Journey with Giovanny: mucho gusto!

A story of immigration, friendship, and the magic that happens when those seemingly different transform our lives.

click here for the NPR interview 

Steve Derthick grew up on Signal Mountain, Tennessee, and wrote his first poem for his Mother, after she gave him a puppy for his sixth birthday. Steve followed his sense of creativity around the wooded bluffs and caverns of his childhood, under the live oak canopies of Cumberland Island, and along the cobblestone streets of Sevilla. Steve met his wife Barbara in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, and together they brought their three children to live in Colombia, where he met Giovanny in 2008.

Giovanny Padilla Mojica was born in Cienega, Colombia, amidst stilted houses above the great saltwater marsh. Always on the move, like a jaguar, Giovanny followed his Mother to Venezuela where she went seeking a better life when he was three. Ten years later, Caracas descended into civil unrest, and they moved back to Colombia. Giovanny joined the marines at 18, then worked as a night watchman, writing about life and love, culture and politics, in a spiral notebook, in multi-colored ink. Giovanny had this notebook on the desk beside him during his shift as the apartment doorman the day he met Steve.

Pedro Abriles is from Curanilahue, Chile, where he wrote and played his first song at fourteen for the stray dogs that gathered around his porch after everyone else went to bed. A third-generation singer-songwriter, Pedro earned a degree in music education and founded a recording studio in Concepción, where he met his wife Brandee. Pedro and Brandee lived in Calgary, Canada where Pedro founded a Latin orchestra. In 2020, Pedro and Brandee moved to Chattanooga where Brandee became a Spanish professor at UTC, where Pedro sang on March 23, 2022, the day he crossed paths with Steve and Giovanny.