Some 16-24% of Colombia’s
population (44 million) is of African descent, giving it the third
largest Afro-descendent population in the western hemisphere after
Brazil and the United States. This population, spread through different
regions in Colombia, has created a rich variety of musical forms
in Colombia. Although this dossier will focus primarily on the music
of the southern Pacific coast, it is important to recognize this
variety among the Colombian regions.
The importation of large
numbers of enslaved Africans was commonplace by the 1600s, and continued
up to the end of the 18th century. Slavery was abolished gradually,
ending definitively in 1852. The Africans that arrived in chains
at the Colombian port of Cartagena were taken from the Senegambia
region, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, and central Africa,
bringing with them both much of the labor on which the colonial
and Colombian economies were built, but also a panoply of cultural
forms from their African homelands that was supplemented by the
indigenous and Spanish Creole forms they encountered in Colombia.
The particular
dynamics of these mixtures, the kinds of work the enslaved Africans
and their descendents were made to do, and the kinds of musical
and cultural forms that emerged varied according to region. There
are five important regions of Afro-Colombian traditional music:
the Caribbean coast, the San Andrés archipelago, the Chocó,
the Cauca and Patía Valley region, and the southern Pacific
coast, although each of these contains a number of sub-regions and
points of overlap.
Gaita
instruments.
The
Caribbean Coast
The Caribbean
port of Cartagena was one of the major points of entry to the South
American mainland for the slave ships, and the Caribbean coast in
general is still the home of many black Colombians and a number
of Afro-Colombian musical styles. The best known of these are the
related genres of cumbia, gaita, and porro.
These feature an ensemble of hand drums, shakers and a bass drum
which play in an interlocking rhythm, and often wind instruments
like the indigenous-derived flute called gaita.
(Example 01 “La mica prieta” (Gaita)
– Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto)
These musical
forms have often been incorporated into brass bands called papayeras,
especially in the western part of the coast, and in the 1940s were
orchestrated for a modern big band, such as those led by Lucho Bermúdez
(1912-1944) and Pacho Galán (1906-1988). Another traditional
music is bullerengue, which features interlocking percussion,
and women’s singing, with dancers inside a circle of clapping
onlookers, who enter the circle to dance.
(Example 02 “Mariangola”
– Petrona Martínez,
Le bullerengue)
The eastern coast is the home of the music, immensely popular in
Colombia, called vallenato, which features accordion, a
tubular scraper, and a single hand drum.
(Example 03 “Los campanales” (Merengue
vallenato) – Alejo Durán, Los colores de la tierra)
Another music which has become very popular in the Caribbean is
called champeta, and is comprised of local versions of
the Caribbean, West and South African popular musics (especially
African soukous, highlife, and mbaqanga
and Haitian kompá) that began to be played in the
late 1960s on gigantic sound systems called picós.
(Example
04 “El liso” – Luis Towers, Champeta criolla)
Betoman and friends with Picó Son Africano, San Basilio
de Palenque, 2002.
Photo: Michael Birenbaum Quintero
Finally, the
town of San Basilio de Palenque, a town founded by runaway slaves
in the 17th century, retains not only a creole language with elements
of both Spanish and the central African Kikongo language, but a
drum-based percussion music called lumbalú.
San
Andrés and Providencia
San Andrés and Providencia are two small islands in the western
Caribbean, originally settled by the British and their English-speaking
slaves. The native population is, like that of Antillean islands
like Jamaica or Barbados, Protestant and English- or patois-speaking.
The music of San Andrés and Providencia emerges from this
heritage. Religious music is largely comprised of English Protestant
hymns sung by a church chorus. The islands also have a traditional
dance band, featuring guitar, mandolin, violin, a percussion instrument
made of a donkey’s jawbone, maracas, and a string bass made
of a washtub. This ensemble performs mento music, as well
as other musics that were popular in the Caribbean in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries such as contradanse and polka.
(Example 05 “Providencia Mento”
– Grupo Tradicional de Willie B. Archbold, Itinerario
Musical por Colombia)
San Andrés has also produced some well-regarded reggae bands.
The
Chocó
Chocó province is an isolated rainforest region along Colombia’s
northern Pacific coast and the border with Panama. Its main artery,
the Atrato River, connects it with the Caribbean. The Chocó
was an important destination for African slaves, who were sent there
to work the rich gold mines of the region. The best-known music
of the Chocó is the lively brass band music called chirimía.
This music includes such international genres as polka,
danza, contradanza, and mazurca, probably
imported from the Caribbean, as well as local forms like abozao
and levantapolvo. The chirimía band features homemade
bass and snare drums, cymbals, euphonium (a small tuba) and one
or two clarinets, and in its older version, reed flutes as wind
instruments.
(Example 06 “La quita marido”
– Chirimía la Contundencia)
San Pacho
Chirimía
is particularly popular in the October festivals of San Francisco
(affectionately nicknamed “San Pacho”) in the city of
Quibdó, which features over a month of chirimía
dancing in the streets.
Tambora,
a musical form usually associated with neighboring Panamá,
and which features drums and singing, is found on the coast of the
Chocó.
The province,
like parts of the Caribbean coast, assimilated the Cuban sexteto
ensemble and its repertoire of son music in the early 20th century.
Chocó
has some musical forms which it shares, with its own particular
variations, with the southern Pacific coast, especially alabado,
canto de boga, and the religious ceremony called gualí
(analogous to the southern Pacific chigualo).
Some of Colombia’s
best-known salsa bands are from the Chocó.
Cauca
and Patía Valleys
The Cauca Valley was the destination of many enslaved Africans who
worked the plantations, sugar mills, cattle ranches and gold mines
there, and was the home of many of the wealthy white Creoles who
owned gold mines in the Chocó and the southern Pacific, from
which the Cauca Valley is separated by the western chain of the
Andes Mountains. The nearby Patía Valley was the site of
western Colombia’s largest runaway slave community, called
El Castigo.
The music of
the region has not been very well studied. One major form there
is the Patía string band music called bambuco, which
shares characteristics with both the Andean string music of the
same name and southern Pacific currulao music. Cauca Valley
fuga may be related with southern Pacific juga
and is played either by string bands or brass bands, the latter
during the religious ceremonies for the Adoration of the Christ
Child, held in February. Rural zones of the region also occasionally
hold a ceremony similar to the southern Pacific chigualo
and the Chocoano gualí.
(Example
(internet) “El solterón” – Las cantadoras
del Patía)
