It would be
incorrect to assume that the black inhabitants of the Pacific have
not absorbed modern, cosmopolitan musics into their musical lives
beyond the religious musics and the marimba music described above.
Despite the isolation of the southern Pacific, a number of musical
styles and forms have been enthusiastically adopted and given their
own particularly local spins.
Petronio
Álvarez
The guitar,
for example, has appeared in accounts of the Pacific since at least
the 1760s, at times playing alongside the marimba ensemble. Little
is known about the early guitar repertoire, although it may have
included Afro-Spanish dance forms like paracumbé,
which resemble current marimba music and jugas in their
rhythmic structure. By the early twentieth century, the guitar repertoire
included both international genres such as waltz, fox-trot, and
Cuban conga and Colombian national forms like pasillo and
bambuco, often accompanied by violins and other string
instruments. These genres were also played by a fife-and-drum ensemble
called chirimía (not to be confused with the Chocoano
brass band described above). However, both the chirimía
and the guitar repertoire also included versions of traditional
marimba music and jugas. These guitar currulaos
would become increasingly popular and a number of composers in the
larger cities of the Pacific, such as Petronio Álvarez in
Buenaventura and “Caballito” Garcés in Tumaco
would compose guitar currulaos that were played in informal
gatherings and dancehalls in those cities.
(Example 09 “Mi varita”
– Grupo
Tamafrí)
In the early
20th century, both Tumaco and Buenaventura had municipal brass bands
that played genteel music in the city plaza on Sunday afternoons.
The young men involved in these bands, however, were also fans of
the Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican records that were entering
through these port cities, and formed mambo bands, often including
guitar players who took the place of the piano. Singers such as
Tito Cortés of Tumaco also recorded boleros, son
and other cosmopolitan forms.
Some of these
groups, most prominently Pereogoyo y su Combo Vacaná from
Buenaventura, also drew on guitar currulaos, jugas,
and even the occasional alabado for their repertoire, orchestrating
songs such as guitarist Petronio Álvarez’s well-known
currulao for a full mambo band, creating a hybrid form
which remains innovative to this day.
(Example 10 – “Caso del vencedor”
– La Maruja)
Like the mambo bands of the 1950s and 50s, some salsa artists like
Jimmy Saa and Yuri Buenaventura have roots in the southern Pacific.
The mix of a cosmopolitan, salsa sensibility with local sounds,
as with Peregoyo, has continued to inspire such modern fusion groups
as Grupo Bahía, Marejada, Grupo Orilla, and Grupo Herencia.
(Example 11 – “La guayabita”
– Grupo
Orilla, Lo que me tocó)
These last groups
have arisen in the last 10 years or so with the Petronio Álvarez
Festival of the Music of the Pacific, held every August in Cali.
This Festival, which includes Chocoano music, and southern Pacific
traditional music, as well as this new generation of fusions, has
begun to give visibility to the music and the musicians of the Colombian
Pacific. The Petronio Álvarez Festival is part of a greater
emphasis on black culture that has been seen in Colombia since the
passage of a new multicultural constitution, and new laws in the
1990s which recognized Afro-Colombians, and those of the Pacific
in particular, as an official ethnic minority group.
The people of
the southern Pacific have also been influenced by newer tendencies.
Rap, ragga, and reggaetón from the US, Puerto Rico, Jamaica,
and Panama have been very influential over the decade or so, and
a number of Colombian rappers from the Pacific coast have emerged,
such as Junior Jeim and Element Black from Buenaventura, and Leka
el Poeta, Misterioso, and Master Boys from Tumaco. These artists
often represent black Pacific themes in their work, including slang
and musical elements.
(Video
3: “Puro soye” Jr. Jein y DJ Piru (Buenaventura))
