Colombia exhibits its folk...! Wait a minute, what is this?

By Gerardo Guarache Ocque // @gagueando

It was about time. Certain Colombian species had been marching for a while, at a low fire, waiting for the international public to sniff them. Here the door is not closed to anything. Electronics? Yes. Dance hall? Clear. Hip hop? Of course! Of course, it is implied a nonnegotiable requirement: the mixture must include fruits harvested in some parcel of this heterogeneous territory that borders five countries in the north of South America, looking at the Pacific and the Caribbean.

Although Sidestepper has been on the road for more than 20 years, it deserves prominence every time there is talk of Colombian fusion music. And, by the way, it serves as a starting point for this story that continues to be written.

Sidestepper was born from the meeting of two brains: Iván Benavides , who was a member of the duo Iván y Lucía and collaborated with polishing the concept of Carlos Vives ; and Richard Blair , a Brit who worked at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios and crossed the ocean invited by Totó La Momposina in 1992 and who, once he found the colors he was looking for, stayed.

The Benavides and Blair experiment became a band that has worked as an intermittent musical collective. That's where Andrea Echeverri ( Aterciopelados ) has gone, to mention a recognized artist, and other characters have participated that stand out in subsequent chapters of this story, such as Gloria "Goyo" Martínez ( Choquibtown ), or Pernett or Kike Egurrola ( Bomba Estéreo ) .

If Supernatural Love (2016), his most recent work, suffered a chemical process of separation of substances, small amounts of cumbia, porro, bullerengue, Cuban or salsa and definitely African sounds would be obtained; all this combined with bluegrass, folk and American country, maybe some flamenco and even a little unclassifiable arabesque. Why split the head with so much musical taxonomy? It is better to say that it is a delicate fusion, like a good craft that weaves the electronic and the organic until it is difficult to identify which is which.

Sidestepper Supernatural Love : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siB3N5jSWsk&t=1738s

Sidestepper , which includes guitarist Teto Ocampo in its training - another of those who worked with Carlos Vives since the days of the Classics of the province and La tierra del olvido - not only contributed since the late 90s to define what would happen in this restless alternative musical scene founded on the local-global duality, but continues to contribute.

Supernatural Love is an album of all places or none. A bilingual album that caresses the body but also conveys messages of peace, love, understanding, and values ​​the simple life, rural life, the loves and pains of a deep Colombia.

The spiritual and the mundane

Bomba Estéreo , which premiered Ayo (2017) not long ago, has emerged in these times as the tip of the iceberg, especially outside New Granada borders. In his fifth work, he further refines what he has been showing: electronics as the basis of a proposal with folklore.

Astutely, Bomba Estéreo is kept in an indefinite place between the sexy sound that guarantees presence in radios and parties, and sound as mere artistic expression. " To love like this " is an example of the first. " Come back " is a sample of the second.

Stereo Bomb. Love like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJr1zbtb5Kw

Stereo Bomb. "Come back": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GY7j_KL1Uk

Liliana Saumet and Simón Mejía , column, brain and heart of Bomba Estéreo , say that Ayo was born from a spiritual ceremony in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. They sought, perhaps, to bring a dew from the ancestral indigenous heritage, a dew that now distils from an album loaded with dance hall and songs based on Antillean patrons.

Come on girls! -Samantt singing- listen to this song that is not a reggaeton nor is it made to move your ass./ If I caught your attention, that is my intention, what I have come to say is hard . It is " Flower Power ", a kind of declaration of principles, a proclamation in defense of women. It is as if the vulgar and macho reguetón was shaking like dandruff of the shoulders.

" Internacionales ", the single, is another statement of Bomba Estéreo . I am Colombian, I am American, I am a citizen of the world , they clarify, and invite a great dance floor that does not discriminate between nationalities or languages. They enhance what the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos Calderón called The Cosmic Race (the Latin American), sublime result of the mixture of the four primitive races of the world. Dance, dance, that to dance you do not need tongues , they chant : a truth about the size of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

Identity: fusion

Review the history of what they have called "new Colombian music" - although the "new" is a very dangerous label in the medium or long term for obvious reasons: it is a sentence to expiration - it is to recognize that behind all this there is a research work. The proposals are based on music lovers, researchers, scholars, knowledgeable about folklore but lovers of music with a capital M.

To analyze it briefly is also to find an immense genealogical tree. They are musicians who have crossed the path, passing from one group to another. They are new bands that arise from the metamorphosis or the implosion of others whose journey left learning, not only artistic and musical, but also managerial.

Each band pulls towards its side, towards its own combination of foreign and local influences, but the umbilical cord remains firm, tied to Colombia, the matrix, the beloved homeland that hurts. Systema Solar does this , which last year published its Rumbo a tierra and celebrates 10 years of travel. They have also done groups like Frente Cumbiero , Curupira , Mojarra Eléctrica and even Puerto Candelaria , the last two more organic and more Caribbean than all those mentioned in these paragraphs.

Puerto Candelaria "The band": https://open.spotify.com/track/1P9gt4t8srChLxoUIsGdvI

In the middle of the spotlight is ChocQuibTown , with its cord tied to the Pacific coast. The trio carries that identity even in the name: if someone is reading this from abroad and does not know it, this group was baptized as a tribute to Chocó, Quibdó capital, the only Colombian department with coasts in the Pacific and Atlantic and only border with Panama, of exuberant vegetation but also with very high rates of poverty.

ChocQuibTown is the colorful and carefree face of the region. Awarded already with several Latin Grammy, Tostao , Slow Mike and the beautiful Goyo have learned to sneak into the jungle lion of the Latin American mainstream, mixing very native and unknown aspects outside their habitat with reggae, dance, salsa ... Let's give an example, " Nobody said ", included in his album El mismo (2015), seems to be just a dance piece with a tumbao de calipso, with guitars, basses and keyboards, but in the background it is based on the chirimía -the traditional rhythm that owes its name to a rustic handmade flautilla.

ChocQuibTown. "No one said": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se3Ali4VKB4

It should be made clear that this movement of alternative, modern, urban music, inspired by Colombian folklore, this world music with tricolor flag, grows thanks to a quality that is in tune with the challenges of the 21st century music industry: their records are references, business cards, studies to update the sound and experiment, but its true flavor is reserved for that unique and unrepeatable experience that is the live presentations.