PELIGROSA

First off my condolences to his family.
Rafael Calixto Escalona Martinez’s first song is dated February 1943. The seventh of nine children he was to become one of the most prominent Vallenato music composers ever. He grew up listening to peasants and troubadours of the region that often passed by his village bringing news from Valledupar to his childhood village town Patilla. His poetic habits caught him writing songs whenever a situation merged; of sadness and happiness, love and lament, angst and parties. He was a composer who’s style was atypical. Not a musician, he recanted stories often just chorus’ and verses later to be sung by musicians from Valledupar and across Colombia. He was also a long time friend of Gabriel García Márquez, who included him in his stories and once told him that his own master piece novel, 100 years of solitude, was just a 350 page Vallenato. Whether it was inspiring Colombian telenovelas, winning awards for his authorship or his hundreds of songs recanting everything from lewd nostalgia and disgust to honoring his second daughter, Rafael Calixto Escalona Martinez, will be remembered forever.

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You can always ask wiki about cumbia but what’s the fun in that? It’s of course spread like wild fire and Colombians aren’t ’slaves’ to the Spanish Empire anymore but this is what i gather:

The cumbia has its origin in San Basilio, a little town of Atlantic coast of Colombia, South America. It was danced and created by the slaves to feel happiness and forget the heavy work and hard life. It was danced at night in the Palenque de San Basilio behind the ocean walls, the place where the slaves used to hire from the Spanish. The cumbia is danced with wide and long white skirts, with tropical flowers on their hair and a candle as a ritual in the darkness. Men wear white pants folded up, without shirt, with machete to side and sombrero hipihapa. Later they added a red panuelo (scarf ) around the neck to add color. The cumbia is danced barefoot because they dance on the sand and so close to the ocean that the water reaches to touch their feet. Dancers perform around the drums musicians and the fogata. In the Palenque, where we can still found descendants of cumbia, African-Americans who speak African and Spanish language. They continue with their traditions and customs; like crying the babies when they are born and do a rumba (party) when they die; sending letters to their dead relatives, imitating the occupation of the person that just died. They celebrate big parrandas and rumbas (big parties) to the son of cumbias with fogatas and typical orchestras, remembering their heritage and slavery, being now completely free.

See you tomorrow at Creekside Lounge!!

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The following history of FANIA is taken directly from the FANIA website.

Like many American stories, the tale of Fania comes from the boroughs and inner city barrios of New York City. In the early 60’s young Latin musicians brought the music from their homelands into the Great Apple and thus began a great period of musical reinvention and free cooperation amongst the melting pot of cultures living in the city.

During that time of cultural change, musical life in New York was exciting and unpredictable. One could visit Greenwich Village and listen to the topical folk of Bob Dylan, or take that A train to Harlem and watch James Brown shred his R&B all over the Apollo Theater. Fania would evolve, out of this diverse and dynamic mix of ideas, into one of the most influential and beloved Latin musical institutions of our times.

The new sounds coming from Spanish Harlem and the Bronx were sometimes rough and dangerous but always real and immediate, like the New York streets that inspired them. Along the way, Fania artists mixed a cornucopia of styles that transcended the boundaries of traditional Latin music and set the path for the genres of salsa, boogalu, Latin R&B, and afro-Cuban jazz.

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