Francesco Lastrucci

ARTS: El Cafetal

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  • Mr. Dario Lopez's Vallenato music school in Villanueva. Youg boy practicing accordion. Dario teaches mostly Acordion and holds his lessons in his home's patio. The accordion carries the melody in vallenato. Here the three row button model is used, known in different regions and at various times as “el moruno,” “guacamayo” and “espejito” (“machine screw”). The accordion first came to Colombia in the latter 1800s where it was used in European dance music. From the very beginning it was considered a lowbrow instrument, a position it proudly maintains to this day. Most accordions continue to be imported from Honer in Germany where they are tweaked to produce the warm and reedy sound Colombians prefer.
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  • El cafetal neighborhood. Girl swimming in the river in a hot afternoon. . While rough hewn and leathery in sound, vallenato lyrics are usually plain written and sugarcane sweet. Everyday events, passion, eternal love, village folklore, travelogues and miracles blur in the telling; voices crack, crackle with emotion in a music that so influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez that he once described One Hundred Years of Solitude as a 350 page vallenato and inspired charcters such as {quote}.Remedios la Bella{quote}.
  • Billares de Rueda. Men playing pool in one of the billares in town, while a sweets vendor waits outside. Loud vallenato music records are always played in the background.While rough hewn and leathery in sound, vallenato lyrics are usually plain written and sugarcane sweet. Everyday events, passion, eternal love, village folklore, travelogues and miracles blur in the telling; voices crack, crackle with emotion in a music that so influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez that he once described One Hundred Years of Solitude as a 350 page vallenato and inspired charcters such as {quote}.Remedios la Bella{quote}.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. On the stage during the Festival, local hero and vallenato icon {quote}Poncho{quote} Zuleta, with the accordion of {quote}El Cocha{quote} Molina opens the festival edition in Villanueva. Born in El Cafetal neighborhood, singer and composer Poncho Zuleta, also known as {quote}polmun de oro{quote} (lung of gold) is part of big family of famous vallenato artists. In 2006 Poncho and his brother Emiliano (acordionist) were the first group in history to win a grammy in the category vallenato/cumbia. There are more than 68 accordion performers, singer-songwriters and composers having been born in Villanueva, village which is the main provider of vallenato music: The cradle of Accordions. Most of them were born in the Cafetal barrio, which makes the festival in Villanueva is often referred to as the “criollo” festival and rivals the more commercialized one of Valledupar.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Primavera del Ayer contest (translate as yesterday's spring, the senior competition). Live performance of Singer and accordionist Pedro Romero with his inseparable iconic Reyban aviator glasses and sombrero Vueltiao (the colombian coast's hat), two distinctive features of vallenato artists from the classic age. Pedro is part of an important vallenato dinasty. His nephew Israel Romero to gether with Rafael Orozco was the founder of legendary group {quote}binomio de oro{quote}.
  • Dariana (left) dances in front of her sister Karen(center) and the neighbour Marisol (Right) in her house in El Cafetal neighborhood. While rough hewn and leathery in sound, vallenato lyrics are usually plain written and sugarcane sweet. Everyday events, passion, eternal love, village folklore, travelogues and miracles blur in the telling; voices crack, crackle with emotion in a music that so influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez that he once described One Hundred Years of Solitude as a 350 page vallenato and inspired charcters such as {quote}.Remedios la Bella{quote}.
  • A {quote}Parranda{quote} (street party) at {quote}La Esquina de Geno{quote}, the most popular parranda place in El Cafetal, where all the bohemians of the neighborhood gather. People playing domino while covered with Maizena (cornstarch), often used to throw at people during parties. A parranda is a big part of a Vallenato's lifestyle: in a parranda you listen vallenato classics, you dance and most of all, you drink. You hear so much vallenato that it seems the last will of the people, you so much alcohol that it seems that all the reserves of whiskey and beer will be exhausted. People drink liters of contraband whiskey and fall asleep when the body asks for it, to rest and start over. Sometime parranda can last for 2-3 days. These parties can not be done anywhere. There are houses that have become institutions for accordion parties.
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  • Minca, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Man playing the accordion in his house while his sons accompany him on the drums and guacharaca. Mùsica vallenata originated in the Magdalena Grande area of Northeastern Colombia now comprised by the Departments (States) of Magdalena, Guajira and Cesar. This region touches the Caribbean coast and stretches across the vast fertile valleys between the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Sierra de Perija mountains hugging Venezuela.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Crowd dancing, singing and drinking during a vallenato live performance. There are 4 different rhythms in Vallenato: Paseo, Son, Merengue and Puya. The first two being slower and more melodic and sentimental and primarily designed for listening. The merengue and puya rhythms are played for dancing, and other Colombian dance rhythms, cumbia and tambora, are often described as subgroups of vallenato.
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  • Villanueva, barrio El Cafetal. 12 years old Dariana's portrait by the river. If Villanueva is the core of Vallenato, the Barrio of El Cafetal (until recently a heavily guerrilla controlled area) is the core of Villanueva: for being the cradle of vallenato music, for the bohemian lifestyle of its people and for the cafeteros .Every composer got inspiration from the town’s everyday life, from its mountains, its river, its women, its coffee, its cockfights and its “magical realism” themes. Gabriel García Márquez, once described his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude to be a 350-page vallenato nad got inspiration for its characters such as {quote}Remedios La Bella{quote} from the people of these towns.
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  • Villanueva town square. Man singing vallenato song with a guitar. While rough hewn and leathery in sound, vallenato lyrics are usually plain written and sugarcane sweet. Everyday events, passion, eternal love, village folklore, travelogues and miracles blur in the telling; voices crack, crackle with emotion in a music that so influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez that he once described One Hundred Years of Solitude as a 350 page vallenato
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Crowd dancing, singing and drinking during a vallenato live performance. There are 4 different rhythms in Vallenato: Paseo, Son, Merengue and Puya. The first two being slower and more melodic and sentimental and primarily designed for listening. The merengue and puya rhythms are played for dancing, and other Colombian dance rhythms, cumbia and tambora, are often described as subgroups of vallenato.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Domiciano Lopez from Valledupar with accordion with his drummer and Pedro Romero from Villanueva (background) is doing a rehersal inside a restaurant before performing in the Primavera del Ayer competition (translate as yesterday's spring, the senior competition).
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  • El cafetal neighborhood. Woman from a coffee farmer's family with her son on the floor during a hot day. A coffee bag used as a pillow. . While rough hewn and leathery in sound, vallenato lyrics are usually plain written and sugarcane sweet. Everyday events, passion, eternal love, village folklore, travelogues and miracles blur in the telling; voices crack, crackle with emotion in a music that so influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez that he once described One Hundred Years of Solitude as a 350 page vallenato and inspired charcters such as {quote}.Remedios la Bella{quote}.
  • The carnival's parade stops in front of a mural depicting the story of Vallenato music in Villanueva. . While normally featuring typical carnival music and dance, here in Villanueva vallenato music and lifestyle is a big part of scene and gives a different flavor to the Carnival parties.
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  • Billares de Rueda. Men playing domino in one of the billares in town. Loud vallenato music records are always played in the background.
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  • Villanueva, barrio El Cafetal. Flirting couple. On a rainy night a boy visits his girldfriend during a dance rehersal. If Villanueva is the core of Vallenato, the Barrio of El Cafetal (until recently a heavily guerrilla controlled area) is the core of Villanueva: for being the cradle of vallenato music, for the bohemian lifestyle of its people and for the cafeteros and the activities that revolve around the coffee production.Just to name a few: Poncho Zuleta, Jorge Celedon, El Binomio de Oro, Jean Carlos Centeno were all born in the same street in El Cafetal and they are all now international stars of Vallenato.Every composer got inspiration from the town’s everyday life, from its mountains, its river, its women, its coffee, its cockfights and its “magical realism” themes. Vallenato translates as “born in the valley” and is the music of the north Colombian countryside. Originating from farmers who mixed Spanish and West African rhythms, vallenato was long derided across Colombia as unsophisticated cowboy music, before it was championed by the country’s intelligentsia, among them Gabriel García Márquez, who once described his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude to be a 350-page vallenato.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Rehersals in the street before the Junior contest for Acordionists. The accordion carries the melody in vallenato. Here the three row button model is used, known in different regions and at various times as “el moruno,” “guacamayo” and “espejito” (“machine screw”). The accordion first came to Colombia in the latter 1800s where it was used in European dance music. From the very beginning it was considered a lowbrow instrument, a position it proudly maintains to this day. Most accordions continue to be imported from Honer in Germany where they are tweaked to produce the warm and reedy sound Colombians prefer. One brand, Bapos, is manufactured in Colombia. Since performers change accordions to change keys, there is usually an assortment of diatonic instruments at the artist’s feet, or off to the side of the stage.
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  • Dancers during the festival's opening parade, marking the first day of celebrations. Each neighborhood marches and dances through the towns streets showing different costumes and choreographies. Each neighborhood will also name its {quote}reina{quote} queen. The parade will end up at night in the main square in front of the stage and the first concert will begin.
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  • A {quote}Parranda{quote} (street party) in {quote}La Esquina de Geno{quote}, the most popular parranda place in El Cafetal, where all the bohemians of the neighborhood gather. Poeple dancing and arm wrestling in front of the picture of {quote}El Profe{quote} (professor) one of the main carachter of the neighborhood and amateur composer. A parranda is a big part of a Vallenato's lifestyle: in a parranda you listen vallenato classics, you dance and most of all, you drink. You hear so much vallenato that it seems the last will of the people, you so much alcohol that it seems that all the reserves of whiskey and beer will be exhausted. People drink liters of contraband whiskey and fall asleep when the body asks for it, to rest and start over. Sometime parranda can last for 2-3 days. These parties can not be done anywhere. There are houses that have become institutions for accordion parties.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Rehersals in the street before the contest for Acordionists. The accordion carries the melody in vallenato. Here the three row button model is used, known in different regions and at various times as “el moruno,” “guacamayo” and “espejito” (“machine screw”). The accordion first came to Colombia in the latter 1800s where it was used in European dance music. From the very beginning it was considered a lowbrow instrument, a position it proudly maintains to this day. Most accordions continue to be imported from Honer in Germany where they are tweaked to produce the warm and reedy sound Colombians prefer. One brand, Bapos, is manufactured in Colombia. Since performers change accordions to change keys, there is usually an assortment of diatonic instruments at the artist’s feet, or off to the side of the stage.
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  • El Cafetal, the cafetaleros's barrio. Man putting coffee beans on the road in front of his house for drying. The coffee beans usually take about three days in full sun to dry and here in {quote}el Cafetal{quote} people usually dry their coffee on the road. The southern part of La Guajira’s department lies between two mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serrania de Perija. {quote}Campesinos{quote} here often cultivate coffee in the mountains, spending several days in their “fincas” and bringing the harvest back to town to dry it and sell it to big coffee companies. They get payed very little for this product.
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  • Dancers on a break during the festival's opening parade, marking the first day of celebrations. Each neighborhood marches and dances through the towns streets showing different costumes and choreographies. Each neighborhood will also name its {quote}reina{quote} queen. The parade will end up at night in the main square in front of the stage and the first concert will begin.
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  • El Cafetal, the cafetaleros's barrio. Man recollecting coffee bean from the road in front of his house, at the end of a day drying under the sun. The coffee beans usually take about three days in full sun to dry and here in {quote}el Cafetal{quote} people usually dry their coffee on the road. The southern part of La Guajira’s department lies between two mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serrania de Perija. {quote}Campesinos{quote} here often cultivate coffee in the mountains, spending several days in their “fincas” and bringing the harvest back to town to dry it and sell it to big coffee companies. They get payed very little for this product.
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  • An improvised road Cockfight in El Cafetal barrio. Boy with his rooster. Cockfights are very important in this region, a social and cultural weekly event that never fails to get these small rustic arenas overcrowded. The cock becomes a symbol of virility, a hero and a reason of hope for many Cafetaleros. Cock-fighting is used as a means for economic gain and an improvement in one’s standing in the community. People live with their cocks, feed them and treath as pets. Kids grow up with cocks and grow up with gallera’s stories (often mix reality with fairy tales). A gallero never wants to have to make dinner from one of his own roosters, but when he does, the meat is the best to be had. After all, a fighting cock has been pampered all its life, fed the best food and exercised daily.
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  • The carnival's parade. The reina (the queen) of the carnival dancing in the streets around town with her neighborhood's dancers. The reina is the equivalent od the beauty pageant's winner. While normally featuring typical carnival music and dance, here in Villanueva vallenato music and lifestyle is a big part of scene and gives a different flavor to the Carnival parties.
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  • Villanueva, El Cafetal barrio. Girls talk under the rising full moon in El Cafetal barrio, Villanueva, with the Serrania de Perija mountains in the background. While rough hewn and leathery in sound, vallenato lyrics are usually plain written and sugarcane sweet. Everyday events, passion, eternal love, village folklore, travelogues and miracles blur in the telling; voices crack, crackle with emotion in a music that so influenced Gabriel Garcia Marquez that he once described One Hundred Years of Solitude as a 350 page vallenato and inspired charcters such as {quote}.Remedios la Bella{quote}. Vallenato translates as “born in the valley” and originated from farmers who mixed Spanish and West African rhythms, vallenato was long derided across Colombia as unsophisticated cowboy music, before it was championed by the country’s intelligentsia.
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  • A {quote}Gallera{quote}: Cockfight arena. Cockfights are very important in this region, a social and cultural weekly event that never fails to get these small rustic arenas overcrowded. The cock becomes a symbol of virility, a hero and a reason of hope for many Cafetaleros. Cock-fighting is used as a means for economic gain and an improvement in one’s standing in the community. As an art form, the cockfight focuses on an aspect of life, aggression, and projects it into a theater where it can be more clearly expressed and understood. Instead of resorting primarily to violence among themselves as a way of answering a base human impulse, the participants translate their urges into a drama of appearances, where they cannot harm the observers or participants in reality.In the cockfights arenas the Guajirs often show off his notorious temper and to test the most important form of agreement of the region: la Palabra de Gallero. The cockfighter's word of honor, palabra de gallero, guaranteeing players' bets, is not to be breached under any circumstances. Palabra de gallero means you can make a verbal wager with a person across the ring whom you have never met, establish odds, and trust his word. In the cockfighting arena, any breach of the code of honor is serious enough to ban the violator from the arena forever.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Crowd dancing, singing and drinking during a vallenato live performance. There are 4 different rhythms in Vallenato: Paseo, Son, Merengue and Puya. The first two being slower and more melodic and sentimental and primarily designed for listening. The merengue and puya rhythms are played for dancing, and other Colombian dance rhythms, cumbia and tambora, are often described as subgroups of vallenato.
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  • The carnival's parade stops in front of a mural depicting the story of Vallenato music in Villanueva. . While normally featuring typical carnival music and dance, here in Villanueva vallenato music and lifestyle is a big part of scene and gives a different flavor to the Carnival parties.
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  • El Cafetal barrio, Villanueva. Portrait of old accordion player and farmer. The tendency now is to view the 40s and 50s as a sort of golden age of vallenato. Colombians are proud to point out that vallenato symbolizes the unique and largely imagined harmonious relationship between the races that comprise their country; native Indians, Black Africans and the Spanish. Each group is said to have contributed an instrument to the ensemble.
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  • Boy at home feeding his rooster. Cockfights are very important in this region, a social and cultural weekly event that never fails to get these small rustic arenas overcrowded. The cock becomes a symbol of virility, a hero and a reason of hope for many Cafetaleros. Cock-fighting is used as a means for economic gain and an improvement in one’s standing in the community. People live with their cocks, feed them and treath as pets. Kids grow up with cocks and grow up with gallera’s stories (often mix reality with fairy tales). A gallero never wants to have to make dinner from one of his own roosters, but when he does, the meat is the best to be had. After all, a fighting cock has been pampered all its life, fed the best food and exercised daily.
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  • A {quote}Parranda{quote} (street party) in a house in El Cafetal barrio, Villanueva. Sonia dancing with a neighbour. A parranda is a big part of a Vallenato's lifestyle: in a parranda you listen vallenato classics, you dance and most of all, you drink. You hear so much vallenato that it seems the last will of the people, you so much alcohol that it seems that all the reserves of whiskey and beer will be exhausted. If Villanueva is the core of Vallenato, the Barrio of El Cafetal (until recently a heavily guerrilla controlled area) is the core of Villanueva: for being the cradle of vallenato music, for the bohemian lifestyle of its people and for the cafeteros and the activities that revolve around the coffee production.
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  • Villanueva. Cuna de Acordeones festival. Rehersals in the street before the contest for Acordionists. The accordion carries the melody in vallenato. Here the three row button model is used, known in different regions and at various times as “el moruno,” “guacamayo” and “espejito” (“machine screw”). The accordion first came to Colombia in the latter 1800s where it was used in European dance music. From the very beginning it was considered a lowbrow instrument, a position it proudly maintains to this day. Most accordions continue to be imported from Honer in Germany where they are tweaked to produce the warm and reedy sound Colombians prefer. One brand, Bapos, is manufactured in Colombia. Since performers change accordions to change keys, there is usually an assortment of diatonic instruments at the artist’s feet, or off to the side of the stage.
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  • The desert of the Alta Guajira. Mùsica vallenata originated in the Magdalena Grande area of Northeastern Colombia now comprised by the Departments (States) of Magdalena, Guajira and Cesar. This region touches the desert of the Alta Guajira, runs along the Caribbean coast and stretches across the vast fertile valleys between the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Sierra de Perija mountains hugging Venezuela.
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