We go to Colombia and enjoy Los Sabores del Porro….
We may be wrapping up Colombia week in our online class but we don’t dare leave without enjoying Porro music, a traditional folk music from Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Enjoy this video of Los Sabores del Porro by Playing For Change. (Did you expect to see a clarinet? Not I!)
Let Louis Towers remind us that Colombian music is more than Cumbia…
Champeta –also known as “Creole Therapy”–is an highly danceable genre of Afro-Colombian music that finds its inspiration in the historical struggle between the Afro-Colombian population and Colombia’s European-descended upper classes. In the 1960s and ’70s Colombians facing poverty in and around the city of Cartagena blended African rhythms with Caribbean dance music and played this music–LOUDLY!–through speakers known as “picós” in public dance parties. These parties, which also came to be known as picós, served as an emotional release for struggling Colombians, who referred to the music played there–called “champeta” as a reference to the champeta machete used by workers in the fields–as “Creole Therapy.” The ruling class of Cartegena initially attempted to ban picós and critics have labeled champeta as “aggressive” and “tastless,” but Colombia’s youth continue to embrace the genre, alongside related Caribbean genres such as Reggaeton, as a form of class-conscious artistic expression. In this video, Louis Towers shows us why.
This week’s online class takes us all the way to Colombia, a wonderfully complex, ethnically, culturally and geographically diverse country with a violent recent past. Years of internal armed conflict have kept tourists away from Colombia, but over the last few years crime and civil strife have become less dominant and more outsiders are discovering the magical Colombia others have always known. BONUS: Come to class this week to explore three eras of CUMBIA.
Curralao Orquesta Guayacan will make you DANCE!
All Around This World believes we can learn legions about a country while we’re dancing? In class this week we’re exploring Colombia. Let’s start our adventure with this live performance by Colombia’s Curralao Orquesta Guayacan. I dare you to watch this video and not get up and groove.
