That day, the afternoon that Rafael Calixto Escalona died, fifteen years ago, the Vallenato sky put on an elegant gray dress, dressed as a widow; The soil of Valledupar was dressed in bad omens; his children, my brothers; They dressed in longing and I dressed in nostalgia since dawn.
The medical prognoses in the capital of the country, where Rafael Escalona Martínez lay in a clinic in the middle of those horrendous tubes that prolong existence and that keep us clinging to the word hope; They were the worst. The men of science who were making all their efforts to raise the maestro of Vallenato again – like many other times – had already told my brothers that this time they just had to wait. But not the usual miracle; but the moment of farewell, the moment of goodbye, the hour of departure.
And the moment came in the afternoon. By then Nevada was preparing to cry and the lightning did not understand reasons. Exactly at 4:36 in the afternoon on Wednesday, May 13, Rafael Calixto Escalona said goodbye to life when his heart refused to continue beating, at the Santa Fe Foundation, in the country’s capital, with his children Berni. Francisco, Ada Luz, Clemente and ‘Rafa’; and in Valledupar, his land, the Sierra Nevada released its lament in the form of rain, so that “La Creciente del Cesar”, one of his most beautiful songs, came to life, while its author crossed the boundaries of death. .
Moments of Escalona’s farewell.
It’s raining in La Nevada
It’s going to rain in the Valley
The lightning is seen
Like a candle that goes out
The lightning of his song never appeared on the scene that day in his Valley of the soul, it was not possible to see it; since the metaphor navigated the twists and turns of the unknown, while the candle of Escalona’s existence was extinguished forever.
From mouth to mouth like a yawn; In the same way as his songs transcended, in Valledupar-Macondo, the news of his death spread, as did the verse of one of his songs, many followed the events of what happened after Valledupar, while the whole world knew of his death. “Erdaaa the mess is going to be big the day he dies,” my dad said one day jokingly. And he was a teacher, because God rewarded you with great wisdom, and even allowed you to sing the way in which he would die.
Moments of Escalona’s farewell.
And if Esperanza is right
That there in the Valley a person died
Do not doubt that it was Escalona
who died of the heart
Maybe he was in the wrong place. But it is understandable, when that song was created, Escalona was very young, and before he had thought that his death could be in Santa Marta, due to love sickness; or in El Molino, La Guajira, because of a miller. Furthermore, by then he did not imagine that Bogotá was going to love him so much, and he was not going to steal them for a long time, so that it would be there in the highlands that the poet from Patillal would say goodbye to life and be fired with the honors of a head of state. The people of Bogotá said goodbye to the Head of State of El País Vallenato, between ruanas and multicolored coats with a chorus of voices that, in the midst of tears, shouted from both sides of Carrera Séptima: “Thank you, teacher, for everything you gave us.” . While we, his family, full of pain but filled with pride, made our journey with his body to the Catam Military Airport, to bring him back to his land.
TRIBUTES BEGIN FOR ‘ESCALONA EL GRANDE’
While Nevada mourned one of her most beloved children for the second time, in Bogotá they were preparing the farewells for maestro Escalona. After his death, the body of the ‘Big Dad of Vallenato’ was taken to the Cristo Rey Funeral Home and from there it went to the headquarters of the Society of Authors and Composers of Colombia, Sayco, where ‘Escalona el Grande’ would receive the first of his posthumous tributes.
While the coffin was taken to the farewell hall, the accordions also cried, along with the entity’s officials, friends and family. “Maestro is in his house,” those were the heartfelt words of welcome, in the middle of the final farewell, pronounced very hurt by Alberto Urrego, the president of Sayco at that time.
Moments of Escalona’s farewell.
The pilgrimage that began on Wednesday night in Sayco, to accompany the teacher, continued on Thursday morning until eight in the morning, at the end of the mass offered in his memory, before being taken to the Elliptical Hall of the National Capitol, where Escalona in the midst of the stillness of his soul, another tribute awaited him.
Just like the previous night, the list of characters who paraded through the place was endless to pay the last tribute to the son of Don Clemente Escalona, whose body remained in a burning chamber in the elliptical hall, headquarters of the Congress of the Republic.
A MASS OFFICIATED BY THE CHARACTERS OF THEIR SONGS
Once again the floor of the feelings of us, his children, his nephews who embraced us with their solidarity and his friends who did not leave us alone for a moment, moved and in what way. The pain once again mixed with nostalgia, with memories, with the past, with the present and collided head-on with reality, when the silence was broken by a sad note intoned by King Álvaro Meza, which marked the passage of the funeral procession towards the Cathedral Primate.
Rafael Escalona was so privileged in life that his second farewell mass was officiated by the high Hierarchs of the Church in the country; the same ones who once felt offended by the daring of that boy who dared to question the conduct of the Church, with the issue of the famous Custody of Badillo that disappeared from the town and, as always, it was impossible for him to keep quiet about the fact. His daring led him to be known even in the Holy See, so that, paradoxically, half a century later, it was the same Apostolic Nuncio, who praised his qualities as a composer and storyteller, which led him to be one of the greatest and most important authors that Colombia gave birth to.
At the end of the mass they put on
From the priest down to search
At the end of the mass, few remembered that warning that Escalona had made more than five decades ago. At the end of the mass they, the priests, characters in their songs; They accompanied him to the door of the Cathedral, where a moved Bogotá waited for her teacher to give him the most heartfelt goodbye and show him all her admiration.
Once again Álvaro Meza remembered why he was there with his accordion on his chest. Once again Meza intertwined melodies that days before people danced with joy and that at that moment shrank the feelings of the strongest. When the box containing the remains of the ‘Son of Patillal’ was placed in the vehicle to advance towards Catam, the people of the highlands and the coastal people who studied, worked and lived in Bogotá, formed a cord of affection, tied their hearts and They let themselves be carried away by the moment, to bring out from the depths of their ego the lost voice, which allowed them to join the choir to sing goodbye.
From far away came a vallenato
And he came playing his sad accordion
and sang with pain
The death of Pedro Castro
It was not Castro who was leaving, it was ‘Rafa’ who left Bogotá on a journey with no return, who returned to his land, who let go of his dreams, who clung to life until his last breath.
It was the Master, the one who was leaving, and leaving many of those friends with whom he shared a photo, a phrase or a hug heartbroken, in his daily walk along the Seventh; before the illness prevented him from going out to visit the city.
Even if I go to high school
Don’t think my Maye that I’m dead
Goodbyes give feeling
That’s very fair, I believe it.
BACK TO THEIR ROOTS
Escalona, my father, still missed a trip to his land in life. He wanted like no one else to be present at the Vallenato Festival that had just ended, but just as he resisted his desire when he realized that it was impossible due to its severity, he also took a step back from death so as not to spoil the party for his countrymen. Since then he knew that the end was closer, but with everything and that, he found the courage to send reasons with affectionate phrases that he knew how to say.
In the midst of his gravity, we spoke and I felt his voice so strong that he managed to deceive me. I felt his mischievous laugh that made me think that the butterflies of the Badillo River would return again with his ‘recao’. We even managed to joke about Jaime Molina’s party in heaven, without me knowing that Jaime was in front of his bed, motioning again for him to come over next to him, to the other shore, to the other side.
Moments of Escalona’s farewell.
“Daughter, love scares death,” was the phrase that at that moment I did not understand very well, because the desire to see him get up from that bed again was so great that it erased from me the understanding and the reasons to understand that beings like him they never leave, even if they are dying; but they remain beyond the sun and travel looking for a space in eternity, to immortalize their soul.
Walking the earth
or sailing on the sea
maybe I will find
a place where there is no sorrow
And since I can’t find it
I keep wandering through life
the same as the swallow
that nobody knows where it’s going
When Rafael Calixto Escalona Martínez was loaded onto the FAC plane to make his last journey through the mortal world, his family accompanied him on his return home. It was the moment where memories began to erode in each of us from stillness and silence. As the guardian of dreams, ‘Rafa’ at the bottom of the ship escorted us, looked at us, analyzed us and even laughed at so many things that at that moment it was impossible for him to convey.
Glued to a window yesterday he was flying with the girl from La Casa in the air in his arms. She looked and looked at the clouds, perhaps imagining that moment there with her father with the little angels, so that no one would disturb her life.
Another metaphor that came to life, when the clouds kissed the air that cut the plane’s flight with an Ada Luz in the foreground, who from the bottom of her heart wanted to scream, singing her pain:
He who flies does not rise
Let’s see Ada Luz in the clouds
He who doesn’t fly doesn’t get there
Let’s see Ada Luz in the Immensity
Meanwhile, the sorrows in my own heart were the same as those of the Cañaguates, and what can we say about my other brothers Rafa, Pachín, Berni, and my cousins Margoth and Augusto.
Each one with their burden of pain was preparing for the landing into reality, for the meeting with the rest of the family, for the hug with friends and to see the world in its right dimension. But all that happened like a movie before us, when the accordions of the Vallenato Kings threw away their pain to receive the greatest on his last journey, that of farewell, that of returning home, but also that of never again.
From there to there, Macondo came to life and from the last open room of the dismantled neighborhood of tolerance, accordion groups came out playing the songs of Rafael Escalona, the nephew of Bishop Celedón, heir to the secrets of Francisco El Hombre; in an allegory where the vallenato sky was filled with yellow butterflies; Water flowed again from the Rosa María spring; the Jerre-Jerre left his rebellion and came out of his cave in the mountains; The Custody of Badillo appeared in the Plaza Alfonso López, where a united people, owner of the greatest musical testament, said goodbye to Rafael Calixto Escalona, who at that moment, hand in hand with Remedios ‘La Bella’, was rising on the train of the immortality, far above the stars where the kingdom of God is.
A carpet of pink clouds spread out waiting for him, and a joyful Jaime Molina sang to him:
Come, come, I’ll make your portrait in heaven
Come, come, I love you, introduce Saint Peter
Taryn Escalona
@tarynescalona
[email protected]