The accordion festival in Valledupar that takes place every year in April, is not only an autochthonous event that unifies a town in the Colombian Caribbean region nestled in the heel of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Vallenato Festival is also a folkloric expression that attracts locals and strangers with the sound of an accordion, people of all classes and social conditions, who cannot be away from one of the most traditional events of Macondo culture. big, where everyone sings.
The world capital of vallenato or ‘Los Santos Reyes’, as Valledupar is known, is the scene of the musical duel where every year the most renowned musicians of the region and the country meet. However, the matter has not stopped there; since today accordion players from other nations arrive, with the necessary courage to face those who grew up knowing the secrets of the instrument from a very young age, tearing tears of poetry from it, until turning them into songs.
The Vallenato country is known worldwide as the only place on the planet where men risk a crown in a contest that is not exactly beauty.
preparing to be king
From when you are a child, also with an innate talent, in the ‘Valley of Accordions’ families begin to place the necessary elements for the preparation of the future king. Some, like the kids who come from musical dynasties, don’t even need training. Those in that category play from when they begin to take their first steps in life, just by listening to their parents. Then they become little geniuses of the accordion and they show it when they pass their first litmus test in the Rey Vallenato Children’s contest.
Many of these children have achieved the feat of winning all the categories of the event, such as the King of Kings of the Vallenato Festival, in its 40th version; Hugo Carlos Granados, who holds five crowns.
The walk of history
Countless things have happened at the Vallenato Legend Festival since the first king was elected in 1968. From an improvised stage in Plaza Alfonso López, temple of the event created by characters of the stature of the former Minister of Culture, Consuelo Araujo Noguera, President Alfonso López Michelsen, and Maestro Rafael Escalona Martínez; that one day he remembered the transfer of the 41 years of the event, when it began with a few tourists from the interior of the country invited by the young people who were lucky enough to be able to leave the province to study; until its transition to a monumental setting such as the Parque de la Leyenda Vallenata, where the last three Kings of the Accordion have been crowned.
Few journalists arrived in Valledupar at that time and those who did were mostly out of solidarity with their Vallenato friends and to wonder how the experiment was going to turn out for them. Among the anecdotes of the creation of the ‘Fiesta Vallenata’, there is one told by ‘La Cacica’, Consuelo Araujo, when one of her guests- she brought “so that he would speak well or badly of that Vallenato birth, but the important thing was to say something»-, the former director of Radio Sucesos RCN, Juan Gossaín; He made his appearance in the small town of Vallenato with three-pointed sandals, footwear typical of people who live in the savannahs of the Coast, in northern Colombia, a jean and a long-sleeved shirt, which they called him crazy tame.
The visitor’s clothing at that time caused much surprise in the ladies of Vallenato society, to the point of wondering who was that Hippy who was on the loose at the Festival, and also, who had invited him?
Today those stories are just memories because the Vallenato Festival is the perfect space to soak up the people, put aside the glamour, the titles of nobility, the status that high public offices give. That is why those presidents of the Republic, actors, politicians, candidates, ministers, queens or famous singers, who arrive at the ‘Valley’, know that they must remove their investiture during the five days that the festival lasts and bare the skin of their souls, to to be one more member of the great vallenata party.
What no one wants to miss
Navigating the vallenata festival is immersing yourself in the musical tradition of a town that lives and vibrates to the sound of a caja, a guacharaca and an accordion.
The characters or places of the songs of Escalona, the greatest exponent of the musical culture of his town, are obligatory themes of the same contestants in the contests of each festival, as well as the songs of other Vallenato minstrels. Those places or characters were not invented by the teacher Escalona; their vestiges existed, exist or still remain framed in the Vallenata legend. In essence, these songs are the magnet that attracts visitors to the region each year, to learn first-hand the stories of those songs that were born from the daily events of the ‘Old Valley’ that were not told, but were sung and then they spread like a yawn, from mouth to mouth.
Anyone who has shared the joy of a party will never be the same again, and even less after knowing a singular universe where to be Monarch of the vallenato country, a musician must demonstrate in an accordion duel that he is a gladiator; combining elements such as talent and creativity; but more than that, authenticity, the magic formula to win the game against his opponent.
For all this, the Vallenato Festival is and will always be the pride of a race and one of the most beautiful and autochthonous folk festivals that Colombia has to show off and show to the world. A space where no one wants to be removed from that magical moment that is lived in Valledupar, on a May dawn when the April accordions close.
Taryn Escalona
Director www.elpaisvallenato.com