A little llanerita arrived in Valledupar, and Rafael Escalona, the eternal poet of the region, gave her one of those original gifts that cannot be found anywhere on the planet. Gifts that any woman would envy, because of the exotic, beautiful and unreal nature of her.
This time the nice gift was not that magic comb bought in Istanbul, nor the green whale, nor that blue turtle, much less a pink cloud wrapped in a Rainbow.
The llanerita, the muse of that last love song that Escalona wrote and that seven months after his death Colombia knew in the voice of the Nightingale, Jorge Oñate, received a hammock full of turpiales.
“It was the least he deserved,” the teacher told me one day, with that mischievous look he had, wanting to cut off the smile that escaped him without being able to stop it.
“You can’t imagine all the hardships that little plain girl went through to get to me”; she said too. I imagine, I responded, looking at him and returning him with another smile, his own mischievous gesture.
Today I wonder where that woman is from this life or the other, who with the magic of Carmentea spread all over her skin, inspired the last tune of love more than thirty years ago to the Singer of Patillal; sealing with her farewell the entrance to the twist of her soul through which the essence of poetry sprang forth.
An elusive plainer
A long time ago, when the singer Jorge Celedón came to promote his new album in Valledupar, he told me, with his face marked by disappointment, that due to very high financial demands, he had had to release that song after having it almost ready for release. include it in his production as a tribute to Escalona. Demands that did not properly come from the teacher, and that was what hurt the most.
However, Jorge Celedón did not lose hope that perhaps, over time, the world would know that song performed in his style.
It wasn’t like that, Jorge Oñate got in his way. For a long time Oñate had been infatuated with the latest muse of the Maestro del Vallenato and Celedón ignored him.
In life, although many do not believe, everything has its time, not one day more, not one day less. Jorge Oñate, the singer from La Paz, waited patiently for his status as an accomplished ‘Escalonista’ and for considering himself the best interpreter of those songs. With Jorge Oñate, the men and women of his time in the region became followers of Escalona, and along the way his children. Today the children of those children or the grandchildren of folklore know, tell and sing those same stories.
The ‘cachaquito’ – as Escalona called him since he was a child – using the affection that the teacher always had for him, got into the heart of his poetry, until he entrusted him with his songs, so that with his voice he could give a new life to Old Sara, to The Testament, El Copete, El Chevrolito, La Maye, and many of those stories that told the daily events of the old Valley.
After Escalona’s departure, Jorge shouted from the rooftops that that little llanerita was for him, and with the consent of his wife Nancy, he desperately searched for it until he found it intact. One day he took off the dress that Celedón had placed on her and dressed her as a pilonera, a vallenato pilonera, one of those that evoke nostalgia.
ESCALONA’S LAST TRIBUTE TO COLOMBIA
What many do not know is that the llanerita was the perfect excuse for maestro Rafael Escalona to finish adorning the national geography with his songs. He knew that he could not leave this world without highlighting the beauty of the Llanos, without singing about its beautiful landscapes, its fauna, and also exalting the Llanos woman, just as he did with an Antioqueñita from the mountains that he met. in Cali, called María Tere.
In the same way, he used love as a pretext to dedicate a song to Leticia, the capital of the Amazon, and to the Indians of Putumayo, the day he decided to write the letter to Dina Luz from the border with Brazil in the south of the country. The same place that long ago the unforgettable ‘Maye’, in a fit of jealousy and resentment, threatened to burn if ‘Rafa’ dared to cross the border with the famous Brazilian. Of course, that could not remain anonymous and became another famous song that Maye always denied.
But it was not only Escalona who wandered in love through the south of Colombia. He also traveled through La Guajira in his chevrolito, and came across a beautiful Wayuu, whom he baptized ‘The flower of La Guajira’. After his tour he returned again to San Juan where he sowed his heart. But it was in Urumita where his infatuation with a certain Esperanza made him foreshadow the illness that would put an end to his days: And if Esperanza was right / that there in the Valley a person died / do not doubt that it was Escalona / who died from the heart.
Also Elsa Armenta, a young woman from Molina Guajira, allowed her soul to travel to find peace from the love sickness that was tormenting her: “Oh my life, if you could see how I sigh/ I have my body in the Valley but my soul in the Mill.” .
Of the towns in the south of La Guajira, Fonseca was not left without a song either; There he sang to Carmen Gómez, -he did it for a friend- but she sang to the woman who drew his eyes to Spain and Latin beauty.
Not satisfied with that, he dragged a woman from Plateña to his land from the famous banks of the Magdalena, and then with his peculiar impudence, he demanded why he came to steal the heart of a vallenato.
The teacher was right, he needed to immortalize the Llano and his women in his song. He needed to draw that beautiful landscape with the pen of his verses, he had to leave his heart-shaped footprint in the plains sunset, the same as that of the bull when he steps on the beach. And he did it, before the night completely covered his existence.
With the masterful interpretation of ‘La Llanerita’, which makes the skin of my soul crawl, Jorge Oñate closed the cycle of that song. There were previous attempts, but that little llanerita was not for anyone else, Escalona always knew that and reserved it for after his departure.
A gift of love was needed for the Llanos, that hit region of our national geography. It was necessary that this song, like all of his, also be immortalized in the voice of the Goldfinch; it was necessary to die to continue living.
And as much work as he had to go through leaving the Llano to come to Valledupar.