How the Petronio Alvarez Festival globalizes Afro-Colombian music

A few minutes before midnight on Saturday at the Petronio Alvarez festival in Cali, Colombia, the sound system stopped working with La Herencia de Timbiquí on stage. The crowd, estimated at 45,000 by festival staff, hardly missed a beat – and kept singing for several minutes.

It was no wonder that the audience, a mix of Colombians and visitors from the US, Europe and elsewhere, knew the band's material. is one of the few groups from the musically rich Pacific coast of the South American country that is the epicenter of “Petronio”, as it is known, to reach tens of millions streams on Spotify. But outside of Colombia, even as Latin music gains increasing traction on a global scale, relatively few fans are familiar with the rich diversity of Afro-Latin music that originates from Colombia's Pacific coast.

Petronio, named after Petronio Alvarez — a railroad worker and composer of a song that has become an anthem for the region, “Mi Buenaventura” — can help fix that.

The event, which concluded its 28th edition on Monday, takes place in Cali – the city with the second largest black population in Latin America, after Bahía, Brazil. Many of its black residents migrated here from the coast, driven by the drug war and other violence. They brought with them a rich cultural and musical heritage that includes genres steeped in folklore such as brass-heavy chirimía and the marimba-led currulao.

But these genres never gained the prominence of others—such as vallenato, cumbia, or even the modern hybrid of rap and reggaetón.

Petronio has gained a higher international profile every year. Organizers of the municipal authority estimated that the 2024 festival will attract half a million spectators, after it started in 1997 with only five thousand locals in the stands. And this year, a visit from Prince Harry and Meghan Marklewho both spoke from the stage (Markle spoke in perfect Spanish) as guests of Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez — the country's first black vice president — put new eyes on the event.

Markle spoke in perfect Spanish from the stage, and the royal couple not only danced and listened to music from the Pacific coast, but also attended events focused on the challenges facing the people of the historically marginalized region.

However, the question some are asking is: What will it take for the Afro-Colombian sounds of the Pacific Coast to reach a global audience?

One person who was attracted to music was Inma Grass, founder of the Spanish music company Altafonte, acquired by Sony Music in January.

Altafonte's roster includes La Herencia de Timbiquí among its artists, and Grass came to Cali both to brainstorm a campaign celebrating the band's upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary and to meet and hear new artists. En route to the airport on Monday, Grass said Bulletin board that her twelve-day stay was her first visit to Colombia. “I am overwhelmed by the musical richness [of the Pacific coast]she said. “It has global potential.”

Musicians offering special performances outside of the event's five-category competition format included Nidia Góngora, also from the Pacific city of Timbiquí; Góngora has toured Europe and the US for years and is known for her pioneering collaborations with English electronic producer Quantic, as well as for recording music with her group, Canalón de Timbiquí (the group earned a Latin Grammy nomination in 2019 for the albumalbum/3AjG16gUxVdNEIv09vKTZE?si=3ZVv1BcpTBiaN6WjtiFBDA” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”> De Mar y Río.)

When Quantic, whose real name is Will Holland, started talking to Góngora about the collaboration in 2017she asked him to visit her hometown first. “I was afraid it was going to be a killer relationship,” she said Bulletin board on the second day of the festival, sitting in a room next to the Viche Positivo seafood restaurant she runs in Cali (viche is a drink made from sugar cane). Góngora took Holland to her family's home on the coast. “It came back with more respect,” he said, explaining that he “made a commitment” to the marimba and percussion in its roots.

The result: album/4zbYfwweAeHj2jUfFVi6Wl?si=qbIbPx9KS_aJnYefSGGtHw” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>Couragea six-track album that has each been streamed over a million times on Spotify, in which “two sounds come together without either taking the attention away from the other,” the singer said. The name refers to a traditional blend viche and herbs.

Such musical mixes are increasingly found in Petronio in the “Libre” or Open category.

The six-day festival also included after-hours events, such as a presentation Alexis Playa singer from the Pacific coast who combines horns from Chirimía with electric guitar, conga drums – and rap. Even so, his concert included a short one chirimía presentation beforehand, as if reminding the audience of the artist's musical roots.

Many musicians and others at the festival in Cali were concerned about these roots and their creators being lost without attention or support. The highlight was the first night's concert led by marimbero Hugo Candelario, who assembled a 26-person ensemble with a handful of marimbas conductors, the oldest is 87-year-old Gennaro Torres – and their young relatives. Candelario was founded Grupo Bahia, winner of the first “Petronio”, in 1997.

The Guapi-born musician also spent several days during “Petronio” talking to anyone who would listen about the need for everything from his videos conductors explaining their techniques, tuning and other musical knowledge, to music schools on the Pacific coast to keep traditions alive and develop future talent. His audience included officials of the Colombian government and a delegation from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival.

“The danger is that ancestral magic and wisdom go to the grave with it conductorsCandelario said. “The festival is not a panacea,” he added – meaning it cannot solve these problems on its own.

Yuri Buenaventura has told him history more than once he lived penniless in Paris as a young man and went on to sell over a million copies of his album Herencia Africanaincluding a salsa version of the Jacques Brel song, “Ne Me Quitte Pas”. Now living in Cali and working on projects through a foundation he founded that include recordings by musicians from the Pacific coast, he worries the festival could become “a caricature of itself” if musicians from the region don't have a way to learn the knowledge . and outside the music industry, on issues such as production, marketing and songwriting rights. This lack of knowledge also puts music at risk, he said.

Altafonte's Grass dealt with the tension between preserving musical and other cultural traditions and reaching a global audience. “A lot of musicians are getting back to their roots and mixing it with genres that young people are listening to,” he said. “You can't be a purist,” she added — citing the example of Spanish flamenco, which has sparked many such discussions for decades, just to see the artist Camarón de la Isla they combine the traditional form with other contemporary sounds, achieving great success.

“I think we need to keep the traditional bands and sounds, while at the same time I love the way music continues to evolve,” he said. “If not, it's not going to connect with new generations – mixing trap, rap, jazz, reggaetón, everything they feel in their world.”

One category above others at the festival offered such fusion – the “Open” competition. After midnight Monday morning, Chureo Callejero — a group of young musicians from Tumaco who combine marimba, rap and snare drums — were announced as this year's winners in the category.

Within hours of the win, a person posing as an Italian visitor to the festival wrote a comment under one of the few YouTube videos of the group, with just over a thousand views: “We want your music on Spotify! Long live Petronio! Long live Colombia!”.