Colombia - Vallenato

Journalist Betto Arcos reports from Valledupar, home to vallenato, a folk style popularised in the 1990s by Carlos Vives and celebrated in the city's annual Vallenato Legend Festival. The singers are accompanied by accordion and percussion in music that ranges from the slow, swaying rhythms of paseo and son to the more upbeat merengue and the frenetic grooves of puya. Vallenato as a genre goes back around 200 years and its songs are mini-epics, filled with local characters and poetry. Gabriel García Márquez once described his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude as a “400-page vallenato”. Betto Arcos tells the story of this vibrant music and drops in on a local parranda gathering – a type of jam session – in Valleupar during the festival.

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