Vallenato Soul

I think it was the moment when the vallenato whizzed by on a local city bus for the millionth time and Bua shrieked, whipped around to face me, and admitted with a sly smile that latin music had finally gotten inside her soul that I realized something: although we had both been embracing this strange, new culture for quite some time, neither one of us had before agreed that we felt any particular connection to crazy Cartagena. She was the first. I spun towards her with that infamous look of bewilderment so commonplace on the face of a foreigner in a foreign country, and asked her if she had totally lost her mind. She started laughing in her quietly mysterious yet hysterically obvious Thai way and slapped me lovingly on the shoulder, telling me that it would get inside me too—I just had to wait for the right moment. The moment when the accordion would wriggle into my skin, when the guacharaca (a ridged piece of bamboo struck with a metal stick) would scuff its way into my heartbeat, when the cantante (the singer) would serenade me into a deep, Latin sleep…. when I would finally feel in step with the ritmo of the colorful Colombian world. So I ask myself now: when did this time finally come? And why is the music so important in this transition?

It’s not like the overplayed and watered-down Salsa, the quick and catchy Merengue, or the Caribbean hip-hop called the Reggaeton—music that dances in and out of life like mediocre but likeable friends. Vallenato, you see, is a ferociously popular folk music from the valleys deep within Colombia: the northeastern region of Valle de Upar claims origins, yet the millions of Colombian Africans trace it back far within their own jungles. Its etymology is quite simple, and stems from two distinct Spanish words: valle, or valley, and nativo, or native. The native of the valley—the old man outside with the cracked guitar, the young boys with the big black eyes following the farmers, the mothers inside cooking their coconut rice and fried plantains. The original people of Colombia. The urban people of Medellin call it “country music,” scoff at it for the most part, and consider it “just one of those ‘costeno’ things….” However, though I tried to deny it, I unexpectedly found myself searching for its unique sounds in those moments of silence I used to crave: for vallenato, as music usually does, squiggles into every corner, meanders into every crack in the walls, waits on every bus, lingers in every mind long after the song is over, sings from every familiar mouth, and jumps into every memory I had thus made during my five month journey. It wasn’t like rock music, gospel, jazz, or indie—music that fades with the noisy sounds of life, the flashing of streetlights, the beeping of busy cars, and the hubbub of human voices… it…lasts, like a delicious taste in the mouth, like a breathy kiss on the lips, like the first flawless Spanish conversation.

And don’t think I’d forgotten how I felt the first time I heard it (and many of the times after that!): that squished up child face reeking of unpleasantness, with crinkles of the lip and a distaste in the mouth, follows me in giggles whenever I remember. It is the face of spinach, the cringe of piano lessons, the groan of the billionth identical group photo on a weekend trip. My grandparents’ German polka music with a bongo thrown in! What kind of music is that! And that dance—two people sucked onto each other, bobbing from side to side with their arms wrapped around each other—what is that! I felt ridiculous listening to it; I felt ridiculous dancing to it; I felt ridiculous sitting on the bus being constantly immersed in it.

Yet—after the boys at the Foundation threw Bua and I a dance party in order to share their love of vallenato with us, after the other teachers shared their favorite discs with us during quiet office hours, after I repeatedly tripped over my feet (and those of my partners!) while trying to find the rhythm, after my new friends burned me countless CD’s and eagerly introduced me to their beloved sounds, after I returned home and found Colombia only in the sounds of the accordion and that old Caribbean beat, I think it hit me too. Latin music had gotten into my soul too; it was just a little bit late. It found me in my house in Atlanta, Georgia, not long after the sounds of Colombia had faded to the beep of new automobiles, the strum of electric guitars, and the punctuated voice of English. While presenting the vallenato to my father, listening to it snake out of my home stereo system, I realized that my mind was no longer in North America: it had danced, far back, into the exotic jungles of Cartagena, to skip along the colonial streets, to bask in the eternal summer sun, to linger in a place I might not be again for a long, long time.

Those of you who have heard the Vallenato know that it is much, much more than just a simple music: it is a lifestyle, a hot Caribbean spirit, a fierce and voracious cultural richness. It is, in essence, what Colombia really is, and what Colombia once was for me.