Colombia’s Best-Kept Secret
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Strangely, it was a summer trip to central Mexico in 1997 that solidified her interest in the Colombian coast. “It struck me that there were so many idiosyncrasies of the people in the various villages, and after being in Chicago for three years it was like rediscovering something,” says Navas-Courbon, who is 25 and of Spanish descent. “I thought to myself, ‘Wait a minute, I’ve seen this before,’ and, of course, I knew it from Colombia.” Upon returning to Chicago she began to plot a feature-length documentary, her first, about the African influence in the Pacific lowlands. It’s currently titled “Mazamorreo: In Search of Memory/En busqueda de memoria”–mazamorreo is a Spanish word that means panning for gold. She’s editing it now in hopes of finishing by September, and says it will be shown at next year’s Chicago Latino Film Festival.
The hypnotic, stuttering currulao rhythm is the heart of the music. Traditionally, chanted call-and-response vocals ride over simple melodic motifs played on marimba and propelled by several African hand drums. But Hugo Candelario Gonzalez, a Guapi native who teaches music in Cali–Colombia’s second largest city, three hours from Guapi by boat–wanted a broader audience to appreciate the music he grew up with, so he formed Grupo Bahia in 1992 to embellish currulao and some of the other 80 rhythms indigenous to the region with additional instrumentation–horns, piano, and bass–and mix it with other styles. On Grupo Bahia’s terrific 1998 debut album, Con el corazon…Cerca de las raices, which isn’t distributed in the U.S. but will be sold at the band’s shows here, he’s given it a strong infusion of salsa–in fact, several members of the group have also played in popular Colombian salsa outfits like Grupo Niche and Guayacan. But his marimba is the defining instrument, and the rhythmic foundation is markedly different from the typical Afro-Cuban groove, employing a 6/8 time signature with the accent on the fifth beat.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Nathan Mandell.
