Blade beneath the laughter

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Local Cartageneros dance champed during a local festival.
Local Cartageneros dance champed during a local festival.

It’s a curved knife with a short blade used for various tasks including the kitchen, fishing, and defending oneself. It’s also the name adopted to describe a genre of music that originated along Colombia’s northern coast.

Champeta is characterized by upbeat, tropical rhythms and often sexually suggestive lyrics and dance moves. It’s enjoyed at full volume, blasted from a ‘picó’ (derived from the English word ‘pick-up’), which is basically a huge, travelling sound system accompanied by an MC to keep the ‘perreo’ (party) going. Huge crowds gather along Colombia’s Caribbean coast to enjoy champeta music, where there’s never a shortage of alcoholic beverages, or the whinin’ and grindin,’ essential at any perreo.

Champeta and Cartagena de Indi- as share a strong bond, as it is the city where it all began. Production of champeta music started to gain force around the 1970s in Cartagena, but the contagious rhythms eventually spread to other cities along the coast, such as Barranquilla and Santa Marta, and other parts of Colombia. Nevertheless, it remains a major pillar of Cartagenero culture. It shares many similarities with musical style that emerged across the Caribbean. Its audiences, instruments, rhythms, and turbulent – but rich history – reach beyond the borders of Colombia and into Afro-Caribbean traditions.

Champeta music can be traced back to the village of San Basilio de Palenque, located a few hours south of Cartagena. San Basilio was the first free village of the Americas, founded by maroons (fugitive slaves) in the 17th century. Declared by UNESCO a world heritage site, it is the only village which still speaks a place specific Spanish-creole language which originated in Western Africa before the slave trade.

Palenquero has a huge influence on the slang and dialect that makes champeta and Cartagena so unique. Against all odds, the community of San Basilio has still preserved much of the African heritage of its original inhabitants, and it is from these roots that champeta music was born.

‘Champeta africana’ is a genre of popular music in its own right. African artists such as M’bilia Bel can still be heard blasting from many a sound system in Cartagena’s surrounding neighborhoods; and for a time it was referred to as ‘creole therapy.’ The gatherings inspired by the music were considered to be a distraction from the hardships of daily life.

One of Cartagena most popular ‘picos’ is Rey de Rocha, from the community of Rocha, a free village similar to that of San Basilio. Attending champeta parties has remained out of the mainstream of Cartagena’s fast growing tourist industry. Events are normally held in barrios far from the touristic centres: and can sometimes become dangerous due to alcohol fu- elled confrontations between party-goers. Several prominent champeta artists have died at the hands of others, such as ‘El Sayayín’ and ‘El Jhonky’.

When champeta first began to gain popularity, it was frowned upon by an elite, who deemed it to be immoral. The term ‘champetu’o’ was adopted not only to identify a fan of the music, but was used as an insult for someone that was vulgar, noisy, or aggressive. The term still highlights an inequality amongst the different classes of this port city and the wide gap which exists between an impoverished black majority, and the white elite that retains control of a legacy handed down from the days of colonialism and slavery.

Today, the sound has become more accepted within Colombia. New artists are emerging onto the scene, especially within the sub-genre of champeta urbana. Well known for its infectious rhythms and lyrics champeta can inspire an urge to dance from even the most rigid of listeners. ‘El espeluque’ refers to a moment in champeta when the beat drops, bringing all of the erotic and fun-loving energy of the song into one moment, making it impossible not to get lost in the music. Despite the apparent free spirit, there lies a deeper meaning in its existence, and even in its name – champeta: the blade beneath the laughter.

 

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