The CD has a cardboard cover and feels a lot better in the hands than the traditional plastic CD jewel cases. The original sounds of cumbia music got their inspiration from the sounds around the small ranches in San Jacinto. Later, Miguel Antonio Hernández Vasquez (uncle of Chuchita), set lyrics to the cumbia sounds and became the founder of cumbia music.
The gaita: a complicated instrument
Not to be confused with the Galician or Scottish Bagpipes (also called Gaita in Spanish), the Colombian Gaita has a very elaborate fabrication process from basic materials that are found in the warm parts of Northern Colombia.
Making a gaita is completed as follows: first you must find a one meter high small tree growing out of the ground. You chop the tree down and chisel out the fleshy middle of the tree. You are then left with a hollow shaft a meter long with a large opening at the top. The next step is to cut out five finger holes. Then you must mix African bees’ wax and coal dust into a putty. You then apply this putty to the top part of the instrument to seal off the opening on the top. A few decades back the gaiteros, would insert a reed into the wet mix for the mouthpiece. Now-a-days they just use a regular plastic straw. After the putty dries you then have a gaita.
The fact that this group has persisted with various different line-ups that includes several generations of musicians speaks to the liveliness of this tradition and answers the call to “things of destiny.” Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto are a musical jewel in San Jacinto and Bogotá and a huge influence for other gaita musicians throughout Colombia.
Through their lifetime of compositions and teaching young musicians, these pied pipers are a vital link between old traditions of gaita and its recent renewal. Thanks in part to their music, the gaita has become one of the most influential traditional genres of music in modern Colombia and one which shows no sign of letting go an audience.
