Carlos Vives celebrates three decades of musical activity in Buenos Aires concert

the colombian artist Carlos Vives will bring next Saturday to the Movistar Arena stadium in Buenos Aires the celebration for three decades of profuse musical activity but, fundamentally and as he warns, “It will be the opportunity to tell a little about the path we made from the classics of traditional music to what we call the rock of my town.”

Without pedantry but also dodging false modesty, Vives tells Télam that “in some way I was at the genesis of something that was a new and Colombian sound for making music.”

“When I was young, if I wanted to make modern music, I had to copy someone who was successful somewhere. But I looked at traditional music, at the vallenatos with which I had grown up, at those cumbias that they taught me as a child and those minstrels that passed through my house and I wanted my modernity to be born from something of my own”review.

With that formula that, remember, “somehow it made people in the industry laugh or ask me why not do something else ‘if you can be the new Julio Iglesias’, an invention was developed that did work for us”.

“And not only that -explains- A new generation also arrived that has done things with a lot of identity, approaching the sound of the world today with the urban, in pop. We Colombians understood that we had a heritage and had particular things that could make us more authentic in music”.

With his own baggage that allowed him to be a voice as personal as it is rooted, boasts more than 20 million albums sold and is one of the 300 most listened to artists on the Spotify platformreturns to Argentina with “El Tour de los 30”.

In his Saturday concert at the Movistar Arena, Vives will not only recreate milestones of his career such as “La Gota Fría”, “Pa`Mayté”, “Volví a nacer” and “La bicicleta”, but he will also present songs from his latest albums “Cumbiana II” and “Escalona: it had never been recorded like this”.

While “Cumbiana II” completes a work on the origin and evolution of cumbia that included a first album, the documentary “El mundo perdido de Cumbiana” and the book “Cumbiana, historias de un mundo perdido”, the album about Escalona visits 12 of the author’s most memorable compositions and includes a tribute by Armando Zabaleta.

However, among the motivations of this tour, the musician, author, singer and actor born 61 years ago in Santa Marta includes being able to pay tribute live to the vallenato accordionist Egidio Cuadrado, 70 years old.

“I hear many things, for example, that Carlos Vives fused Colombian music with rock and it is not like that because we are already fusion. In Colombia we are Africans, we are pre-Hispanic Americans, we are mixed races, we are Africa, we are from Europe, We are Spain and whatever we do is a fusion of cultures.”Carlos Vives

“The truth is that I’m not much of celebrating years and stuff, but with the 30 years of ‘Cosas de provincia’ (his sixth album but first dedicated to vallenato) where my group La Provincia was captured, I did find a great opportunity to recount our history and pay homage to Egidio, my partner, my accordionist musician who started with me then and has been in very delicate health for four years”.

-What happened to Egidio Cuadrado?

-During the pandemic he was in intensive care due to lung problems and since he lived in Bogotá like us but here is a very high city, he had to return to live in his homeland Villanueva, in the Caribbean, which is a town that is the cradle of accordions and great accordionists. And that situation, then, ended up convincing me to celebrate it, encourage it, this has a lot to motivate my compadre so that he fills me with hope and joy and we return to the stage. But, in addition, we recorded an album (“Escalona: it had never been recorded like this”) and we made a film about Rafael Escalona, ​​one of the greatest vallenato composers and who was his brother-in-law and his companion in the famous parrandas of his time, to tell their story to the new generations and that they know that sound.

-There is a constant in you of putting that past into dialogue with the present, forcing that bridge of your own culture…

–It is that it was very important, and it still is, to bet that our modernity is born from something of ours, from something to which we are emotionally connected, without the need to copy someone from another part of the world. A style that because I am daring I called the rock of my town and others called it tropipop.

-And is this tour a good excuse to continue putting this example on display?

-Of course, from that side it is that I loved celebrating this because it is also reminding people a little, what our process was. I hear many things, for example, that Carlos Vives fused Colombian music with rock and it’s not like that because we are already fusion. In Colombia we are Africans, we are pre-Hispanic Americans, we are mixed races, we are Africa, we are from Europe, we are Spain, and whatever we do is a fusion of cultures. If one looks at our history, we have always been made to look outside and look very little inward without understanding that looking inward we could be part of the world because the world is within us.

-Not coincidentally, your character Professor Amaranto Molina in the Disney series “The Grave Club” defends these traditions. Why do you think it is so important to fight these cultural and symbolic battles?

-In each of the towns of each part of the world there is something that happens and that is created despite the fact that, on the other hand, there is something from the industry of wanting to uniform ourselves. But we have so many things to give to the world of all that we are that there is an incredible opportunity there and a long road, as a famous vallenato says.