I found the photo by chance. When I find old photos, I delight in imagining the situation stopped in time, the dialogues perpetually frozen. That was a powerful and important document for the Vallenato culture because, perhaps, it brought us face to face with the creative moment of one of the most famous songs by Rafael Escalona: The pirate of Loperena. There were the protagonists: Rafael Escalona, Colacho Mendoza (without hat and with hair), Adam Montero and the “pirate” Hugues Martinez. Youth, beautiful treasure…think.
Source: Upar Valley Academy of History
The photo continued to haunt my head and my inner voice repeated to me: if there is a photo, there is a video. This is normal today in the society of the spectacle, but unthinkable in Valledupar in the mid-twentieth century. It was then that the epiphany happened, I remembered that between 1960 and 1961 a couple of English explorers toured the country, visited the region and interviewed Escalona as part of a project called “Anglo-Colombian Recording Expedition”.
Donald Tayler and Brian Moser visited indigenous peoples and recorded native Colombian music during rites and ceremonies as well as spontaneous or casual encounters. The musical ethnography experience lasted fourteen months and was sponsored by institutions such as the British Museum, the Royal Geographical Society, the Isaac Wolfson Foundation and the British Institute of Recorded Sound, which later became the British Library Sound Archive. The final result was published in 1972 under the name Music of some Indian Tribes of Colombia. Some pieces such as maracas, drums and flutes from the native peoples were also deposited at the British Museum and the 80 hours of recording at the British Library Sound Archive, in London.
Fuente: British Library Sound Archive
I started the search and found that in the British Library Sound Archive, under the reference number C207/75there is a file titled The Motilon – Valledupar, Rafael Escalana (accordion), 1960 to 1961. I felt myself playing that childish amusement of the cold cold hot hot. I requested it, but they informed me that the audio file was not digitized but that I could listen to it by approaching the premises, in London.
I read the review and was thrilled. The recording was made in June 1961, at Escalona’s house in Valledupar, “during a whole night of revelry and among many bottles of beer and brandy.” Moser and Tayler say that “since the late 1950s, Rafael Escalona along with a small group of musicians began to sing a new form of contemporary songs related to the countryside, the events, and the people of the place where he lived. These songs became very famous and now Escalona is a popular man. On the tape we can hear Rafael Escalona dedicating the song to Donald who comes from afar, from the land of fog, London, a large and friendly city, to share with us these moments of tenderness and scientific research, doing us a great honor, to which we will contribute the best we can…”
As a good vallenato I am stubborn, so I did not give up and continued the investigation. I fervently wanted to listen to that treasure, until I finally found a file that was 59 minutes and 56 seconds long. Headphones on and comfortable in my hammock, I began to prick up my ears and I found several surprises: Moser and Tayler visited Atanquez and recorded chicote, bagpipes and a vallenato group that played a song that I later learned was written by Urbano Gutiérrez, they also captured the ambient sound of a procession of San Isidro Labrador in the same place. Pure gold, but it was not what he was looking for. I kept listening until ¡EUREKA!, there it was, at minute 18, that calm voice and with the cadence that made him famous, it was Rafael Escalona dedicating his song The swallows Andres Becerra and two bearded men who do not belong to Fidel, Cipriano [que era Brian] and Donaldo [que era Donald]. The greatness and inexhaustibility of Escalona never ceases to amaze me.
Consuelo Araujonoguera affirmed in her book Escalona, the man and the myth (1988) that wounded slingshot it is the greatest composition Raphael created, in poetry and musicality, and is only a distant approximation in The swallow. Both songs follow the same common thread, pain and spite. Although the muse that inspired this song was never known, Consuelo collects the testimony of Poncho Cotes, knowledgeable of the composer’s secrets, who went so far as to affirm that there was no specific and determined woman, but rather that the song was dedicated to all the women of his life and none in particular, that there are many and not just one of the tears that moved him to write that song. But, the Vallenato writer is categorical when affirming that both wounded slingshot as The swallow they arose from the same state of sentimental grace that had its own face and name. The same path leads him to compose Wounded Honda, Bad luck, The best until you get to The swallow.
Escalona is and will continue to be eternal.
P.S. Special thanks to Sergio Daza Quintero who helped me by downloading and editing the audio that accompanies this article.
Twitter: @CarlosLinan
