The story
Long before cumbia went electric, it was played on the gaita, a long flute of Indigenous origin, over hand drums with African roots, in the towns of Colombia's Caribbean coast. Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto have played it that way since the 1940s, and in 2007 they won a Latin Grammy for it.
Then the music changed hands. Andrés Landero, remembered in Colombia as the King of Cumbia, started out alongside Los Gaiteros and learned their sound, then moved it onto the accordion. The gaita cumbias became the dance music of the sabanas, the grasslands inland from the coast. Carmelo Torres was Landero's student. "Esas cumbias que se interpretaban en la gaita se pasaron al acordeón," Torres says: the cumbias played on the gaita passed to the accordion.
“Los ritmos de gaita los pasó al acordeón el maestro Andrés Landero porque él empezó junto a Los Gaiteros, con Toño Fernández, con Juan Lara.”
Then it went electric. Julio "Fruko" Estrada went to work at Discos Fuentes, Colombia's great tropical record label, at eleven years old. As a bassist, arranger and producer, often called the Quincy Jones of Colombia, he helped shape the cumbia and salsa that played across Latin America. "The bass is the most important instrument," he says.
On Madre Cumbia, or "Mother Cumbia," their new album together, all three play in one band. Carmelo Torres, who played the legendary accordionist Francisco el Hombre in Netflix's One Hundred Years of Solitude, is back on stage with the group his teacher learned from.
Come dance to all of it.