Diana Corredor was born in Bogota, holds a degree in Sociology and a Masters in Anthropology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and currently lives in Mexico City pursuing her PhD. She arrived in Morroa, a municipality in the Sucre Province, Caribbean region of northern Colombia as an environmental consultant to help implement the environmental management plans set up by oil drilling companies.
“I arrived in Morroa on my own, and that was quite an expense, I was fortunate and sometimes lodged with the musicians who play Pito atravesao but I felt my presence caused some pressure because some of them are campesinos and live hand to mouth” she explains. “They are a rural community where people are just used to saying hello as they stroll by.”
Morroa is a town of artisans who for generations have weaved hammocks, an industry unknown in other regions of Colombia. People in Morroa weave their hammocks in vertical looms.
And then there’s cumbia. Over the last three decades Morroa hosts the National Festival of Pito Atravesao, Pablo Dominguez. The Pito is a flute that forms part of traditional group of four musicians that includes two drums, the llamador and the bambuquito and maracas.
Federico Ochoa Escobar, musician and researcher, has written that the Pitos origin and development are not clear but four basic statements are likely: the Pito is a Colombian instrument, it is the primeval Cumbia instrument, a very important musical genre in North and South America; the Pito is the King of the Carnaval of Barranquilla, with an ubiquitous presence in those festivities and many young people in Colombia’s Caribbean region now play Pito.
Diana Corredor worked with musicians who play the “Pito atravesao” in Las Flores, a small town located on an alternate road a few kilometers from Morroa. In Las Flores people live with plenty of economic restraints. Corredor tells of a musician who is only 40 years of age and has severe back problems but has little to no health insurance. Despite the important presence of natural gas in the region the residents of Las Flores have no access to that natural resource. Many families cook with firewood -a practice detrimental to their health.
The musicians and their families are not an exception.
“In Barranquilla musicians get paid, in Morroa they are not, they do it out sheer belief but cannot live off it” Corredor adds.
“These local traditional musicians will not play at a Carnaval like Barranquilla’s due to the lack of an invitation or other barriers that do not allow them to participate. They play at local festivities like those that take place on December 7, a traditional celebration Colombians call the Night of the Velitas (little candles).
“Most of the time there is no work for them as musicians. It seems that only one traditional Pitero has been invited and paid to play in Barranquila’s carnaval,” Corredor states.
Colombia’s Caribbean rhythms are celebrated in many festivals, and three stand out: Carnaval de Barranquilla, the Vallenato Festival in Valledupar, capital of the Cesár province, and the Porro Festival, in San Pelayo a town located in the Córdoba province.
The vallenato music has been over the last seven decades a space where the political and economic elites of the Caribbean Coast and Bogotá gather to further there power. Researcher José Figueroa highlights the presence in this historical gathering of former president Alfonso López Michelsen, the Vallenato composer Rafael Escalona (a legend in Colombian culture), and writer and politician Consuelo Araujo Noguera, a central figure in the creation of the Vallenato Festival
Figueroa writes that those elites created and promoted at their whim “ the cultural imagery of the campesinos of the Caribbean region” while in everyday life “this imagery seeks to marginalize those campesinos from any political and economic participation.”
The Colombian congress has declared the Carnaval de Barranquilla national heritage and the UNESCO has given it the title of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
And now there is Senate Bill to declare the Porro rhythm and the Festival Nacional del Porro Colombian Cultural Heritage. Senator Ruby Chagui Spath, of the Centro Democrático right wing party, and personal assistant to former president and recently arrested Álvaro Uribe Vélez sponsored the bill.
Senator Chagui Spath is the daughter of Elber Chagui former mayor of the city of Cereté, and who has links to Alejandro Lyons and Bernardo Ñoño Elías, who since 2018 have been linked to major cases of corruption. The elites of Córdoba province and the city of Medellín are now replicating the Vallenato cultural heritage model the Liberal party elites of the city of Valledupar and Bogota used during the 1960s and 1970s.
“Cultural heritage projects render invisible those who produce the traditional musical rhythms from other towns and regions,” states Diana Corredor.
“The project to declare the technique with which Pito atravesao is played in Morroa Cultural Heritage highlights two problems: on the one hand who decides what is declared cultural heritage? It should be the musicians, the artisans, the creators who decide knowing what this is about and its impact.
“And who will benefit from it? The people who create the cultural products or the business sectors and the political class? And it is a mistake to equate the Pito atravesao in Morroa to another flute kown as “Caña de millo” from other Caribbean sub-regions. The regional social and cultural specifics, as well as the sound of each instrument are different.
“There is a negative impact when the artists are not aware of the magnitude of being national and international cultural heritage,” Corredor adds.
“The Carnaval in Barranquilla is cultural heritage of humanity and this has obviously favored the city’s hotel and tourist industries, who receive national and United Nations aid, but does any of this aid really make it to the people where the music and dance originated or does it all stay in the city.”
“Who declares cultural heritage and what is declared cultural heritage can reinforce relationships of political and economic power while the creativity of the artists is not recognized and even lost,” sentences Corredor adding the “social economic and political elites are the ones who decide what is cultural heritage, as was the case of Vallenato music.”
“Like so many other aspects of life, electoral politics influences peoples lives, including musicians and festivals, like the Festival del Pito Atravesao in Morroa. The town has the same national political divisions expressed in local murals, some in support of current right wing president Ivan Duque or the leftist candidate Gustavo Petro. This has touched the Festival that has had two moments: the same families with local and regional political affiliations ran the festival from 1989 through 2015.
When there was a change of political parties, the festival changed. In 2019 a person close to the old executive board was elected mayor, and the old political groups took back control of the festival.
Liberal Antonio Francisco Olmos Navas is Morroa’s mayor for the 2020-2023 quarter, while two former mayors Juan Domínguez Carrascal and Carlos Solano Corena are not caught up in corruption scandals.
These changes in party politics have no impact on the lives of the “musicians who remain the same, their daily conditions show no change, they keep playing, entertaining people at the local Festival,” Corredor insists adding “this happens in many areas of Colombia where festivals hide these intricate tapestries of politics and money.”
The Montes de María region made up of several dozen municipalities that includes Morroa and Las Flores suffered brutal violence at the hands of a variety of armed groups: Colombian army, guerrillas, paramilitaries toward the end of the 19th century and early on this century. That violence forcefully displaced and destroyed the lives of entire communities, and left a deeply rooted fear. And it is in that history of poverty, displacement and violence where COVID-19 shows up.
“In those regions you cannot apply prevention norms like constantly washing hands when there isn’t even running water. You can’t stay home when you live off agriculture, selling handicrafts, or informal employment, like running a moto-taxi. Without basic income it’s very difficult to stay home”, states Corredor.
“COVID cases were slow to show up in the Sucre province, when compared with Bogota or Barranquilla, but with tourists at the beaches in Tolu and Coveñas there was an increase in the number of cases.”
Is there migration from Morroa and Las Flores to other regions?
“The first massacre in Montes de Maria region of Sucre province took place in 1996. The epicenter was the area known as Pichilin in Morroa. A paramilitary group under the command of Salvatore Mancuso with support from businessmen, the police force in nearby capital Sincelejo and Navy personnel. The residents of Pichilin were displaced to nearby Sabanas de Cali and the urban area of Morroa. Residents of Cambimba, another area of Morroa were also forcefully displaced by paramilitary in 1996.
Salvatore Mancuso would later be extradited to the United States because of his links to cocaine trafficking. He was recently released and is back in Colombia, has asked forgiveness for his crimes and offered to tell the Truth and Reparation Committee about civilians and authorities involved in paramilitary armies.
“People displaced from different parts of the Colombian Caribbean have arrived in Barranquilla, especially people from areas close to the River Magdalena, fleeing the armed conflict. But not necessarily from Morroa.”
“In this context the Ministry of Culture created in areas afflicted by this armed conflict Expedicion Sensorial, that gave temporary jobs to local musicians who could teach their art,” Corredor adds.
“Through Expedición Sensorial, the Ministry of Culture with the private company Corporación Cabildo, from Cartagena, that actually spent the Ministry’s money, hired musicians from Morroa as music teachers for children and adolescents from Pichilín and Las Flores, facilitated musical encounters with regional musicians, recollected some historical memory stories, and produced a few videos of the musical education workshops, they also gave out Cultural Promoter diplomas and financed the trips so the musicians could take part in activities in the Festival Voces de la Luna in Las Flores and at the Festival Nacional de Pito Atravesao.”
But these projects are temporary, “and that leaves the musicians of Las Flores and Morroa in the same situation, there are no permanent changes, there is no musical industry, social and cultural projects cannot depend on the State because in the long run people are left with nothing.”
There is no economic support; there is violence, what other barriers do people face to produce their music?
“I don’t know if the musicians and their communities have been sold the idea that music comes from outside, those who can play come from outside, they don’t take on the opportunity to do it, to have it. I don’t have enough elements to argue what happens to them at the cultural level that they don’t work enough to get there productions out.”
Corredor explains that she worked to build a network through social media, a five song CD was estimated at about one million Colombian pesos (a little over $US300) and a series of raffles were proposed to raise those funds, but the musicians have not done it.”
Copyrights are also an issue. Corredor clarifies that in order to claim copyrights musicians need to write sheet music that does not exist. Other musicians who can write music need to help but experience has taught us this facilitates plagiarism.
“We are finishing up a documentary on Morroa, because the cultural legacy of the Pito and the tradition of the hammock production on vertical looms is all but lost. There’s a bad practice to equate the music of Pito from Morroa with music of Caña de millo from Barranquilla, the city that absorbed the musicians from the Magdalena River region.”
Is the musical tradition of Pito atravesao still dominated by men?
“I would first have to say that I learned the musicians history through the elders in Las Flores and Morroa. The process of telling their history was important, they created their family tree, they saw who they are,” Corredor explains and she insists that the putting historical memory together must continue.
“I found female dancers but not musicians, even though there is a reference to Tiburcia Meza, or as she is called in Las Flores Tia Tiburcia, who when she was not playing musical instruments would dance in the parrandas (parties).
“She played the bambuquito, a small drum, and maracas. Tiburcia was sister to José Germán Meza, one of the most important Piteros of Morroa. Her other brothers Pedro, Gabriel sometimes played Pito and her sister Ana Catalina was a cumbia and porro dancer.”
“Tiburcia Meza enjoyed drinking the typical rum of the region. This shows she held a different position in her community, she didn’t carry the stigma or she didn’t care” Corredor explains while adding that “women have been reserved to private spaces, the domestic, but not the public spaces and even less where there is liquor.”
“The musical world is related to family neglect, it allows men to waste money in the big parties.”
The roles of men and women are fixed in traditional festivals and parrandas, the place each one occupies seem integral to promoting the Festival itself.
“Its three days of competition, that highlight the majestic execution of Pito atravesao in the traditional categories and in which women show the swaying of their hips in the dancing couples contest…”
There are plenty of female dancers in Morroa but Diana Corredor only found one 14 year old girl who is learning to play Pito atravesao, something she sees as an obligation in an effort to preserve this culture.