The Centro Festival began in Bogotá. From January 26 to January 29, the center of the Colombian capital will receive its first great injection of music. Organized by the Gilberto Alzate Avendaño Foundation (DRAIN), the festival celebrates its fourteenth edition, which under the slogan ‘sounds of difference’ will make the people of the capital dance and jump with presentations by 29 artists from genres as diverse as rock, pop, rap, punk, metal, fusion, indie, tropical, cumbia, llanero, vallenato, Andean, Latin American, contemporary and children’s.
Programming of the Festival of the Center 2023
From January 26 to 29, the district event of the year will be held in the company of artists of international stature
On its first day, the festival will feature the presentation of Cumbia Stars, group that has been nominated for the 2020 Latin Grammys in the category of Best Cumbia/Vallenato Albumthey have a wonderful repertoire of danceable music in which they fuse unpublished songs with original arrangements by masters such as Lucho Bermúdez, Rodolfo Aicardi, Los Corraleros de Majagual and Fruko and his treasures.
The group is made up of singer Cristina Escamilla, one of the most important voices of the genre in the country, and seven musicians with extensive experience and recognized musical quality, including director, composer, guitarist, and accordion player Juan Pablo Acosta.
National Rhapsody: a photographic journey through 15 years of Colombian rock at the Gilberto Alzate Avendaño Foundation
The exhibition will be open to the public from January 25, 2023 and has the participation of 10 photographer artists
Infobae spoke with Cristina Escamilla hours before her presentation at the Festival Centro on the stage of the Bronx Creative District (race 15 #9-50). Escamilla spoke about the importance of cumbia, how it has become a Latin American genre, despite having originated in Colombia, and about the plans they have for 2023.
Cristina, how was Cumbia Stars born and how long has it existed?
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Well, the Cumbia Stars were born in 2017. In December 2017 we had our first concert, the release of the first album, and then we followed the second album. We are a group of musician friends who have been working together for many years, a little over 13 years and well, already in 2017 we made the decision to meet, get together and dedicate ourselves to the work of tropical music and cumbia.
They are five years of work in Cumbia Stars, how has been the reception of that young audience?
Oops! It has been wonderful how they have received our music, how they fill our concerts, sing and chant the songs. The number of people and listeners we have on the platforms| digital, on Spotify; the number of views we have on our YouTube channel… no, it’s been amazing. I think that it has greatly exceeded our expectations in these five years that we have been in existence and, well, we continue to work.
Why this interest in cumbia, in joints?
No, we have always loved our traditional music very much, we had been making Colombian music for a long time and we saw a very particular phenomenon, and that is that in Colombia the groups were staying, as if secluded, paying tributes and tributes to the music that had already the great maestros, but here in Colombia we didn’t see much new music, we didn’t see much new tropical music, new songs, new cumbias, new compositions.
So we observed this phenomenon there and we said we are going to start composing and delivering tropical music, to continue contributing to the history of music.
Why do you think this phenomenon occurs? Could it be said that the new generations are not very interested in these rhythms?
They have many things, in any case, it would be necessary to enter into a very interesting research process there. But one of the things that we suppose has influenced is that globalization, for so many years, began to displace a little the knowledge of the enjoyment of our traditional music, cumbia, porros, this orchestra music, right?, but At this moment, there are already many groups apart from the proposals that we have been working on, and I believe that this has been changing and in a short time, not too far away, I believe that we will be much more appropriate to these own sounds.
Cristina, why is it important that these traditional tropical sounds and rhythms continue to be updated?
I think it is absolutely important that we all fall in love with the sounds of our country, those roots sounds, those sounds of all that instrumentation. Finally, this is in our blood and we have it in our DNA and we cannot ignore that we are part and it is also part of our culture, of what we are, of the miscegenation that occurred in our territory in Latin America.
It is extremely important, besides that regardless of the fact that cumbia is a Colombian genre, that it was born in Colombia, not to ignore that it is currently a Latin American genre.
How well received are these tropical rhythms in the interior of the country?
Of course, we have already come to the city of Bogotá on several occasions and the people of the capital are truly a wonderful public, who welcome and respect things well done and well, it will always be a pleasure for us to come.
Today you are performing at the Centro Festival. How do you receive that invitation?
No, well we are happy. In fact, at this moment we are arriving in Bogotá. The concert is tonight at 6:55 p.m., at the Bronx Creative District, Let’s take ourselves, the center of the city, a wonderful space with all our music, with all our cumbia, with our staging and, well, we hope that people end up enjoying dancing and singing our songs.
You’re releasing new material tonight, right?
Tonight we are premiering live So much that I can’t stand. It has already premiered on all digital platforms and tonight, live and direct at our concert, we will premiere the video clip, so well, let’s hope it’s one of those songs that people fall in love with and for sure it will be .
Finally, what are your plans for 2023? What are they working on?
Well, this new year we are already recording our fourth something, our fourth musical production. We are working on a couple of tours, there are presentations in Canada and the United States. We will continue traveling throughout Colombia and all corners of our country, bringing our music and making people fall in love with cumbia, and well, those are the plans, and other things to come… more collaborations with other artists, more video clip recordings, plus recordings of educational material around the sounds of our tropical music and our cumbia.
