I love the sound of Vallaneto and recently ran across a Colombian series about Leondro Diaz.
The songs of many of the Vallentos are like poems, speaking about life, the beauty of it, as well as the hardships.
One of the great Spanish authors credits Vallentín for his storytelling.
Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez once said that One Hundred Years of Solitude was a 400-page Vallenato: a traditional music of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. The songs are mini-epics, filled with local characters and poetry. It’s a style that stretches back 200 years and is still thriving today.
…”Back in the day, the news was spread through songs,” says Tomás Dario Gutiérrez, a Vallenato historian and composer. “News that today could be transmitted in a matter of seconds — for instance, an epidemic.”
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, one of the main characters learns of her mother’s death through a famous Vallenato accordionist named “Francisco el Hombre,” inspired by a real-life minstrel.
…Up until the late 1800s, Vallenato was played on indigenous Colombian flutes called gaitas. When the accordion came to Colombia from Germany in the mid-1800s, it became the primary voice playing four distinct “airs” or rhythms: paseo, merengue, son and puya.
Last December, UNESCO declared Vallenato “intangible heritage, in need of safeguarding.” Efraín Quintero, vice-president of the Vallenato Legend Foundation, says that acknowledgment brings with it a big responsibility.
The story of Leondro Diaz, a composer and singer, is the story of a boy born blind and the hardships he had to endure, including the abuse of his father. It is a long series, fifty (50) one-hour episodes, but it is a beautiful story that, at least for me, has kept me glued to the TV, well, to the monitor in my case.
Leandro Díaz comes into this world with everything against him. He is born blind and his father Onofre considers that this visual deficiency is a divine punishment, for which he despises him and tells his family to do the same. Thanks to his aunt Erotida, Leandro is saved from being raised with animals and develops the musical talent with which God has blessed him. His first song is dedicated to his mother to complain about her abandonment, and the second is full of sarcasm for a neighbor who accuses him of spying on her daughter bathing naked in the river. As an adult, he begins to be recognized in the region and to enjoy the respect that his father never gives him. He composes the famous song “La diosa coronada” and begins to rise in the fledgling vallenato industry. He meets Matilde Lina, the love of his life and the inspiration for his most famous song. Leandro writes her the most beautiful verses of vallenato “When Matilde walks up to her, the savannah smiles” and fights to the death to get her love.
*Based on real events recorded by Alonso Sánchez Baute in his work “Leandro”, which portrays the life of the teacher Leandro Díaz.
The story is in Spanish, and it is not dubbed nor captioned in English or any other language. Although I speak Spanish and am a Tejano, my vocabulary is limited. However, I have worked for years on improving my Spanish, and now I can follow the movie and understand everything that is happening. I do have to ask my wife what certain words mean on occasion, especially since the Spanish of the Pacific Coast of Colombia has a dialect of its own. My wife is from Colombia, and I believe she is as beautiful as Matilde Lina or the person portrayed in the TV Series.
