Americas Faculty Research Group
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VISITING SPEAKER FROM COLOMBIA: |
Egberto Bermúdez studied early music performance practice and musicology at the Guildhall School of Music and King's College, University of London. Currently he is Professor (tenured) of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas of the National University in Bogota, Colombia. He has published a number of works on Latin American and Colombian music history, traditional and popular musics and musical instruments. In 1984 he founded, and since then has directed, CANTO, an ensemble specialised in Spanish and Latin American Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. In 1992, with Juan Luis Restrepo, he established the FUNDACIÓN DE MÚSICA, an institution dedicated to disseminating the research about the musical past of Latin America, both amongst the scholarly community and the general public. He was President of the HISTORICAL HARP SOCIETY from 1998 to 2001.
Shotguns and Accordions: Music of the Marijuana Growing
Regions of Colombia
Vallenato: Colombian Popular Music from the Caribbean Coast,
an Introduction
A History of Colombian Caribbean Dance Music
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Shotguns and Accordions: |
Venue: 305, Agriculture Building
Date: Monday, 21st November 2005
Time: 1:00pm
This documentary from the Channel 4 ‘Beats of the Heart’ series
(by Jeremy Marre) looks at vallenato. Mixing accordions, electric bass, percussion
and lusty, open throated vocals, vallenato emerged as a popular music when the
drug mafias rose to prominence in the 1960s and became the soundtrack for their
feverish life-style. The film also looks at the musical traditions of Colombia
which helped shape vallenato – from the vibrantly rhythmic, African-rooted
cumbia music to the elegant traditional flute music of the various indigenous
peoples – and provides cultural and political contexts for understanding
and enjoying Colombian cultural production of all types.
Vallenato: Colombian Popular Music from the Caribbean
Coast, an Introduction
Venue: Bedson Teaching Centre, room 1.48
Date: Wednesday, 23rd November 2005
Time: 2:00pm
This talk is aimed at undergraduate students from the School of Modern Languages
but will be of general interest for those wanting to know more about Latin American
popular music. (On Monday 21 November there will be a showing of the video Shotguns
and Accordions: Music of the Marijuana Growing Regions of Colombia (1983) at
1.00, in room 305, Agriculture Building. This documentary from the Channel 4
‘Beats of the Heart’ series (by Jeremy Marre) looks at vallenato.
Mixing accordions, electric bass, percussion and lusty, open throated vocals,
vallenato emerged as a popular music when the drug mafias rose to prominence
in the 1960s and became the soundtrack for their feverish life-style. The film
also looks at the musical traditions of Colombia which helped shape vallenato
– from the vibrantly rhythmic, African-rooted cumbia music to the elegant
traditional flute music of the various indigenous peoples – and provides
cultural and political contexts for understanding and enjoying Colombian cultural
production of all types.)
A History of Colombian Caribbean Dance Music
Venue: Recital Room, Armstrong Building
Date: Wednesday, 23rd November 2005
Time: 4:30pm
A historical overview of the dance music (música costeña, caliente
o bailable tropical) that consolidated in the Costa Atlántica Colombiana
from the 1930s onwards, its processes of nationalization and internationalization
until the emergence of the different genres of Colombian Tropical Pop in the
1990s.