The Grammy Award Winning Bagpipers of San Jacinto, Colombia

San Jacinto, Colombia, is one of a handful of small rural towns around the world that have that have become globally known on the “world music” circuit. Much like Clejani, Romania – famous for the Taraf de Haïdouks band of Roma musicians – San Jacinto is home to a huge community of talented traditional musicians.

These musicians – clad often in a traditional white garb, red scarf, and the sombrero vueltiao – are guardians of a tradition that has become synonymous with Colombian music, especially that of the Afro-Colombian Caribbean and Pacific coasts of the country.

At the heart of this tradition is the gaita, a large recorder-like flute made from a hollowed cactus stem played by the indigenous people of Colombia and Panama. In the coastal plains around the Caribbean melting pot of Cartagena, the gaita was combined with hand drums of African origin to make the unique Colombian cumbia sound. This heady mix of African, Indigenous, and Spanish sounds has spread around Latin America and takes many forms, but at its historical roots lies the gaita music found in San Jacinto.

The most well-known gaita band from San Jacinto, the appropriately-named Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto, were formed in the 1950s and famously took home a Latin Grammy. More on that later.

The sleepy town of San Jacinto

My intro to the gaita came through another avenue though.

Like so many world music nuts in the 1990s, I discovered the music of Colombian Afro-Colombian singer Sonia Bazanta, known as Totó la Momposina, through the Real World Records label back in the 1990s. What struck me most was the combo of African drumming with an ethereal Native American sound – there really was nothing like it.

I made it a mission to catch some of this music live in Colombia. Luckily when my wife and I decided to take our family on trip to Colombia in 2019 I was able to organize a visit (with my ever patient wife and kids who are the world’s best field recording partners).

As fitting today’s day and age, this musical journey started back in 2019 from my apartment in Brooklyn, with a WhattsApp conversation with a musician way up a mountain in Colombia.

I reached out to Colombian gaita player and bandleader Martin Vejarano for his advice. I wasn’t really at all familiar with the whole gamut of gaita music – I really only know the records of Totó la Momposina. I was in for a pleasant surprise.

Martin introduced me to Freddy Arrieta, a professional gaita player and member of Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto. Once I got closer to our trip, we started conversing back and forth about on Whattsapp. He lives outside of San Jacinto and whenever he would get a signal, he would send me an incomprehensible voice note message in his strong accent. Thankfully, a colleague was able to translate the voice notes for me.

Freddy Arrieta on the right

We made plans to meet – once again WhattsApp proved its role as the ultimate tool in 21st century musical exploration! [Note: if you are looking to track down traditional musicians in this day and age outside the US and a few other countries, WhattsApp is indispensable].

We travelled down to San Jacinto after spending some time in Cartagena (highly-recommended). Cartagena deserves its own entry (and I did some recordings there as well, maybe in two years I’ll post them) but I think the real music musical richness of this town lies in the Afro-Caribbean region surrounding Cartagena, which includes towns like Palenque de San Basilio, the first “free-town” in the Americas where African traditions are maintained today.

To get to San Jacinto, we travelled south from Cartagena, through the humid flatlands surrounding the town towards the cooler Montes de María mountain range in Bolivar state. San Jacinto is only a few hours from Cartagena and is on the way to the somewhat mythical inland port of Mompox, a colonial town somewhat off the well-beaten tourist path in this region. As her name indicates, Totó la Momposina hails from Mompox

When we arrived in San Jacinto we were greeted by a few local officials and taken on a tour to see the town’s most prized possession: the Latin Grammy that Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto won in 2007. There were quite a few policemen around – apparently the San Jancinto region was a  hotspot for FARC activity until not too long ago. But today it’s a very peaceful and sleepy mountain town.

We soon met with Freddy and Los Gaiteros at a local restaurant where we caught an incredible concert with a rather young line-up of musicians (some members are well into their 80s). According to Freddy there are at least five groups in the region, with Los Gaiteros the most famous.

It wasn’t easy, but I was able to speak a bit to Freddy. He lives outside of San Jacinto in the town of San Juan Nepomuceno and loves to talk about his trip to New York City some years back to play for ecstatic audiences. Thanks to Freddy and to Martin there is a Gaita scene in NYC, which hopefully should come back to life in the next months.

Freddy told me that this music is the “blues of our villages.” He insisted that this was music of the campio, steeped in the historical meeting of African and Indigenous traditions. It is a culture that survived the initial violence of colonialism and slavery, but also made it through the recent civil conflict but Freddy made a point of saying “no one silenced us during the years of violence, because our music came from the campio.”

To bring home his point, Freddy sang me a song about Conquistadors, their lust for gold, rural life, conflict… and his proud Sinú blood.

We had another treat. A female gaita player! Local player Vanessa Montes Porras joined the group for an amazing number, which I was able to record (video clip at the top of this blog).

All in all it was a fantastic visit - please do think of heading down to San Jancinto if you are checking out the amazing music scene of Cartagena!