Bogotá Music Market reveals an enviable spectrum of Colombian talent

04 October 2024, 12:00

Lead photo: Las Guaguas de Pank

(Anyer Vela) (Cantares del Pacífico) (El Kalvo) (El León Pardo) (Gabriela Ponce) (Las Guaguas de Pank) (Mau Gatiyo y Los Años Maravillosos) (Raquel) (Bogotá Music Market)

Bogotá Music Market - a sort of Colombian SXSW – launched 13 years back as part of the city’s support for its emerging cultural industries and quickly became a platform for giving local artists the ear of the wider music industry at both a national and international level.

Across a series of well-produced showcases and an expansive symposium at Bogotá's Delia Zapata Olivella National Arts Center, the event – affectionately known as BOmm – also helps composers, musicians, producers, agencies and promoters discover new opportunities in the music business. Talks and panels cover everything from AI's continuing use in music creation, the need for new spaces to perform music, and how to market playlists.

While the city itself has been instrumental in the renewal of cumbia – and the country a key part of reggaeton's ongoing success - BOmm’s programming reflects a full spectrum of national sonic expression. These kind of showcases can be something of a crapshoot so it’s refreshing that so many of the artists I see performing during the four days I spend at BOmm feel close to market-ready, with the talent, chops – and songs – to hold their own in an international space.

Raquel

From Antioquia, in the northwest of Colombia, Raquel Tamayo makes hazy and vibrant guitar music that files away nicely between Alvvays and Soccer Mommy in its heavier moments but also also shot through with melodic hooks that pick up where The Cure’s poppier moments left off.

Originally a film student, Tamayo bought a guitar in the pandemic to bring to life the songs she imagined soundtracking her short films, and kicked off her career in 2021 with the song "Película". Debut album Paseo en carro a la costa followed two years later and in 2024 she's pushing a live set that feels fresh and full of energy, with lyrics that capture road-trip nostalgia and childhood memories. It’s definitely among the most indie-leaning moments at BOmm.

Las Guaguas de Pank

On a heavier trip entirely are Las Guaguas de Pank: four women from Pasto – a city an hour from the border with Ecuador – whose sound intertwines punk music with their Andean roots.

The band’s formation came amid the 2021 national strikes, when tens of thousands came out to protest against tax increases and health care reforms proposed by the government of Iván Duque. A project born out of solidarity, as an act of cultural resistance, has taken shape as a unique proposition in Colombian music: a sound that’s both hard-edged and rooted in history, and as lyrically confrontational as they come. The band have thrived among more traditional rock line-ups but their sound is flush with the same anarchy that’s driven grass-roots punk scenes across the world since the 70s. They’re a clear-mile ahead of everyone else I see at BOmm in terms of excitement, adrenalin and conviction.

Anyer Vela

Two of BOmm's more interesting performances represent the success of social enterprise and reformation in the country. The nostalgia-tinged sentimental sound of Anyer Vela was born under incarceration where the Bogotá singer and songwriter found music as a form of expression and healing. Deprived of his freedom – and missing his family – Vela’s life was turned around by Music by Mambart, an initiative encouraging cultural entrepreneurship among young people by promoting second chances and preventing violence.

Among the most important songs Vela produced in prison, "Dulce Regalo" is a dedication to his daughter that reveals the depth of his heart-on-sleeve compositions and is a canon moment in his live set at BOmm.

Cantares del Pacífico

A thriving force in Afro-Colombian marimba, Cantares del Pacífico was a project that came together almost 20 years ago. A series of acting, painting, ballet and music workshops were held at the Buenaventura Cultural Center to encourage parents in the area to enrol their children in these courses. What began as a hobby in the workshops birthed an ongoing project which hit a high last year with a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album.

Cantares del Pacífico's exhilarating sound celebrates their African legacy and tackles the problems they’ve faced for being considered a minority in Colombia. Their sound is driven by the Chonta marimba; crafted from the Chonta tree – specifically cut during the waning moon – it’s an instrument typical of the pacific region of Colombia, and its sound recalls flowing water in the jungle. Its name translates to “piano of the jungle” and in Cantares del Pacífico it is the mother instrument around which their sound is built.

El Kalvo

Within the hip hop space, Bogotá rapper El Kalvo is making immersive and often surreal rap that’s loaded with social comment and delivered with swagger and humour. A former member of Geniales Analíticos until going solo almost ten years back, El Kalvo’s pedigree was shaped by an early immersion in Spanish and Puerto Rican rap, and his discography to date led to to this year’s incredible record Los tres golpes, which forms the heart of his live show at BOmm. He performs next to a prop arrangement of a street vendor's fruit-and-veg stall while his stage visuals show clips of everyday life in Colombia. At one point he even brandishes what looks like a link of plastic sausages.

El Kalvo’s queezy baritone pitch-shifted flow set over sinister bar-room piano and brass (recalling some of the best 90s hip hop) make him feel like an experiment in creating a rap-infused Tom Waits. It's pantomime – irreverent and aware – and it somehow comes together as something original and inspired.

Mau Gatiyo y Los Años Maravillosos

Another artist taking their cues from the surreal is accordion-wielding Mau Gatiyo. Taking an instrument central to the country’s traditions, Gatiyo’s own spin on the airwaves-dominating 70s and 80s vallenato music is shot through with an increasingly experimental perspective, especially on latest long player Superpoderes. Gatiyo’s collective Los Años Maravillosos (The Wonder Years) tackle songs that poke at social issues and drug culture, and they even hooked up with prestige Brooklyn label Names You Can Trust for a 7” earlier this year.

El León Pardo

Cartagena-born Jorge Emilio Pardo Vásquez built his early career as a trumpeter but as El León Pardo he has become synonymous with the gaita, a Colombian wind instrument that originated in the Caribbean coast and is found throughout the Northern Andes. Similar to a bagpipe – without the bag – it makes a sound that becomes evocative and immersive in the hands of Vásquez. His take on the folk sounds of Colombia is informed by a classical and jazz discipline but never sounds rigid or uninviting.

Gabriela Ponce

Gabriela Ponce is another artist from the far south of the country who has built a profile nationally for her fresh compositions. Ponce was the vocalist with Buha 2030 and Verbalia but last year’s El Sur del Ser saw her step out on her own with a record that mixes guitar, and clarinet alongside a vocal filled with character and emotion and stuttering, jazz-flecked expressionism.