Vallenato festival: People playing music for the love of it

VALLEDUPAR, Colombia -- After my third year in a row visiting the Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata, it has dawned on me that it has become a sort of personal cleansing ritual.

After months of promoters and cheery label publicists pitching this week's next-big-thing; after being told that, no matter how undeserving, this particular artist has charted this high and has sold these many units so he therefore merits my attention; after enduring countless discussions about marketing and image; I need a reminder that once people composed and played music just because they loved making music, and they still do. MTV came later.

Sure, the conflict of art and commerce is inherent to popular music. Only nowadays we marvel at the hucksterism of our pop stars as we wait in line at the cash register.

Still, before it becomes ``product,'' the industry term, playing music is about someone trying to have a good time or say something, perhaps both.

Vallenato hits big time

In the past five years, vallenato, the accordion music of the Caribbean coast of Colombia, has unexpectedly become big business. And with the success of Carlos Vives and the keen interest shown by artists such as Gloria Estefan, who showcased it in her Grammy-award winning Abriendo Puertas, and Julio Iglesias, who incorporated it in his best-selling El Camino, it is international big business.

But not that long ago -- vallenato after all is only about 100 years old -- this was a music of parrandas, backyard gatherings.

Popular poets, some who couldn't read or write, drew simple, enduring images of stunning clarity, depth and grace. The best of the classic vallenatos are miniatures of small town life, sung love letters (``Cuando Matilde camina hasta sonrie la sabana,'' When Matilde walks even the plains smile, said the great Leandro Díaz), homespun newscasts (``Ya yo conocí el avión, pa' que nadie me eche el cuento, es un pájaro volando con alas sin movimiento,'' I've already seen an airplane, so no one can tell me lies, it's a bird that flies without flapping its wings,'' wrote Juan Solano in 1914.).

While more popular than ever, vallenato remains, to some extent, backyard music. But it is now struggling against vulgar romanticism, grafting with other genres (Mexican rancheras, Dominican merengues) and soul-numbing commercial formulas.

And yes, it is easy to romanticize. After all, the vallenato festival is a popular event created by members of the region's patrician families for their own political, economic and social reasons. Politicians visit for a couple of days with the great unwashed and hope for votes, record labels push their latest products, sponsoring beer companies buy good will, and stars in the after-competition shows bid for legitimacy. And who knows how many of these local, weekend musicians long for the hit record, the big show in Paris or Miami, the break the irrepressible Gonzalo Arturo ``Cocha'' Molina got when he was called to play accordion on Estefan's album.

King for a year

But still, acordeoneros from all over the region do come to Valledupar -- which is to vallenato what Clarksdale, Miss., is to blues -- to compete at the town's plaza under a 110-degree midday sun for the right to be called Rey Vallenato, vallenato king, for one year.

Like the man sitting in a corner at the festival offices, shoes covered with mud and dust, just arrived from who knows where, laboriously filling out his application for the competition, the ballpoint pen a toy in his big hands, the red accordion sticking out of his black vinyl bag. Or like the professional acordeonero, tall and built like a linebacker, who I always found a bit intimidating, playing for a festival veteran, asking for advice like an eager schoolboy. Or like the kid who, oblivious to the circus around him, walked along the wall in the backstage room idly fingering his accordion, mesmerized with the portaits of previous winners, so close and so far.

The competition

Meanwhile, in the plaza, under the big mango tree, people gather and make predictions, arguing the decline of the festival and the incomparable greatness of this or that past winner. There are no million-dollar contracts or Pepsi commercials waiting for the king. Maybe better-paying weekend gigs -- but then only if the people in the plaza agree he deserved the win. The judges' decisions are for the books. The people's choices are unappealable. There are uncrowned kings and kingly losers. This year's winner, 21-year-old Juan David ``Pollito'' Herrera, beat the odds-on favorite and ended up being carried around the plaza on people shoulders.

Elsewhere in the plaza, groups of friends, neighbors and relatives, sporting mismatched T-shirts stenciled with the names of their candidates, unfurl handmade signs with words of support and yell their encouragement.

It is impossibly hot and impossibly crowded, and for four days, nobody sleeps much. The music lingers in the air, from morning to morning. It's not just the stage and the plaza. It pops out unexpectedly in sidewalk gatherings. It screams out of car radios. It wafts, like perfume, from behind doors left ajar.

You can't help have a good time or be healed.