Cholombiano: Cultural Appreciation and The Rise of Outsider Cumbia
By Elida Silvey
It all started with cumbia. A folkloric rhythmic genre of music born out of Colombia whose modernization at the start of the 1940s caused it to spread like wildfire across the rest of Latin America. More specifically, for me, it started with the low-tempo, raw-voice cumbia coming out of Monterrey, Mexico, initially called rebajadas. I remember the first time I heard a rebajada — I was about 11 or 12 years old at my cousin’s quinceañera. I was captivated by its rhythm and swing, taking over my body and resonating with an unknown familiarity as if being possessed by ancestral phantoms.
I sprouted into adulthood from a budding, party-loving family made up of immigrant parents — a Mexican father and a Venezuelan mother. While growing up, it was my mother who was always the first to jump at the hint of a song creeping up on the booming sound systems and, in doing so, ingrained in me a passion for movement. I remember, however, uncharacteristically, with Celso Piña’s ‘Cumbia Sobre El Rio’ playfully pulsating out of the speakers, that it was my dad who pulled me to the dance floor to show me what he proudly called Mexican cumbia. Just like that, I was hooked.
The differences in their way of dancing — my mother’s faster-paced salsa-like rumba versus the more urbanized slow swing of my father’s moves — were one of the first times I noticed a distinction between my mother’s and father’s cultures. Interested in exploring these differences as a way to understand my own, I began to research rebajadas and came to realize they stood as vibrant examples of cultural appreciation. The point at which two cultures, roped in by their shared love of cumbia, embrace to form something truly unique. This resonated with me.
The Cultural Impact of Immigration
To understand the magic of rebajadas and the culture they influenced, we have to start at the beginning. The general census of Mexican migration, as collated by the ‘Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía’ (INEGI, 2010), shows a successive growth of Colombian migration into Mexico, establishing it as the 4th largest migratory group by 2010. Unlike many other instances of migration that brought along with them volatile tension between their intersecting cultures, Colombians were, for the most part, readily embraced by Mexican outsiders.
Monterrey, a staunchly Catholic and conservative city, then became the hub and center for this cultural boom blossoming from its manifestation of different cultural expressions. Sound system parties, or sonidero culture, saw a rise in cumbias being presented to Mexicans as a result of the Colombian immigrants’ impact across the city. As a well-respected Colombian immigrant and sonidero in Monterrey, Sonidero Dueñez popularized Colombian music in the city and influenced other sound system DJs to adopt it into their own forms of expression, fostering a creative cumbia boom.
Legend says Sonidero Dueñez’s turntables overheated from a long night of DJing, distorting traditional cumbias to the now infamous rebajada tempo — around ~76 BPM as opposed to the traditional ~86 BPM. Rather than finishing his set early, he persisted, adapting the music to the malfunction, to the respect and wonderment of his peers and partygoers. This adaptation allowed Mexican participants to better understand Colombian lyricism, acclimating the otherwise rapid-fire accent of Colombians to the Mexican ear, creating a space for Colombian immigrants to foster a resurgence of their beloved genre and serving as the spark from which Cholombiano culture ignited.
Social Outcasts: The Immigrant and The Outsider
Becoming an immigrant forces you to experience a range of side-eye sneers, miscommunications in day-to-day conversation and hyper-hesitation from those around you. Being culturally different, even between two Spanish-speaking countries, is the equivalent of sticking a red label on your forehead as if to state boldly, ‘I’m an outsider’. In a similar fashion, being an expressive individual interested in non-religious ideals in a decisively Catholic country marks you with the same red label. Growing up as an immigrant in a staunchly religious city myself, I was drawn to the parallels between these two groups.
Cholombianos, who are a specific sub-sect of cumbia fans and its subgenres — the low-tempo rebajada, the Colombian nostalgic kolombia and the accordion-propelled vallenato — embraced aspects of Mexican outsider culture, known as Cholos, and blended them with the Colombian cultural aspects they grew to love off the back of the cumbia-led sound system parties popping up across the city.
Cholos, who grew in popularity in opposition to the societal pressures bubbling up along the northern borders of Mexico, became a striking representation of Mexican subculture. Along the same vein, Cholo culture and its many offshoots, such as Cholombianos in Monterrey and Chicanos in the western United States, shared the desire to propagate a tight-knit community for those that didn’t quite fit into social norms.
This melting pot of Mexican subculture and Colombian immigrant culture created the backbone from which Cholombianos confidently sprung up. This formed the perfect community for both cultures to coexist, allowing them to express the parts of themselves they would otherwise conceal.
While the average Monterrey native is more traditional and religious than their outsider counterparts, Cholombianos’ passion for flashy, unconventional fashion and cumbia-led nightlife caused a rift between the city’s population. Perhaps, in part, due to their polarizing views, Cholombianos cherish their own community; this amalgamation of cultural aspects that are woven intricately, beautifully and purposefully is an apt representation of cultural appreciation. Cholombiano culture benefits its Mexican outsider members just as much as it does its Colombian immigrant participants by creating a space for them to express themselves freely.
Cholombiano: From Music to Fashion
Musicians like La Tropa Vallenata sensually play with catholic tropes in songs like ‘Satanas’, unsettling them in an enticingly carnal down-tempo tune as one representation of their outsider ideology. Their lyrics suggest a satirical communion with Satan in search of a devilish dance partner, reacting with sarcastic absurdity against the bland monotony of Monterrey’s mainstream, largely contributing to their polarization. Others, such as Lisandro Misa, Andres Landero and Aniceto Molina, many of whom are Colombian natives, remain closer to the initial rebajada sound with strong Colombian cumbia influences. Such as the poetic and lyrical styles evoking nature and indigenous ideology as their central focus.
On the opposite spectrum, the modernized versions of these intertwining genres appear to be influenced by Mexico’s popular music trends. Similar in lyrical structure to pop culture bands Molotov or Cafe Tacvba, songs such as Sabor Kolombia’s ‘Cumbia Rebajada’ or Los Kolombokos’ ‘El Mariguanito’ exist as a representation of the evolution of this subculture within and around the country.
While ‘Cumbia Rebajada’ employs the use of Mexico City slang and rap-like vocalizations to deliver its message, in ‘El Mariguanito’ we can hear the strong influence of Mexican satire in lyrics such as “Marijuana had a son and they called him Marijuanito'' — using Mexico's greatest export, humor, to poke fun at the dangerous cartel climate swarming the country. Cholombiano’s and other cumbia-born subcultures fostered a resurgence of self-expression as an extension of their musical interests.
Popular songs make a number of references to great Colombian artists that rose to popularity in the 1970s, such as Sonidero Duenez and Aniceto Molina. In addition to these, references are made to the widespread success of cumbia, including Houston house parties, NYC Latin-clubs and Monterrey sound systems, as well as the shared personal sentiments towards the societal norms bred within its cities. These references all live embedded within the fibers of outsider cumbia. All of which cements, in its history, the importance of “being in the know”.
This type of cultural submersion breeds a space that is welcoming for those clued in, even for those who are considered outsiders and seek to subvert its ideology. This emboldening of self fostered the fly-paper sticky hairstyles, Guadalupe-clad necklines, floater caps, baggy shorts and boxy button-down style of Cholombiano fashion. They collated bits and pieces that required intention and carefully curated them to represent the ideals, interests and beliefs shared by Cholombianos. Embracing the title of outsider with pride.
So Why Does Any Of It Matter?
In a world where self-expression is often reduced to copy-paste formulas, I look to these clusters of creative communities as bright examples of cultural appreciation and outsider communion. I’ve come to realize these beacons of individuality live in the enmeshment of differing cultures, where they act as enlivened examples of outsiders belonging. Of community without requisite. Of differences being embraced rather than rejected.
These fluid pockets of existence between outsider cultures who’ve come together in a collective desire to belong, to be a part of a community where self-expression is limitless and the oddities of being are embraced rather than rejected. This is where creativity lives. Perhaps a part of me was driven to understand this subculture as a way to understand myself. To try and find how I could create my own ripples in the collective tidepool.
As bell hooks poignantly states in All About Love, “Realistically, being part of a loving community does not mean we will not face conflicts,” but it does “allow us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life-enhancing” (139). Growing up as an immigrant in a religious, predominantly non-minority city created an urge within me to find solace within the community. Cholombianos and the many songs inspired by, formed out of and created for this cumbia-led subculture gave me the hope that one day I could find my place. My place to express myself without the confines of limits.
I’ve chased these subcultures across state lines and over the Atlantic in an attempt to find this place. I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that if I were in the right place at the right time, much like Cholombianos in Monterrey, I would be able to make my world erupt in creativity. It wasn’t until recently that I realized the eruption happens first from within: by extending a hand to a stranger, by sharing your passion for something, by allowing yourself to communicate with those different from you. Most importantly, by wearing the title of an outsider with pride. ♦