BEJUCO

“Afro-Columbian percussions, the singing touch of the marimba, the dancing ostinato on guitar with a complexity of voices invoking ancestral polyrhythms that fervently carry all the complaints and joys of the sea coast” (FIP, 2021). From the thriving South Colombian music scene, Bejuco gathers up traditional Bambuco and Currulao musical styles and reinvigorates them with punchy Afrobeat, pop, dub and hip-hop rhythms, in a dynamic whirlwind of sounds set off by the interplay of multiple answering voices and the marimba, a wooden xylophone intimately linked to its orresponding traditional practices, inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Bejuco’s debut album, Batea, was released in 2021 by Llorna Records. “It sounds like the sea, and has the power of a wave,” is how the band’s members describe it.