Petronio alvarez

Petronio Álvarez

Location: Cali, Valle del Cauca
Region: Pacific
Duration: 5 days

The Colombian musician Patricio Romano Petronio Álvarez Farmer was born on October 1, 1914 in Cascajal's Island, near Fortune, port of the one that in life was a lover and inspired his song more known at present: “My Fortune ". During his infancy the music turned into his principal way of expression,devoting itself to touch guitar before expiring 20 years of age. In 1935 it created the set musical "Fortune" and though the music of the Pacífico was his principal passion, had to devote to trades as that of notary and machinist of the locomotive " The Palm " of the National Railroads, today preserved as national monument in Cali.
This interpreter of sones, family parties, bambucos and currulaos,died on December 10, 1966 in Cali at the age of fifty two. In his honor the name was given to the Festival of Music of the Pacific Ocean "Petronio Álvarez", which is celebrated anually in Santiago of Cali.
Some of his more recognized songs with pacific pace are: " Good-bye to Colombia ", " The Cauca ", " Seeing To run ", "Bome", " Good-bye to the Port ", "Roberto Cuero", " Cali, city sultana " andthe currulao " My Fortune ", which after the first recording with Titus Cortés and The Troubadours of Barú became popular in many other voices and managed to be known as Buenaventura's Anthem.
The Festival Petronio Álvarez was consolidated as the biggest and representative holiday of the folklore afrocolombiano of the Pacific Coast. The sensuality of the dance, the ancient singings that arerenewed in musical mergers, the alive tradition that makes vibrate the whole village that is contagious across the flavor of the marimba, the conuno and the guazá, instruments that are interpreted masterfully and that stamp the pace on percussion blow, are alone the preamble of the motives for deciding to travel to Cali in the middle of August.
The origins of a young Festival:
In 1997 one gavebeginning to the Festival Petronio Álvarez, in response to the need to create a space of meeting for composers, musicians and investigators of the native music of the Coastal Pacific Ocean.
The ethnic plurality and the multiculturalidad of Cali did a rapid echo to the event that grew in participants, publicly and it was sheltered in the heart of a region that saw in the Festival a way of conservation,appropriation and connection of the cultural manifestations urban and rural afrocolombianas.
The Festival calls anually for more than one hundred of musical national and international groups that Petronio Álvarez competes for the prize in different modalities. But the most competed and more longed prize is the ovation of a demanding public who submits generously when the music manages to touch thefibers that move it.
* The Petronio Álvarez is more than a festival. It is a state of mind that wakes the senses up. About this one can have one of the most exquisite offers of the Colombian gastronomy, with flavor to sea. The handcrafted samples deliver amazing textures that have in the fiber of leaf of banana and in the totumo one of his principal raw materials.
Every night of the Festivalis a sonorous and visual spectacle that guards his better images in the color of a scene in continuous movement: the white handkerchiefs to the air to are of currulao and the people who dresses of his better smile, the most authentic, which rescues the pride of belonging to a cultural root that enjoys itself every year with the better thing of yes.
The Festival of Music of the Pacífico PetronioÁlvarez, it is the instrument or vehicle, by which it is recognized to the city as space of congregation and reflection on the cultural inheritance of the pacific tradition, with processes directed to the equity and incorporation, with actions that recognize the social, cultural and economic diversity.
Characteristics:
Between his modalities there are of marimba, chirimía, freely, unpublished...