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Travel the world with the Music Planet Road Trip, sampling the music and culture of different locations around the globe, from roots-based traditional styles to the latest contemporary sounds, and with local experts on the ground as your guide.

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Music Planet: Colombia - Vallenato

Music: World

12/02/2022 GMT

Colombia - Vallenato

BBC World Service - Music Planet, Colombia - Vallenato

To listen online, visit bbcworldservice.com/musicplanet

Betto Arcos reports from Valledupar, home to vallenato, a folk style popularised in the 1990s. To listen online, visit bbcworldservice.com/musicplanet

Journalist Betto Arcos reports from Valledupar, home to vallenato, a folk style popularised in the 1990s by Carlos Vives and celebrated in the city's annual Vallenato Legend Festival. The singers are accompanied by accordion and percussion in music that ranges from the slow, swaying rhythms of paseo and son to the more upbeat merengue and the frenetic grooves of puya. Vallenato as a genre goes back around 200 years and its songs are mini-epics, filled with local characters and poetry. Gabriel García Márquez once described his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude as a “400-page vallenato”. Betto Arcos tells the story of this vibrant music and drops in on a local parranda gathering – a type of jam session – in Valleupar during the festival.

To listen online, visit bbcworldservice.com/musicplanet

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