Vallenato Is Colombian Campesino Music. And When The Land Suffers, The Genre Does, Too

When I listen to vallenato, I’m transported to Colombia — the smell of crisp mountain air, the first touch of sunrise on my skin, the rich taste of a warm cup of coffee.

For Carlos Vives, often referred to as “el rey del vallenato” and one of the South American country’s biggest stars, vallenato is inseparable from the agriculture of Colombia and the farmers, or campesinos, who keep it alive. 

“The genre started to become distorted when the life of the campesinos, the life of the agricultural workers started to suffer. The only way to keep vallenato alive is for the campesino to not be displaced. That the rivers, the earth, and the countryside are healthy. That the campesino is happy,” Vives tells Refinery29 Somos in Spanish. “This is the only way for vallenato to survive — everything else is industry.” 

Like vallenato, Vives is endemic to Colombia, a symbol of pride who created modern interpretations of traditional Colombian genres such as bambuco, cumbia, champeta, porro, and vallenato. But despite several Grammy wins and being a leader in Colombian vallenato for more than three decades, Vives insists he does not make true vallenato. 

“Even though they call me the ‘king of vallenato,’ I actually represent modernity that is inspired by my Colombian identity, which includes original vallenatos, original cumbias, and a series of rhythms and genres that are rooted in our oral traditions. Thirty years ago, I decided I was going to make the rock music of my people. I can’t make folkloric music because I am not Leandro Díaz. I am not Alejo Durán. I am not a campesino from the highlands. I’m a city boy,” Vives says. “Pretending that those of us who make modern industry music are making vallenato is not understanding what vallenato truly is.”  

Although Vives’ music is vallenato-adjacent, he still believes his songs spiritually connect to folkloric vallenato. True vallenatos, he says, told stories that would travel from pueblo to pueblo. La Gota Fría, a 1938 vallenato by Emiliano Zuleta that Vives famously covered, chronicles a duel between two famous accordion players. Similarly, Vives and Shakira told a story of two friends meeting up to ride their bikes from Santa Marta (Vives’ hometown) to La Arenosa (or Barranquilla, where Shakira is from) in "La Bicicleta." By documenting a small piece of life in Colombia, Vives preserves the traditional storytelling of vallenato through his contemporary songs. 

“The feeling I get when I’m listening to Leandro Díaz sing and tell us those stories through his music is the same feeling my fans sometimes get when they listen to me sing my songs. I am connected to the spirits of those early oral traditions because I’ve preserved the essence through my modern interpretations,” Vives adds. 

To understand the oral traditions that Vives celebrates in his music, we need to go back to the early days of vallenato music. Gabriel García Marquez once called One Hundred Years of Solitude a “350-page vallenato,” believing his literature followed in the tradition of the genre’s storytelling methods. But more than a literary device, vallenato — and the history behind it — is the story of Colombia.  

Vallenato means “born in the valley,” which fittingly describes the music’s birthplace of Valledupar, a city in the Caribbean region of Colombia. Similar to Mexican norteños, vallenato took inspiration from European folk music, as German merchant and trading ships arrived in Colombia during the mid-19th century. These ships also brought a staple of vallenato music: the German accordion. German sailors traded the wind instrument with Colombians in exchange for food and other supplies. 

It didn’t take long for Colombians to blend the sound of the accordion with their own instruments. The Indigenous guacharaca (a percussion instrument) and gaita flute as well as the African caja drum gave vallenato its distinctly Colombian sound. 

Over time, vallenato evolved into not only an official music genre, but a form of cultural expression. Traveling troubadours used vallenatos to bring news to isolated towns, immortalizing not only the events of the time but also important Caribbean folklore through its music. 

“We always think of vallenato as coming from Valledupar, but even though it's very specific to a very specific region in Colombia, I would say it’s a little bit like the blues is here [in the United States] — it’s extended everywhere,” says Leila Cobo, the chief content officer for Billboard Latin Music and Español, and the author of Decoding Despacito: An Oral History of Latin Music. “Even though we have salsa in Cali, for example, salsa is really music that was born in New York City from all this confluence of rhythms. Vallenato is Colombian, and it is one of our pride and joys.” 

There are few things more Colombian than vallenato, and it would be difficult to visit the country without encountering the harmonious mix of instrumentation that defines this classic sound. Colombia makes vallenato a priority, preserving the genre through events like Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata, an annual celebration that began in 1968 and became the most important vallenato event in the world. In 2006, the genre received global recognition when the Latin Grammy Awards added vallenato as a category. 

But the modern vallenato sound has a sad underpinning. 

“As the campesino has been forced to move from his farmland to impoverished and under-resourced parts of the city, the sound of vallenato has also become more tragic. Vallenato has moved away from the joyful stories of men who worked in the fields and were happy. When vallenato music is sad, it is because the campesino has been forced to emigrate to the city and has begun to live another life,” Vives explains. “And that’s why I say, with all due respect, that industry music is not vallenato.”