Felito Barranquilla Colombia

En route from Brazil, myself and Paprika made a short detour, (coming from the other end of the pacific(Australia) via Brazil is a rather large detour) to Barranquilla, Santa Marta & Los Naranjos on the Northern coast of Colombia, where we meet up with our good friend Fabian from the Africolombia Blogspot, specialising in Afro Colombian music from the picoteras of North Colombia , Cumbia, Champeta and other African & Caribbean gems that made it to the northern ports of Colombia via the African & European diaspora. Barranquilla is famous for it’s rootsy annual carnaval celebrations which along with the African slaves, helped spawn what we now know as Palenque music, a relentless Afro, indigenous Colombian rhythm popularised by the Picoteras(Colombian Sound Systems) & Carnaval Dance schools of the regions. Palenque was originally an African community of slaves that had escaped captivity from the Sugarcane farms and industry of the surrounding Islands of the Caribbean and Central America to form a solely African community, deep in the outer reaches of Northern Colombia who used Palenque music to tell there story.

Now, Barranquilla is home to the infamous Felito records, focusing on Palenque music of the late 70’s and 80’s and also a distributor for Afro Colombian sounds alike.  Within a day of being in Barranquilla we knew we were in the right city, records are everywhere downtown.  Under the guidance of our friend Fabian, hustling through downtown amongst countless street vendors and after a quick coffee we meet up with Aurel from Palmwine records Paris for what ended up being a 2 day session in the ex Felito shop, now run by Chane.  Initially the shop was closed but after a quick phone call we had the place to ourselves along with a few of Chane’s drinking buddies who decided to continue on with there card game at the front of the shop, while we excavated 30 years plus of history out the back, surfacing occasionally to test some heat on the Gameros at the front and knowing when we struct gold from there heated approval.  At sunset we decided to call it quits and head to a local bar, for a couple of ice cold Club Colombia’s, & I do mean ICE! cold, completely appropriate in 40 degree heat!  This was a bar us record folk dream about, to the roof high of dusty African, Caribbean and Colombian records of a golden era, selected tenderly by the elderly gentleman who was also serving the drinks. When I say tenderly I don’t mean he was playing some lovesick ballads or slow dancing boleros, this was straight heat that only the tropics knows how to deliver. 100+ db were raining down in that tiny bar but who would complain, the music just got heavier as the records changed, would love to get him in for a Sabrosa night, he would tear the roof off.

Day 2, downtown we decided to hit Felito again, this time armed with a head lamp and a few litres of water, we started to pull out the boxes of 45’s covered in what seemed like an inch of dust.  The humidity mixed with the dust was incredible, reminded of those years as a boy spent in tropical north Queensland on the Islands but with no coast in sight. So Chane rigged up a makeshift lead of some electrical cable to an old exhaust fan and proceeded to blast us with some hot humid air which was life giving in that dark & dusty top floor, giving us the strength to carry on a few more hours.  So after pulling some 7 inch gems more record hunting and some shifty black market currency exchange down an old collectors arcade further downtown and not to mention a huge downpour which turns the streets of Barranquilla literary into a river, it was time to blaze some trails and head further along the coast over to Santa Marta for a quick stop on to Los Naranjos for some r&r and a root down on a private little beach hideaway East of Tayrona but that’s another story for another blog.  

Coming up we will have another mix from PepeSol “La Costa Buena” covering some of the records dug out of Barranquilla, expect, cumbia’s gaita’s & porro’s….keep an ear out….till then, Saludos para todos!