Palenquero

PALENQUERO Men from San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia) vibrate with music. Not only their bodies shake: the African spirits manifest in their gestures and in the ecstasy that invades the streets of the town. Since the XVI century, Palenqueros have accompanied all their rites with the rhythm of the drums, and this way they have got drunk to forget the abandonment of the Colombian state that condemns them to isolation and poverty. Music from Palenque (considered “the first free town from America”) is a link to the history, the land and to all that cannot be seen: with that that appears on each face when the stretched skin of the drum is hit and a voice fills the space with life and death chants in both Spanish and Palenquero, language that mixed Spanish, African Bantu, Portuguese and French to create a code that the slaveholders could not understand.