The band Puerto Candelaria revolutionized the Colombian music scene in the early 2000s with its debut album, Kolombian Jazz—blending jazz with música tropical (tropical music),Footnote 1 an umbrella term for commercially circulated Caribbean-derived dance musics in Colombia. In 2023, the group premiered a stage work that tells a love story through classical Colombian tropical music from the 1950s, performed in a big-band format, a setting for which much of that repertoire was originally composed. The 1950s were a golden age for tropical music in Colombia, when musicians such as Lucho Bermúdez, Pacho Galán, and Edmundo Arias transformed cumbia, a folk tradition from Colombia’s Caribbean region, into an urban national genre.
La Sociedad de la Cumbia is a groundbreaking Colombian independent production that blends music, dance, theater, and melodrama into a unique artistic experience. Rather than a conventional musical or revue, this work is best described as a hybrid of narrative dance-theater and staged concert: the story unfolds through acting and choreography, while a live orchestra on stage provides a continuous musical backdrop, performing a curated repertoire of 1950s songs specially arranged for the occasion. Juancho Valencia (El Sargento Remolacha) serves as director, producer, and arranger, alongside the other members of Puerto Candelaria, with support from his label, Merlín Producciones. The onstage production featured thirteen musicians, sixteen dancers, and five actors and has taken multiple forms: a miniseries for the regional TV channel TeleAntioquia, a studio album, and a series of live concerts in Medellín and Bogotá between 2023 and 2025. The album is available on streaming platforms, while the complete live performance can be viewed on YouTube. In 2024, the recording received a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Cumbia/Vallenato Album.
The show’s central narrative is a love story told through tropical music: jazz arrangements of cumbias and porros, along with original compositions, weave the plot together. The story follows a heteronormative melodrama: an upper-class woman falls in love with a humble young man but is forced to marry within her social class to please her father and secure the family’s finances. The action unfolds at Club Mariscal, a venue reminiscent of historic social spaces in Medellín, including Club Unión and the dance hall of Hotel Nutibara, both known for hosting Lucho Bermúdez’s orchestra and serving the city’s elite. Margarita Echavarría, daughter of the owner Baltazar, falls for Pepe Mantilla, one of the club’s employees, but marries Mr. White. The surname Echavarría recalls a prominent industrialist family, founders of Coltejer and the Banco Comercial Antioqueño, who by the 1950s ranked among the wealthiest in Colombia. Pepe Mantilla’s story echoes the broader migratory trends of the era: many Colombians moved from the Caribbean coast to Medellín between the 1930s and 1960s to escape partisan violence and seek opportunity in the growing industrial hub.
The actors bring these characters to life without singing; their work centers on acting, dancing, and delivering spoken dialogue. The musical weight falls on the Puerto Candelaria big band—present on stage for nearly the entire show—with Catalina Calle (“Catt”) and Jairo Andrade as vocalists. The ensemble includes Juancho Valencia, pianist and musical director; Catt on vocals and composition; Eduardo González on bass and vocals; Didier Martínez on percussion; Harlinson Lozano on saxophone and clarinet; and Lucas Tobón on saxophone. For this production, the group expands to include guest musicians on trumpet, trombone, additional saxophones, and folk percussion, assembled to achieve the sound of the big bands of the 1950s. Against this backdrop, the couple enjoys adventures with friends and club staff—dancers who portray guests and employees, and take the dance floor during almost every song. The joy is short-lived: Margarita is forced to marry the dull United States citizen Mr. White, in an arrangement that serves her father’s interests and the family business. The story ends happily, though; many years later, the couple reunites and rekindles their love at the same club where it all began.
A central feature of La Sociedad de la Cumbia is the way the love story unfolds through arrangements of beloved tropical music songs—originally composed for big band by masters such as Lucho Bermúdez, Pacho Galán, Mario Gareña, and Edmundo Arias—now reimagined by Valencia with extended harmonies, chromatic shifts, and instrumental breaks that enrich the repertoire. Valencia composed new works only where the original songs could not carry the narrative weight; these moments also allow him the most compositional freedom. The opening track, “Fiesta en el Yuma,” sets the tone with a distinct swing feel, while “Lamento”—which scores the scene where Baltazar forces Margarita into marriage—takes on Baroque echoes, as does the bolero “Al Parecer,” which accompanies the reunion of Margarita and Pepe in old age.
Puerto Candelaria’s signature humor is central to the production’s appeal. One example is “Porro operático,” a piece by Lucho Bermúdez built on the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen. In this arrangement, the band alternates two measures of the famous aria played in a porro style with two measures of a new melody, creating a whimsical effect. This musical joke underscores Mr. White’s awkward attempts at Latin dance and highlights Margarita’s concealed indifference, consistently amusing live audiences.
The production’s historical significance lies in how it reveals key aspects of the music industry, Medellín’s cultural life, and its economic context. By the 1950s, cumbia and its related genres had displaced bambuco as Colombia’s national music, completing a transition from Caribbean folk tradition to urban Andean consolidation.Footnote 2 Lucho Bermúdez was central to that shift: he not only “dressed” cumbia in frac, but transposed the melodies of the gaitas—untempered indigenous instruments—to his main instrument, the clarinet, introduced the voice of Matilde Díaz, and broke into the upper-class venues of Medellín and Bogotá with a full big band orchestra.Footnote 3 Medellín, as the epicenter of the Colombian recording industry and home to labels such as Discos Fuentes, Codiscos, and Sonolux, played a decisive role in that consolidation and in the international circulation of tropical music that followed. That reach gave rise to cumbia rebajada and cumbia sonidera in Mexico, cumbia villera in Argentina, and cumbia andina or chicha in Peru.
With La Sociedad de la Cumbia, Puerto Candelaria has created something rare: a work that is at once a scholarly act of recovery, a love story, and an invitation to dance to música tropical from the 1950s.
Beatriz Goubert holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Columbia University. Her dissertation (book project) focuses on the musical practices of the Muisca indigenous communities in Colombia as a strategy for cultural revitalization and legal recognition. Goubert’s academic interests include popular culture in Latin America, collaborative ethnography, digital humanities, sound studies, and environment and politics. She has published extensively on Latin American musical practices and cultural policies, and developed a digital archive of fanzines.
