2023-08-27 05:24:24
26/08/2023
Alvaro Guerrero Arango
The party at La 45 starts late. At 11pm on a Friday most of the bars and clubs are still empty. The rumba starts shortly following midnight. The music that comes out of all the venues and buildings in almost three blocks competes to impose itself on the Manrique boulevard until 4 in the morning.
The corridor of La 45, which was filled with bars and nightclubs following the construction of the Metroplús that crosses the entire avenue, has been the epicenter of the party in the northeastern part of the city for almost a decade: Manrique, Aranjuez, Popular and Santa Cross. Half a million people. More inhabitants than in Manizales or Pereira.
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The nightclubs and restaurants on both sides of the road have become bigger and bigger. Small bars that a couple of years ago occupied a garage now occupy an entire floor of any of the various buildings dedicated exclusively to partying. Luxury and extravagance have also gradually arrived in an area that is still seen from the outside as very popular or very violent.
On the top floor of one of those five-story buildings that were built following the pandemic, they built a themed restaurant in the shape of an airplane, where the waiters are dressed as pilots and the prices are like those of Avianca. Above the restaurant, on the roof, a heliport has been operating for a couple of months from where a helicopter leaves every 10 minutes to make a 6 or 8 minute tour of the area that costs $290,000 per passenger. On a good day the helicopter takes off regarding twelve times.
The block at midnight seems quiet. The owners of the bars say that for regarding 6 or 7 years they have not had to pay for the vaccine. Prostitution does not seem to be a problem, micro-trafficking also seems to be under control. Visitors are still mostly locals. Electronics and guaracha rule. Of every five-story building, three or four are only of these genres. That’s where the party starts later. Still at 12 the lap is very dead. Electronic clubs are the only ones that charge cover to enter any day of the week. The later the night, the more expensive to enter: $10,000 or $20,000 it costs on a normal day.
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Makes sense. The tables are full of bottles of water for which, as is well known, you only pay once and the rest is filled from the tap in the bathroom. Pelaos don’t buy brandy, or rum, or whiskey. At most a bottle of Gatorade or in the rarest of cases a poisoned slush. The party is passed at the tip of tusi. A lot. Very much. One bag per person. A naturalized consumption, which does not deserve to go and hide in the bathroom. There is no need. If the nose is dirty, it is cleaned in the elevator mirror at the exit. No problem. “We have tried to control this consumption, but it has been impossible. You know, it happens in all the neighborhoods, even in El Poblado or Laureles”, says the owner of one of the guaracha nightclubs.
On the street, with the gum and cigarette vendors, a bag of pink powder costs $60,000. Half of what it costs in Lleras and a third of what it costs in Provence. The same as a half of brandy in any of the salsa bars that, although they remain almost empty, resist the temptation to put Karol G, Diomedes or Fumaratto following a song by the Gran Combo de Puerto Rico.
“There are people who don’t come back because they say that La 45 is already just guaracha. I wish they would come and realize what we do here to preserve the salsa tradition of Medellín. Thank you for helping us make this visible,” says Nacho, the owner of Calle 8 bar, a huge salsa discotheque, as big as the guaracha ones, to which only two couples came all Friday.
Like Nacho’s, in La 45 there are at least three other clubs where only salsa is heard. That in just two blocks. A salsa density that hardly exists in another area of the city.
It’s not by chance. Manrique and the northeastern zone were the cradle of salsa in Medellín since the early 1960s with Jairo Grisales and the Miramar group, one of the pioneers of Afro-Caribbean music in the country. Also from a street near 45 came out in the late 80s and early 90s, when Medellín was the most violent city in the world and the northeast one of the main quarries of hitmen of the Medellín Cartel, Pachanga Orchestra. Twelve boys from one of the hottest areas of the world who in 1991 won the award for Best Young Orchestra at the Cali Fair in the World Capital of Salsa.
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“For that youth entangled by having to become an adult in the most deteriorated of theaters, salsa turned out to be a refuge and a symbol of another city, a gloomy and paradoxical city, very different from the little silver cup in which their old men prospered. . To the rhythm of salsa, many weaned themselves from their origins and connected in their own way with the world beyond the mountains, at the same time that they understood, albeit harshly, that a city with severe complications was beating under their feet.” , wrote Sergio Valencia regarding Pachanga in the book of the 30 years of Latina stereo. Ismael Miranda had already said it before in Así se compose un son: “To compose a son you need a motive and a constructive theme and also inspiration”.
In Manrique the salseros / Who put together a party on the corners / It rains sorrows and lightning falls / They never lose their joy / Going down Aranjuez / I found the bongo / He came galloping / All through 92 / And if they tie my feet / I will dance with my hands / If my whole body is tied / I will dance in my thoughts. He sings Pachanga in one of his songs, El son de los barrios.
That second generation of barrio salsa singers was inspired by the salsa that came from New York, which described the characters and the dynamics of the streets like the ones they inhabited.
A couple of weeks ago, the Antioquian writer Gilmer Mesa (born and raised in Aranjuez) said that it was an outburst to call reggaeton urban music because its lyrics, contrary to what happens with tango, rock and salsa, do not give Account of a man in a Latin American city. He said it in a conversation with Trucu, one of the founders of Siguarajazz, a group, also from the northeast, that since the early 2000s has been playing and mixing jazz, Latin jazz and salsa.
Contemporary to Siguarajazz, neighboring orchestras such as Charanga la contunente or Guatequismo were also born. In recent years, music lovers and DJs from the neighborhood have come together in projects to promote the genre in the city: they created a web station called La Hermandad Salsera and they carry out projects such as Salsa Matiné, which consisted of having block parties on Sundays from 10 in the morning at the point of romantic salsa. In short, salseros come out of the northeast as well as silleteros from Santa Elena.
That is why in La 45, the pink zone of an area that has more inhabitants than any of the capitals of the coffee axis, the timbale, the congas and the bongos face off once morest the synthesizer. And they endure with what they have and can. Unscrupulous. No false modesty. Without discrimination. No shame. What regarding Marc Anthony is not salsa but pure pop that only hits in the United States? It doesn’t matter, it sounds on La 45. That motel sauce is mané? Here it doesn’t matter. On La 45 at two in the morning salsa sounds like that in the background the guaracha sits. At Manrique, salsa resists because it is tradition. It is the music of the neighborhood and the neighborhood has not changed as much as the music has changed. Sauce and point.
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