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Los Macondos
By Ilana Harlow
Los Macondos
| Eugenio Ortega Juan Ortega Willie Penates David Pacheco Juan Maya Nestor Gomez Oscar Ortega | ..... accordion, lead vocal, band director ..... bass guitar, chorus, musical director ..... guiro ( guacharaca) ..... timbales, chorus ..... congas ..... caja ..... caja, chorus |
Eugenio Ortega was not born into a musical family, but family is an integral part of his music. When he got married, his beloved bride Bertica could not help but take notice of another one of his loves. He would bring home records of vallenato music and listen to them again and again, singing with them and dancing to the sounds of the accordion, caja drum and guacharaca scraper. He had loved the music and had sung it ever since he was a boy. On their first Christmas together in 1957 she gave him his very first accordion as a gift. He learned to play it by ear, mastering the complex and often fast-paced fingerwork characteristic of vallenato. When their sons Oscar and Juan were old enough they joined him in his vallenato band. Juan recalled first learning to play traditional music:
"In Colombia, each night of Christmas there is a session of prayers about the birth of Jesus. The whole family used to gather and in between prayers we sang seasonal religious songs called villancicos. My father took his accordion and we would all get instruments and just play in between the prayers. That's how we started learning to play this type of music. I started playing the caja, a small drum. Once I got to New York in junior high school, I started playing the cello but I wasn't too happy with it so they gave me the contra bass. And that's how I got into playing the bass because I thought, 'Great, now I can play this in my father's band.' It's always been about learning music to be able to play with my father."
Similarly, being able to play music with his sons has given Eugenio great joy. "My father prefers to play with us, to play as a family," commented Juan. "He would love to have all of us here in the house. He used to tell us he didn't want us to go away to college. He would have loved to build a college in the back yard. When I was away in the military he would call me when the band had rehearsals and would have them play for me over the phone."
Eugenio not only plays and sings well-known vallenatos, he also has composed and written the lyrics to thirty of his own. His original compositions are registered with the Society of Authors and Composers in Colombia. Not surprisingly, several of his songs were inspired by family members. When his son Oscar, who had long played caja with the band, moved away, Eugenio wrote, "...My voice breaks when I try to sing, because my son has left...It has been a while since my accordion has played. It also feels the pain, because it misses the caja."
Vallenatos traditionally have been used to tell stories. Eugenio, a scholar of vallenato, dates an acapella version of the form to the 1500s. Peasants moving cattle from one region to another would sing to pass the time, making up lyrics about the things they saw in their travels. As they passed from town to town singing about current events, the songs became "newspapers" of sorts. Three of vallenato's four rhythms were developed in the 1600s and instrumentation was added. Vallenato has retained its function as a way for musicians to tell stories; topics include local happenings and the singers' current or past loves.
Both Eugenio and vallenato music are natives of the northern coastal region of Colombia. Typically, a vallenato group consists of an accordion, caja, guacharaca and a singer. In recent years the music has spread across the country and around the world. Now, some vallenato bands include synthesizers, electric guitars, congas, timbales, bass guitar and several singers. Although Eugenio's sound is distinctive, his style is more traditional than other groups playing today. He is a great fan of traditional music both from Colombia and from other countries. He also is a fan of the musicians who recorded the traditional vallenato he grew up hearing on the radio and on albums. He once arranged for the first accordion player ever to record vallenato, Abel Antonio Villa, to come to the United States in order to perform. Eugenio and his group were privileged to perform with him.
When Eugenio arrived in New York in 1971 he started a band called "Colombia, Nueva York." When Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez completed his prize-winning book One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1972, Ortega renamed his group "Los Macondos. " The fictional town of Macondo is the setting for several of Marquez' stories. Garcia Marquez, in turn, is an admirer of vallenato. The music is mentioned in some of his writings and he once referred to his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude as a "four hundred page vallenato."
As one of the first musicians to perform vallenato in the United States, Eugenio provided an important service for his community. His group played at house parties and at Colombian restaurants and nightclubs. Juan noted that, "This kind of music was not usually played in the clubs and people were starving for it. We did the club scene in Manhattan and Queens and once we were known in that community, Colombian communities in other states wanted to hear this kind of music live, because they were starving for it. That's how the band has been kept alive, I think, people wanting to hear the music. We've never really gone out there to look for work, to sell the band. It's not about that. We do this because we love the music."
Los Macondos, under the leadership of Eugenio, also have served as cultural ambassadors by playing their traditional music for many non-Colombian audiences. The musical center of vallenato in Colombia is the city of Valledupar that has been the site of an annual vallenato competition since 1968. Each year an accordion king is crowned. Today, we crown Eugenio Ortega as our accordion king.
To contact the group call Juan Ortega at (516) 488-1529.