Celso Piña, it is said, almost single-handedly created the burgeoning cumbia
scene in Monterrey with his first album in 1980...
Over time, the cumbia lineup supersized, sometimes rivaling salsa
bands in its musical girth, incorporating everything from horn sections
to keyboards. Live, Piña keeps it simple, playing accordion and singing,
while his backing band, Ronda Bogota, consists of his brothers Rube on
the guacharaca and Lalo on the caja and congas, and Enrique playing the
guitar or bass.
As salsa took the rest of Mexico by storm in the Sixties and
Seventies, cumbia Colombiana found fertile ground in Monterrey. Just two
hours from the Texas border, about seven hours from Austin, the city is
one of the wealthiest in Mexico, known for its industry and
hard-working populace, who keep close ties with the states.
Here the social classes are sharply divided, the rich,
SUV-driving residents living in heavily policed and gated communities,
while the city's working class residents, the maids, carpenters,
live in ever-expanding shantytowns that hug the scenic mountains
surrounding the city of almost seven million inhabitants.
It was in these tough, working class colonias that cumbia Colombiana took root as a way for the residents to forget their struggle and strife.
With his album Barrio Bravo, Piña calls homage "to all the rough neighborhoods in the world."
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