Yo Amaneci

Andrs Gregorio Landero Guerra, born in 1931 in San Jacinto, Colombia, embodies the spirit that made it possible to bring cumbia music to the world. Synonymous with the evolution of this musical genre, Landero managed to charm audiences through a complex weave of compositions, shot through with local nuances and diverse derivations from his native Caribbean province. He constantly sought to create his own language while remaining acutely alive to tradition. Landero left home at seventeen, manifesting his passion to take artistic creation to the limit while demonstrating his belief in freedom and communal living. In 1964, he started his musical career with Discos Curro, the landmark Costeo label owned by Jos Mara Curro Fuentes from Cartagena. In 1965, he released Fiel Caricia, his first album with this label, presenting a broad and intense repertoire of merengue, paseo, and cumbia music. Landero displays his compositional brilliance by combining naturalness and long-standing carnival tradition. He was named King of Cumbia in El Banco (Magdalena), King of the Bolivian accordion festival in Arjona (Bolvar), and King of Cumbia in Mexico. He constantly paid tribute to his native land with heart, with soul and the ability to stir emotions, on albums such as Cumbia en La India (1966), Mujer Querida (1969) or La Fiebre (1969). This first stage of Landero's work with Discos Fuentes is a vast compendium of rural dialogues of unswerving beauty, encompassing songs in the son, paseo, puya, cumbia, pasebol, merengue, and gaita styles. Tender, wild poetry that describes a delightful panorama of true stories, sea breezes and sun that unfolds timelessly. Landero returned to Fuentes in 1979 with Bailando Cumbia (1979), followed by El Hijo Del Pueblo (1981) and Por ah es que va... la cosa! (1983). Not one of the records released during Andrs Landero's career is dispensable. His coherent and constant efforts to build on the foundations of the cumbia tradition form an extraordinary legacy rich in masterpieces of Colombian popular music. He is the author of a polyphonic blossoming and the outstanding figure through which to appreciate, from a historical perspective, the syncretism of indigenous and African slave music from the Caribbean coast, namely cumbia. Yo Amaneci gathers tracks from 1966 to 1982, taken from his albums on Discos Fuentes and other labels. Includes liner notes by Carlos Mario Mojica (Don Alirio).