Colombia al Parque: A Major Festival in Bogota

Bogota will host the Colombia al Parque Festival this weekend. With this event, the capital of the country continues its summer music program, which has been part of Bogota’s cultural scene for years. The “Festival al Parque” comprises six free musical events held annually in Bogota to celebrate diversity and talent.

With the participation of international, national and local artists, this Saturday and Sunday the music festival, in addition to the programming on stage, will offer the public an alternative space where DJs and selectors will merge songs and tracks of traditional genres of the country.

The organizers announced that for this edition, the event will feature the Art and Entrepreneurship Zone, where a wide variety of products ranging from textile interventions and graphic arts to upcycling fashion, accessories and independent publishers will be exhibited.

Another of this year’s novelties is the Discos Pacifico tent, which will have a special program that will alternate with the main stage, creating a complementary space where attendees can connect with the music of the Colombian Pacific presented by DJs Prieto Riddiman, JI El mas Demente and Cerrero.

Colombia al Parque Festival, in Bogota

Under the slogan “When the river sounds”, six national, three international and eight local artists will pay tribute to the tributaries that carry knowledge, stories, sounds and music that today are recognized as their own.

For the organizers, the musical program of the festival will navigate the rhythms that surround the Magdalena River and the South Pacific, a region that will be a special guest at this edition, which will be held at the Parque de los Novios, in Bogota.

“Since its creation, the festival has focused on the programming of regional and popular Colombian music from all regions of the country, generating a meeting of cultures, sounds and people from different territorial and aesthetic backgrounds,” explains Maria Claudia Parias, director of the District Institute of Arts of Bogota, a public body that is one of the organizers of the festival.

This year, the festival’s program will feature nationally recognized groups from Cauca, Cartagena and Barranquilla, among others. The line-up includes Herencia de Timbiqui; Gaiteros de Pueblo Santo; Sol Nacer; Semblanzas del Río Guapi; Zaider and the special guest, the Colombian Music Philharmonic.

The international artists who will participate are Billos Caracas Boys, a legendary Venezuelan orchestra that has been a reference of tropical music with its style that mixes merengue, cumbia and bolero; Lila Downs, a renowned Mexican singer famous for fusing genres with lyrics that have a high social content; and the Chilean singer and composer, Pascuala Ilabaca, who mixes traditional and contemporary music.

The festival that goes beyond music

With the idea of diversifying the offer and combining it with music, the organizers and the Mayor’s Office of Bogota will bring to the festival 21 enterprises that will offer a diversity of products for all tastes and audiences.

This offer will include the special participation of the national brand Somos las Reinas del Caribe, led by designer and cultural manager Kika Comas, who stands out for her pieces that combine textile waste and ancestral techniques.

Likewise, during the event, attendees will be able to enjoy Residuo Cero Lab Movil, a presentation that will demonstrate the potential of plastic waste generated at the Festival. This activity includes an electric bicycle modified with plastics transformed through upcycling techniques.

In this way, the participants of this experience will observe and take part in the transformation process. As a result, they will obtain a pin in less than ten minutes from two caps or four grams of plastic.

Academic activities of the Festivals in the Park

One of the most important components of the Festivals al Parque are the academic activities, which aim to educate audiences and offer knowledge on different topics related to each Festival.

In Colombia al Parque, the first of these activities took place last Thursday, August 22 at the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cultural Center and featured maestro Jorge Velosa, who gave a talk on his most recent book “Historicizing my singing, a trip through the carranga”, a work that describes the origins and history of the carranga.

The carranga is a musical genre which originates in the Colombian Andean region, especially in the department of Boyaca. Velosa was the musician who popularized it in the 1970s. The carranga was created after undergoing a process of transculturation that was influenced by Mexican, Italian and other Colombian musical genres. The performance of this genre uses, in addition to the voice, a series of original instruments, such as the guitar, tiple, requinto or guacharaca.

Other academic activities of this festival will be held on Monday, August 26, with two events at the Sergio Arboleda University. A practical workshop on composition and creation of lyrics that will focus on the traditional music of the Colombian Caribbean and a discussion on the circulation of live music from the experience of three successful artistic projects.

The offer of concerts and cultural activities in Bogota is nourished by this series of events that make up the free Al Parque festivals, which during the summer months invigorate culture and leisure in the capital of Colombia.