Today marks the third anniversary of the death of Abelardo Carbonó, an iconic guitarist and composer and one of the most influential pioneers of the Champeta Criolla genre.
Originally published in Spanish in Bacanika Magazine in 2021, this article celebrates Carbonó’s life and musical legacy through intimate anecdotes and reflections from those who knew him best. As we honor his memory, this tribute sheds light on the extraordinary lives and journeys of this Colombian musician whose contributions left an indelible mark resonating across cultures and generations.
One morning in January 2015, an abandoned taxi brought traffic to a standstill on Barranquilla’s hectic 72nd Street. Its owner had dashed out in a rush, thinking of nothing else but to hug Abelardo Carbonó.
The taxi driver, whose name I couldn’t get, had been listening to Abelardo in a live interview on the news program Atlántico En Noticias on the popular radio station Emisora Atlántico. When he saw that he was close to the station’s headquarters, he started driving at full speed. There came a moment when the traffic jam on the busy 72nd Street prevented him from moving forward, so, fearing that the musician would leave the radio station before he could express his admiration, he had no problem leaving the car in the middle of the street, ignoring the chaos he was about to cause.
A few moments before that, I entered the station with a small man whose appearance did not attract attention. When I entered the booth, the journalists looked at us with their usual faces as if they thought, “Here comes Daniella again with another of her artists.” During the break, I greeted them all. “Gentlemen, this is Abelardo Carbonó,” I said. At that moment, the attitude of the journalists changed radically. “I can’t believe it! Where had you been all this time?” said one of them to Abelardo, whom he knew by name and, of course, by his sound but not by sight.
When Abelardo and I left the station after the interview, the taxi driver had a similar reaction. As he approached him, jumping up and down and shouting joyfully, he said, “I met my wife dancing the Guana Tángula. I can’t believe it’s you! I can’t believe it’s you! I was convinced that Abelardo Carbonó had died!”
And that taxi driver was partly right in believing that Abelardo was no longer with us. The year 2015 was part of a resurrection period for Abelardo. A “revival,” as the Europeans called it, when the Spanish label Vampisoul released the compilation El Maravilloso Mundo de Abelardo Carbonó in 2013, thanks to the titanic efforts of his manager, the filmmaker and founder of Palenque Records, Lucas Silva. In a way, Abelardo had been “dead” for some time, in a period of inactivity that had kept him away from the stage and from recording for many years, in that Barranquilla where local music legends often live in oblivion, as if they were dead.
Abelardo already knew what death was, for he had lived many lives. He had died and resurrected many times. Therefore, when I received the news of his recent death on November 22, I had the feeling that this was not the first time Abelardo had died, but it was definitely the last.
Among all the lives that Abelardo has lived, there is that of the active policeman, who, in the seventies, broke his police baton in two in front of his commander, making official his resignation from the institution after nine years to devote himself entirely to music. With the end of this life began another as a musical legend, creator of a unique sound that integrated the electric guitar into the champeta criolla genre, recording on labels such as Felito Records, Codiscos, Ham Music, and Machuca. A legend that was then buried in years of obscurity, only to rise again in his aforementioned resurrection. Abelardo Carbonó lived all these lives, and who knows how many more.
The purpose of the interview in Emisora Atlántico was to announce a pivotal moment in Abelardo’s career. After the success of the re-release of his music in Europe, Abelardo would reunite his band after 15 years away from the stage. This was to take place at the International Carnival of the Arts, a multi-disciplinary festival organized by the La Cueva Foundation, where I worked for several years as a music programmer. From that presentation at the iconic Amira de la Rosa Theater, Abelardo and his group embarked on a journey of performances and tours across Colombia and the world, marking a triumphant return to the limelight.
Return From Death and New Journeys
During our many conversations, Abelardo used to talk about how his music “came back” to him from Europe, as if he were talking about a person who had made a long journey only to return unexpectedly. He also said this on stage while participating in the International Carnival of the Arts in 2015.
“There was a re-issue of my music, a production made in Spain. And from there they came back, my songs came back to me from Europe. People didn’t listen to my work here, but it turned out that my market was in Europe. Then, over time, they brought that music back here, and it’s like there’s always a moment when, like a tree, you have a dead branch, but a little trunk can sprout from it.”
A few years later, in 2018, it would be he who would embark on a tour of Europe, following in the footsteps of his music and retracing the path his sound had opened there. On this tour, he experienced a popularity and public acceptance that he had never enjoyed in his own country and region. He said that people came from all over to interview him, to the point that he, always a man of few words, had to say often: “Hey, I have nothing more to tell you. I’ve got to start making sh*t up.”
His music continues to grow in popularity in Europe. More recently, the Japanese label Okra, released his album with the tracks El cucaracho and La cumbia sampuesana with Eblis Alvarez of the Meridian Brothers, with an album cover by the visual artist, DJ and record collector Mateo Rivano.
Carbonó’s Brazilian Doppelganger
Beyond the shared musical elements, there is an undeniable – and dare I say, uncanny – physical, aesthetic, and temporal similarity between Abelardo Carbonó and the Brazilian guitarist Joaquim de Lima Vieira.
I saw even more parallels between these two artists one day when Mario Galeano, leader of the iconic bands Frente Cumbiero and Ondatrópica, showed me the album Lambadas das quebradas Vol. 3 by Vieira e Seu Conjunto. “Look, an Amazonian cousin of Abelardo!” he told me, laughing.
But what Mario told me as a joke, I took very seriously. When I listened to the album, I realized the parallel went beyond that. Mestre Vieira, as he is known in Brazil, is the creator of the genre called guitarrada, a style from the Brazilian region of Pará that has an undeniable sonic similarity to champeta criolla but also incorporates elements of samba and lambada. On a sonic level, guitarrada sounds like the product of a parallel universe to Colombia’s champeta criolla, where the electric guitar is also a central axis.
After years of searching for this album, I finally found it, bought it, and discovered many more parallels between the worlds of Abelardo and Mestre Vieira. Both began their careers during the same time, and their most prolific period was in the late seventies and early eighties. Both played in a seven-piece format in groups that included some of their brothers.
The album covers of Lambadas das Quebradas Vol. 3 and Abelardo Carbonó y su Grupo exhibit striking similarities that are hard to overlook. The remarkable physical likeness between both artists, as well as in the visual aesthetics and wardrobe choices.
After noticing this coincidental musical kinship, in 2017, I went in search of Mestre Vieira, intending to bring him to Colombia to meet his Colombian counterpart. During this search, I got in touch with his manager, a woman named Luciana, who, like Lucas Silva-Abelardo’s manager, is also a filmmaker.
Sadly, the dream of uniting these two maestros was never fulfilled, as Vieira passed away in February 2018 at 83. Still, the musical legacies of Abelardo and Vieira endure, standing as a testament to the fascinating parallels between the musical worlds of Colombian champeta and Brazilian guitarrada, forever bridging two distinct yet kindred musical traditions.
Echoes and Reincarnations
It is indisputable that Abelardo’s musical contribution is a decisive influence in the new Colombian music we hear today. The characteristic sound of his guitar has influenced many musicians in Mexico, Perú, and other Latin American countries, often without his unwitting followers even discovering who was behind the creation of this particular style of guitar playing.
“The true master of psychedelia in the Colombian Caribbean, his name is Abelardo, his name is Abelardo Carbonó,” sang the Bogotá artist Masilva in “Abelardo,” a song he composed in his honor in 2016. Shortly after, the avant-garde Latin American jazz quartet Bituin included a version of Palenque Palenque, one of Abelardo’s most popular songs, in their latest album, proving the validity of his sound in today’s groups, regardless of their musical disciplines.
Colombian musician Eblis Álvarez tweeted that Abelardo “managed to unite the Colombian touch and the African touch in a vision that we have yet to fully understand.” And so it is: Abelardo’s work is something that is still not fully understood, not fully revealed, not fully measured, processed, or known.
Abelardo’s life, like his sound, was unique, unusual, and unclassifiable. Abelardo’s world was like his sound: heterogeneous, multiple, made up of many other worlds. It is a sound where he married elements of Colombian champeta, rock n roll, country music, African music, Arabic music and so much more. Every part of his sound was interwoven in a unique way with other, sometimes very dissimilar elements.
Bringing so many universes together and into dialogue is what it means to be truly cosmopolitan. What he was able to do in a single earthly step will take us, those of us who are still here, several lifetimes to understand, appreciate, and disseminate in its entirety.
Mateo Rivano shared on his social media the last cover he created for one of Abelardo’s albums with the message: “Abelardo Carbonó gives the guitar to the next generation and leaves this destroyed and senseless world he was part of. Another musician who almost fell into oblivion if it wasn’t for sensitive people like Lucas Silva at Palenque Records. This would be the last cover of his discography. It is somewhat foreboding.”
This last death of Abelardo leaves many of us with the feeling of a duty fulfilled, and this is just what Mario Galeano, who is also one of the people who enthusiastically promoted Abelardo’s work, said. “Our gang has recognized, accompanied and been influenced by Abelardo’s work. We played the records, we re-issued them, we recorded his work, we took him on tour. In other words, we did a pretty complete job. That also deserves a mention. May this task never end!”
Indeed, this mission must never end. For me, Abelardo Carbonó’s story stands as a testament to how musical research and cultural stewardship can reclaim justice from the clutches of oblivion. It demonstrates that, through collective efforts, we can breathe new life into what was once forgotten. What was dead can resurrect and attain immortality, defying the borders of life and death.
Listen to El Maravilloso Mundo de Abelardo Carbonó, a compilation of his music released by the Spanish label VampiSoul.
