Page 11 - PAISA CULTURE_Neat

Traditionally In Antioquia, there has been a well-grounded
culture and love of music. In the rural areas of the department
popular music reigns, and there is a great absence of cultured
music, except for the religious music in the catholic temples.

This is not the case in Medellín, where in addition to popular
music, cult music has been an essential necessity for the
development of this region. The region has or has always had

an elegant professional elite in this field, has had several
symphonic and philharmonic orchestras and, in addition,
several sets of old music, ballets of international renown as the
Ballet Folclórico de Antioquia, estudiantinas, choral, ensembles
of jazz and rock, many popular and professional Colombian
traditional music - bambucos, corridors, songs, for example - as
well as a wide Latin American repertoire, tangos in the first
place. (Carlos Gardel, the greatest exponent of Argentine

tango, died in Medellín in an accident in 1935).

The cultivation and production of literature and cultured
musical criticism are equally historical and traditional in
Antioquia, one of whose examples is the writer Darío Valencia.
One of his works can be seen in Darío Valencia Restrepo, Notes
on the life and work of Bach, in which there is an erudition and
implacable rigor over the dense subject worthy of any
European cultural scene of the highest level.