Salsa and cumbia were born to unite people through collective dancing. To be enjoyed in community. Grupo Niche, a historic and very popular Colombian group, and La Delio Valdez, a successful Argentinean group, both integrated by a large handful of instrumentalists, all of them with plenty of experience and passion, know this very well.
Grupo Niche is an institution of salsa music made in Colombia. Their songs, brimming with rhythm and romanticism, have marked several generations. Over more than four decades, since Jairo Varela and Alexis Lozano founded the group in 1979 in Bogotá, they have sold two million records, performed four thousand concerts in thirty countries, released more than thirty albums, enlisted more than three hundred musicians and won countless awards (Latin Grammy, Globo, Aplauso, Lo Mejor de Lo Mejor or Furia Musical). At present, after Varela's death (twelve years ago) and Lozano's departure, the band is formed by singers Alex Torres, Luis Araque, Fito Echevarría and Alejandro Iñigo, percussionists Juanito Murillo, Fabio Celorio and Diego Camacho, pianist Víctor González, bassist Sergio Munera and musicians Edgardo Manuel, Edward Montoya, Carlos Zapata, Oswaldo Salazar and Paul Gordillo on wind instruments, under the direction of José Aguirre.
Cumbia was born in the Colombian Caribbean coast, but since then it has revealed itself as the Latin American musical genre par excellence. The most elastic, the most adaptable, the most enduring. In every South American country it has gained its own prominence, and Argentina is no exception. Delio Valdez is a cumbia group formed in 2009 in Buenos Aires, which proposes a torrential live, credited with more than seven albums and the Gardel Award for best tropical music album precisely for the sixth of them, "Sonido subtropical" (2019). Their latest work, which is actually an extraordinary introduction for those who want to know what their live performances are, is "La gira y la serenata" (2023), a live recording in which this cooperative of musicians demonstrates their expertise in combining cumbias from the popular songbook with other styles linked to the Andean tradition of northwestern Argentina, but also to reggae, rock, salsa or jazz. And, of course, an unequivocal invitation to dance.
