Don't forget us, Petro's rural base tells new president

The wooden bars of the marimba bounce under the heads of enthusiastic mallets. Guasás - bamboo cylinders filled with seeds - shake in unison. Dressed in a white cotton dress and straw sombrero, Otoniel Orobio sings.

- Mat Youkee

In Guapi, an isolated town of 38,000 inhabitants on Colombia's Pacific coast, 10 bands from the surrounding region are competing for a coveted spot at the finals of the Petronio Álvarez festival, an annual celebration of Afro-Colombian music and culture held every August in Cali. In a region largely cut off from the road network, life revolves around the rivers that snake through dense rainforest. It's fertile ground for musical inspiration.

"The heart of Colombia is in the rural areas," says Orobio, the lead singer and songwriter for local 10-piece Camerón de Playa. "This music comes from the rumble of the stones that roll when the river rises, from the sound of the breeze in the trees, from birdsong. There are birds that play the marimba, birds that play the flute.”

Since the election in June of former guerrilla Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, the country’s first Black vice-president , the voice of Colombia’s 4.7 million Afro-Colombian population has never been louder. The four departments on the Pacific coast contributed 2.55m votes to Petro and Márquez’s 11.2m. In Guapi, the pair won 94% of the ballot.

“For the first time in history, the Pacific coast played a determining role in electing a president,” said Angélica Mayolo, Colombia’s Afro-Colombian outgoing minister of culture. “Now there’s a great expectation that the government should respond with concrete actions that address its needs.”