29/08/2026
First trip outside the US: Medellín, Colombia 🇨🇴
Stayed with a friend, explored, and spent a lot of time listening.
Colombia has a deep relationship with rhythm - cumbia, vallenato, champeta, reggaeton and you can hear pieces of that history everywhere.
Medellín exported that energy to the world. J Balvin, took reggaeton global. Juanes did it for Colombian rock and pop a decade before that. Erick Morillo carried the same roots into house music and helped put Colombia on the map in electronic. Different sounds, same root - a country that treats rhythm as identity.
Go back further. Cumbia off the Caribbean coast. Vallenato out of Valledupar, built around a German accordion that landed here a century ago and never left. Champeta from Cartagena - African rhythm, reggae, and something uniquely Colombian, all at once. Every region kept its own drum language.
