This song talks about life as a fisherman in the Carribean region of Colombia. It's not a glamorous life and the work is hard, but the fishers are happy nonetheless because they can have whatever they want.

I was introduced to this song by a Christopher Clarke, a friend of mine from school and a theorbo player in the Red Dot Baroque Orchestra. The version I was introduced to was by Banda Magda, which is an innovative interpretation of El Pescador itself. 

El Pescador was composed by José Barros (1915-2007) who, according to Totó la Momposina, left behind a legacy of 978 songs across various genres. Barros mentions in the song that El Pescador was composed on a sunny morning.

This introduced me to the genre of cumbia, a syncretic musical style that has origins on the Atlantic coast of Colombia but has now spread across the Americas.

Traditional cumbia is usually made up of three layers:

1: An African base of traditional drums and the basic cumbia rhythm

2: Music of people indigenous to the Magdalena river region

3: European influences, namely singing and imported instruments, such as the accordion.

The basic rhythm of cumbia can be seen in the topmost diagram on the right (I will include an audio sample soon for it soon).

One instrument associated with old traditional cumbia is a flute known as kuisi or gaita. These flutes are made of dried, hollowed-out cactus stems, and the head is made of beeswax and charcoal. Since it has a fipple, it works similarly to other instruments like the recorder, or the whistle.

Nowadays the scope of cumbia has expanded even further, and instruments such as the accordion or clarinet are now firmly a part of cumbia, but the underlying rhythm is always constant.