Most people who hear El Porro just want to move. They want to dance, or at minimum their foot starts tapping and they cannot stop it. They do not stop to ask who wrote it. I want to tell you about the Colombian genius behind the piece that changed my musical life.
His name was Gentil Montaña.
A Guitarist Who Belonged to No Single World
Gentil Montaña was born in Bogotá in 1942. He was a classical guitarist in the formal sense — trained, precise, studied in the European tradition. But what made him extraordinary was that he refused to leave his Colombian roots at the door when he sat down to play.
That tension, the pull between European classical structure and the wild joy of Colombian folk music, is exactly what you hear in El Porro. It is a piece that sounds almost too festive for a single guitar, like it wants a full band, trumpets and percussion and a crowd in a village square. Montaña wrote it anyway and made the guitar do all of it.
He spent decades as a professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, teaching and composing. He wrote hundreds of pieces. But for me, El Porro is the one that reaches across the room and grabs you by the collar.
What Porro Actually Is
Porro is a rhythm from the Caribbean coast of Colombia. It started as a folkloric expression in the Sinú River region and grew into one of the country's most beloved dance styles. It is full of energy and colour. When you hear it played live at a Colombian festival, you understand immediately that this music was not written to sit still to.
Montaña took that spirit and put it in the hands of one guitarist. That is the achievement. Every time I play it I feel the weight of that choice. He could have diluted it, smoothed it out to fit the instrument more comfortably. He did not.
Why This Piece Found Me
I heard El Porro years ago and I could not leave it alone. I heard a whole arrangement in my head, a rhythm section, horns, the works. I wanted to honour what Montaña had created while also bringing something of my own Caribbean background into it. The Caribbean coast of Colombia is not so far, culturally, from Trinidad where I grew up. We share a love for rhythm that gets into the body.
My arrangement on the new video tries to capture what Montaña was reaching for. The festivity of a village celebration. The kind of joy that is not polite or restrained but completely alive.
Gentil Montaña died in 2011. He left behind a body of work that is still being discovered by guitarists around the world. If El Porro is your introduction to him, go deeper. Listen to his Torbellino, his Bambuco, his Cumbia settings. You will find a man who understood that the guitar could carry an entire culture on its back.
That is a rare gift. I am grateful he used it.