The country where accordion is king

Típico is everywhere, from fancy concert halls to the lively regional festivals of the interior provinces.

Don’t lump Panama with other countries of Central America...we’re different in virtually every aspect, including music.

Don’t expect to find marimba ensembles in a country where the accordion is king, a strong legacy from Panama’s lengthy relationship with South America. The instrument is the main attraction of every tipico music performance in Panama, a country which has long preferred the Caribbean-accented rhythms of Colombia rather than the Mexican-influenced music of its northern neighbors.

Panama has always had closer ties to South America than with Central America. During the colonial period, when the Isthmus was administered by the Vicerroyalty of Santa Fe (present-day Colombia), black slaves (who arrived in large numbers to Panama and Colombia) slowly transformed their ancestral chants and dances into what is known today as cumbia - the folklore rhythm common to both countries. Cumbia is one of the ingredients of vallenato, the most popular vernacular music genre of present-day Colombia.

Sometime in the late 19th century, when Panama was still a Colombian province, European immigrants, possibly French or Italian, brought the accordion to the region of Valledupar, Colombia and the instrument quickly became one of the distinctive features of Vallenato (the regional music of Valledupar).

Nobody knows for sure when the first accordions arrived in Panama, but until around the turn of the 20th century, many prominent Panamanian families, some of which hail from the Azuero peninsula in central Panama, sent their children to study at universities in Bogota, Barranquilla or Medellín. It was perhaps one of those studens who first brought the instrument to Azuero, a region known throughout Panama as the “Cradle of Panamanian culture”.

Samy & Sandra Sandoval, a brother-sister duo who changed the concept of Tipico music

The sounds of early Vallenato were rapidly adopted in the Isthmian provinces where it combined with the salomas (a type of yodeling typical of Panama’s hinterland) and local instruments to become pindín or típico. One of its first exponents was Lucho Azcárraga, who made some of the first recordings of the genre and is considered one of the country’s first international stars (He was, in his early years, a well-reputed organist for silent movies).

Toward the 1950’s and 60’s a strong generation of pindin accordionists, most of whom hailed from Azuero, were appearing on the stages of virtually every celebration from Las Tablas and Chitré to David and Santiago, where they became local celebrities. However, Panama City residents, accustomed to North American rhythms and salsa, shunned pindín, often calling it “cholo” (redneck) music.

This prompted pindín accordionists and singers, such as Dorindo Cárdenas, Osvaldo Ayala, Nina Campines, Alfredo Escudero, and the late Victorio Vergara (today, a revered icon of tipico), to seek new trends to attract city folk but it wasn’t until the 1990’s, with the arrival of a new generation of tipico musicians that a real ‘boom’ ocurred. In1995, Samy & Sandra Sandoval, a brother-and-sister duo from the town of Monagrillo, in Herrera, started to cause havoc in the capital with with their sensuous dancing style and by introducing Afro-Caribbean and pop rhythms to their compositions.

Today, the Sandoval duo, the Plumas Negras ensemble and Manuel De Jesús attract as many people to their concerts as would Christina Aguilera. Tipico music has also been able to penetrate places where it was unthinkable a few years ago, such as the province of Colón, a strong bastion of Afro-Caribbean culture, and the National Theater, where the Panama Symphony Orchestra has performed with accordionist Osvaldo Ayala as a soloist a number of times.

Manuel de Jesús Ábrego, one of the youngest Tipico celebrities.