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    Afro-Colombian Music Offers Youths A Rhythmic Alternative To Drug Gangs

    Currulao combines drums and marimbas and is popular along the country's Pacific coast where most of the population is Afro-Colombian. One verse goes: "We no longer have peace in our paradise."
    by John Otis Apr 13, 2020 3 minutes
    Harold Tenorio is the director of a folk music school in Tumaco, Colombia.

    An acoustic folk music developed by his enslaved ancestors along Colombia's Pacific coast helped to keep John Jairo Cortez on the straight and narrow.

    While growing up in the crime-ridden town of Tumaco, cocaine smugglers killed his father and Cortez says he was "tempted" to join a rival gang to avenge the murder. Instead, he was lured into another local industry: currulao.

    Pronounced koo-roo-LAO, drums and marimbas and is popular along the Pacific coast, where most of the population

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