The Creole Kings of Champeta (1997)

SYNOPSIS : This documentary tells the story of the CHAMPETA or CREOLE TERAPIA, one of the most innovative, ignored and marginalized musical kinds of Colombia and perhaps of Latin America. This musical movement, which mixes African rhythms like Soukouss from Congo (ex-Zaire), Mbaqanga from South Africa and Highlife from Ghana-Nigeria, with rhythms of the French and English Speaking West Indies (Haïtian "Compass ", Socca, Calypso, and Reggae), runs as a Master on dancers 'feet all along the Colombian Atlantic Coast, from Turbo to Riohacha. Born in the black districts from Carthagena at the end of the Seventies, and in villages like Palenque de San Basilio, this Afro-Colombian rhythm, made popular by some fish salesmen, shoeshiners and self-educated musicians of popular origin, is going to extent and to conquer all the country thanks to its West-Indian and Colombian rhythms. The documentary is a portrait of CHAMPETA's most famous artists and discjockeys, as well as the story of the birth of this music, which looks like the one of Reggae and Rap in Jamaica and in the United States. One of its goals is to make known the talent of these artists, humble people who built alone and without any help all the necessary structure for the production and the distribution of this music: independent labels, recording studios, disc stores - and a public which shows its support at every new production. African rhythms of the whole world, mixed with the rhythms of our Colombian Caraibes, meet in Carthagena to mix with the new vacile efectivo of Creole Terapia.