Influenced by the records that came from central and West Africa through the port of Cartagena, artists of the Colombian Caribbean coast added Afro-Colombian rhythms to genres from the mother continent such as soukous, highlife, and makossa. A teaming up of picoteros (local Djs) and MCs and singers created perhaps the pioneering contemporary urban genre in Latin America: the champeta. Kussima, also known as Hernan Hernández, was part of a generation of artist that came to rise during the peak of champeta’s local fame, his Terapia Criolla was the proposal of a coexistence of multiple African elements in the context of a minoritized local culture that was trying to find its expression in pop culture at the turn on the century.

“Marucha en Palenque”, a party anthem for San Basilio de Palenque (Palenke), the first free African locality in the Americas, shows us Kussima using his voice as a drum at the same time as telling a simple anecdote, wanting to animate the crowd, letting space for their dancing as the main goal of the piece.