Juancho Polo Valencia

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Polo and the second or maternal family name is Cervantes.

Juancho Polo Valencia
Birth name	Juan Manuel Polo Cervantes
Born	(1918-09-18)18 September 1918 Cerro de San Antonio, Colombia
Died	22 July 1978(1978-07-22) (aged 59) Fundación, Colombia
Genres	vallenato

Juan Manuel Polo Cervantes (1918–1978), known as Juancho Polo Valencia, was a Colombian accordionist and songwriter. He was an early pioneer of the Colombian genre of vallenato, and is particularly remembered for his composition "Alicia Adorada", written about the death of his first wife.

Biography

Polo was born on 18 September 1918 in Cerro de San Antonio, Magdalena, Colombia, to Juan Manuel Polo Meriño and María del Rosario Cervantes. He attended primary school in Fundación, and secondary school in Aracataca. He gave himself the name Valencia because of his admiration for the Colombian poet Guillermo Valencia.

Polo was taught gaita by his father, but preferred the accordion, which he began learning by himself and was later taught by Pacho Rada. Polo was known for his "slow, cadenced style", and for his poetic and metaphorical lyrics. He was an early pioneer of vallenato, alongside others including Alejo Durán, Luis Enrique Martínez, Abel Antonio Villa, and Emiliano Zuleta.

Polo was widely believed to be illiterate, but in fact he was a keen reader of poetry and of the bible, and would "lock himself in his room for hours and compose songs, writing them down in careful handwriting and with respect for the rules of language." Pastor López said of him in the 1970s: "Juancho Polo Valencia has no teeth, didn't get a school degree, but his singing is a science." (Spanish: Juancho Polo Valencia, no tiene dientes ni tiene muelas, no tuvo grado de escuela pero al cantar es la ciencia.)

Polo died on 22 July 1978 in Fundación; he had fallen asleep in a hammock after playing in Aracataca the night before. He was buried in Fundación, but his body was later moved to Santa Rosa de Lima.

Compositions

Polo's best-known song is "Alicia Adorada", written about his first wife Alicia Cantillo, who died alone while pregnant in the village of Flores de María, where the couple lived, while Polo was away performing. He wrote the song at her grave, and though he rarely performed it, a version by Alejo Durán became very well known in Colombia; Marcos Fidel Vega Seña called Durán's version "the most successful and grandiose lament in accordion music."

Other notable compositions by Polo include "Sí, Sí, Sí", "El Paseo de Concordia", "Lucero Espiritual", "La Muerte de Alfredo Gutiérrez", "Niña Mane", "El Pájaro Carpintero", "El Provincianito", and "La Muerte Es La Que Puede". Polo's song "Jesús Cristo Caminando con San Juan" is his retelling of the baptism of Christ. He released 21 LPs between 1971 and 1978 on various Colombian record labels.

External links

• Juancho Polo Valencia discography at Discogs