José María Peñaranda
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11 March 1907
José María Peñaranda | |
|---|---|
| Born | José María Peñaranda Márquez 11 March 1907 Barranquilla, Colombia |
| Died | 5 February 2006 (aged 98) Barranquilla, Colombia |
José María Peñaranda Márquez[1][a] (1907–2006) was a Colombian musician and songwriter. He wrote the successful songs "Se Va el Caimán" and "Me Voy Pa' Cataca" and released the first 12-inch record on label Discos Fuentes in 1957.
Peñaranda was born on 11 March 1907 in Barranquilla, capital of the Colombian department of Atlántico.[2] As a child he often travelled to Magdalena with his mother Mercedes, who sold clothes in villages, and there he saw Francisco Moscote play.[1] He worked as an electrician and mason, and did not come from a musical family.[3][4]
Peñaranda could play several instruments including the accordion, guitar, and güiro.[5] He started writing songs in 1937, and his most successful was "Se Va el Caimán".[5] Peñaranda toured several countries in the Americas in the 1940s–60s, and recorded hundreds of albums on record labels across the continent, including around 20 with his group Peñaranda y Sus Muchachos.[5][6][7] The 1957 album Las Secretarias, attributed to Peñaranda y su Conjunto, was the first 12-inch record released by Colombian record label Discos Fuentes.[6]
Peñaranda died on Sunday, 5 February 2006 in Barranquilla.[3]
Musical style and compositions
Lyrical content
Peñaranda was particularly known writing lyrics containing double entendre or explicit sexual content.[5] Some of his LPs came with the warning "For adults only".[4]: 203 Late in his life he converted to Christianity and expressed regret for his lyrical themes.[6]
"Se Va el Caimán"
Peñaranda's best-known song is "Se Va el Caimán", which he wrote around 1940.[4]: 90 The song was initially called "El Hombre Caimán", and may have been adapted from a song of the same name by Crescencio Salcedo[8][9] (the melody of which José Pinilla Aguilar claims was probably written by Daniel Lemaitre).[10]
Peñaranda first performed the song on Barranquilla radio station Voz del Litoral, playing guitar accompanied by Ana Luisa Colón on tiple and another musician on dulzaina and guacharaca. An acetate disc of this version eventually reached Eduardo Armani, who recorded the song as a porro in 1945.[1] Rosita Perón recorded a successful version in Venezuela in 1945,[4]: 90 and in 1946 the song appeared in the Mexican film Pasiones Tormentosas sung by Kiko Mendive.[2]
Also in 1946, Colombian Efraín Orozco Morales recorded a version of "Se Va el Caimán" with his orchestra, adding an additional verse. Orozco lived in Argentina, and his version of the song was very popular there; when footballer Efraín Sánchez arrived to play for San Lorenzo de Almagro in 1948, he was nicknamed "El Caimán" because he came from Barranquilla.[1] Other versions were recorded by several Colombian and international artists, in multiple languages, and Peñaranda released a version of his own in paseo vallenato style in the 1980s.[1]
Other compositions
Another successful song written by Peñaranda is "Me Voy Pa' Cataca", which appeared in the 1950 Mexican film Amor Salvaje, and was later made famous by Nelson Pinedo and La Sonora Matancera under the name "Me Voy Pa' La Habana".[1] Other notable songs by Peñaranda include "La Cosecha de Mujeres", "Las Cuatro Hijas", "Que le Den", "Las Secretarias", "Teresa", "Opera del Mondongo", "Compadre le Vendo un Carro", "La Bomba Atómica", "Celso", and "El Peluquero".[1][11] His song "El Coge Coge" was written about the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.[5]
