The story
Popayan Religious Music Festival in Popayan
Popayan Religious Music Festival is a classical concert program founded in 1964 to complement the city's Holy Week processions, staging nearly 850 concerts across six decades in Popayan's churches, parks, coliseums and theaters. It reached fifty uninterrupted editions in 2013, a rare continuity record, and remains organizationally separate from the religious processions it runs alongside.
Popayan Religious Music Festival was founded in 1964 by a group of young classical music enthusiasts who wanted the city's Holy Week to include a formal concert program alongside its religious processions, rather than leave sacred music entirely to the church services themselves.