National Bullerengue Festival

Held each mid-June since 1988 around the feast of San Juan, Puerto Escondido's bullerengue festival gathers more than two dozen Caribbean coast delegations performing 'baile cantao' - the call-and-response singing and dance tradition brought by islanders from Baru. It centres Afro-Caribbean cultural memory and intergenerational transmission over staged spectacle, judged through a national pageant recognising mastery of the tradition.

Puerto Escondido's national bullerengue festival, first held in 1988, centres on a musical form its own practitioners describe as having been largely invisible nationally for much of the twentieth century despite deep roots in Colombia's Caribbean coast: bullerengue, a call-and-response singing and dance tradition performed as 'baile cantao', brought originally by islanders from Baru and carried inland through the gulfs of Uraba and Morrosquillo.