The story
Tambora Festival in San Martin de Loba
San Martin de Loba's tambora festival, running for more than three decades in this Bolivar river-basin municipality, showcases a women-led, largely vocal and percussive tradition distinct from Caribbean coast genres like cumbia and vallenato. Organised with backing from the Bolivar government, ICULTUR and the dedicated Corpotambora corporation, it draws performing groups from across the Magdalena River wetlands region.
Tambora, the drum-and-song tradition of Colombia's Magdalena River wetlands, found its first dedicated festival in 1978 in the town of Tamalameque; San Martin de Loba, a municipality in Bolivar department where the river borders Magdalena and Cesar, developed its own festival shortly afterward, organised in its early years by local figures including a schoolteacher remembered locally as professor Mier.