The story
Dia de la Cancion Criolla in Nationwide
Every October 31, Peru sets aside Dia de la Cancion Criolla to celebrate vals criollo, marinera limena, and polka criolla, the guitar-and-cajon music born in Lima's working-class neighborhoods. Declared a national holiday in 1944, the date was chosen partly to compete with Halloween's growing popularity, and it remains the biggest night of the year for the capital's penas criollas.
Peruvian criollo music grew out of Lima's mixed-race, working-class neighborhoods in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, blending Spanish guitar tradition, Afro-Peruvian rhythm carried by the cajon, and locally rooted melody into forms like the vals criollo, or Peruvian waltz, alongside the marinera and polka criolla.