Vallenatos Belong to Colombian Farmers

Although Vives’ music is vallenato-adjacent, he still believes his songs spiritually connect to folkloric vallenato. True vallenatos, he says, told stories that would travel from pueblo to pueblo. La Gota Fría, a 1938 vallenato by Emiliano Zuleta that Vives famously covered, chronicles a duel between two famous accordion players. Similarly, Vives and Shakira told a story of two friends meeting up to ride their bikes from Santa Marta (Vives’ hometown) to La Arenosa (or Barranquilla, where Shakira is from) in “La Bicicleta.” By documenting a small piece of life in Colombia, Vives preserves the traditional storytelling of vallenato through his contemporary songs.