José María Peñaranda Márquez (1907–2006) was a Colombian musician and songwriter. He wrote the successful songs " Se Va el Caimán" and "Me Voy Pa' Cataca", and released the first

12-inch The twelve-inch single (often written as 12-inch or 12) is a type of vinyl (polyvinyl chloride or PVC) gramophone record that has wider groove spacing and shorter playing time with a "single" or a few related sound tracks on each surface, compar ...

record on label Discos Fuentes in 1957.

Biography

Peñaranda was born on 11 March 1907 in

Barranquilla Barranquilla () is the capital district of the Atlántico department in Colombia. It is located near the Caribbean Sea and is the largest city and third port in the Caribbean region of Colombia, Caribbean coast region; as of 2018, it had a popul ...

, capital of the Colombian department of Atlántico. As a child he often travelled to Magdalena with his mother Mercedes, who sold clothes in villages, and there he saw Francisco Moscote play. He worked as an electrician and mason, and did not come from a musical family. Peñaranda could play several instruments including the accordion, guitar, and

güiro The güiro () is a percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines (see photo) along the notches to produce a ratchet sound. The güiro is commonly ...

. He started writing songs in 1937, and his most succesful was " Se Va el Caimán". Peñaranda toured several countries in the Americas in the 1940s–60s, and recorded hundreds of albums on record labels across the continent, including around 20 with his group Peñaranda y Sus Muchachos. The 1957 album ''Las Secretarias'', attributed to Peñaranda y su Conjunto, was the first

record released by Colombian record label Discos Fuentes. Peñaranda died on Sunday, 5 February 2006 in Barranquilla.

Musical style and compositions

Lyrical content

Peñaranda was particularly known writing lyrics containing

double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, and the other often conveys a message that would be too socially unacc ...

or explicit sexual content. Some of his LPs came with the warning "For adults only". Late in his life he converted to Christianity and expressed regret for his lyrical themes.

"Se Va el Caimán"

Peñaranda's best-known song is " Se Va el Caimán", which he wrote around 1940. The song was initially called "El Hombre Caimán", and may have been adapted from a song of the same name by Crescencio Salcedo (the melody of which José Pinilla Aguilar claims was probably written by Daniel Lemaitre). Peñaranda first performed the song on Barranquilla radio station Voz del Litoral, playing guitar accompanied by Ana Luisa Colón on

tiple A tiple (, literally treble or soprano), is a particular type of guitar, typically with 10 or 12 strings but sometimes fewer, and is built in several distinct regional styles. A tiple player is called a ''tiplista''. The first written mention of ...

and another musician on

dulzaina The dulzaina () is a Spanish double reed instrument in the oboe family. It has a conical shape and is the equivalent of the Breton bombarde. It is often replaced by an oboe or a double reeded clarinet as seen in Armenian and Ukrainian fo ...

and

guacharaca Guacharaca is a percussion instrument found in Colombia. It is a rasp named after a bird ( ''ortalis guttata'') whose call it is said to imitate. It is usually made out of the cane-like trunk of a small palm tree. The guacharaca itself consists ...

. An

acetate disc An acetate disc (also known as a ''lacquer'', ''test acetate'', '' dubplate'', or '' transcription disc'') is a type of phonograph record generally used from the 1930s to the late 1950s for recording and broadcast purposes. Despite their name, "ac ...

of this version eventually reached Eduardo Armani, who recorded the song as a

porro The porro is a musical style and dance from the Caribbean region of Colombia. It is a Colombian cumbia rhythm that developed into its own subgenre. It was originally a folkloric expression from the Sinú River area that evolved into a ballr ...

in 1945. Rosita Perón recorded a succesful version in Venezuela in 1945, and in 1946 the song appeared in the Mexican film ' sung by . Also in 1946, Colombian recorded a version of "Se Va el Caimán" with his orchestra, adding an additional verse. Orozco lived in Argentina, and his version of the song was very popular there; when footballer

Efraín Sánchez Efraín Elías "El Caimán" Sánchez Casimiro (26 February 1926 – 16 January 2020) was a Colombian footballer who played as goalkeeper. He competed for the Colombia national football team at the 1962 FIFA World Cup which was held in Chile. Amon ...

arrived to play for

San Lorenzo de Almagro Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro is an Argentine professional sports club based in the Boedo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It is best known for its football team, which plays in the Primera División, the first tier of the Argentine foot ...

in 1948, he was nicknamed "El Caimán" because he came from Barranquilla. Other versions were recorded by several Colombian and international artists, in multiple languages, and Peñaranda released a version of his own in paseo vallenato style in the 1980s.

Other compositions

Another successful song written by Peñaranda is "Me Voy Pa' Cataca", which appeared in the 1950 Mexican film ', and was later made famous by Nelson Pinedo and La Sonora Matancera under the name "Me Voy Pa' La Habana". Other notable songs by Peñaranda include "La Cosecha de Mujeres", "Las Cuatro Hijas", "Que le Den", "Las Secretarias", "Teresa", "Opera del Mondongo", "Compadre le Vendo un Carro", "La Bomba Atómica", "Celso", and "El Peluquero". His song "El Coge Coge" was written about the assasination of

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala (23 January 1903 – 9 April 1948) was a Colombian politician and statesman who was the leader of the Liberal Party. A nationalist, he served as the mayor of Bogotá from 1936–37, the national Education Minister ...

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Penaranda, Jose Maria 1907 births 2006 deaths Colombian musicians Colombian songwriters People from Barranquilla