"La Múcura" (the earthenware jar, :es:múcura) is a traditional Colombian

cumbia Cumbia refers to a number of musical rhythms and folk dance traditions of Latin America, generally involving musical and cultural elements from American Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Africans during colonial times. Cumbia is said to have com ...

song.

Composition

Rhythmically, the song is an example of a

or Afro-Caribbean rhythm that may have originally been used for courtship rituals among Africans. The word cumbia itself may be related to cumbé, a Kongo word meaning "noise" that may be at the root of other Spanish words as well, viz. "cumbancha," a noisy party.

Lyrics

The lyrics begin: : It was composed by Crescencio Salcedo, a flute player who also composed "Mi Cafetal", and has received many recorded versions. In 1948 it was recorded by Los Trovadores de Barú for

Discos Fuentes Discos Fuentes is a record label based in Medellín, Colombia, South America. Founded in 1934 in Cartagena, Colombia, by Antonio Fuentes Estrada, Discos Fuentes was the country's first notable record label. The label was instrumental in introducing ...

, then in 1950 entering Mexican cinema in versions by

Ninón Sevilla Emelia Pérez Castellanos (10 November 19211 January 2015), known professionally as Ninón Sevilla, was a Cuban-Mexican actress and dancer. Early life Sevilla was born and raised in Centro Habana, a popular section of Havana. As a youth, she ...

and

Pérez Prado Dámaso Pérez Prado (December 11, 1916 – September 14, 1989) was a Cuban bandleader, pianist, composer and arranger who popularized the mambo in the 1950s.''On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture'' Louis A. Pérez Jr. - 2012 ...

. "Little Jug" by Johnny Martin 1950 was an English-lyric version. The song's lyrics are an example of

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 ...

in Hispanic popular song, according to social scientist Marcelino Canino Salgado. The image of the broken water jug () is an old and common metaphor for the loss of virginity in Latin and Latin American culture. The word "múcura" was once thought of as having precolombian origins but it is in fact of likely

Kikuyu Kikuyu or Gikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) mostly refers to an ethnic group in Kenya or its associated language. It may also refer to: *Kikuyu people, a majority ethnic group in Kenya * Kikuyu language, the language of Kikuyu people *Kikuyu, Kenya, a town in Cen ...

origin. Its meaning, in Colombian Spanish, is the same as "cántaro", namely, a clay jug. Salcedo himself claimed that "múcura" was a nickname for a short and

hernia A hernia (: hernias or herniae, from Latin, meaning 'rupture') is the abnormal exit of tissue or an organ (anatomy), organ, such as the bowel, through the wall of the cavity in which it normally resides. The term is also used for the normal Devel ...

ted man.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mucura Songs in Spanish Colombian songs