Magdalena Moreno, afro-transvestite singer: “Bullerengue is an exercise in freedom”

For a long time names like Petrona Martínez or Ceferina Banquez remained anonymous. The two women achieved recognition when they were already advanced in years and after a lifetime dedicated to keeping their roots alive as bullerengue singers, an Afro cultural tradition from the Colombian Caribbean. Their stories are just a small example of the invisibility that women’s contributions have had in the country’s traditional music, and that continues towards sexual dissidence…

For a long time names like Petrona Martínez or Ceferina Banquez remained anonymous. The two women achieved recognition when they were already advanced in years and after a lifetime dedicated to keeping their roots alive as bullerengue singers, an Afro cultural tradition from the Colombian Caribbean. Their stories are just a small example of the invisibility that women’s contributions have had in the country’s traditional music, and that continues towards sexual and gender dissidence.

Magdalena Moreno Morales (Santander, 29 years old) set out to break with that marginalization and created La Morena del Chicamocha, a group where she sings and composes powerful bullerengues. But she did not want to break that anonymity only with her music or with anti-racist lyrics, but rather revolutionized with her presence and story alone. “They are not going to end our joy here. Like the tree that dies standing, we stay ‘here,’ she sings to the rhythm of the drumbeat. Magdalena has escaped precariousness, transphobic violence and paramilitary violence. She says that she has followed the call of her singing ancestors who encouraged her to heal through music and to walk hand in hand with a short bagpipe and with water as a compass. She calls herself an Afro-transvestite and uses female pronouns. She speaks with EL PAÍS within the framework of the first LGBTIQ + memory meeting held by the National Library of Colombia.

Q. What does bullerengue mean to you?

R. Bullerengue is an exercise, a practice of freedom. It was born from the people who were enslaved and who played this rhythm to free not only the body, but also the spirit. To understand it you have to start from there, from its history. This will allow us to understand that freedom has no labels. Today we have so many forms of oppression, so many speeches of hate, discrimination, exclusion, that it is necessary for everyone to know freedom. My transition into bullerengue has been a gift.

Q. How did you get into traditional music?

R. My first approach was through dance at the age of 13, then I ended up in singing. When I came of age I toured the entire Colombian Caribbean, which allowed me to get closer to the roots and origin of Afrodiasporic music such as bullerengue.

Q. You were born and raised in Girón, Santander, outside the Caribbean and where these traditions are not very common…

R. Yes, for me this had more to do with what I consider to be the call of the diaspora of people of African descent in this country. Afrodiasporic sonorities are within families. In my case it was a bit complex because my maternal family, where all the Afro people come from, does not recognize itself as Afro. At the same time, Santander has historically excluded the history, culture, and contributions of people of African descent. That meant that for a long time I did not feel part of that territory, because since I was little I felt more related to the drum, to the Caribbean. She tells me that I would take the pots out of the kitchen and start making her play the drum. I feel like she always called me the movement. Added to that, in my childhood, even from my pregnancy, my mother sang me lullabies that, when I became older, I discovered were not conventional ones. The lullabies that my mother sang to me were songs of Afro origin.

Q. What led you to leave that land and follow that calling?

R. I left my territory due to many situations: economic, sexist violence, homophobia. In my neighborhood, the Convivirs were in control. These paramilitary groups carried out social cleansing, and I grew up seeing pamphlets on the corner of the house warning: “Good children go to bed early. Neither whores nor faggots.” That stopped me from moving. I was not afraid of my identity, but I was afraid of survival, of staying there and being killed if I developed my being in those conditions.

So when I was 17 I went to the Caribbean. I started a tour from the Magdalena River, continuing through the Momposina Depression and the Middle Magdalena until I reached the Caribbean Sea. That journey is what I refer to as the so-called Afrodiasporic, because the enslaved people entered through the sea. I remember that I have always been surrounded by water as a crucial element to understand my transits and the transits of life itself. I traveled playing in restaurants, with my bagpipes, cumbia and bullerengue. That allowed me to survive for the rest of my days, along with sex work. I claim that I have had to use it as a survival tool, because for us many times there are no other alternatives.

Q. What has been the role of sexual and gender diversities in traditional music?

R. In traditional music we have existed all our lives, but the transvestites, the black women, the queers have been erased. It has been a silenced memory. Furthermore, the LGBTIQ+ population often does not approach ancestral or traditional practices due to the sexist dynamics that exist. It is not because the music is like that, but because of practices inherited from colonial dynamics. We must begin to closely analyze these gender roles imposed within traditions, and how they have become exercises of oppression. For the folklorization of music, it was much more convenient to whitewash everything so that it was more pleasant to the elites who maintained the way of saying what is culture and what is not. For example, in Talaigua, Bolívar, there are still many cultural expressions of drag. The same in many dances of the Colombian Caribbean that have been disguised with the discourse of satirization. People say that there are no bullerengues about diverse people, but the song Petronita Olivares is very old, and it refers to that gender ambiguity.

Q. A few years ago he settled in Bogotá. Why did she decide to live so far from Girón and the Caribbean?

R. Because I was forced. After the pandemic, my financial situation became very complex. I was very tired of the lack of job opportunities, of the precariousness… And my transition was more evident. Coming here was a necessity. Every time I saw transphobia more explicitly to access any type of right, health, food, whatever.

Q. In the midst of that crisis, was the Morena del Chicamocha born?

R. Before, I had been in several musical groups and they knew me as La Morena, but what I was composing was sticking around and I felt the need to name where it came from. That is why it was born to add “the Chicamocha”, which refers to the great river of Santander. She was also tired of always being under the tutelage of a man, of a director, so she could sing my songs.

At first I had a very utopian dream: a large group of trans people. The reality was different. There are almost no trans people and diverse people assuming a body role present in traditional music. If a man sings, he has to look very macho, so that he doesn’t get “faggot.” The queers are always in the back, behind the hairstyles, the queens, the preparation, the dances, but they are not allowed to be physically present, talking about what happens to them, what they experience. I confirmed that in Bogotá, because I didn’t find trans people who made traditional music. So I started to look at the support I had from other people who knew my process, my story; They joined this initiative.

Q. How many people make up La Morena del Chicamocha?

R. At this moment there are 11 of us. Some recognize themselves as having diverse sexual orientations, and more Afro people have been joining. One of my dreams is for Afro music to be represented from the life experiences of black people.

Q. What is your composition process like? What inspires you?

R. Songs flow every day, but I only have about 50 written. That’s bullerengue, there are songs that will stay in your head and others that are ephemeral. Because this is a ritual of life, there are times to be happy and times to be sad. I always compose from something that motivates me, something that has happened to me, something that I live, that goes through me. Bullerengue became a form of enunciation for black women in this country, sometimes the only way to tell their stories.

Q. What are the plans for Morena?

R. The plan is to be able to record. We don’t have music on the platforms; People know my songs, but they can’t find them on YouTube. It has been a very nice exercise, because despite this I notice that people like the project, it has touched their hearts, they sing my songs at concerts. That says a lot about what I’m doing. In professional and work terms we need to have a product. By mid-year at the latest we will be with our first production. The idea is to continue producing, elevate bullerengue to other aesthetic concepts, and also enter the commercial sphere as a political dynamic. If you stay in the underground, in a separate ranch, you stay in a niche. People should know bullerengue everywhere in the world.

Q. What is your relationship with your family like? What do you think of your artistic career?

R. I have a closer relationship with my sisters than with my parents. My mother is a very religious person, and the topic of her has always conflicted her. I love her very much, even though we have a distant relationship at the moment. I couldn’t say that she is a support in my work, but she is present in some of my compositions.

Q. Have you found other families?

R. Yes, for me the collective and the community became a way of building that home. There I found my sisters, these mothers [como les llaman a las mujeres trans en la tercera edad] that, without that blood relationship, they have taught me, they have managed me. I don’t believe in feminist sorority, I believe in foxiness, among foxes we understand each other better [risas]. It has been a very beautiful exercise, because even though we come from different places and contexts, we have found ourselves in the love that unites us.

Q. Do you consider yourself a feminist?

R. No. I experienced feminism and it was fundamental to understanding many things about the violence I experienced, but that was it. I have an anti-patriarchal stance. For me, feminism no longer vindicates the fight for the non-exclusion of feminized bodies, but rather has been co-opted by a lot of trans-exclusionary, racist and non-self-critical dynamics. These white or super-commercial feminisms have done quite a violent exercise on us. I have been violated in many feminist spaces and I am still being violated by some of them, so I am not interested. The most beautiful thing about us is that we have existed and resisted with or without feminism. The black woman will continue to exist, the transvestites, the cuir, the trans, the non-binary will continue to exist. I claim a black, community, peasant, indigenous feminism.

Q. What should be society’s role in the face of this wave of transphobia?

R. Stop being spectators. Just as men are asked to break the patriarchal pact, it is also urgent that all people stop being with the cisgender and heterosexual pact. That is what does not allow us to understand that our existences and our lives do not erase anyone. It is necessary that we are not the only ones facing this fight against transphobia. Let’s start acting by rejecting these hate speeches. Guaranteeing quiet and trustworthy spaces for my trans colleagues.

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