How Latin Grammy nominee Giovanni Parra imbues his music with the 'flavor of Colombia'

On the last day of the 20th Cartagena Music Festival, at a sold-out show, Giovanni Parra and his quintet finish their set with “Milonguín,” the title of his latest album dedicated to his younger sister, Geraldine. It’s an auspicious time for Parra and his quintet; They’re celebrating 15 years as a group, and it’s the first time they performed at the renowned music festival, held every January in the historic Caribbean city.

It took a lot of work for Parra to get here. By age 19, he’d been playing accordion for more than five years. Then, one day at a Bogotá record store, Parra said he discovered the music of Argentina’s Astor Piazzolla.

“The Vienna Concert, Astor Piazzolla and his quintet, live, I went crazy when I heard it, even though I could only listen to fragments of the recording,” Parra said. “It’s a very special memory for me. When I got home with the new CD, my Mom said, ‘Now, how are you going to pay for the bus?’ I had no money to buy such expensive CDs, but I didn’t care. I bought it.”

Parra graduated with a music degree in 2005. Two years later, he met bandoneón player Daniel Binelli, who had been a member of Piazzolla’s last sextet.

“At that time, I had such a fever for the instrument, I was playing Piazzolla’s music with a bandoneón that was not very good,” Parra said. “Maestro Binelli saw me with the instrument and said, ‘If that’s what you want, you must go to Buenos Aires to study.’ That was a game changer.”

Parra went to Buenos Aires for six months but ended up staying almost five years, studying with bandoneón masters, including Néstor Marconi and Leopoldo Federico. After learning and absorbing everything he could about tango and the bandoneón, he returned to Colombia in 2011.

Parra said in Buenos Aires he’d been surrounded by a tightly knit music community and was afraid to leave everything behind and start from zero in Bogotá. But as soon as he returned, he began to create a music scene centered on tango and its instruments. He organized concerts and academic presentations by Argentine musicians, and he founded the Bogotá Tango Orchestra.

Inspired by Piazzolla’s quintet of piano, double bass, electric guitar, violin and bandoneón, Parra formed his own group. Four years later, Parra’s quintet recorded its first album called “Bogotá – Buenos Aires”. In that first album, Parra began to explore Colombian music with his group.

“I included three styles of Colombian Andean music, a Bambuco, a Pasillo and a Guabina, with the advice of great musicians who work with this type of music,” Parra said. “At first, I thought it was just a nod to Colombia’s music by the quintet. Now, in retrospect, with those tunes is how I began to find an identity, the sound of my quintet.”

Since then, Parra has recorded four albums of Colombian Andean music with his quintet. And, to this day, Parra is following the advice of Piazzolla, his greatest influence. Piazzolla advised his colleagues and disciples to play their own music and to find the avant-garde qualities in their country’s popular music.

Jaime Andrés Monsalve, music director of Radio Nacional de Colombia, the country’s public radio network, said Parra has never tried to do a fusion of styles.

“He approached Colombia’s Andean music with a tango format in the most natural and organic way,” Monsalve said. “He’s never tried to combine one thing with the other. He’s simply tried to find new sounds and colors for Colombian music that has very rigid formats.”

Parra is at the top of his game and should be representing Colombia everywhere, said Julia Salvi, president of the Salvi Foundation, the organization that created the Cartagena Music Festival.

“He’s a very studious and conscious musician and what I call a genius yet to be discovered by the wider public,” Salvi said.

Today, in addition to playing and touring with his quintet, Parra teaches tango music and bandoneón at two universities and is recording music for a string quartet. At the end of the day, what’s important for him is what he can say as a Colombian musician. Parra said he plays bandoneón, but he’s not from Argentina.

“My commitment as a musician, the main focus of what I do is that the music I compose should have the flavor of Colombia, the country I’m from and where I was born,” Parra said.

Parra’s sixth album, “Milonguín,” was nominated for a Latin Grammy last year. This is his fifth nomination.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.