Why take a walk around Petronio?

So that your lungs expand even more when you sing. To get goose bumps all over your body. To avoid to be killed for being black. To defend your life. To validate the identity of the hairstyles and the caminao 1 .To listen to the unedited sounds of the violin. To imagine that we are traveling by a

canoe with the sound of the marimba. To witness how clouds come together joyfully with the river of people that just want to dance.To recognize that we are all children of Petronio. To eat marranitas 2 filled with shrimps. To give in to the tollo 3 , the cazuela de chontaduro 4 and the

fried plantain with sauce of piangua 5 . To drink arrechón, tumbacatre, viche, tomaseca, parapicha 6 and to familiarize with the devils that we are all made of. To feel aphrodisiac.

To feel the heat with some juice of borojo 7 . To try our wings out for the first time so we can reach the stars and examine which colours were chosen to paint the stars.To acknowledge that each person that we meet at Petronio is a true friend. To move our hands, our head and stomach to

the rhythm of currulao 8 . To live the experience of our body moving by itself. To appreciate the drunken yet sincere festival smiles. To know how it is to live in a peaceful territory. To wave handkerchieves and make them dance with the moon and the wind. To jump until our feet hurt. To

sweat and to feel alive. To laugh and hear the eco of our laughter. To get infected by the sound of the chirimia 9 . To try the taste of the breeze of the Pacific. To listen to the violins from Cauca whispering in our ears. To draw landscapes of happiness in our brain. To realize that actually God is black. To feel that Petronio is nothing but a beautiful idea of freedom. To imagine that the waves of the sea can also move to the rhythm of the clarinets. "Pa´ mete la mano, saca y huele"; 10 .´Para saber como se tumba una casa a punta de rumba´ 11 . To recover our memory. To construct our independence and our identity. So that we never let anyone kill our

utopia.To talk with strangers and sweat by their side. So that Petronio carries on being a dream from which you will never want to wake up. So that Petronio carries on belonging to us. So that no one ever kills our ideas of freedom.

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1 Walking in style and self-confidence

2 Popular appetizer from the Pacific zone of Colombia. They are fried plantains balls filled with shrimps and refried into crispy balls. The filling varies according to where exactly they are prepared, for example they can be stuffed with pork belly. Marranitas literally translate as “little pig girls”.

3 Young blue shark, the main ingredient of many delicious dishes from the Pacific region.

4 Cazuela de chontaduro is another typical dish from the Pacific. Chontaduro, also known as the ‘palm peach’, is a fruit common to certain parts of Central and South America. The fruit grows in a cluster on a palm tree. Its color varies from bright orange red to orange and yellow/green.

This is a palm peach casserole! It is also known for its aphrodisiac powers.

5 Piangua is a type of a bivalve mollusk also characterized as the "exquisite secret" of the Pacific coast of Colombia.

6 All homemade medicinal alcoholic drinks prepared in the Pacific coast.

7 A fruit that grows in the rainforests of Colombia and is collected when the fruit matures and falls to the ground. Borojo is highly energetic, with a high protein content, has essential aminoacids for the body and its phosphorous content is surprising.

8 Currulao is a music style played collectively on marimbas with heavy use of call-and- response vocals. Currulao originated in South Pacific Colombia, where local materials are used to fashion bass and hand drums, seed rattles, etc. Rhythmic elements of the basic four-man group includes a cununo drum played in 6/8 time, while a second performer plays a home- made rice- filled shaker called either a guasa or guache.

9 A traditional genre of Colombia's Northern Pacific region.

10 A verse taken from a song by Grupo Bahia called "El Birimbi"; which is also the name of a type of a typical dish in the Pacific coast made with corn, sugarcane, spices, milk and coconut served hot or cold.

11 A reference to the famous song "La vamo a tumbar" by Grupo Saboreo.