Rafael Escalona

Rafael Calixto Escalona Martínez (27 May 1927 – 13 May 2009) was a Colombian songwriter. He is considered one of the best vallenato songwriters of all time, though he could not play an instrument and rarely sang. He was a co-founder of the Vallenato Legend Festival, along with Consuelo Araújo and Alfonso López Michelsen. Escalona was a long-time friend of Gabriel García Márquez, who mentions him in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and described him as “the intellectual of vallenato.” Early life and education Escalona was born on 27 May 1927 in Patillal, in the Colombian department of Cesar (but at that time in Magdalena). He was the seventh child of colonel Manuel Clemente Escalona Labarces, a veteran of the Thousand Days’ War, and Margarita Martínez Celedón. Unusually for early vallenato figures, his family were wealthy. Escalona attended school at the in Valledupar, and there aged 15 he wrote his first song “El Profe Castañeda” about a teacher Heriberto Castañeda. Escalona left the school in 1943 after completing the third year of his , and started attending the in Santa Marta. After repeating his fifth year three times, Escalona left the Liceo Celedón without graduating in 1948, a