The Carnival of Blacks and Whites in Pasto is performed between 3 and 6 January, shows how different ethnic groups are expressed through a party that is considered Cultural Patrimony of the Nation.
Undoubtedly, the Carnival of Blacks and Whites is one of the richest traditions in Colombian folk arts. In addition, music and dance, Excel mastery of the craftsmen who are responsible for developing bulky floats, representing the magic of popular legends, the irreverent mockery of the characters from everyday life or just fantasy and artistic imagination.
Carnival is itself a space where the Narino own shyness becomes friendly spontaneity: January 5, blacks are playing the “pintica” in the face of friends and strangers, remembering the days of slavery when the Spanish crown allowed a day of freedom for blacks and the next day, played the whites, under a rain of perfumed powders preceding the slow pace of the floats to the sound of the troupes of ñapangas, as they affectionately call rural women.
Extras who are accompanied by Indoamericanto, a group of musicians with ready-made suits thousand each year for the parade, with panpipes, flutes and pipes.
The staging has characters such as “Michita Linda”, which is the same Virgin of Mercy, the Castaneda family, who are the visitors, Pericles Carnival, Carnival’s highest authority under whose mandate only happiness and enjoyment is mandatory for the people, the lavish floats and of course, blacks with currulao, marimbas and drums, and the white and mixed with all the brilliance of the sound of his flutes and pipes.
The writer referred to the Profane Salvador Carnival of Blacks and Whites in the following way: “I’ve met other parties, but the carnival of blacks and whites are indelible and embedded in memory. What I remember most are the smells of the carnival: the old years night is packed with gunpowder and firearms.
