Pacho Galán

Biographical notes

Francisco de Asís Galán Blanco, best known as Pacho Galán was born in Soledad, Atlántico, on the 4th of October 1906, and died in Barranquilla on the 21th of July 1988.

He started playing music professionally when he was fourteen, he then was already mastering violin and clarinet, as a member of the Banda Departamental del Atlántico. Later he became a member of the Orquesta Sosa of which he became the director after the band had been renamed Emisora Atlántico Jazz Band.

In 1955, when he was working with the orquesta de Ramón Ropaín, the Sonolux label asked him to recruit an orchestra to record a personal composition “Ay cosita linda” whose arrangement mixed cumbia and merengue costeño, the merecumbé rythm was born.

Many famous musicians participated in tne Pacho Galán Orquesta among which the singers Alberto Alzamora, Emilia Valencia, Tomasito Rodríguez and Fernando Barceló.

The Senate of the Congres of the Republic of Colombia, through the law 1300 of May 15, 2009, declared the works of Francisco Galán Blanco, cultural patrimony of the nation.

Sources

• Los 105 años de Pacho Galán, Radio Nacional de Colombia, October 3, 2021.
• "Por medio de la cual se conmemoran los 100 años del Natalicio del Músico y Compositor Francisco “Pacho” Galán se declara Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación el Merecumbé en sus 50 años de Ritmo y se dictan otras disposiciones ", Jaime Cervantes Valero, Jairo Clopatofsky G. and Silfredo Morales Altamar, Congres of the Republic of Colombia, May 15, 2009