Lucho Bermúdez, composer, conductor, arranger and musician, is considered by many to be the main figure in the most important musical phenomenon of the 20th century in Colombia; he made Caribbean rhythms an essential part of this very Andean country’s musical identity. The musician Carlos Vives, writer Daniel Samper Pizano and music researcher Juan Vicente Contreras, will talk, from the point of view of their different disciplines, about the importance of Lucho Bermúdez in the country’s musical memory, about his role in the internationalisation of cumbia and the recognition this genre receives throughout the world as a specifically Colombian style.