Honorary
Chairman of the Board
Pacho Rada













Born in 1907 in Plato, Magdalena Columbia, Francisco Pacho Rada is one of the founding fathers of Caribbean music and the originator of “Son” Vallenato. Notorious throughout the Columbian countryside for traveling from village to village and party to party, playing his accordion for food, liquor, or just a few cents. For decades he wrote and played hundreds of songs in practical obscurity, much like many of the great blues men of the early 1900’s in America.

In Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic “One hundred years of solitude” (1967) he was fictionalized as Francisco el Hombre, a troubadour who comes face to face with the devil one night on a lonely road and gets the better of him in an accordion duel to save his own soul.
In 2001 his life was chronicled in the documentary El Acordeon Del Diablo, a must see movie for anyone that appreciates the accordion and Vallenato music.
There’s an old blues line: “Women love me cause I’m so much fun and men hate me for the things I’ve done.” No one epitomizes this line more than Pacho Rada who is known to have over 420 grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren. That’s a lot of parties!
Pacho Rada died in 2003, two years after the release of El Acordeon Del Diablo he was 96 years old.