Chúpame El Dedo (translated as Suck My Finger) is a Colombian cumbia duo with a tongue-in-cheek satanic metal element, formed of Eblis Álvarez and Pedro Ojeda. “Metal music has a dark face, in contrast to the joyful side of tropical music. It didn’t make any sense to combine them, but it ended up being a very outer limits thing,” explains Álvarez in The Wire 501. Rhythmically, the duo increases the urgency of the dance to the extreme. A baseline sound of cumbia, huayno or guaracha is sped up and distorted, which then becomes enraged with satanic voices and lyrics until the music becomes a diabolical trance.

“Chupame El Dedo is like one of the bastard children of the city, to the different people, from the dark night,” notes Ojeda. "And it’s then sustained rhythmically and percussively by electronic music and guaracha, or by the picotero genres of the Caribbean, and how that can enter into dialogue with metal, which is the idea of blending the dancefloor with obscurantism, a bridge that serves as a way to connect them.”

Eblis Álvarez and Pedro Ojeda belong to a cumbia micro-scene in Bogotá. Here, they explore some of the most significant tracks in the scene’s development.

Chúpame El Dedo
“Metalero”
From No te metas con Satán (2019)

“This is a cover we did of a Cuban guaracha composed by Rafael Hernández, which later became famous in Colombia thanks to an Aníbal Velásquez version, a leading figure in Colombian guaracha,” Ojeda explains. “The original is called “Cumbianchero”, and ours is called “Metalero”. In Bogotá, it’s a very popular song because the lyrics are reminiscent of the Rock Al Parque festival, which is an important festival in Bogotá, with the Saturday dedicated to metal.”

Romperayo
“Diadema de Catalina”
From Romperayo (2015)

Ojeda says: “This choice reflects [Bogota based group] Romperayo’s beginnings. We spent a lot of time at home putting together samples from different sources, field recordings, vinyl records, and playing around with them. This track was one of those early experiments.”

Meridian Brothers
“Sigan al minero hasta la escala”
From Meridian Brothers VI (2009)

Álvarez explains that this “is an old song now, written circa 2008; it’s significant because it was an attempt to make a modern vallenato, with electric guitar and organs. I really like the lyrics, because they're the successful result of an experiment.”

Los Pirañas
“Todos tenemos hogar”
From Historia Natural (2019)

““Todos tenemos Hogar”, from Historia Natural, is a calm song with very lyrical guitar playing,” notes Ojeda. “It is one of Los Pirañas’s most listened-to songs and has resonated deeply with people. It has a more ternary rhythm, similar to the Colombian bambuco or pasillo.”

Los Pirañas
“El aguazo de Javier Felipe”
From Una oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida (2025)

Álvarez notes that, “An aguazo is a painting made with water (agua), and Javier Felipe Morales is a friend of the band, so we dedicated the song to him. It’s a repetitive song, based on a very irregular loop, which we’re trying to capture in the live recording. So the loop shifts unintentionally: it’s irregular, and we're trying to capture it, and that creates a very beautiful texture and melody.”

Frente Cumbiero
“Cumbia Trotsky”
From Inconcreto & Asociados (2025)

Ojeda explains that, “This was composed by Mario Galeano. It is deeply rooted in the cumbia sound of Latin America and is very much designed for the dancefloor. It draws on Trotskyist imagery and manages to build some interesting bridges on a global level.”

Sonora Mazurén
“Charanga Mazurén”
From Charanga Mazurén (2022)

“This is a song with a charanga rhythm, featuring the accordion and lead vocals of Iván Medellín, who was part of Sonora Mazurén and is now with Conjunto Medialuna,” Ojeda says. “Both Iván and Nicolás, who is the current director of Mazurén, are part of Romperayo in their live set.”

Ensamble Polifónico Vallenato
“Son”
From Fiesta, Que viva la (2014)

Álvarez says that, “At that time, around the 2000s, vallenato was very popular, but it was frowned upon and did not belong to the academic world. So, we did partly out of pleasure and partly out of transgression. I was the singer, and I played the guitar and then I played the drums in the Sexteto La Constelación.”

Ojeda adds that, “This is one of the hits of the Ensamble Polifónico Vallenato, which showcases the first accordion shots, using what is called a beginner’s luck, which, although not part of the melodic legacy of the instrument, comes out in a very natural way.”

Sexteto La Constelación
“Pa Abajo”
From Fiesta, Que viva la (2014)

“These were the times when traditional music was beginning to be seen firsthand in Bogotá,” reflects Ojeda.“People were beginning to see instruments, like a gaita or a tambora, instruments that had not been so readily available before. We approached music intuitively, and music began to arrive on records such as Sexteto Tabalá and La Niña Emilia, among other CDs and cassettes that circulated at Javeriana University.” Álvarez agrees: “I think that was wonderful, I love it when I hear it, I know we no longer have that freshness, that lightness that we had back then. It’s something very beautiful about youth, it was our essence. Essence contradicts personality, since personality develops and essence is something you have, and at that time everything was pure essence. Then, as time goes by, personality takes control, and you organise yourself in relation to social norms, but back then we were a collective that didn't have to conceptualise anything, everything just flowed like a stream of information, because of an essence that cannot be controlled.”