Crescencio Salcedo Monroy (1913–1976) was a Colombian flautist and songwriter. He wrote notable songs including "El Año Viejo" in several tropical music genres, and was admired by Gabriel García Márquez.
Biography
Salcedo was born on 27 August 1913 in Palomino, a district of Pinillos in the Colombian department of Bolívar. His parents were Lucas Salcedo and Belén Monroy, and he had five siblings.
As a child Salcedo learned to play and make flutes, and he did not attend school but was taught various trades by his maternal grandfather Telésforo Monroy.
As a young man Salcedo worked as a merchant and sailor on the Magdalena River. When his grandfather died he moved to La Guajira, where he lived for 8 years with indigenous people and became a yerbatero es.
After living in Paraguaipoa es, Venezuela, he spent time in Santa Marta, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Sincelejo, Montería, and Bogotá, selling flutes on the streets, before settling in Medellín in the mid-1960s.
In his memoir Living to Tell the Tale, Gabriel García Márquez describes watching Salcedo perform in Barranquilla:
"Crescencio Salcedo, a barefoot Indian who would stand on the corner of the Americana to sing without ceremony songs of his own and other people's creation, in a voice that had some tin in it, but with a very personal art that imposed itself on the daily crowd on Calle San Blas.
