The Voice of Today’s Música Popular Falls Silent as Colombia Grieves Yeison Jiménez

The Voice of Today’s Música Popular Falls Silent as Colombia Grieves Yeison Jiménez
Credit: Instagram/ yeison_jimenez

Yeison Jiménez died Saturday afternoon in a plane crash in Boyacá, ending the life of an artist who helped carry música popular from rural bars into stadiums and into the everyday routines of millions across Colombia. Authorities said the small aircraft went down minutes after departing from Juan José Rondón Airport in Paipa at 4:11 p.m. Video recorded shortly afterward shows the wreckage in flames on private rural land. There were no survivors.

Jiménez had been traveling to Medellín with members of his team Juan Manuel Rodríguez, Óscar Marín, Jefferson Osorio, and Weisman Mora, along with pilot Hernando Torres, to fulfill a concert date in Marinilla, Antioquia. Within hours, news of the crash spread nationwide, and Colombia entered a period of public mourning that felt immediate and personal.

Música Popular Once Lived On the Margins

Música popular did not grow inside formal concert halls. It formed in agricultural towns, in roadside cantinas, and in the routines of workers who carried heartbreak into their daily lives. Its foundations were shaped in Antioquia during the 1930’s and 1940’s, drawing from Mexican corridos and rancheras, Argentine tangos, and regional Colombian traditions that rural communities reshaped into something direct and intimate.

The genre passed through several names before settling into its current identity. It was first called música campirana, later música guasca, and eventually música de carrilera, linked to the railway routes that distributed records after the Antioquia Railroad opened in 1929. Vendors sold albums at stations, radios played them between freight schedules, and laborers memorized lyrics centered on despecho, a word that holds sorrow and fatigue in the same breath.

For decades, the music remained outside respected cultural spaces. Urban elites dismissed it even as its audience grew across towns and working neighborhoods. That distance narrowed through figures such as Darío Gómez, who insisted on being heard and gradually widened the genre’s reach. The path he helped clear would later become the one Yeison Jiménez expanded into something far larger.

A Career Built Far From Privilege

Yeison Orlando Jiménez Galeano was born on July 26, 1991, in Manzanares, Caldas. He began performing at seven years old, winning a local children’s song festival five consecutive times. By 13, he had started writing his own music.

With no industry connections, he moved to Bogotá and spent five years working at Corabastos, the city’s central wholesale market, recording whenever possible and singing for coworkers who became his first audience. In 2013 he released his debut album Con el Corazón Volumen 1, led by the single Te deseo lo mejor, which brought him onto national radio and marked the beginning of his rise.

His career grew through constant touring, composition work for other artists, and performances across Latin America and Europe. In 2024 he became the first música popular singer to sell out El Campín Stadium in Bogotá. He earned three Premios Nuestra Tierra and built a parallel career as an entrepreneur through an equestrian breeding business tied to his lifelong passion for horses and ranch culture.

Yeison Jiménez Had a Voice That Crossed Generations

Jiménez modernized música popular without stripping away its emotional core. His songs spoke about jealousy shaped by social media, loneliness in crowded cities, and relationships that collapsed in public view. Younger listeners heard their routines reflected in his lyrics, while older generations recognized familiar heartbreak.

Darío Gómez had carried rural sorrow into radio waves. Jiménez carried it into phones, cars, and playlists that followed people through traffic and long workdays. He made the genre visible to audiences who grew up online without disconnecting it from its origins.

For many Colombians, myself included, this music never lived at a distance. I grew up hearing it through my grandfather’s voice while he poured aguardiente into small plastic cups, through cousins singing at full volume and laughing when the lyrics felt too accurate to ignore. Jiménez lived in my playlists for years because his sound felt like home.

It felt like singing with people who no longer sit at the table. It felt like shouting lyrics on random Tuesdays without a reason. It felt like carrying memory inside a melody that refuses to leave your chest, even on the drive to work.

What Remains After the Music Stops

Today, música popular fills arenas, dominates streaming platforms, and reaches listeners far outside Colombia, yet its stories still grow from ordinary lives. What Jiménez did was a phenomenon. He translated it for a generation shaped by screens and public heartbreak.

His death leaves a silence that numbers fail to explain. It lives in kitchens, in cars, in neighborhood bars, and in family gatherings where his voice once played without ceremony. The songs remain. The road continues. And his voice now lives where Colombia keeps its artists when the music ends — in their hearts.

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