“La Bicicleta” is a postcard from Colombia's Caribbean coast. Carlos Vives (from Santa Marta) and Shakira (from Barranquilla) sing about riding a bicycle with someone they love — through their hometowns, past the sea and the streets they grew up on — and about keeping life simple and light.
The 2016 song blends vallenato, the accordion music of the coast, with pop and reggaeton, and it won the Latin Grammy for Record and Song of the Year. Along the way it name-checks real places, which makes it a little tour of the region.
Coastal Colombian Spanish is fast and drops its “s”, but the chorus is slow and easy. A good song for the vocabulary of the outdoors — the bike, the sea, the sand, to ride, to go round — and for hearing two accents side by side.