Cali's fair

The Cali Fair is a massive year-end celebration held in Santiago de Cali, Colombia. Cali is a 2-million people city located in the country's southwest, right by the edge of a vast sugar cane plantation zone, the Cauca Valleyin fact, the official name of this event is the Sugar Cane Fair. The city is about 100 miles away from the Pacific Ocean. The first Cali Fair took place in 1957, and it has been held with no interruption since then. The Fair was originally set as a traditional Spanish bullfighting celebration that also included a horse parade, ballroom dancing, and a beauty pageant. However, starting in the 1980s the Cali Fair progressively adopted the form of a street carnival that focuses instead on a celebration of salsa music and dance, and as such is now also dubbed as the Salsa Fair. The celebration includes public concerts and private presentations of the most outstanding world singers of salsa of the most famous singers and bands from places like Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela, the United States, Europe, and Colombia. Today, artists performing at the Cali Fair include both the legends of old school salsa and billboard artists. As of lately, salsa dancing, has become more central to the Fair, perhaps even more so than the music presentations. The so-called "Cali style" or "Colombian style" is a particularly fast-paced form of salsa dancing that matured in Cali in the 1960s. Back then the city's urban youth playfully combined steps of AfroColombian Cumbia, Cuban Mambo and American Charlestonand Swing. The Cali style became internationally famous when by 2008 our dancers began winning world salsa championships that took place in the United States and were broadcast by international networks. The most spectacular display of Cali style in the Fair is the Salsdromo, a mile-long parade featuring hundreds of dancers of all ages. The salsdromo was first instituted in 2008 and quickly became the Cali Fair's most popular event. The Cali Fair usually starts on December 25th and ends on the 30th, although the bullfighting activities extend towards January 6th. As for the party, it continues for the entire year. It is not by chance that Cali has been called by salsa musicians and fans alike as "the world's salsa capital."