This paper studies la tambora –traditional folkloric music of the Colombian Caribbean Coast– as a communication vehicle of cultural contents such as ideas, beliefs, values and meanings. It explains how this music transits from its original social context towards a staging context in annual festivals, which reinforces the symbolic character of the artistic practices of their actors. Additionally, it describes the way in which dance, singing and music, as vehicles for cultural communication, produce particular senses of life for the inhabitants of the region through a kind of storytelling, through the invention of traditions, through the song to nature and through the representation of the region’s precarious social reality. It presents an analysis of the artistic practices interpreted from some contemporary sociological perspectives.(Complete article in spanish language).