Seattle's Premier Cumbia Festival Is Bidi Bidi Bom Back

The Burien festival fundraiser named after Selena's hit song returns April 13, 14, and 20.

by Agueda Pacheco Flores

For Spanish translation, click here.

Bidi Bidi Bom Bash is back again to bring its three-day event full of community vendors, markets, and best of all, cumbia rhythms to the South End.

Festivities will begin next month on April 13 and will kick off with a market at Lake Burien Presbyterian Church. Attendees will see an assortment of local vendors selling anything from art and jewelry to food. A "Bidi Bidi Bom Brunch" at La Esquina will follow the next day, April 14, and will feature drag performances. The festival will end on April 20 with its official cumbia dance event called "Aguacero," a nod to Seattle's rainy weather, at Club Sur in SoDo. Both Bidi Bidi Bom Brunch and Aguacero require tickets, which range from $10 to $80. All but Aguacero will be all-ages events.

"It's about 50 vendors total, a mix of services and goods," says Roxana Pardo Garcia who has organized the event since its inception. "We'll have two live painters. … Carlos Martinez and Jessica Marquez, and then Aileen Jimenez is going to be doing an art workshop during the market," she added.

The Selena-inspired festival, whose name is a nod to Selena Quintanilla's 1994 song "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom," first started in 2017, with smaller karaoke events in the Burien area. Since then, the festival has gone through different phases, seeing a virtual event during the lockdown and also seeing different fiscal sponsors, but this year is different in other ways, too. Pardo Garcia's production company, Lo Roxay Productions, holds the creative residency. Organizers and talent for the event are all local.

"It's completely a Pacific Northwest brand," Pardo Garcia says.

Different elements of the festival have also had different iterations in the past too. Aguacero, for example, which without a doubt is one of the event's major attractions, was formerly known as Cumbiaton and had a sister event in Los Angeles. "It'll be our return under this rebrand," Pardo Garcia explains.

This year Aguacero will be DJed by all local DJs — La Roxay Productions resident DJs Sergio Sibrian and Siempre Bruja, as well as DJ Essex. Additionally, Pardo Garcia says the event will have drag performances, a selfie station, and an additional market.

"Last year it was a really intergenerational cross-racial makeup of people," she says. "It wasn't just Latinos, it was like all over — there was a bunch of Black folks who showed up, Asian people, some white folks, like it was really a really good cross-representation of the community that we belong to, which is really cool."

Now that the event is also under the fiscal sponsorship of Alimentando el Pueblo, a culturally inclusive food bank for the King County Latino community that Pardo Garcia started in 2020, all proceeds from the event go toward the nonprofit and its mission and goals.

Last year's Bidi Bidi Bom Bash, the first in-person festival for the brand since pandemic lockdown sent almost all events virtual, made $7,000 and its night market was attended by 500 people.

"That is actually what we clocked in terms of participation in 2019 when we did it last time and for us to have the same turnout as we did before the pandemic to me is actually a really good indicator," says Pardo Garcia. This year she is anticipating even higher attendance numbers. "Maybe we'll hit the 1,000 mark," she says.

For more information about Bidi Bidi Bom Bash, visit its website or Instagram page.