Ovidio Enrique Granados Melo, the Colombian accordionist, songwriter, and master accordion technician known throughout the vallenato world as El Viejo Villo, died on June 5, 2026 at the Instituto Cardiovascular del Cesar in Valledupar. He was 84. The cause was complications from an ischemic episode. Vallenato music, one of Colombia’s most beloved and UNESCO-recognised cultural traditions, lost one of its last great guardians.
Born in October 1941 in the Mariangola neighbourhood of Valledupar, Granados learned to play accordion from his grandfather Juanchito Granados and received his first instrument from his uncle. He learned the craft of accordion repair as a child by watching the master technician Ismael Rudas, an education that would define the second and equally remarkable dimension of his life’s work. By 1959 he was playing with Los Playoneros del Cesar alongside some of the region’s finest musicians, and in 1968, at the very first Vallenato Legend Festival, he competed in the accordionist competition and came second behind the legendary Alejo Durán. He competed again in 1975 and 1983. He never won the crown. He left something more lasting.
In a large kiosk at his home in the Los Caciques neighbourhood of Valledupar, Granados ran an accordion repair workshop for more than sixty years, a place without a sign on the door where damaged instruments arrived from across Colombia and beyond and left singing again. He was considered the finest accordion technician in the country, the man musicians called when nothing else could fix their instrument, a doctor of the accordion in the most literal sense. He performed both roles simultaneously and made them inseparable, accompanying Diomedes Díaz on several recordings including a celebrated 1982 version of Calixto Ochoa’s “Diana,” while composing his own pieces including the paseo “El Pobrecito” and the merengue “El Vicio.”
The dynasty he built is one of the most extraordinary in the history of Colombian music. His sons Juan José and Hugo Carlos Granados won the Vallenato King title at the Vallenato Legend Festival in 2005 and 2007 respectively. His brother Almes Granados was Vallenato King in 2011. Multiple family members have shaped the tradition across generations, from the workshop table and the festival stage in equal measure. In 2025, the Vallenato Legend Festival Foundation awarded him the title of Lifetime Vallenato King, a recognition as overdue as it was deserved for a man who had spent six decades serving the tradition with both hands, the one that played and the one that repaired.
He is survived by his wife Nimia Córdoba, their ten children, and the sound of every accordion he ever brought back to life.