Náfer Santiago Durán Díaz, known across the Colombian Caribbean as Naferito, was born on 26 December 1932 in El Paso, then part of Magdalena and today in the department of Cesar. He grew up inside a musical dynasty. His parents, Náfer Donato Durán Mojica and Juana Francisca Díaz Villarreal, raised children who lived with the accordion as a household instrument. His brothers included Luis Felipe Durán and Alejandro Durán, the juglar later crowned the first Rey Vallenato of the Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata in 1968. Family memory places their ancestors among Antioquian musicians: a great-grandfather who played the tiple, and a grandfather who played accordion and gaita. Naferito himself said that by the age of seven he was learning on a single-row accordion his older brother had bought, and that by eleven he was already skilled.
The brothers worked as laborers on the Las Cabezas farm of the Gutiérrez de Piñeres family, people from Santa Cruz de Mompox who took the Durán musicians to festivities in Cartagena and other coastal towns. Those early travels taught Naferito the four traditional aires of vallenato: paseo, merengue, son, and puya. He later recalled that music once paid little, that nights meant long journeys on burros, horses, boats, or battered cars, and that the heart still filled with emotion wherever the accordion went. His first composition, a merengue titled Cuando miro esos ojitos, came at eighteen. Over decades he wrote more than eighty songs, many recorded by other stars of the genre. Consuelo Araujonoguera, founder of the Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata, nicknamed him the Hacedor de Canciones, the maker of songs. Researchers and fellow musicians also called him the king of the minor key for the melancholy color of pieces such as Sin ti and Mi lamento (Clavelito).
His best known song, Sin ti, was written in Mompox for Rosibel Escorcia Mure, the Chiriguaná-born woman who became his wife in the 1950s. He had been away on a long musical trip; when he returned and sang the song at her window, she told him she was pregnant. Their first daughter, Denia Esther, was followed by eleven more children with Rosibel. Public accounts differ on his total number of children, ranging from about fourteen to around twenty-two with more than one partner, but the twelve with Rosibel are the best documented branch, and several sons became professional musicians. Among them are composer Luis Durán Escorcia, accordionist Jáder Durán Escorcia (who recorded with Farid Ortiz and José Jorge Oñate), and composer Armando Durán Escorcia. Other children named in folkloric profiles include Víctor Julio, Juan, Jaime, Elkin Javier, Marelvis, Odalis, Delvis Rosa, and Marta. Naferito also spoke of a son with Bernarda Cervantes of Chimichagua, the muse of his song La Chimichaguera, recorded in 1975 by Rafael Orozco and Emilio Oviedo.
The year 1976 fixed his place in national memory. At the Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata in Valledupar he won the professional accordion crown as Rey Vallenato, performing Déjala vení, Teresita, El estanquillo, and Altos del Rosario (the last composed by Alejo). That same year Codiscos released Herencia Vallenata, the debut album of Diomedes Díaz. Naferito was the accordionist on the record and contributed compositions of his own. Tracks such as El Chanchullito, Teresita, Muebles viejos, and Pobre negro announced a singer who would become one of vallenato's defining voices. Diomedes's first accordionist was not a hired sideman alone; he was already a crowned king and a craftsman of traditional song.
In 1983 he tried to compete again at the Festival. The jury, which included Gabriel García Márquez, Enrique Santos Calderón, Rafael Rivas, Miguel López, and Leandro Díaz, declared him fuera de concurso, outside the contest, a distinction reserved for a musician judged beyond ordinary competition. Naferito later said he first feared the phrase meant he was not good enough, until García Márquez told him it meant he was the best, a fuera de serie. He also won twice at the Festival Cuna de Acordeones in Villanueva, La Guajira, in the Primaveras del Ayer category, took a professional title at Barrancabermeja in 1983, and was Rey de Reyes there in 1992. In 2009 he traveled to France with caja player Jorge Luis Zuleta and guacharaca player Álvaro Mendoza; a Paris concert was issued as a live album, and he heard La Chimichaguera sung in French.
His composition Sin ti entered popular culture again when Emiliano Zuleta Díaz's accordion version appeared on the soundtrack of the film Los viajes del viento. Carlos Vives, who recorded the song, publicly recalled how Sin ti linked him to his own father. Through the 2010s and into his nineties Naferito remained in El Paso and Valledupar, still putting the accordion to his chest. Interviewers found him frail but lucid, proud that his children kept traditional vallenato, and grateful to God. He once said that leaving the accordion would be like dying while alive. In October 2022 press reported that he received a pacemaker. In July 2026 his son Luis Durán Escorcia said he was hospitalized with cardiac complications at the Clínica de Alta Complejidad in Valledupar. After weeks of intensive care, Náfer Durán died there on 29 September 2026 at the age of ninety-three.
He left a body of work rooted in village stories, minor-key feeling, and the Durán family line that helped define Colombian accordion music. Brother of the first Rey Vallenato, first studio accordionist of Diomedes Díaz, and Rey Vallenato of 1976 in his own right, Naferito carried traditional vallenato from farm parties and coastal roads into festivals, records, and film. Colombia's folklore remembered him as a juglar who never abandoned the instrument that, in his words, accompanied the beating of his heart.
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