The City Of Musical Memory / Edition 1 available in Paperback
- ISBN-10:
- 0819564427
- ISBN-13:
- 9780819564429
- Pub. Date:
- 09/01/2002
- Publisher:
- Wesleyan University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0819564427
- ISBN-13:
- 9780819564429
- Pub. Date:
- 09/01/2002
- Publisher:
- Wesleyan University Press
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819564429 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2002 |
| Series: | Music/Culture Series |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.76(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
"In Those Days, Holy Music Rained Down"
Origins and Influence of Música Antillana in Cali and Colombia
One evening my husband and research collaborator Medardo Arias Satizábal took me to visit the artisan Hernán González. A colorful person much loved by his neighbors, González is renowned for the carnival masks he makes in his home in the older working-class barrio of Loma de la Cruz. He is also a veteran of Cali's popular music scene during the 1940s and 1950s and maintains his passion for that era by collecting videos of old movie musicals. González was a youth when Cuban (and to a lesser extent, Puerto Rican) styles were spreading throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, gaining enormous popularity in urban centers in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, and Panama, and in the Latino community in New York City. These sounds also spread to Colombia, where they took hold in the Atlantic coast ports of Cartagena and Barranquilla, and in Cali.
González led us back to the dining area behind the grocery store that he also runs out of his house, where he turned on the television set and videocassette player to show us some choice excerpts from his collection. As we watched famous stars croon and mambo their way across the screen, he regaled us with anecdotes about Cali's scene in those days — famous dancers who knew all the Cuban styles; the bars, cabarets, and brothels where you could hear the latest recordings of this music; the movie houses where you went to learn the dances from new musicals; and the ballrooms where local bands performed música antillana. Flashing us his mischievous and charismatic smile, González said, "En esos días llovió música sagrada sobre Cali" (In those days, holy music rained down on Cali).
González's remark is hardly the raving of a lone music fan. His attitude is typical of working-class Caleños of his generation, who embraced Cuban and Puerto Rican sounds during the 1940s and 1950s. While the music they love is hardly "sacred" or "holy" in the literal sense (especially given its initial rise in the city's red-light district), it certainly is revered as both the root of contemporary local tradition and the glorious musical emblem of a bygone era. González's recollection of his youth as a time when "holy music rained down on Cali" points to a widespread Caleño origin myth in which the arrival of música antillana is constructed as a virtual genesis of the modern city. Indeed, his remark invokes the Old Testament book of Genesis, in which holy rain figures not only during the Creation, but also during the biblical flood that washed away the old and renewed the Earth again (Genesis 2:7 and 7:12).
Origin myths are a vital part of cultural beliefs, whether in the context of nations, ethnic groups, or subcultural scenes. They are intricately tied to discourses about authenticity and purity, anchoring subjectivity and social identities through a number of codes, representations, and practices. In this chapter I explore the roots of Cali's contemporary origin myths by looking at the city's history in regional and national contexts, linking this to the development of música antillana and its influence in Colombia and Cali from the 1920s through the 1950s. I situate the emergence of música antillana as a widespread cosmopolitan dance music in Latin America, analyzing the political economy that led to the predominance of Cuban genres in música antillana but also made space for Puerto Rican elements and artists to be included. The transition from música antillana to salsa is explored through the influence of two pivotal groups that, not surprisingly, had a great impact in Cali — the Sonora Matancera and Cortijo y su Combo. I also explore the role played by música antillana in the formation of Colombian música tropical ("tropical" dance music based on Atlantic coast genres) and look at the ways in which both música antillana and música tropical competed for attention in Caleño musical life in the middle of the twentieth century — later replaced by the origin myth about música antillana's predominance. This chapter contextualizes how struggles over local, national, and cosmopolitan identities in Cali set the stage for many cultural practices that I analyze in the rest of this book.
Cali in the Regional and National Context
Cali is located in southwest Colombia, two hours' drive inland from the Pacific coast, in a broad valley between the western and central ranges of the Andes Mountains. The old part of the city lies on the banks of the Río Cali, a western tributary of the Río Cauca. As the main artery and primary waterway of the Colombian southwest, the Cauca River flows thousands of kilometers to the north, coverging with the Magdalena River to empty into the Caribbean Sea. Urban expansion in the middle of the twentieth century filled in the pasture and swampland between Cali's historic downtown and the docks (now demolished) on the Cauca, and Cali now extends from the western mountain foothills eastward to the banks of the Cauca. The construction of luxury condominium towers and sprawling shopping centers during the economic boom of the 1980s and early 1990s has further expanded Cali's urban landscape, yet the city retains the lush tropical climate and pleasant, tree-lined ambience that have been its hallmark for generations. Average year-round temperatures hover around 78º F (25º C), and every afternoon the midday heat is dispersed by a refreshing breeze that blows in from the Pacific coast over the mountains that line the city's western reaches. Indeed, the celebrated congeniality of Caleños is often attributed to the tempering effects of the tropical sun and the delicious afternoon breeze.
Founded in 1536 by the Spanish explorer Sebastián de Belalcázar, Cali was established as a secondary administrative center during the colonial era, linked to the governor's seat in Popayán, 150 kilometers to the south. Through the sixteenth century, warrior bands from the various Carib-speaking tribes that lived in the Cauca Valley made repeated attempts to oust the encroaching Spaniards but were finally quelled through military force. The names of tribes and caciques, or native chiefs, remain as geographic place-names throughout the area (e.g., Jamundí, Calima, and Petecuy); indeed, the name "Cali" is thought to be a derivation of the name either of the Lilí or the Calima people. During colonial times, the principal economic activity in Colombia's southwest was based on gold extraction from the mines and rivers of the western cordillera and Pacific lowlands, sustained by the labor of African slaves brought into the country through Cartagena. To feed this indentured work force, large haciendas were established in the Cauca Valley around Cali, where the fertile soil proved ideal for cultivating a variety of fruits, grains, and vegetables, as well as livestock. Also maintained through slave labor, the haciendas differed from the plantations set up in the Caribbean in that agricultural activities on the former were based on mixed-crop farming for an internal market, rather than on monoculture or cash-crop farming for an export market. The colonial gold mines and haciendas paid tribute to the regional administrative seat of Popayán, not the viceroyal capital of Santafé de Bogotá. As a result, economic and political ties to the interior were relatively weak.
The dual hacienda-mine system peaked in the second half of the eighteenth century and began to wane after independence from Spain in 1810, weakened by the declining gold market and also the increase of cimarronaje as rebel slaves fled to freedom. Through the middle of the nineteenth century, many cimarrones (escaped slaves) organized land invasions of hacienda properties in the Cauca Valley. Such invasions continued after the abolition of slavery in 1852 and formed the basis of the Afro-Colombian minifundio (small-plot) peasantry that prevailed in the region surrounding Cali from the late 1800s until the middle of the twentieth century.
Still a small provincial town in the early years of this century, Cali began to grow after the construction of a railway line linking the interior to the Pacific coastal port of Buenaventura in 1915–17. Completed shortly after the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914, this railway enabled transport of all products from Colombia's southwest interior to the port and greatly opened Colombian foreign trade, which until then had been conducted mainly through Cartagena and Barranquilla on Colombia's Atlantic coast. For the zona cafetera (coffee-growing region) north of Cali, the railway provided easier access to international trade arteries than the previous route north through the arduous waterways of the Magdalena up to Barranquilla. Coffee exports through Buenaventura increased fivefold from 1916 to 1926, and with the construction of further railway links in the interior, by 1944 nearly 60 percent of all Colombian coffee was exported through Buenaventura. As the midway point for coffee transported by steamboat down the Cauca River and loaded onto trains bound for the port, Cali became the business headquarters and central clearing house for major coffee exporters (Posada-Carbó 1996: 160–61).
Although coffee served as the basis for Cali's initial urban expansion in the first part of the twentieth century, it was sugar — the favored sweetener for this caffeinated brew — that consolidated Cali's agroindustrial boom and second wave of urbanization from the 1950s through the 1970s. The fertile lands and sunny climate of the Cauca Valley provide one the most ideal zones on earth for cultivating sugarcane. Friends informed me, as we drove through countryside checkered by dazzling emerald-green canefields, that new crops are sown and harvested throughout the year. After the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent U.S. blockade of Cuban sugar, the United States turned to Colombia and other Latin American countries to satisfy its sweet tooth. Already the hub of Colombia's national sugar industry, Cali quickly expanded with the influx of laborers required to work in the expansion of sugarcane cultivation, harvesting, and processing. Migration from surrounding regions — caused in part by the bloody strife of La Violencia — further contributed to Cali's rapid urbanization in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, the establishment of a regional hydroelectric authority in 1954 enabled the construction of dams and power plants along the region's principal waterways, consolidating a nearby energy source for industrial and urban development. In addition to the sugar industry, others such as paper and cardboard products and cement were established; the traditional agricultural base of mixed crop and livestock framing also continued, for local and regional consumption. During this time Cali's population more than doubled, expanding to nearly a million by 1973. On the crest of this industrial and economic wave, in 1971 Cali hosted the Pan-American Games, a key moment for international recognition of the city. The Pan-American Games stimulated urban development along the city's southern flank, resulting in the growth of new neighborhoods that nearly doubled the geographical span of the city in the 1970s. In addition to the long-standing Caleño passion for swimming, track, basketball, and especially soccer, the Pan-American Games also helped to consolidate sports and physical recreation as an important basis of local cultural identity alongside salsa music (Gómez 1986: 284).
Another white powdery substance — cocaine — is said to have been the basis for Cali's third wave of urbanization during the 1980s and early 1990s, as the Cali cartel grew in power and began to pump inordinate sums of money into the local economy. Real estate projects (condominiums, town-houses, and shopping malls) mushroomed, new businesses opened, and the local market was flooded with luxury consumer items. The city's population nearly doubled as migrants poured in from other regions of the country seeking jobs and better economic opportunities. By 1985 Cali's inhabitants numbered 1.4 million; by 1994 there were 1.8 million. Unofficial sources estimate Cali's current population at over two million. In the early 1990s Cali surpassed Medellín to become the second largest city in Colombia; the economic influence it wielded was subordinate only to that of Bogotá. Most important for musicians, however, the cartel bosses reputedly patronized salsa bands and encouraged the formation of new groups. There was a constant demand for live music in the many new nightclubs that were appearing on the scene and at lavish parties held at private mansions and country estates. (In chapters 3, 4, and 5 I discuss the effects of this "third wave" of urbanization on Cali's salsero culture.)
Of key importance in understanding Cali's contemporary salsa scene is the role of the annual December Feria, or fair, in providing a focal point for Caleños to affirm their assertion as the world salsa capital. Held from 25 December to 30 December, the Feria is to Cali what Carnival is to Barranquilla, Rio de Janeiro, and Port of Spain. Although conducted in more modest circumstances than these carnival celebrations (for one, the extravagant parades central to those events have never been realized at the Feria, and processionals with costumes and floats are a minor feature of the festivities),Cali's Feria is certainly carnivalesque. City residents and tourists alike have spoken to me in glowing terms of the five days of nonstop rumba (merrymaking) that mark this time, when people indulge in a spree of drinking, dancing, concertgoing, and club-hopping. Unlike in other parts of Colombia (and Latin America, for that matter), fiestas patronales, or patron saint days, are not widely observed in Cali. Rather, the Feria has become the city's representative celebration and parallels the emergence of contemporary popular identity after Cali began to expand in the middle of the twentieth century. (In chapter 6 I examine the position of the Feria in local popular culture, focusing on its critical role in shaping the city's salsero identity.)
Salsa music has influenced not only Caleño subjectivity, but also the image of Cali that is widely held in the rest of Colombia. Caleños are renowned for their inclination to partake of a rumba, that is, a party or festive gathering (not to be confused with the specific Afro-Cuban musical tradition of the same name). Since at least the 1960s, Cali has promoted itself with catchphrases such as la ciudad pachanguera (the "partying" city), la ciudad alegre (the happy city), and el sucursal del cielo (heaven's outpost). These slogans illustrate the inclination for revelry and the all-important rumba that have become essential to Caleño social life — elements shaped through decades of listening and dancing to salsa and música antillana.
Music and Region in Colombia
In his study of salsa in Cali, Alejandro Ulloa cites the lack of a local musical tradition as one of the principal factors contributing to salsa's adoption and popularity in this city (1992: 194–95). The notion that Cali did not have a musical tradition prior to salsa and música antillana is common among Caleños; I heard several other observers cite this same reason. It is another version of the origin myth introduced at the beginning of this chapter. In a country whose geographic and cultural diversity is paralleled by the wealth of its musical styles, however, this statement is highly peculiar. What stake would Caleños have in claiming that they had no local tradition prior to that established by the adoption of música antillana and salsa? Clearly, the concept emerges from local origin myths that position the flowering of contemporary popular culture and identity with the arrival of música antillana. Caleño musical life certainly predates this moment, although in ways that did not anchor a distinctive Caleño identity. In order to clarify the significance of Ulloa's claim, however, we must first understand the nexus between music and regional identity in Colombia.
Colombian regional identities are strongly articulated by musical style and other cultural practices, in ways that are closely tied to struggles over economic and political control of the nation. In Colombia, cachacos (people from the interior, particularly in or near the capital city of Bogotá) and paisas (people from the Antioquia region) have long been identified as the two groups that have held the political and economic reins of the nation. Accordingly, through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the representative national style was long identified with música andina, or music of the Colombian Andes, which features such lyric genres as bambuco and pasillo, played by string trios of tiple, bandola, and guitar (see Abadía Morales 1973). Associated with the mountainous interior regions of the country (the provinces of Antioquia, Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Santander, Caldas, Tolima, and Huila), this tradition is distinct from the music usually thought of in North America and Europe as "Andean," that is, the highland traditions of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Música andina is also played in the northeastern part of Valle province, only an hour's drive from Cali. The promotion of Colombian música andina over other regional styles during the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth century was closely tied to the economic and political power historically held by the interior. Indeed, the term música colombiana (Colombian music) was commonly understood through the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries to refer to bambucos and pasillos (Wade 2000: 51–52). In terms of regional cultural stereotypes, the rather serious, refined and introspective air associated with música andina is also that associated with the character of people from the interior.
(Continues…)
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Copyright © 2002 Lise A. Waxer.
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Table of Contents
Introduction"In Those Days, Holy Music Rained Down" Origins and Influence of Musica Antillana in Cali and ColumbiaMemory and Movement in the Record-Centered Dance SceneLife in the Vinyl Museum: Salsotecas and Record Collectors"Heaven's Outpost": The Rise of Cali's Live SceneTaking Center Stage: The Bottom of Local Bands"Cali Is Feria" Salsa and Festival in Cali's OutpostEpilogue: Del Puente Pa'llaAppendix IAppendix IIAppendix IIINotesGlossaryBibliographySelected DiscographyIndexWhat People are Saying About This
"Waxer's detailed ethnographic and archival research, clear explanations and interpretations of musical forms, and sophisticated theorizing about the changing meaning of culture in an age of global economics and politics combine to make this an extremely important book."
— George Lipsitz, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California at San Diego
"Waxer's textured description of a fascinating music culture provides a crucial link in the existing literature on Latin popular music, and pulls together many strains of contemporary thinking about popular culture in an impressive and original view."
"Waxer's detailed ethnographic and archival research, clear explanations and interpretations of musical forms, and sophisticated theorizing about the changing meaning of culture in an age of global economics and politics combine to make this an extremely important book."—George Lipsitz, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California at San Diego
""Waxer's detailed ethnographic and archival research, clear explanations and interpretations of musical forms, and sophisticated theorizing about the changing meaning of culture in an age of global economics and politics combine to make this an extremely important book.""—George Lipsitz, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California at San Diego
""Waxer's textured description of a fascinating music culture provides a crucial link in the existing literature on Latin popular music, and pulls together many strains of contemporary thinking about popular culture in an impressive and original view.""—Paul Austerlitz, author of Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity