The City of Musical Memory. Lise A. Waxer

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.⁹ 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.

      During the 1930s and 1940s, music from Colombia’s Atlantic or Caribbean coast began to replace música andina in the national eye. In Colombia, this region is usually referred to as La Costa (the coast), despite the fact that Colombia has another coast on the Pacific (usually referred to as el litoral pacífico [the Pacific littoral]).¹⁰ Costeño (Atlantic coastal) traditions combine African, European, and indigenous influences, typified in the flute-and-drum ensembles that perform cumbia, porro, gaita, fandango, mapalé, chandé, bullerengue, and other genres (see Jaramillo 1992; Camargo 1994). As La Costa began to play an increasingly critical role in national political life, urbanized versions of porro, cumbia, and gaita formed the basis for the dance-band adaptations of Costeño rhythms that swept into national circles as música tropical during the 1940s (Wade 2000). Since the 1970s, vallenato, an accordion-based style related to cumbia and música tropical, has become the most popular Costeño genre, replacing the big-band sound of música tropical as a national style. As Peter Wade discusses at length in his book Music, Race, and Nation, the sensual, playful, and carefree associations of música tropical are closely tied to national images of Costeño identity.

      Colombia’s other coast, the Pacific, is populated by a predominantly Afro-Colombian population, with two distinct traditions: the chirimía bands in the northwest Chocó province and the marimba-based currulao tradition that prevails along the southwest littoral of Valle, Cauca, and Nariño provinces and into Esmeraldas, the northwest corner of Ecuador. The Chocoano chirimía tradition is similar to Costeño town bands that adapted European wind-band instrumentation to black musical aesthetics and stylistic practices. Featuring clarinets, trumpets, euphonium, and European percussion, they differ from the fife-and-drum ensembles used