Cumbia!: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre ed. by Héctor D. Fernández l’Hoeste and Pablo Vila (review)

Abstract

Cumbia!: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre. Edited by Hector D. Fernandez l'Hoeste and Pablo Vila. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. [ix, 302 p. ISBN 9780822354147 (hardcover), $89.95; ISBN 9780822354338 (paperback), $24.95; (e-book), various.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, discography, index. The scenes of this anthology range widely in a geographical sense and in the way that each writer approaches cumbia. Hector Fernandez l'Hoeste and Pablo Vila have assembled a collection of thoughtful essays and presented them in a logical sequence reflecting the outward migration of cumbia from its origins. While tracing cumbia & ascent to its current status as an international symbol of Colombia, they also demonstrate its role as a signifier of new sociocultural identities throughout Latin America. As a result, Cumbia! instantly assumes a place of prominence within the small body of English-language literature on this music and dance genre. By way of introduction, each editor relates his background and relationship with cumbia. Fernandez l'Hoeste presents himself as a middle-class costeno, that is, a native of la costa, Colombia's Caribbean coastal region and cumbia's birthplace. Many middle-class Colombians regarded cumbia in a condescending and racist manner, but the working-class women employed in the Fernandez l'Hoeste household ensured young Hector's love of it. Vila's upbringing in middle-class Argentina did not allow him to appreciate cumbia until later in life, when he witnessed its power as a form of music adopted and transformed in his own country. Following these personal introductions, the editors explicate their working hypothesis: that focused examination of cumbia ... evinces some of the mechanisms through which eminent forms of identity, like nation, region, class, race, ethnicity, and gender ... are achieved, negotiated, and ... enacted by its (p. 13). They acknowledge the complex give-and-take relationships between all of the microprocesses employed in music and in the construction of sociocultural identities. The eleven essays that follow explore such relationships in meaningful and enlightening ways. Readers learn a great deal about cumbia and other Latin American music genres while also bearing witness to a methodology that could be applied in other genres and regions. Leonardo D'Amico's opening chapter provides a concise, comprehensive overview of the genre. D'Amico, who has previously authored an Italian-language monograph about cumbia, describes its origin as a tri-ethnic syncretism--a combination of African, Spanish, and indigenous elements, with the African component being the strongest. He describes the typical cumbia ensembles and organology, compares etymological perspectives on the genre's name, and gives an overview of its evolution in twentieth-century Colombia, accounting for its various changes mediated by technology and its dissemination into Colombia's interior. D'Amico's chapter is ripe to serve as required reading in introductory Latin American music courses. Chapter 2 begins in earnest the consideration of cumbia as a migrant genre. It chronicles fieldwork undertaken by archivist and musician Jorge Arevalo Mateus as he accompanied Marioneta, an ensemble led by Martin Vejarano and comprised of musicians from inland Colombia and New York City, as they traveled to compete in a music festival in Colombia's coastal region. Arevalo Mateus documents official and informal reception of the ensemble, apparently comprised of outsiders. While failing to surpass traditional standard-bearers in popularity and credibility, reactions to the studied innovations of Marioneta show receptivity among the music's core followers to innovation and globalization, even using Marioneta's success as a source of pride that invokes the long road traveled by cumbia from its humble origins as a local folk tradition. Here is an initial taste of one of this book's most pervasive themes: transnationalism, a word and concept that appears in almost all subsequent chapters. …