Cumbia! Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre

Abstract

The 11 essays compiled in this volume present the reader with different scenes of a music genre that has become fully engaged with the global marketplace. Based on extensive fieldwork on multiple sites, they challenge us to recognize cumbia as a transnational and global musical phenomenon rather than a genre in a strict sense. One of the coeditors, Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste, thus contends that “cumbia offers a vehicle of study unlike any other, providing an enormous opportunity to explore the arbitrariness of our ways of conceiving of the idea of nation, above all, in terms of rhythm and difference” (p. 248). Music is still central to what culture sounds like, but as music increasingly links the global and the local and vice versa, questions emerge regarding what this new music expresses and represents. Indeed, DJ Shaggy's dancehall version of Colombian accordionist Alberto Pacheco's classic “Cumbia Cienaguera,” the mascot song for the 2008 European soccer championship that put millions of sports fans on their feet, bears little resemblance to the regional ritmo of coastal Colombia. First documented in the late nineteenth century in a Cartagena newspaper in reference to a couples' dance, cumbia retains its name even as it mutates from a regional genre with strong ethnic and social connotations into a national and transnational music-and-dance phenomenon. Cumbia's international travels and appearance in cosmopolitan contexts, however, call for sophisticated social and cultural analyses that consider shifts in meaning for both music producers and consumers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, they are foremost interested in the various and complicated ways in which cumbia takes root in and shapes distinct national cultures. Thus, identity politics are at the core of the authors' interest in cumbia in its various national forms — Colombian, Mexican, Peruvian, Argentine, and Uruguayan, among others. These politics include articulations of ethnic, racial, class, gender, regional, national, and transnational identifications.The present analyses of cumbia as a traveling genre of global extension follow pioneering studies by Fernández L'Hoeste in 2007 and Deborah Pacini Hernandez in 2010. In a chapter from the latter, “From Cumbia Colombiana to Cumbia Cosmopolatina,” Pacini Hernandez asked about the conclusions that might be drawn from the recent and simultaneous movement of music, people, and identities in Latin America. The contributors to Cumbia! have taken up the challenge to examine various identifications linked to migration processes as cumbia traveled and continues to travel throughout the Americas. Their conclusions, however, are far from uniform. Maybe the only constant that emerges from their case studies is the link between cumbia (in its various forms) and the lower and working classes, which gives rise to multifaceted identity negotiations and constructions. A tropical music genre, the infinitely malleable cumbia seems to be particularly suited for the marginalized and stigmatized migrant and working classes as it responds to their dreams, aspirations, and ambitions to carve out a legitimate place in the societies of their respective countries. Peripheralization and centralization are practices that help us understand the ways in which localized idioms of distinction are created. Cumbiera practices across the Americas, each characterized by its own distinct histories of migration and racialized class articulations, illustrate that ideas regarding urban modernity and sophistication hinge on constructions of local traditions empowered by foreign customs and modern technologies. Whether it be cumbia in any of its forms — colombiana, sonidera, norteña, villera, andina, or tecno-cumbia — the authors demonstrate how cumbia's ritmo suits local musical preferences to transform cumbia into nuestra cumbia (our cumbia).Versions of some of the essays have been previously published, but it is nevertheless valuable to have them all collected in this volume. Together they introduce the reader to a broad range of Latin American musical practices that claim their roots in a specific regional genre but mean different things in different places. Cumbia! is essential reading for anyone interested in popular music studies, music and migration, globalization, and communication. The volume is accessible to nonmusic specialists — the authors avoid engaging in musical analysis beyond the basics — but the overall scholarly writing style might pose a challenge to a general readership.