During the mid-to-late 1980s, several salsa bands from Colombia began to have commercial success on a national and international scale. Hits from this period, like Grupo Niche’s “Cali Pachanguero,” have become part of the standard repertoire that many expect to dance to in salsa clubs throughout the world. This book, written by the late Lise Waxer, examines the historical context from which these bands emerged, concentrating on the main hub of Colombian salsa production, the city of Cali.
Central to this history is the process of how a musical genre like salsa, born in New York from Cuban, Puerto Rican, and African-American aesthetics and practices, came to be an essential part of the identity of a city nestled in the southwest corner of Colombia. Waxer describes how, beginning in the 1930s, Caribbean and U.S. sailors brought recordings of Cuban music to the port city of Buenaventura. These records became popular in the red-light districts that the sailors frequented and, like many other goods that arrived in the port, eventually made their way to Cali. In Cali, the general absence of bands that played this kind of music resulted in the emergence of several cultural practices that depended on these recordings. Dance club owners, for example, hired percussionists to play along with records. DJs played records back at speeds faster than those at which they were recorded, producing a frenetic dance style. Owners of records, especially rare recordings, were accorded special status within Caleño neighborhoods. After the arrival of salsa in the late 1960s, records continued to be important, with the introduction of all-salsa format radio stations in the 1970s and the appearance of small cafés oriented towards listening to salsa classics in the 1980s. Throughout the book, Waxer highlights the critical role recordings have played in the musical identity of Cali, and her findings bolster the work of those folklorists and ethnomusicologists who are helping to bring more attention to the impact that commercial recordings have on aural and material culture.
In the 1980s, Cali became a major center for the drug trade, and money became available to support concert appearances by famous international salsa artists as well as local bands. Not wanting to get too involved with the role of the drug cartel, Waxer instead focuses on the effects money had on the local scene. The major concerts exposed Caleños first hand to international performance techniques and practices, inspiring local musicians to work on their arranging, choreography, and showmanship. New opportunities to both to earn money as a musician and to learn an instrument inspired a number of people to perform. All-female and all-child orquestas were formed. It is these circumstances and not the drug money directly, Waxer argues, that gave rise to the talent that produced bands that competed and became successful on the international scene.
Waxer’s most compelling chapter is about Cali’s Feria, the annual carnival held between Christmas and New Year’s Eve since 1957. As with many other festivals, the Feria serves to symbolically reflect the cultural identity of the location in which it is held. In 1968, New York-based salsa stars Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz performed at the Feria, with overwhelming success to over-capacity crowds. The event served to crystallize Cali’s taste for the emerging music genre, sealing its place in Cali’s identity. The musical practices that Waxer describes earlier in the book all find their way into the Feria, as do class-based social divisions.
Waxer’s book continues her work of filling an English-language gap in scholarship about the impact of salsa in South America, and I appreciate the inclusion of Spanish-language sources in her bibliographic references. Several chapters are reworked from earlier journal articles, which in turn grew out of her dissertation. The subtitle of her dissertation is “a social history of salsa in a Colombian City,” and I believe this subtitle helps to better situate what the book accomplishes. While Waxer is quick to recognize and pull in threads of ethnomusicological theory, the book’s real strength lies in its well researched ethnographic and historical descriptions. These descriptions might prove useful, for example, to those scholars looking to compare cases of the transnational appropriation and reinterpretation of music. For those interested in Colombian music, the book acts exceptionally well as a companion to Peter Wade’s 2000 text, Music, Race and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia.
This book won the 2003 Alan B. Merriam Prize from the Society of Ethnomusicology (SEM) as the most distinguished English-language monograph of that year. Unfortunately, Waxer passed away in 2002, just as the book was being published. The Popular Music Section of SEM has commemorated her scholarship by naming their student paper prize after her.
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[Review length: 778 words • Review posted on August 14, 2006]