Bambuco, tango and bolero: Music, identity, and class struggles in Medellin, Colombia, 1930--1953

This dissertation explores the articulation of music, identity, and class struggles in the production, reception, and consumption of sound recordings of popular music in Colombia, 1930-1953. I analyze practices of cultural consumption involving records in Medellin, Colombia's second largest city and most important industrial center at the time. The study sheds light on some of the complex connections between two simultaneous historical processes during the mid-twentieth century, mass consumption and socio-political strife. Between 1930 and 1953, Colombian society experienced the rise of mass media and mass consumption as well as the outbreak of La Violencia , a turbulent period of social and political strife. Through an analysis of written material, especially the popular press, this work illustrates the use of aesthetic judgments to establish social differences in terms of ethnicity, social class, and gender. Another important aspect of the dissertation focuses on the adoption of music genres by different groups, not only to demarcate differences at the local level, but as a means to inscribe these groups within larger imagined communities. Thus, bambuco articulates contradictions and paradoxes brought about in the way Antioquenos (the regional community) related to the idea of the Colombian nation. Tango articulates an important difference between the regional whitened ethnic identity, the so-called raza antioquena (Antioqueno race), and the mestizo (mixed ethnicity) associated with Bogota, the nation's capital. Finally, the local adoption of bolero embodies the aspirations of the middle classes to gain access to transnational and cosmopolitan ideals of modernity. During a period of turmoil, bolero's middle-class listening practices engendered a certain depolitization of the space of social struggles that characterize popular culture of the period. Using a diachronic approach, the dissertation illustrates the variations of musical practices and habits of musical consumption according to particular social and political circumstances. The discussion includes the musical and textual analysis of a few representative pieces of the repertoire.