Negotiating Musical Style in Panama: Nationalism, Professionalism and the Invention of 'Musica Tipica Popular'

This dissertation provides both an historical outline and contemporary ethnographic account of the Panamanian musical practice called "musica tipica popular," which is commonly understood in Panama to denote a specific kind of vernacular music that is widely embraced. 1 By examining the social-historical processes, events and discourses that have contributed to the genre's development, this study seeks to develop greater understanding of what I argue is this music's particular and pronouncedly ambiguous relationship to prominent themes of Panamanian cultural nationalism. Specifically, I endeavour to show that early on in its history musica tipica popular epitomized Panama's (liberalist-identified) national ethos of progressive modernity and cultural cosmopolitanism while at the same time maintaining alignments to specific territories and musical practices significant to Panamanian vernacular imaginaries.;The historical outline covers musica tipica popular 's development beginning from the late nineteenth century to the present. Its focus is on the genre's tandem commercialisation and massification, performance and production technologies and associated performance modalities, shared musical/sonic traits, repertoire and approaches to innovation through musical mixing or fusion (fusion). One of the central goals here is to trace and examine points of alignment between musica tipica popular and dominant paradigms governing isthmian geo-cultural self-identification---particularly the interplay between a rural-identified "vernacular" culture and the perceived urban cosmopolitanism of Panamanian metropolites.;Through ethnographic research this study also aims to examine the various sonic, social and economic factors that contribute to notions of musica tipica popular as a particular socio-musical collectivity actively in dialogue with discourses of Panamanian national and cultural identity. To this end, notions of "genre" and "style" provide an analytical framework particularly for coming to terms with the interplay between sensibilities of convention and common practice, and a need for meaningful differentiation among practitioners. It is my contention that while musica tipica popular practitioners actively cultivate links both to themes of Panamanian music-cultural vernacularism and cosmopolitanism, on the whole the relationship of the genre to nationalist discourse should be more properly understood as one of sustained ambiguity: not wholly aligned to one theme or the other, and in fact doggedly and often productively resistant to such binary categorizations.;1 The literal translation of musica tipica popular is "popular typical music." The term "popular" in Panama can mean both 'of the masses' and having mass popularity/acceptance. During my fieldwork, the latter was the most common interpretation.