Cumbia Aesthetics and Politics in Latin America
Organizer(s): Eloy Antonio Neira de la Cadena (Uiversity of California Riverside), Valeria Chavez (North Western University), Kristian Rodriguez (North Western University), Constanza Fuentes (University of Texas Austin)
Chair(s): Eloy Antonio Neira de la Cadena (University of California Riverside)
Latinidad is a relational identity marker. First, it emerges as a form of othering on the part of
English speakers toward speakers of Latin languages in the United States; it is about establishing a hierarchical difference. Second, Latinidad is also a response to this othering through the creation of an imagined community. Thirdly, however, Latinidad also arises from the recognition of commonalities and differences within Latin America; in this case, it is about recognizing an othering that is simultaneously a WE. This social process also occurs through the construction of affective bonds where aesthetic expressions are the galvanizers. An example of this is the presence of the musical genre cumbia, which, from its Colombian origin, acquired a presence in the 1960s throughout Latin America and the United States. In the Latin American case, it was adopted by subaltern populations in their own countries. This panel, through the presentation of four case studies —carried out in Southern California, Peru, Mexico, and Chile—explores how Latinidad and the creation of a sense of belonging (or unbelonging) are invented through a concrete object which molds affects. Indeed, the panel’s papers examine how one of the most ubiquitous Latin American popular musics is simultaneously expressive of highly localized identities. At the same time, this panel contributes perspectives concerning the aesthetic political significance of a genre that creates “local bonds” and “Latinidad-bonds” to fulfill distinct national and regional cultural, political, and aesthetic necessities.
Presentations in the Session
La Sonora Dinamita Band and the Latin American migration to Southern California: A Borgian analysis of the only band in the US that can play in more than one place at a time.
Eloy Antonio Neira de la Cadena
University Of California Riverside
Before my Ph.D. studies, I was a touring musician with cumbia bands. These bands would play
the same songs and share the same name: La Sonora Dinamita (LSD). LSD was created in
Colombia (1960). As part of the Cumbia boom (1968-1974) and economic and political crisis,
LSD’s sound and members migrated to the North. In Los Angeles, these musicians began to
“reproduce” many bands with the same name. Since then, LSD’s cumbia has been part of the
soundscape of the Latinidad in Southern California, and weddings and quinceañeras fiestas are
unimaginable without the music of LSD. In this essay, I want to explore how Latinidad and the
creation of a sense of belonging (or unbelonging) are invented and reproduced through aesthetic
objects such as LSD(s)’ sound. My main contention is that one becomes LatinX in the US. This
label has two sides. First, it is a way of othering families with ancestry in Latin America; second,
despite its discriminatory origin, it is a label that is embraced and has become a mechanism to
create bonds but also affirms differences. This new feeling of belonging happens through the
molding of affects through concrete objects such as music. In this regard, I would like to explore
how LSD(s)’ music has become a playlist that creates intimate affective spaces for the
performance of Latinidad in Southern California and the US. Also, the creation of these “social
sound spaces” has little to do with the “authenticity” of the band(s) but with what their sound
evokes and creates.
Dancing the Path to Congress: Chicha Music and Peruvian Political Advertising, 2006-2011
Valeria Chavez
North Western University
Stories concerning Presidential campaigns and activity are common findings in major Peruvian
periodicals like La República and El Comercio. By the early 2000s, headlines quickly took an
entertaining turn: stories of politicians joyously dancing, taking the stage at concerts, and even
attending musicians’ funerals lightened the backdrop of austerity and formality long associated
with Peruvian politics. What was the soundtrack of this political performance? This paper argues
that chicha music, a variant of Peruvian cumbia synthesizing Colombian cumbia with traditional
Andean styles, was strategically employed by Peruvian politicians to dismantle the image of a
“serious” politician and gain support from the working class majority. Chicha music was
developed primarily by Andean migrants living in Lima throughout the mid-to-late twentieth
century, and although Limeño elites dismissed the genre as an imperfect bridge between
conceived binaries of “modern/coastal” and “traditional/Andean” (Turino, 1990; Romero, 2008;
Tucker, 2013), politicians recognized the political potential in the music’s working-class
audience. Synthesizing archival research with analyses of chicha campaign jingles composed
before and during Alan García Pérez’s second presidential term (2006-11), I demonstrate how
public engagement with chicha music was a strategy of (neo)populist performativity, and a
particularly powerful one in the scheme of “[Peruvian] politics as spectacle and entertainment”
(Cala Buendía, 2014). Ultimately, this paper demonstrates how music serves as a powerful tool
for crafting a political persona rooted in working-class relatability and how public engagement
with music as “everyday nationalism” generates a political impact beyond “official” campaign
activities.
Cumbia Norteña and the Transnational Figure of the Sirreño
Kristian Rodriguez
North Western University
Since its origins in Colombian music scenes, cumbia has become well-situated throughout Latin
America and the Latine diaspora. Within northern Mexico and the southwestern United States,
musicians have adapted and localized cumbia over the past few decades into cumbia norteña,
successfully weaving cumbia into regional Northern Mexican and Mexican-American
performance practices. I identify how musicians have incorporated genres and instrumentations
of the borderlands with the form, timbre, and aesthetics of cumbia to create a transnational and
cosmopolitan sound while maintaining a distinct norteño identity. Building on the scholarship of
Alejandro Madrid (2011), Michael Cardenas (2021), and Juan Restrepo (2021), I trace a history
of cumbia norteña that demonstrates how cumbia has been threaded into norteño sonic aesthetics,
indicating cosmopolitanism and building transnational circuits of musical exchange. Situated
within this historiography, I then utilize virtual and in-person ethnographies to argue that
contemporary iterations of cumbia norteña epitomize a larger trend within Latin music scenes
that center the melancholic sirreño figure. As I demonstrate through my analysis of
contemporary recordings and performances of cumbia norteño performed al estilo sirreño, the
masculinity of the sirreño is more subdued and introspective than previous sonic figurations of
machismo norteño. With cumbia norteño as my central analytic, I thus unveil how this genre,
simultaneously cosmopolitan and localized, has become a sonic conduit for transnational
reconfigurations of Latino masculinities.
The beginning of Chilean cumbia: La Sonora Palacios band as part of the Chilean popular culture
Constanza Fuentes
University of Texas Austin
In the vibrant cultural landscape of Chile during the 1960s, the emergence of La Sonora Palacios
marked a pivotal moment in the evolution of Chilean music. The band played a crucial role in the
transformation of traditional Colombian cumbia, infusing it with a unique rhythm that resonated
profoundly with the sensibilities of the Chilean population. By adapting the genre to make it
more accessible for dance, La Sonora Palacios created a distinctive musical identity and ignited a
cultural phenomenon that would endure for decades. Thereby, although years have passed since
the release of the first single, “El Caminante,” interest in Chilean cumbia has continued to
transcend generational boundaries and grow among audiences. Based on my historical
ethnographic research conducted in Santiago de Chile, as well as digital ethnography capturing
the experiences and testimonies of members of La Sonora Palacios and followers of Chilean
cumbia, I present a comprehensive analysis of the trajectory of Chilean cumbia and its impact on
the country’s popular culture. As tentative conclusions, I suggest that La Sonora Palacios has
been essential to the development of cumbia in Chile, occupying a revered status as a cultural
institution. Additionally, I argue they are an inspiration for current bands of this genre and part of
the soundscapes of a country. This presentation contributes to preserving Chilean immaterial
cultural heritage and ethnomusicological research of cumbia as a transnational musical
expression.
