by Peter Wade
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Paper: 978-0-226-86845-5 | Cloth: 978-0-226-86844-8
Library of Congress Classification ML3487.C7W33 2000
Dewey Decimal Classification 781.6409861

ABOUT THIS BOOK | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Long a favorite on dance floors in Latin America, the porro, cumbia, and vallenato styles that make up Colombia's música tropical are now enjoying international success. How did this music—which has its roots in a black, marginal region of the country—manage, from the 1940s onward, to become so popular in a nation that had prided itself on its white heritage? Peter Wade explores the history of música tropical, analyzing its rise in the context of the development of the broadcast media, rapid urbanization, and regional struggles for power. Using archival sources and oral histories, Wade shows how big band renditions of cumbia and porro in the 1940s and 1950s suggested both old traditions and new liberties, especially for women, speaking to a deeply rooted image of black music as sensuous. Recently, nostalgic, "whitened" versions of música tropical have gained popularity as part of government-sponsored multiculturalism.

Wade's fresh look at the way music transforms and is transformed by ideologies of race, nation, sexuality, tradition, and modernity is the first book-length study of Colombian popular music.

See other books on: Colombia | M | Music and race | Nation | Wade, Peter
See other titles from University of Chicago Press