This book is woven out of innumerable conversations and interviews with people in Cali and elsewhere in Colombia, not all of whose voices I have been able to include in the account here. Among them are Stellita Domínguez, Kike Escobar, Lalo Borja, Andrés Loiza, Toño Romero, Luisa and Jairo, Baltazar Mejía, Fanny and Jorge Martínez, Jaime and Rochy Camargo, Alejandro and Ruby Ulloa, Henry Manyoma, Rafael Quintero, Richard Yory, Art Owen, Ozman Arias, Gonzalo, Cesar Machado, Lisímaco Paz, Pepe Valderruten, Edgar Hernan Arce, Amparo “Arrebato” Ramos, Evelio Carabalí, Andrés Luedo, Miguel Angel Saldarriaga, Phanor Castillo in Puerto Tejada, Guillermo Rosero, Luis Adalberto Santiago, Fernando Taisechi, Timothy Pratt, Osvaldo González, Diego Pombo, Richard Sandoval, Isidoro Corkidi, Pablo del Valle, Orlando Montenegro, Fabio Arias, Memo Vejerano, Jaime at Zaperoco, Doña Marina de Borja, David Kent, Benjamin Possu, Jorge Mario Restrepo, and Alvaro Bejerano. These people showed great warmth and interest in my project, and it is thanks to their collaboration that I soon felt at home in Cali’s scene. A special tribute goes to Doña Stella Domínguez and Beto Borja, who are no longer with us in body but whose generous laughter and spirit live on.
My conversations with the musicians Luis Carlos Ochoa, Alexis Lozano, Cesar Monge, Wilson and Hermes Manyoma, Enrique “Peregoyo” Urbano, Julian Angulo, “Piper Pimienta” Díaz, Alexis Murillo, Cheo Angulo, Hugo Candelario González, Richie Valdés, Ali “Tarry” Garcés, Felix Shakaito, Santiago Meíja, Alvaro Granobles, John Granda, Hector Aguirre, Nelson González, Gonzalo Palacios, Jon Biafará, Elpidio Caicedo, Jon Granda, Henry, Jorge, Daniel Alfonso, Edgar del Castillo, Fredy Colorado, Jorge Herrera, José Fernando Zuñiga, Carlos Vivas, and others helped to clarify many aspects of the live scene. I am grateful for their willingness to let me sit in on rehearsals and plague them with endless questions. Among the members of all-woman bands, María del Carmen, Francia Elena Barrera, Olga Lucía Rivas, Lizana Mayel, Ana Milena González, Paula Zuleta, Cristina Padilla, and Doris Ojeda offered helpful comments and inspiration. Dorancé Lorza, Chucho Ramírez, and José Aguirre provided valuable information about musical production and arranging. Jairo Varela generously allowed me to observe several recording sessions at Niche Studios, and I had the opportunity to collaborate with him on translating “Solo tú sabes” for his album Prueba de fuego (1997). My conversations with the Puerto Rican musicians Edwin Morales and Ricky Rodríguez of Orquesta Mulenze gave me additional important perspectives on international styles.
Jairo Sánchez generously gave me access to the video archives at Imagenes TV Emilio Larrota cheerfully allowed me to observe recording sessions at Paranova; Carlos Mondragon was helpful at RCN. In Barranquilla, Gilberto and Mireya Marrenco proved to be solid allies; thanks also to Edwin Madera at La Troja. I am grateful to Antonio Escobar for allowing me to participate in the 1995 Festival de Música del Caribe; conversations with Daisanne McLane provided further insight into that event. I would also like to thank Luis Felipe Jaramillo at Discosfuentes in Medellín and Cesar Pagáno in Bogotá, who were generous with both their time and their knowledge.
My trips to Cuba were made especially enjoyable by the friendship and generous assistance of Adriana Orejuela and the Terry family. Conversations with Leonardo Acosta and Helio Orovio provided important information that consolidated my understanding of Cuban music and helped me to better study Cali’s scene. I would also like to give special acknowledgement to Cristóbal Díaz Ayalá, whom I met in Cartagena; he provided materials and important information related to my earlier work on the mambo and Cuban music during the 1940s and 1950s and continues to be a great inspiration and mentor for all of us working in this field.
My special gratitude goes to the following for their solidarity, their time, their insights, and their friendship in the field: Sabina Borja (my unfailing comrade-in-arms), my roommates and fellow doctoral researchers Kiran Ascher and Pablo Leal, the mosqueteros Elcio Viedmann and Kuky Preciado, and Daniel Chavarría and Dennis Pérez. Thanks also to Patricia Galvez; Larry Joseph; Umberto Valverde; Victor Caicedo and family; the Varela family and Catalina Malaver in Bogotá; María Ofelia Arboleda in Medellín; Sugey Moreno in Quibdó; and Cristina and Ramiro Velázquez in Barranquilla. Thanks also to the percussionist Memo Acevedo, my first teacher when I was a fledgling salsiologist in Toronto, who got me started on the long road to Cali and his native Colombia. My gratitude also to Gerardo Rosales, hermano and teacher in Caracas. An especial abrazo to my sisters in Magenta Latin Jazz—Amy Schrift, Luz Estella Esquivel, Dora Tenorio, Sarli Delgado, Alexandra Albán, and Ana Yancy Hoyos. Performing with them was one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire research.
Financial support for this work was provided by generous grants and fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the American Association of University Women, the Nellie M. Signor Fund, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all of which I gratefully acknowledge. I would also like to thank Trinity College in Hartford for institutional support through various phases of this book, and the junior leave that facilitated part of its writing. To the Wenner-Gren Foundation I owe an additional debt of gratitude for the Richard Carley Hunt postdoctoral fellowship that supported completion of this manuscript for publication. Some of the material appearing in this book was published in earlier versions as articles in Latin American Music Review (Colombian salsa; see chapters 4 and 5), Ethnomusicology (all-woman bands; see chapter 5), Popular Music (the viejoteca revival; see chapter 2), the anthology Sound Identities (arrival and impact of recordings in Cali; see chapters 2 and 3), and Situating Salsa (overall history; see introduction and chapters 1–4). I thank the editors of these publications for permission to incorporate revised and expanded renditions of that material here.
Suzanna Tamminen at Wesleyan University Press has been as wonderful and supportive an editor as one could possibly wish for; I am grateful for her encouragement and feedback. Thanks also to George Lipsitz for his enthusiastic response to the project and his support as series editor. I am also grateful to Thomas Radko at Wesleyan University Press and to Chris Crochetière and Barbara Norton at B. Williams and Associates for their input and support during the publication stage. Pablo Delano assisted with the preparation of some of the photographic illustrations in this volume. I am indebted to Fabio Larrahondo and Jaime González of the newspaper El Occidente in Cali for archival photographs. William Cooley prepared most of the musical notations that appear here, and Steven Russell designed the maps; my thanks to both for their terrific collaboration. All translations from written sources and interviews are my own, as are tables and charts.
Finally, with great pleasure I thank my entire family for their unconditional love through my many years of researching salsa music. Not only did they give me freedom and encouragement to explore this path and travel to Colombia, but they also provided moral support, calls, letters and care packages whenever the going got tough. I am also indebted to the Arias-Satizábal family for their love and support through this project. An especial vote of gratitude and love goes to my husband and research collaborator, Medardo Arias Satizábal. He provided important contacts during the final stages of fieldwork and follow-up and offered several observations and perspectives of his own. His magnificent support and understanding during these months of writing have been without equal. Gracias, amor lindo.
Introduction
This book is about a Latin American city and its people. More specifically, it is about how those people found themselves—like residents of many Latin American cities—dealing with rapid urbanization and change in the twentieth century, and the ways in which they responded to these transitions in popular cultural practice. The city in question is Cali, the bustling center of southwest Colombia and now the second largest