PLAYING MUSIC, PERFORMING RESISTANCE:

THE DYNAMICS OF RESISTANCE THROUGH MUSIC IN THE COLOMBIAN SOUTH PACIFC COAST

M.A. THESIS

NATALIA LOZANO

SUBMITTED TO WOLFGANG DIETRICH

MA PROGRAM IN PEACE, DEVELOPMENT, SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT

TRANSFORMATION

INNSBRUCK UNIVERSITY

DECEMBER 8TH 2009

 To the marimberos and cantaoras who

shared with me a piece of their lives.

 
 Acknowledgments

I would like to tank from the deepest of my heart

To Wolfgang Dietrich, Josefina Echavarría, Norbert Koppensteiner, and Daniela

Ingruber for the immeasurable academic and personal lessons that they have giving
to me during the last two years of my life. Thank you and thank you again for
giving me the strength to believe in myself.

To everyone in the peace family and especially to Noah Taylor my loving virtual
writing partner and dedicated style editor.

To my family, and especially my grandma Elvira and my aunt Marta for giving me
so much love and care during the lonely process of writing.

To all those who supported me economically so I could go to Guapí and Cali.

especially all the boys and girls from Jicá who assumed my dream as their own
dream.

To, Manuel Sevilla, Ana Maria Arango and Michael Birenbaum for the guiding
words they gave me.

To Gustavo Hurtado and Argelia for caring so much for me and my work while I
was in Guapí.

To Silvino Mina, Dioselino Rodríguez, Guillermo Ríos, Genaro Torres, Marino

Castro, Eulalia Torres, Natividad Orobio, Melania Obregón, Juana Viáfara, Isidora
Minas, Sixta Perlaza, María Caicedo, Verónica , Nanny Valencia, Eneyder Hurtado,
Freddy Walberto Cuero and Yeiner Orobio for the enormous generousity with
which they made me part of their world.

To Hugo Candelario González for the warmth of his words, and for his Remanso
Inicial, the most beautiful song which has been the soundtrack of my life during the
last months.

 
 Note

The original versions of all the interviews

I have made for this thesis are in Spanish,

in order to make it easier for the reader I

will use the translated version I made of

them. Likewise, in the body text I will

incorporate the translated version I made

of quotations from different Spanish books

and articles, while the original versions

will appear in footnotes.

 
Table of Content
Prelude
A project born out of the person I am.............................................................................................. 8
I have seen sadness .......................................................................................................................... 8
I still see hope ................................................................................................................................ 11
My sung and danced life ................................................................................................................ 13
Through the peace studies lens ...................................................................................................... 15
A project was born ......................................................................................................................... 16
1. Bordón # 1
Peace in Resistance........................................................................................................................... 19
1.1 Beyond peace are many peaces................................................................................................ 19
1.2 Peace is not Passivity ............................................................................................................... 24
1.3 Resistance in diversity ............................................................................................................. 27
2. Bordón #2
The Pacific Coast between Exclusion domination and resistance ............................................... 33
2.1 First Inhabitants ....................................................................................................................... 35
2.2 Nation Building........................................................................................................................ 38
2.3 A conditional recognition......................................................................................................... 41
2.4 Natural and Contingent Resistance .......................................................................................... 46
2.4.1 Historical subjects, permanent resistances........................................................................ 47
2.4.2 Dynamic subjects, dynamic resistances ............................................................................ 49
2.4.3 Spaces of resistance .......................................................................................................... 52
3. Bordón #3
The marimba resounds among exclusion, violence and homogenization ................................... 55
3.1 Labeling music......................................................................................................................... 56
3.2 The marimba ............................................................................................................................ 60
3.2.1 Into the music.................................................................................................................... 60
3.2.2 Music in its Socio-cultural Contexts................................................................................. 63
3.3 The marimba seen from outside............................................................................................... 65
3.3.1 The persecution ................................................................................................................. 65

 
 3.3.2 A National music .............................................................................................................. 67
3.4 A multicultural country............................................................................................................ 71
3.4.1 Getting lost in multiculturalism ........................................................................................ 71
3.4.2 Behind multiculturalism there is violence ........................................................................ 74
3.4.2 Petronio Álvarez Festival.................................................................................................. 76
3.5 Resistance................................................................................................................................. 80
4. Revuelta #1
Getting Involved............................................................................................................................. 866
4.1 Fears and Facts....................................................................................................................... 866
4.2 The town ................................................................................................................................ 889
4.3 The sound of Guapí.................................................................................................................. 92
4.4 Breaking though..................................................................................................................... 933
5. Revuelta #2
Living in music, for music, on music.............................................................................................. 96
5.1 The Marimberos....................................................................................................................... 97
5.1.1Silvino Mina....................................................................................................................... 99
5.1.2Genaro Torres .................................................................................................................. 102
5.1.3 Dioselino Rodríguez ....................................................................................................... 105
5.1.4 Guillermo Ríos................................................................................................................ 106
5.2 The Cantaoras ....................................................................................................................... 107
5.2.1Natividad Orobio and Melania Obregón.......................................................................... 108
5.2.2 Juana Viáfara and Isidora Minas..................................................................................... 110
5.2.3 Sixta Perlaza and Eulalia Torres .................................................................................... 112
5.3 The new generation................................................................................................................ 112
5.3.1 Yeiner Orobio ................................................................................................................. 113
5.3.2 Freddy Walberto Cuero................................................................................................... 117
5.3.3 Marino Castro ................................................................................................................. 119
5.3.4 Eneyder Hurtado ............................................................................................................. 120
5.3.5 Hugo Candelario González ............................................................................................. 122
5.4. Different Contexts, different experiences ............................................................................. 123
5.4.1. Challenging categories................................................................................................... 123
5.4.2 Music for the heart, music to resist ................................................................................. 127

 
6. Revuelta # 3
In the Festival ................................................................................................................................. 133
6.1 A trendy product .................................................................................................................... 134
6.2 Changing to be popular .......................................................................................................... 137
6.3 Other Expressions .................................................................................................................. 140
Finale
Plural Resistances for a Plural World.............................................¡Error!Marcador no definido.
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 1499

 
 Prelude

A project born out of the person I am.

Some months ago I returned from my travels in Guapí, a small town in the Colombian

south Pacific, and Cali, the main city in that side of the country. I was there for six weeks

carrying out the field research for this thesis. I went to the Pacific looking for the marimba

music, for the people who play it, in order to find out whether or not there is any trace of

resistance in the act of playing this music. Today, I have some answers to that question, but

I have to admit they are not exactly what I was expecting. The conversations I had, the

experiences I lived during those six weeks challenged the perspective I had when I started

this project giving me a new understanding on the Pacific, its vernacular music, and the

capacity of resistance that lies in it.

But how did I came to this point? What led me to write a thesis on marimba music

and resistance? It would not be right to say it was pure academic interest which led me

there. Rather, it was a sum of life events which have placed the vernacular music of the

Colombian south Pacific and the interest in resistance in a main position in my life. Music

and politics, music and resistance, music and the possibility of transformation are an

essential part of who I am.

I have seen sadness

I grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, surrounded by my father’s family, a big family of 10

siblings; all of them were at some point of their lives politically active in leftist movements.

With them politics were always a central topic of discussion My most vivid childhood

memories are associated with political events somehow related to me. When I was four

 
years old my uncle Arturo a member of the M-191 Guerrilla, died in the Justice of Palace

siege2; when I was eight Jaime Pardo Leal presidential candidate of the Patriotic Union

(UP), who was a good friend of my father was murdered. When I was nine Luis Carlos

Galán Liberal Party’s presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo candidate of the UP, and

Carlos Pizarro candidate of the M-193 were assassinated. I remember how much hope my

family had on those candidates and in the process of change that they represented and I

remember their profound sadness after every murder. At that time I was not able to

understand what those deaths meant, but I started to be more and more interested in the

Colombian social and political reality.

Some years later I decided to study political sciences because I thought it would

help me to help. In the public university where I studied the conflict seemed to be closer.

There were people form every social class and from every side of the country. There were

secret elements of the guerrillas seeking to recruit new members; consequently, there were

secret members of the paramilitary forces hunting for those idealist new guerrilla members.

There were professors fighting against the others for getting a higher position in the

academic hierarchy. I found in the University an absurd extension of the dysfunctional

Colombian system rather than a place where an alternative to that system could grow.

                                                                                                                         
1
19th of April Movement.
2
The 6th and 7th of November of 1985 the 35 members of the M-19 took over the Palace of Justice in Bogotá,
taking hostage the Supreme Court. The government refused to negotiate and the military forces carried out an
operation to retake the building. The operative lasted more than 27 hours. 95 people were killed and 12 were
disappeared.
3
The guerrilla group was demobilized after signing a peace agreement with the national government in 1990.

 
 At the end of those years I wrote my thesis about internal displaced persons (IDP) in

Bogotá, I was working on it for a whole year. I saw how displaced people struggled to be

recognized as victims of the armed conflict in order to receive the governmental aid that

they deserved, and I saw how they were completely ignored. There were so many in need

of food, housing and medical care. The closer to their situation I became the more

powerless and hopeless I felt. I thought that there was nothing that could be done, that there

was no way to help and finally I decided to escape from the overwhelming Colombian

reality. It could not be away for very long and I came back to keep on searching a way to

transform that reality.

Despite all the doubts I had in the National Commission of Reparation and

Reconciliation (CNRR), I began working for that organization4. For over three months I

read the most horrible stories of massacres and humiliation. There was clear evidence of the

complicity of the Colombian authorities with the perpetrators. Those months were a direct

encounter with human cruelty. Even though it was a disheartening experience it helped me

to realize that I did not want to be part of a process of reparation carried out by the same

government that allowed such atrocities to happen. Moreover, I thought that I did not want

to work for any process of reparation; I wanted to work for a process that allows people to

escape from being victimized, to avoid future massacres. I wanted to be part of a process of

resistance and hope.

                                                                                                                         
4
  The CNRR was created as result of the peace agreement signed between the paramilitary groups and the
government of Alvaro Uribe Vélez. The organization is in charged of the reparation of the victims of that
armed group. The CNRR has not a good reputation among academic and human rights observers in Colombia
because it was created by a government that is implied in judicial investigations that link senators, ministers
and the president itself with members of the paramilitary groups  

10

 
I still see hope
Though, I have seen the sad side of life I am a romantic writer. I have a romantic view of

life and it is my most evident characteristic as author. I see a world full of little acts of

solidarity, I see that relationships based on understanding and love can be built, I see people

resisting and thinking of alternatives to the selfish politics that rule the world. Those small

things happening here and there make me think that there is still space for transformation,

place to hope. My romanticism comes out of hope.

In September 2008, during the 5th European Social Forum In Malmö, Sweden, I was

lucky enough to attend a Michael Hardt´s lecture. He argued that humans beign neither

good or evil by nature are, they are transformable. Therefore, he thinks that revolution

should be a process in which humans start to transform themselves towards the good that is

inside them. Revolution should bring out those characteristics that enable humans to

cooperate between themselves, making it possible to live in society, in order to build a real

democracy. It is a revolution carried out by multiple individualities, which are more

interested in their own transformation than in defeating the opposite (Hardt, 2008).

Michael Hardt´s idea summarizes many of the insights, theories and reflections that

Peace Studies has given to me. And that it is one of my sources of my hope. I believe that

those small individual processes can transform bigger realities, I am not talking about

changing the whole system; I am talking about concrete oppressive realities.

If I look back to those realities that are overwhelming with cruelty, political

violence, the situation of the IDP, or that of the victims of the paramilitary groups then I

can see why I felt frustrated. However, now I can also see that even in those situations are

11

 
alternatives and there is hope. I remember one of the displaced people with whom I

worked, JECO5, he is musician who was persecuted by the paramilitaries because in his

songs he denounced the atrocities committed against him, to his community. The songs

were tremendously sad; nonetheless, he had a spark in him. He was always thinking of the

next place where he wanted to perform, he never gave up.

Working with the CNRR I read one case that shocked me in a particular way: an

afro-Colombian community of the pacific had to leave their lands after receiving serious

threats from the paramilitaries. The government relocated them in a stadium in Apartadó,

the closer city. They were living there for some months but the life away from their lands

and river had no sense for them. They decided to come back and stay in their territories,

they did it and then the paramilitaries killed some members of the community. The entire

town fled to the jungle because they did not want to go back to the city. They stayed there

hiding in the jungle for some more months before they were able to come back once again

to their abandoned lands. They came back, and after them the paramilitaries came back too.

They lived four years, fleeing and returning, fleeing and returning. Nowadays they are in

their lands, the paramilitary threat is still there; nevertheless, the resistance process of the

community was so strong that it called the attention of international and national

organizations which now are protecting them (Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz,

2005).

Looking for alternatives is not easy, resistance is not easy, and the cost of having

hope is very high. My romanticism could be explained by Marc Ellis words when he says
                                                                                                                         
5
His real name is Julio Esteban Casares Olmos, but he prefers to be called JECO.

12

 
that “fidelity is the struggle to love in a painful world” (Ellis, 1986: 74). I chose to believe

in love even if I know that the possibility of getting hurt is always there.

My sung and danced life

Though the political discussions have a very important place in my family, they are not

more important than the cantatas, the family meetings where we all sing. My father sings

with his powerful voice Mexican revolutionary songs. My aunt Marcela sings a beautiful

Chilean song. My uncle Mauricio sings Colombian bambucos6. Every member of the

family has his own hit that we sing again and again and we spend hours singing, laughing,

being together.

In my father’s and mother’s family there are several professional musicians. My

father should have been a professional musician as well. He is not but he is the most

talented guitar player and singer. My mother has a beautiful voice and for some years she

lived by singing in the subways in Berlin. My brother took this musical heritage and he is a

brilliant composer. I am not as talented as any one of them, even so, I sing for myself, and I

enjoy listening to music, feeling music and dancing. Music is for me an endless source of

pleasure.

Therefore, I am always chasing music and music is always chasing me back. At the

university at the same time that I attended politic classes I attended music classes. I needed

them both, they gave me a feeling of balance. I decided then, to write my thesis combining

both of these elements, music and politics. The outcome was “Musical production and

consumption in IDP in Bogotá: two case studies” In one of the cases my thesis partner and

                                                                                                                         
6
Traditional music from the Colombia Andean zone.

13

 
I, analyzed how the consumption of music for IDP changed from the place of origin to

Bogotá; in the other we showed the case of JECO a musician who composes songs talking

about his situation. As I asserted before the thesis work ended up by being a disheartening

experience and for some time I kept in my mind the words of a displaced peasant who told

me “From the moment I came to Bogotá I do not listen to music anymore, I am so sad that I

do not even have the will to whistle”.

In 2007 I worked for some months in a new music project, which produced the

opposite effects in me to those of the thesis: it was absolutely inspiring! A friend decided to

make a documentary about a movement of young Bogotan musicians who are recovering

traditional Colombian music and mixing it with elements of rock, hip-hop, funk, among

others. During the shooting of the documentary I had the opportunity to go to The

Twentieth Bullerengue Festival in Puerto Escondido a small village in the Caribbean Sea.

The bullerengue is a music from the Caribbean; it has not been popularized in the national

context therefore, it has remained as a cultural manifestation of afro-Colombian peasants. It

is performed by a lead singer who is always a woman; she is accompanied by a choir of

women and a group of drummers. For me it was absolutely astonishing to see that all the

lead singers are old women, of 70, 80, even 90 years old. In the frame of the festival they

are important personalities but in their daily lives they hardly have the money to eat. The

festival is not a big festival, in Colombia almost nobody knows about it, nevertheless, for

the inhabitants of that part of the country it means everything, it represents the opportunity

to share proudly their identities. It seemed to me that they were waiting the whole year to

have those three days of glory. For me, those days were an amazing experience, which

14

 
allowed me to see other side of Colombia, of its social and political reality and of its music

as well.

Through the peace studies lens

I watched the final edition of that documentary when I was finishing the first term of the

Peace studies. I saw within it things I had not seen when we were filming it. Perhaps I just

interpreted them in a completely new way. It was especially remarkable for me hearing

Emilsen Pacheco, a bullerengue drummer, saying “I don´t know how much money the

government gives to those people with whom it makes business, and to us? We who are

making peace, we are not taken into account” (Marmo, 2008)7. He understood before I did,

that peace can be performed. Playing bullerengue is their way of making peace. I had to

listen to lectures about the different concepts of peace, and then I began to think that there

was not just one peace but many peaces, and then, I had to attended a media activism

lecture in order to understand that peace was something that could be performed and that

there were many different ways in which it could be done.

Likewise, as part of the M.A. in peace studies I attended to a Media Activism

seminar8 which allowed me to think the concept of resistance in the field of culture and

peace. I found fascinating the ideas of Walter Benjamin about cultural production and its

potential for resistance (Benjamin, 1970). Similarly, that seminar encouraged me to think in

the possibility of resistance as a joyful act present in multiple little daily moments.

                                                                                                                         
7
Translated by the author.
8
Seminar given by Dr. Wofgang Sützl. M.A. Program for Peace, Development, Security and International
Conflict Transformation. 4.2.2008-15.2.2008.  

15

 
A project was born
Hence, when I had to decide what I should write for my M.A. thesis I did not have to look

very far for a topic, the words music and resistance were already dancing around me.

Thinking of what Emilsen Pacheco have said I realized I wanted to tackle a new project in

which I could show that resistance is one of those spaces from which hope can grow, that

peace is happening when a vernacular music is played.

Even if this idea came by working in the Colombian Caribbean, for this research I

thought it would be interesting to focus on the Colombian south Pacific for different

reasons. First, for many years the very old tradition of marimba music was ignored by the

national cultural elites. Second, the alienation that this part of the country has suffered

throughout Colombian history. Finally, its population formed, for the most part, by afro-

Colombian persons who influence both the music and the dynamics of exclusion,

domination and resistance in the Colombian Pacific.

In the following pages you will find the answers I got to those questions. Is the act

of playing marimba music an act of resistance? Is it a manifestation of peace? And then, are

the musicians from Guapí making peace by playing their vernacular music?

The marimba is usually played by two persons. The first is playing the bordón9,

which is a stable harmonic and rhythmic pattern. While, the other, is playing the revuelta a

pattern with a high level of improvisation constructed over the bordón. In this paper you
                                                                                                                         
9
The English translation of bordón would be burden, which according to the Oxford Online Music Dictionary
is “(1) A term for a refrain repeated after the verses (or at other points) of a song (…) (2) A drone. (3)The
lowest of three voices singing together.” Since non of the meanings is exactly the same as the one used in the
marimba music I will use throughout the text the Spanish word.

16

 
will find the same structure, the three first chapters are the bordón, In which I will present

the conceptual frame that underpins the rest part of this work, while the next three chapters

are the revuelta in which I compose a new theme over the conceptual soil I presented

before.

Thus, in the first bordón, I will analyze the concepts of peace and resistance,

starting by explaining the concept of the many and trans-rational peaces developed by

Wolfgang Dietrich, I will continue discussing the representations of peace from a

postmodern point of view, following Wolfgang Sützl and Francisco Muñoz theories.

Finally, I will trace the relation between peace and resistance.

In the second bordón, I will present an overview on the Colombian south Pacific

focusing on the way in which the national government has integrated, or not, this part of the

country. As the Pacific is a region with 90% of black population, I will show the role that

race have had as much in the domination processes as in the resistance movements.

Finally, I will take a look over academic works about the afrocolombian populations and

the concept of resistance related to them.

Afterwards, in the third bordón I will get into the music scope. First, I will start by

explaining the concept of vernacular music. Then, I will present basic musical notions

about the vernacular music of the south pacific coast. After that, I will discuss the role that

the marimba music has had along the Colombian history, focusing on three fundamental

moments: colony, consolidation of the state, and since the promulgation of the new political

constitution in 1991. In so doing, I will give an overview on the Petronio Álvarez Festival

of music from the pacific, which is by far the most important cultural policy targeting the

17

 
Colombian Pacific. Finally, taken into account the given context I will analyze the

possibilities of resistance that reside in the marimba music.

Subsequently, in the revueltas I will narrate and analyze the experiences I had

during the field research at the light of the theoretical framework I presented before. In the

Revuelta #1 I will present some preconceptions I had before travelling to Guapí, and how

they were challenged as I got involved in the life of the town. In so doing I will introduce

the reader to the social, and musical scene of Guapí and to the field research I carried out.

The Revuelta #2, I will present extracts from the interviews I conducted with the

marimberos and cantaoras from Guapí where they talk about their lives and their relation

to the vernacular music. I will present those interviews in three principal groups, the Old

marimberos, the cantaoras, and the new generation involved in the marimba music. I will

analyze such interviews trying to give an answer to my guiding questions.

In the next chapter, Revuelta #3, I will narrate and analyze the most relevant

experiences I had during the Petronio Álvarez Festival of music from the Pacific, and in the

II Seminar of Research on the Traditional Music from the Colombian Pacific which was

held at the same time than the festival.

Finally, in the last part of this work I will present the conclusions to which I came

out after a very long intellectual and physical travel.

I can not highlight enough that this thesis is not about abstract theories, this thesis is

about human practices, human lives, and therefore, this project has been possible thanks the

generosity of many people who shared their lives with me.  

18

 
 1. Bordón # 1

Peace in Resistance
The main intellectual insight I received from the peaces studies, is the concept of the many

peaces. This concept has allowed me to go beyond the common concept of peace as the

absence of violence, to think of peace as a real fact that has many different manifestations

around the world. From such an understanding of peace I will start to identify different acts

of the real life as way to perform peace. Resistance can be then a way to perform peace.

This chapter is a journey through the theoretical route I have walked, and through the

guiding concepts of this project.

1.1 Beyond peace are many peaces

Wolfgang Dietrich proposes a way of categorizating the main understandings of peace that

have taken place in different moments in history and in many places in world. He describes

five categories of peace, the energetic, the moral, the rational, the postmodern and finally,

the transrational peace. It is important to notice that such a system of categorization is not

necessarily a chronological classification; it is rather a classification according to different

understating of the universe (Dietrich, 2006).

Dietrich conceptualizes energetic peace as the state where there is harmony between

the different beings, and with Mother Nature. Human beings, trees, rivers, animals are just

a part of one whole. Humans, then, have to take care for the balance of things on earth,

treating every part of the whole respectfully. Every life matters, therefore, fertility,

represented by Mother Nature, is a main principle of the energetic peace.

This understanding of peace was predominant in pre-colonial African and American

communities, as well as in European magic societies. Nonetheless, nowadays, this

19

 
understanding of peace can be found in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and in hundreds of

indigenous communities in Africa and America which were able to keep their own beliefs

despite colonization.

With the emergence of Christianity the energetic understanding of peace was

replaced by a moral understanding of it. The Universe as a whole was left behind, men

were separated from God. He10 is now somewhere out there, and men will reach him in the

afterlife, as long as they have lived a life according to his rules communicated to them by

God’s intermediaries. Within this frame, peace will be experienced by humans when they

listen to the one truth of God. However, the peace humans can experience in life is neither

eternal nor perfect, that kind of peace exist just in heaven. As Dietrich explains:

Humans, in the words of Augustine, can no longer be natural and spiritual members

of the house of god, but they are on a moral road towards God. The road of a

morally correct person towards God leds via justice, which manifest itself in the

church as norm-given institution. So the social fit (obedience) becomes a

peacemaking imperative for the individual. And Augustine derives from the

unavoidability of imperfection in temporary peace and justice on earth a reduced

right to just war for peace (bellum iustrum) if one of the conflicting parties

obviously is at fault. (Dietrich, 2006: 6)

Hence, peace becomes exclusive; it is just for those who believe in that one truth.

Peace and justice exist in the land of God, all those who are out of it are not pacific, are not
                                                                                                                         
10
While in the energetic understanding of peace the divine was represented by female principles, in the moral
peace God is a man and female features begin to have sinfulness connotations. It is on Eve the responsibility
for the original sin.

20

 
just. That is why war can be justified, because the ‘other’ might be a hazard for the true

peace.

With Modernity the concept of peace changes, it becomes an extension of reason,

there will be peace when humans act in a reasonably way. The nation state appears as the

higher manifestation of reason; it emerges with promises of peace and security, in

opposition to a wild nature in which savage men would live in a state of permanent war11.

The state then, regulates people’s relations with laws in order to guarantee peace.

Thenceforth, peace is understood as the absence of violence.

Under the modern view peace appears along with concepts as security and

development. According to Ivan Illich the rise of the nation state brings a new idea of peace

related to economics. Before that, in Western Europe, peace meant to protect people and

their means of subsistence.

This new kind of peace entailed the pursuit of a utopia. Popular peace had protected

precarious but real communities from total extinction. But the new peace was built

around an abstraction. The new peace was cut to the measure of homo economicus,

universal man, made by nature to live on the consumption of commodities produced

elsewhere by others. While the pax populi had protected vernacular autonomy, the

environment in which this could thrive, and the variety of patterns for its

reproduction, the new pax economica protected production. It ensured aggression

against popular culture, the commons, and women. (Illich, 2006:179)

                                                                                                                         
11
This is clear in Hobbes’s theory, but even if the state of nature is an idyllic one, as in Rousseau’s theory, the
outcome will be the same: humans need reasonable laws and a state to regulate the life in community.

21

 
 Then, modern peace is once again an exclusive peace only imaginable in the frame

of a capitalist system, where capitalist development can be brought everywhere and where

there is security for a the private property. As contradictory as it may sound, peace as the

capitalistic utopia serves as justification for war by claiming to have justice on it’s side. It

justifies the expansion of one culture over others in the name of reason. It is the voice of

reason of the ruling western world.

Continuing with Wolfgang’s Dietrich classification of the conceptions of peace we

find the postmodern concept. Postmodernity should be recognized not as a period in time,

but as a line of thought which has as its main pillar the critic on the modernity’s principles.

Postmodernity tell us that modernity has not brought peace as it promised, indeed by

denying the pluralities of reasons, by claiming to have the one truth, the modern way of

thinking created more violence. It is necessary to end the time of metaphysics, to overcome

the utopias that justify violence, and start seeing the plurality of life. This is the Call for

Many Peaces that Wolfgang Dietrich and Wolfgang Sützl claim for:

European peace research has indeed arrived at this dis-illusioning and therefore

postmodern stage. It has to acknowledge that war tends to “assimilate cultures to

each other, whereas peace is tat state in which each culture blooms in its own,

unique way.” The search fro the “one peace” is identified as a part of a larger

universalist mode of thinking which in its totally rest upon disrespectful and

therefore unpeaceful basic assumptions, so that the guidelines for action and the real

politics that derive from it do at least have the potential for continuous renewal of

violence (Dietrich & Sützl, 2006: 293)

22

 
 Peace ceases to be one to become many when we stop believing in the ultimate truth

of modernity and start to believe in the diversity of truths postmodernity offers. “Unlike

modern thinking, postmodern thinking, will never attempt to dissolve plurality; it will

instead demand respect for and coexistence with difference” (Dietrich & Sützl, 2006:284).

Peace and difference belong to each other. There can be peace only in the plural.

Dietrich continues this conceptualization arguing that even though the postmodern

critic on the modern understanding of peace is a big contribution to peace research, it fails

by giving a concept based on the same reasonable means, leaving aside a great part of what

peace is, that which cannot be understood only by the western reason.

Going back to Nietzsche’s argument in The Birth of Tragedy, and to the development

of trans-personal psychology, Dietrich suggests that the concept of the individual, and of

reason should be renewed in order to reveal a more comprehensive concept of peace.

In ancient Greece Apollo and Dionysius were the Gods of arts, Apollo represented

the formal applied arts: the form, while Dionysius was the god of music, of energy.

Nietzsche argues that this two domains originally conceived as complementary became

opposites. The Apollonian principle became a sign of light and good, whereas the

Dionysian was linked with the evil. This misunderstanding of the Apollonian and

Dionysian concepts was brought about and reinforced by the columns of western thought:

Socrates, Plato, Christianity and Enlightenment. All of them helped to suppress the

energetic Dionysian principle for centuries (Nietzsche, 1980).

Thus, Dietrich encourages us to be aware of our formal and energetic nature; that is

to recognize ourselves as spiritual and rational beings. The concept of the rational self
23

 
revaluated by the trans-personal psychology, should take us to a wider conception of the

individual, of the relationships they build and of the world in which they live. Different

states of consciousness and different realities are part of the world. The call is now for

Trans-rational peaces (Dietrich, 2006).

[A] trans-rational approach inevitably has to acknowledge the spiritual character of

human kind and has to fashion adequate tools to handle this aspect with the

achievements of rational thinking and application of further human virtues, some of

them forgotten, others suppressed in the name of rationality (Dietrich, 2006:18).

Hence, to talk about peace is to talk about peaces, about differences, diverse ways of live

and world’s views. It is to abandon metaphysics and rely upon the humanness of humans,

in their reason and spirit.

1.2 Peace is not Passivity

Now we know that there are many peaces but where are they? What are those peaces

exactly? How can we picture them?

From a postmodern view, Francisco Muñoz develops the concept of the imperfect

peace, he does not talk about many peaces, although he recognizes the existence of

different peaces. The imperfect peace, means, a peace that is always under construction, it

is not an end, it is a process. He recognizes conflict as essential to humanity and deprives it

from negative connotations by asserting that conflict is unavoidable in a pluralistic society.

However, the ways in which humans react to situations of conflict can be negative or

positive. As humans can make a war out of conflict, they can also learn from the other’s

perspective and move on in a non-violent way and, on Muñoz’s perspective, most of the

24

 
time, conflict enables human beings to understand each other and find new ways of living

in community. Conflict becomes a creative energy (Muñoz, 2006).

As conflict is a substantial piece of humanity so is peace. There are thousands of

examples in which humans learn to live peacefully in difference:

We shall begin by recognizing peace as a constitutive element of social realities. Its

origins can be associated to the very origins of humanity, and its history can be

associated to humanity’s history. Indeed, socialization, learning, collectivization,

the act of sharing, association, cooperation, altruism, etc. are all factors that form

part of the origin of our species. Such qualities are determinants in the rise and

success of hominidae and, subsequently, of present day humans (homo sapiens

sapiens). (Muñoz, 2006: 244)

Therefore, when people build channels of communication, of cooperation in order to live

together, when they to accept difference and learn from it, they are constructing processes

of peace, they are making peace, they are experiencing peace.

Another different yet complementary work on the representation of peace is made

by Wolfgang Sützl who reconsidering Nietzsche’s nihilism and Vattimo’s concept of the

weak thought carries out an analysis on the aesthetic of peace. He considers that once we

overcome peace as a metaphysical concept it has to be seen as something that happens

instead of something that is. Using Sützl’s words:

The absence of violence is not in the news, and peace "is" or “ it is not ” (and then it

is violence what happens and what dominates historiography), but peace never

25

 
 happens. We could describe the common conception of peace this way. (…) Peace

is usually understood as something beyond events, like the end of an activity in the

sense of the telos, or as divine blessing that finishes with human suffering. In both

conceptions peace appears as a state of rest, of calmness, of stagnation, as that

distant place where things do not happen, because they already happened. This state

is impossible to represent.12 (Sützl, 2001)

From a metaphysical perspective peace is a substance, a supreme goal in the name

of which men can justify any kind of action. This interpretation comes from the need of

certainty; modern thinking is the answer to the fear of insecurities. The longing for security,

says Sützl using Vattimo’s concepts, produces, a reduction of diversity, a reduction to the

same. In so doing, war, as a reaction to insecurity, is nothing else but the violent reduction

of the other to the same. Therefore, when peace is related to security it becomes a violent

concept. Peace thought from a postmodern point of view “cannot be thought as security,

rather as the ability of live peacefully with insecurity, so to say without having to fight

against any insecurity (Sützl, 2001)13”

                                                                                                                         
12
  La ausencia de la violencia no es noticia, y la paz “es” o “no es” (y entonces es la violencia que pasa y que
domina la historiografía), pero la paz como tal no pasa nunca. Así por lo menos podríamos resumir la
concepción corriente de lo que es la paz (…) La paz se suele comprender como más allá de los
acontecimientos, ya sea como fin de la actividad en el sentido del telos, o como bendición divina que acaba
con el sufrimiento humano. En ambas concepciones la paz aparece como un estado de descanso, de
tranquilidad, de inactividad, como aquel lugar distante donde las cosas ya no pasan, porque han pasado. Este
estado es imposible de representar.  
13
No puede ser pensada como seguridad, sino más bien como la habilidad de vivir con la inseguridad
pacíficamente, es decir, sin tener que luchar contra toda inseguridad

26

 
 Continuing with Sützl’s argument on the aesthetics of peace, he asserts that the

aesthetics in postmodernity are reflected in arts, having renounced the common and safe

places, to go into the field of wonder, and provocation. There is where the representations

of peace should grow, away from certainties; the aesthetic of the pacific should be amusing

and playful. Far away are the representations of peace as something serious, holly or

utopian (Sützl, 2006). Peace is action, something that happens on earth challenging

conventionalisms, resisting the narrow path of modernity with a joyful spirit

1.3 Resistance in diversity

Within this frame I understand resistance as a way of performing peace. It is a call for

diversity, a call to celebrate the plurality of life and at the same time it is a call for us to

accept our own peace. Resistance is a way of performing the plurality of peaces. As

Dietrich and Sützl assert:

The world therefore needs more than one peace for concrete societies and

communities to be able to organize themselves. The peaces do not become mutually

compatible the moment everybody’s understands one another, but when all live in

their own peace, that is, treat others like the members of their own kin, and so respect

them even if they do not understand them. (Dietrich & Sützl, 1997: 15-16)

Michael Foucault comes to a similar conclusion in his article The Subject and Power.

Foucault explains that his main concern is neither power nor resistance but the

objectification of subjects which occurs through rationalized powers in the shape of

domination techniques. Therefore, power became essential in his theory and the larger part

of his work is dedicated to the analysis of those techniques. However in this particular
27

 
article, he proposes a methodology to study the way in which power is executed. He

suggests focusing on the resistances to those powers and in so doing, he conceptualizes the

resistances that are taking place in the world. He points out that:

They are struggles which question the status of the individual: on the one hand, they

assert the right to be different, and they underline everything which makes

individuals truly individual. On the other hand, they attack everything which

separates the individual, breaks his links with others, splits up community life,

forces the individual back on him- self, and ties him to his own identity in a

constraining way (…) Finally, all these present struggles revolve around the

question: Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and

ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal

of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is (Foucault,

1982: 781).

Domination techniques, according to Foucault go straight to individuals as a

disciplinary power which attempts to control them through homogenization. Resistance is

then a struggle against the homogenization that the rationalized powers of modernity seek

to acquire14.

Jocelyn Hollander and Rachel Einwohner wrote a comprehensive analysis on the

concept of resistance. They begin by explaining that although they have read several

                                                                                                                         
14
Foucault’s theory on power and resistance is weight more complex than this. The quotation I inserted
illustrates the dimension of resistance I am interested in. However, it is important to mention that power is not
a negative principle, it is rather an energetic principle inherent to life. Resistance therefore does not attempt to
overthrown power as such but concrete relations of domination.

28

 
articles and books where the main topic was resistance it was not easy to find

conceptualization of it. Therefore, they establish some similarities in the way the word

resistance is used by different authors, and set up some parameters according to which it is

possible to define what can or cannot be categorized as resistance.

According to both authors one can know when an action is resistance or not by (1)

The intention, is it intended to be resistance or not? (2) The recognition. Is it recognized as

resistance by the target? (3) Is it recognized as resistance by an observer? Based on these

parameters they establish seven categories of resistance: (1) Overt resistance which is

intended to be resistance and is recognized by both target and observer as such. (2) Covert

resistance which is intended to be is recognized by an observer but not by the target. (3)

Unwitting resistance, which is not intended to be resistance but the target and the observed

recognize it as such. (4) Target defined resistance, it is just recognized by the target and it

has not the intention to be a resistance action. (5) Externally defined resistance, it does not

havethe intention to be resistance, the target does not recognize it as such but and external

observer does. (6) Attempted resistance, it is intended to be resistance but it is recognized

neither by the target nor by the observer. And finally, (7) Not resistance, it is not intended

and not recognized by anyone (Hollander & Einwohner, 2004).

After this classification, the concept is still very broad, what is not resistance is very

obvious, but beyond that, depending on the perspective, resistant actor, target or observer

everything could be an act of resistance. Nevertheless, I do believe it is a useful tool to

conceptualize different acts of resistance by focusing on the recognition and the intention of

the action. They point out, it is especially problematic to classify as resistance the acts of

29

 
“everyday resistance”, because, the intention of being resistance is not always evident,

likewise, these acts are not always recognized by the target, and therefore they become

resistance just when an external observer label them as such.

Hollander and Einwohner discuss the concept of everyday resistance from the work

of James Scott who understands it as “ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups.”

(Scott, 1985 quoted by Hollander & Einwohner, 1994:539). Scott highlights the role of

what he calls infrapolitics which is the political life of the powerless groups that is exerted

in spaces that are not usually recognized as political, and from where disguised and subtle

ways of resistance steam. Taking into account that the political rights are so limited in

democracies Scott asserts that the infrapolitics are indeed much more influential and

powerful than the big acts of resistance. (Scott, 2000:235).

Resistance in the Infrapolitics has the shape of ‘hidden transcripts’, which are the

communicative practices through which the subordinated groups manifest their

disagreement. Whisperings, gossips, popular tales, songs, gestures, jokes and theater can be

resistance nests. Therefore, resistance can be seen in the construction of popular culture, it

is a social activity, not a mere abstraction. Resistance exists, as culture does, for as long as

it is performed.

Scott knows that this kind of resistance is hardly recognized as such, or in the best

of the cases is undervalued by discourses that see those cultural practices as a source of

escape from oppressive realities rather than as real threats to domination, often being

accused of hindering larger revolts from happening. Scott answers to such interpretation by

arguing that the hidden transcripts, actually, make possible greater oppositions, since they

30

 
create a culture of resistance which has the innocence veil of popular cultures, therefore it is

usually imperceptible as much to the powerful groups as to the external observers.

Ulrich Oslender borrows this concept of resistance presented by Scott in order to

analyze the role of oral tradition in communities of the Colombian south Pacific coast.

Oslender considers such oral traditions as a hidden transcript by considering it a hidden

transcript. I will make reference to this analysis on the third chapter where I will discuss the

possibilities of resistance that lie on the marimba music.

Coming back to the work of Hollander and Einwohner, I would like to discuss the

other categories they propose which might be important for my own work. These authors

discovered that sometimes resistance could be catalogued by the goal it has. In so doing,

they talk about cultural resistance which “in minority communities attempts to preserve the

minority culture against assimilation to the host culture” (Hollander & Einwohner, 2004:

536).They also notice the difference that some authors build between political resistance

and identity-based resistance. At first sight identity based resistance might appear very

useful in order to analyze the case of resistance in the afrocolombian community of Guapí,

however, from my point of view is not necessary to differentiate between political and

identity resistance because usually identity- based resistances have political goals. But even

more essential than this is that a social movement created on the idea of a natural sameness

is potentially violent. By resorting to characteristics that every individual belonging to that

movement must have, it automatically excludes the others that do not have such features,

then identity based resistance might become a justification for violence. Peter Wade

explains this idea for the case of the afrocolombian communities:

31

 
 There are, of course, real dangers in attempting to construct a new category of

“black”, in emphasizing identification rather than difference, in perhaps implying

that blacks all have the same interest or even that they are all in some sense “the

same”. The danger is not automatic one, however. The crucial point is not to ground

that identification in specious natural categories but to justify it in terms of a

contingent identification of political interests; this can exist alongside a

deconstruction of the apparent naturalness of racial categories and a challenge to the

standard meanings attached to blackness (Wade, 1997: 350).

I will discuss this particular case in more detail in the next chapter, however, I

would like to emphasize that identity-based resistance has the risk to become a resistance

calling for sameness instead of difference, which is exactly the opposite conception of

resistance which I am trying to argue..

As I have said throughout these pages, resistance is a call for diversity; it is a way of

performing peace. Resistance is an opposition to totalitarian powers those that homogenize

denying the plurality of life. Regardless of its intent, resistance visible or hidden is a social

action whose aim is the recognition of the plurality of the world.

32

 
 2. Bordón #2

The Pacific Coast between Exclusion domination and resistance

The Pacific Colombian Coast is the area between the western slope of the Andes15 and the

Pacific Ocean, and from north to south, between Panama and Ecuador. There are

approximately 1400 kilometers covered by dense rainforest, and is of the richest places in

the world in terms of biodiversity. Over the years this region has been treated, by the

Spanish conquerors and later on by the national government, as a supplier of natural

resources rather than as populated place willing to be fully integrated.

Although, it is a vast area, in which there are certainly several differences in the

historical dynamics of particular places and even if the analysis proposed for this work has

been focused on Guapí and Cali, I will strive to present a general overview as much on the

way in which the national government has handled a region where the 90% of the

inhabitants are Afrocolombian, as on the way this population have responded to the official

policies. Likewise, I will present the main arguments that have guided the discussions

concerning the relationship between the Afrocolombian communities from the Pacific coast

and resistance. In so doing, I will provide a framework of understanding and analysis to the

social, cultural and political particularities I encountered during the fieldwork in Guapí and

Cali.

                                                                                                                         
15
In Colombia the Andes breaks into three mountain ranges, the Western, the Central, and the Eastern.

33

 
 MAP #1

COLOMBIA PHYSICAL MAP

(Source: Original Image Geographical Institut Agustín Codazzi, places indicated by the author)

34

 
2.1 First Inhabitants
Over the first years of Spanish colonization the Pacific Colombian coast was vaguely

explored by the Spanish conquerors who, preferred to stay in the mountains of the Andean

zone rather than go to the unknown rainforests. However, the gold found in the rivers of the

Pacific area became a great incentive for the Spanish, who arrived at the beginning of the

sixteenth century. As they arrived the inhabitants of this region were three main indigenous

communities, the Embera, Waunana, and Cuna, who used to live along the rivers. There

were not such a thing as cities or villages; they emerged when the conquerors arrived

imposing their own way of administrative organization (Maya, 1993).

The indigenous peoples decided to confront the Spanish after their first few

encounters with them. However, they realized soon that the foreigners where stronger than

they were and decided to leave their lands going deeper into the jungle. With the continued

colonization the indigenous communities became divided, displaced, and their population

reduced. In 1542 the Spanish Slavery Law prohibited the enslavement of indigenous

people. As result, by the end of the sixteenth century the conquerors started to bring

African slaves in order to fill the lack of workers in the gold mines. The Slavery Law

prohibited bringing non-black slaves to America as well. (Maya, 1993, Lucena 2009).

According to Jaime Arocha, one of the most influential researchers on

Afrocolombian Affairs, “between 1580 and 1640, as many as 135,000 to 170,000 Africans

entered New Granada16 through Cartagena de Indias, which besides Veracruz was the only

                                                                                                                         
16
In colonial times, from 1500 to 1717 the land today known as Colombia was called Nueva Granada. From
1717 to 1819 it was called Viceroyalty of New Granada. Note added by the author

35

 
slave port allowed by the Spanish” (Arocha, 1998: 73-74). During the first two centuries of

this human trade, the Africans who were brought to Colombia stayed in the Caribbean

Coast, those who came between 1640 and 1850 were destined to work in the Pacific area in

gold mines. They were later on incorporated to agricultural, cattle raising and domestic

labours sectors as well.

The road to freedom for the African slaves was long and arduous, as the forced

labour was fundamental of the colonial economy. Since the first slaves were brought to

America, cases of Africans fleeing from their owners were known. This phenomenon was

called cimarronismo, as the fugitive salve was called cimarrón. The first Colombian case of

cimarronismo dates from 1525. (Lucena, 2009). By the seventeen century it became a huge

problem for the Spanish Royalty when the fleeing slaves started to found their own

independent villages, the palenques. In Colombia the most visible case of fleeing saves

founding their own villages is the one of Palenque de San Basilio. The village which

became called the ‘first free town of America’ was founded in the seventeenth century

along the Caribbean coast. Though the existence of palenques in the Pacific coast has not

been widely examined in academic works as Palenque de San Basilio has been, ‘free

towns’ were found in the Pacific too. In the seventeenth century there were 19 palenques in

Nueva Granada (Friedemann, 1995).

The Spanish reaction to cimarronismo and palenques was brutal. The laws impelled

authorities to cruelly punish the fugitive slaves that were caught, and to kill the leaders of

palenques foundations, as Manuel Lucena describes, “First, they would cut his right hand,

36

 
then he will be tortured, hanged, and finally, he will be cut into four pieces” (2009:119)17.

To a great extent by the end of the seventeenth century cimarronismo was already under

control. (Lucena, ibid)

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church worried by the rebellious spirit of the black

populations, negotiated with the political authorities to get a free working day for the

slaves, Sunday, so they could come to church. The effects of this decision went much

further than they thought; they opened a channel to freedom. The free working day was

used by some slaves to work in order to be able to save money and buy their freedom.

Manumission became a very popular mechanism to attain liberty, hence, when slavery was

abolished in 1852 many black people were already free (Maya, 1993).

To the contrary of what happened in North America with British colonization, the

colonization carried out by Spain in South America was not aimed to create a new home

across the ocean but to reap all the riches they could. America was a land full of endless

resource to be extracted. Therefore, the infrastructure the Spanish built was just to the level

necessary to bring the resources to the motherland. When the Spanish left, the most

accessible parts of the Pacific region remained a space divided into large extraction areas,

which were owned by few wealthy criollos18. The inner, less accessible and most heavily

forested parts of the region were where the settlements of recently freed black populations

could be found

                                                                                                                         
17
“Primero se le cortaría su mano derecha y después atenaceado vivo y ahorcado y hecho cuartos”.  
18
Criollos is the name given to the descendent from Spanish born in America.

37

 
2.2 Nation Building
Colombia attained independence from the Spanish Royalty in 1810. Since then the

consolidation of the nation has been a permanent struggle. The independence movement

lead by the elite class was heavily influenced by the enlightenment ideas, and the French

revolution. There was not doubt the new country had to be built over the reasonable

principles of the nation-state. Thus, the most urgent need in the construction of the new

state was to create a sense of unity in a diverse territory inhabited by indigenous, Spanish

and black populations (Hoffman & Agudelo, 2009).

Peter Wade argues that the unity issue was solved by creating the imaginary of a

mixed-blood, mestizo, land. However, in this unity the black element was denied. There

was an endeavor from the nationalist elites to promote the idea of a mestizo country, but

mestizo had a positive connotation in so far the white component was predominant (Wade,

1993). The country inherited from the colonial times a social order based on race, the

whiter the skin color the higher the social status was, as Nina Friedemann points out,

The mulatto as social category of the mestizaje19, at the same time that offered

advantages compared to being black, was also denigrating and offensive opposite to

the white being. Thus the instances of the mestizaje were determined by

pigmentation hierarchies and race so much in the stage of cast as in that of the social

classes20 (Friedemann, n.d.)

                                                                                                                         
19
Mestizaje is the word used to describe the process of race mixture between Spanish, black and indigenous
populations in America.
20
  El mulato como categoría social del mestizaje, a tiempo que ofreció ventajas frente al ser negro, fue
denigrante y ofensivo frente al ser blanco. De esta forma, las instancias del mestizaje fueron mediadas por
jerarquías de pigmentación y raza tanto en el escenario de las razas como luego en el de las clases sociales  
38

 
Therefore, the skin color determines the living standards of the Colombian persons.

The discrimination of black populations was underpinned by an official discourse in

which they were blamed for the backwardness of the nation. Laureano Gómez, a

Colombian president of the mid twentieth century, used to say openly that the country

could not move forward due to the indigenous and black heritage of the Colombian

population. According to him “The black is a plague. In countries where he has

disappeared, as in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, it has been possible to establish an

economic and political organization with strong and stable basis” (Gómez, 1928: 51-52).

Robert West, a U.S. American anthropologist, one of the first anthropologists who

studied the Colombian pacific coast, describes the economic situation of the pacific lands of

around 1950:

Yet despite the wealth extracted from the gold –and platinum- bearing gravels,

poverty has been the keynote of local economy for the last 300 years. Most of the

lowland people still eke out a miserable existence through mere subsistence

activities. Practically all of the Indians and most of the Negroes and mixed blood are

primitive farmers, fishermen and hunters, gaining just enough food to live by. (…)

The reasons for the economic backwardness of the lowland are many and complex

(…) A fundamental drawback is geographic isolation and lack of good

transportation facilities. Another, contrary to popular belief, is paucity of extensive

tracts of good agricultural land, still another involves the attitudes and cultural

heritage of the local inhabitants, who to date have felt little incentive to raise their

low living standard. (West, 1957:126)

39

 
 The picture made by West evidences not only a stigmatization of black population

as “primitive” people, but it also shows a perspective which denies the value of their

vernacular culture. My aim is not to criticize West´s work, which for the rest is a very

judicious work, but to call attention to a common point of view that was shared by the elite

classes in Colombia for a long time. The idea of the civilized white compared to the

primitive black has been the determinant by which the Colombian government has handled

the Pacific.

There is a discourse on national development based on racial conditions. It is in the

hands of white people, light skinned mixed blood people, to lead the growth of the nation.

As Wade asserts:

The dominant notion of national identity associates progress with whitening,

progress is also connected to territorial integration on through colonization and

migration. In this vision, as the nation becomes one territorially, it also becomes one

racially and culturally (Wade, 1993: 59)

This territorial integration has been a slow process, carried out by different

movements of colonization, starting form the Andean zone in the middle of the country and

expanding to north, west, south and east in different moments throughout history.

Nonetheless, this integration has not been uniform, that is to say, administrative integration

does not imply political integration, or economic integration. In most of the cases, the

frontier expansion has merely meant incorporation to a productive system. This partial

integration of the Pacific Coast began not long ago. Beginning around the mid-1980´s when

40

 
the national government began to project greater infrastructural plans in the

‘underdeveloped’ Pacific (Wade, 1998).

At the same time that this will of expansion arises a new challenging force comes to

scene, the legal recognition of Afrocolombian communities in a new Political Constitution.

The legal status and its implications created an effervescent field of dominations and

resistances in the Pacific coast.

2.3 A conditional recognition

The promulgation of a new political constitution came after a long process of peace

dialogues carried out by the national government and the guerilla groups M-19 and the

Movimiento Manuel Quintín Lame21. As a condition to sign the peace agreements the

guerrilla groups asked for the instauration of a political space of participation for the

minority groups (Arocha, 1993). Simultaneously, a student’s movement called La séptima

Papeleta22, led a big campaign calling for a new national constitution. The national

government had to yield to the social movement and a new constitution was proclaimed in

1991 with the participation of several, political and ethnic minority groups, none from the

Afrocolombian communities was present though.

The representatives to the National Assembly were in charge of writing the political

document. They were elected by national elections, but none of the black candidates

                                                                                                                         
21
This movement was formed by indigenous people from Cauca, a province in the southwest part of the
country
22
La séptima papeleta means the Seventh Vote. In 1990 there were elections for six public charges, for
Senate, House of Representatives, Departmental, Governing Assembly, Municipal Council and Mayors. The
student´s movement introduces the seventh vote with which the citizens could ask for a Constitutional
Reform.

41

 
obtained enough votes to be part of the National Constituent Assembly. The Indigenous

representatives then, were those who presented the demands of the black communities.

At that time indigenous communities had a legal status while the Afrocolombians

did not. An 1890 law gave indigenous populations a special status defining them as “minors

to be protected and ratified separate resguardos (reserves) and local cabildos (councils) for

them” (Wade, 1998:317). Sometimes this differentiated condition created conflicts

between indigenous and black communities. Despite the tensions, the development projects

planned for their lands in the pacific coast generated alliances between the two ethnic

groups23 which enabled them to have a strong position in the national assembly.

Consequently, the National Constitution of 1991 proclaimed that Colombia is a

multiethnic country, “organized in the form of a unitary republic, decentralized, with the

autonomy of its territorial units” (Colombian Political Constitution, 1991, Title I, article1).

Likewise, the transitory article 55 (AT55) commanded the promulgation within a two year

time frame of a law that should recognize the black populations as an ethnic group with

territorial rights. Furthermore, the AT55 compelled the leaders of the Afrocolombian

communities to participate in a commission in charge of the elaboration of such law.

The commission worked for 9 months, and in June 1993 the president ratified the

Law 70: In Recognition of the Right of Black Colombians to Collectively Own and Occupy

their Ancestral Lands. The first paragraph of the Law establishes the main objectives it has:

                                                                                                                         
23
The relations between Afrocolombian and indigenous communities along the Colombian territory have
different manifestations. There are cases of cooperation among them, there are other friendly relations, but
there are many others guided by mistrust.

42

 
 To recognize the right of the Black Communities that have been living on barren

lands in rural areas along the rivers of the Pacific Basin, in accordance with their

traditional production practices, to their collective property as specified and

instructed in the articles that follow. Similarly, the purpose of the Law is to

establish mechanisms for protecting the cultural identity and rights of the Black

Communities of Colombia as an ethnic group and to foster their economic and

social development, in order to guarantee that these communities have real equal

opportunities before the rest of the Colombian society. (Law 70, 1993)

Although, Law 70 served as tool of empowerment for the afro-Colombian

communities of the Pacific Coast24, it did not represented an improvement in social or

economic conditions for the inhabitants of this region, indeed, just some years after the

promulgation of the law, the situation got worst as armed groups came bringing military

presence to a region where the government never assumed its role, and adding a violence

component to the already convoluted context of poverty and exclusion (Escobar, 2005).

Throughout the 1990’s different interest began to converge in the region:

biodiversity control, infrastructural projects, oil palm plantations, narcotraffic, and

territorial control disputed by the paramilitary forces, the guerrillas, and the national army,

all this factors, deeply intertwined, started to drive the social dynamics of the Pacific coast.

(Escobar, 1999). There was an obvious contradiction between all this interests and the

communities’ reclamation over lands as result of the constitutional reforms.

                                                                                                                         
24
During the time between the promulgation of the AT55 and the proclamation of Law 70 the black
movement was reinforced by activist and academics who carried out a big campaign creating awareness about
balck polpulation’s rights. In this course emerged the Black Communities Process (PCN), a net formed by
120 organization. It has led the black movement since then.

43

 
 Ulrich Oslender, understands the armed conflict that is taking place in the Pacific as

a geo-economic war, that is to say, war is used as a tool for pursuing economic interests

(2004:59) Following the same idea, Oscar Almario asserts that this economic model

promoted socio-cultural forms never practiced before in the region, but that seem attractive

to the population due to the impoverishment conditions they face. Therefore, illicit farming

and strengthening of armed groups happen at the same time that agriculture productive

complexes and the control of the routes of the international traffic of illicit drugscover the

Pacific with territory disputes. (Oslender, 2002: 668)

Arturo Escobar points out that there is an indissoluble connection between

modernity and territorial expansion. In this sense the modern understanding of development

is the cause for the massive displacements of people, because “both the modernity and

development are spatial and cultural projects that demand the incessant conquest of

territories and peoples”25 (Escobar, 2005:48). For the Pacific coast development has

represented the displacement of thousand peoples and the assassination of many others.

According to the National Department of Statistics, 25% of the afro-Colombian total

population is IDP (2007), while according to some social researchers it is the 30 %

(Almario, 2002 quoting Hoffman & Pardo, 2002).

Escobar analyses these displacements and discovers that: (1) the biggest movements

occur in places where big development projects are meant to be implemented, like oil palm

plantation promoted by inland business men. (2) Displacement is used as a terror weapon in

order to discourage social movements. (3) This forced migrations have the aim to remove
                                                                                                                         
25
Tanto la modernidad como el desarrollo son proyectos espaciales y culturales que exigen la conquista
incesante de territorios y pueblos,

44

 
the notion of ethnic groups, unifying territory and culture (Escobar, 2005). Displacement as

a manifestation of modernity tends to eliminates difference.

Meanwhile the adjudications of collective territories turned out to be a long

bureaucratic process which in many cases was manipulated by private interests26. After 16

years 19 collective territories have been created under Law 70; however, many of them are

a target for the armed groups. This situation has prompted the active mobilization of

Afrocolombian social movements.

Though the law gave black inhabitants of the Pacific Coast the legal instruments to

claim their rights making Afrocolombian movements stronger, the black identity became

attached to the concept of it given in the law 70, that is to say, in order to be able to exert

the right to a collective territory black population should adjust to the characteristics

contemplated by the Law: they must have a cultural unity, a single past and they should be

a community tied to the Pacific region. In so doing, all the black population from the

Atlantic coast, for instance, was excluded from the afro movement (Wade, 1998).27

Over the last years, the effects of the Law 70 in Afrocolombian identity have been

widely discussed by academics, since along with the promulgation of law and the

empowerment of the Afrocolombian movement a new interest for studying such processes

arose.
                                                                                                                         
26
Carlos Efrén Agudelo shows how in the south pacific coast business men promoted the community
mobilization needed to apply for the creation of a collective territory, so they could later on exploit the lands
given to the community.(Agudelo, Carlos E., 2004).
27
Jaime Arocha carries out a fascinating research on the Culimochos, a mixed-blood community that for
centuries have lived in the Pacific Coast, sharing some cultural practices with the Afrocolombian
communities of the same region. Arocha explains how the Culimochos decided to designed themselves as an
Afrocolombian community in order to have the benefits of the Law 70. (Arocha, 2002)  

45

 
 MAP #2

PERCENT PARTICIPATION OF AFROCOLOMBIAN PEOPLE PER STATE

                                           (Source: DANE, 2005)  

2.4 Natural and Contingent Resistance

When I got the first ideas to do this thesis I thought of the black communities as a

homogenous group with a unique history and culture. Likewise, I assumed resistance as a
46

 
given condition to this group. As I started to research on the topic the imaginary of the

black populations I had was challenged by the theories of numerous authors. In the

following pages I would like to present some of the main arguments that have guide the

discussions on Afrocolombian communities and their relation to resistance.

There are two main lines of thought in the Afrocolombian studies, on the one hand

there is the line led by Jaime Arocha and Nina Friedemann, who affirm that there is a

common African legacy to all the black communities in Colombia and characterize them as

resistant peoples. On the other hand there are those who criticize the first perspective by

considering it determinist. From the critical point of view the identity is a construction, and

therefore, the resistance element is part of that construction. There are quite a few

researchers working on this side, however, I will take into account the ideas of Peter Wade,

Eduardo Restrepo and Odile Hoffman. Afterwards, making a shift in the discussion of

identity and resistance, I will expose the ideas of Arturo Escobar and Ulrich Oslender on

resistance and space.

2.4.1 Historical subjects, permanent resistances

Jaime Arocha and Nina S. de Friedemann have been the most influential academics in the

study of Afrocolombian populations. Starting from the concept of the invisibility of blacks

in Colombian history, referring to the process of the construction of the nation in which the

black element has not been taken into account, they aim to bring into light this part of the

country. These two authors are, indeed, one of the first to use the word Afrocolombian

which establish in a clear way the African origins of black populations. In this act of

47

 
recovering Afrocolombian history, they came up with the concept huellas de africanía28.

They assert that even if the people brought from Africa were from different places of the

continent, they had somewhere in the subconscious common African elements that came

out in America, when they built their culture in the new territory. According to

Friedemann, “the traces become perceptible in social organization, in the music, in the

piety, in the speech (…) as result of a process of resistance and creation” (Friedemann,

1997:175).29

Resistance is then, essential to the Afrocolombian identity, because it emerged in

processes of resistance against slavery. Subsequently, asserts Friedemann in order to go to

the roots of Afrocolombian history,

“It must be taken into account the cultural resistance and the process of ethnic

reinstatement of the Africans from their arrival to America: the uprisings that

originated the palenques (…) in different parts of the continent. That implied the

concretion of an African solidarity expressed actively or passively” (Friedemann,

n.d.)30.

                                                                                                                         
28
The translation would be African traces, however, it is a little bit problematic because Jaime Arocha
differentiates between africanía and africanindad. Africanidad is something that takes place just in Africa,
while africanía happens in America and it is according to him a reconstruction of memory based on the
memories the slaves bring from Africa. I could not find the right way to translate these different concepts with
different English words so, for the rest of the text I will use the Spanish words.
29
Las huellas se hacen perceptibles en la organización social, en la música, en la religiosidad, en el habla (…)
como resultado de procesos de resistencia y creación.
30
[D]ebe tener en cuenta la resistencia cultural y el proceso de reintegración étnica de los africanos desde su
llegada a América: las sublevaciones que dieron origen a los palenques (…) en distintos lugares del
continente. Que implicaron la concreción de una solidaridad africana expresada activa y pasivamente

48

 
 Within the text of Law 70 one can identify certain aspects of this perspective on

black populations, the most evident, the notion of Afrocolombian communities as a group

of families “who possesses its own culture, shares a common history and has its own

traditions and customs within a rural-urban setting and which reveals and preserves a

consciousness of identity that distinguishes it from other ethnic groups” (Law 70, 1993).

This view on the Afrocolombian identity was recovered by the NGOs which underpin their

discourse in the African heritage, the common culture and resistance as a given condition.

2.4.2 Dynamic subjects, dynamic resistances

Odile Hoffman and Stefan Khittel have objections to this viewpoint, Hoffman argues that

the black identity that is shown as authentic and ancestral by the NGO’s is built over an

academic construction. However, according to her, this process can be understood in a

context where a struggle for recognition is taken place

This re-appropriation of memory, as condition for recognition, turns rapidly into

point of struggle against domination and discrimination (…)To take possession of

the memory and oblivion is one of the maximum worries of the classes, groups and

individuals who have dominated and dominate the historical societies (or aspire to

do it). For many black Colombian intellectuals, to recover the memory – and then,

to select the forgotten zones - and to write it, is explicitly an act inscribed in the

frame of a conquest of power (Hoffman, 2000)31

                                                                                                                         
31
Esta reapropiación de la memoria, condición del reconocimiento, se convierte rápidamente en punto de
lucha contra la dominación y la discriminación. Apoderarse de la memoria y del olvido es una de las máximas
preocupaciones de las clases, de los grupos, de los individuos que han dominado y dominan las sociedades
históricas [OH: o aspiran a hacerlo]”. Para muchos intelectuales negros colombianos, recuperar la memoria -y
seleccionar así las zonas dejadas en olvido- y ponerla por escrito se inscribe explícitamente en el marco de
una conquista de poder.  
49

 
 Kitthel argues that in the studies of the Afrocolombian history there is a gap of 150

years, from the slavery abolition in 1852 to the implementation of the Law 70.

Subsequently the current construction of the black identity is giving preponderance to

elements essential for the pre-colonial, and colonial times, but not to the current context.

(Khittel, 2001:75)

Eduardo Restrepo agrees with Hoffman and Khittel, he asserts that the imaginary of

the Afrocolombian people as a cohesive ethnic community is a recent creation caused by a

process of mediation, interaction and dialogues between different actors and interest of the

government, private sector and the Afrocolombian movements32 (Restrepo, 2001) using his

own words:

[T]he politics of identity do not mean the pre-existence of a unified and omnipresent

political subject. On the contrary, the political subject (whoever it is: "woman",

"proletariat", " black community") is a result of articulations that are not guaranteed

by any biological essence, by a certain social position or by a historical transcendent

experience 33 (Restrepo, 2004:239-240).

Therefore, according to Restrepo resistance must be considered not as a given

condition of a transcendental political subject but as a condition related to concrete

                                                                                                                         
32
In one of his articles, Restrepo explains how after the promulgation of the AT55 activist and academics
went from village to village in the Pacific coast in order to raise awareness about the discrimination against
black people and the opportunities the new Constitution offered for changing this situation. He narrates that
for many people that was the first time they heard about slavery  (Restrepo, 2001)  
33
[L]as políticas de la identidad no significan la pre-existencia de un unificado y omnipresente sujeto político.
Al contrario, el sujeto político (cualquiera que sea este: "mujer", "proletariado", "comunidad negra") es
resultado de articulaciones que no están garantizadas por ninguna esencia biológica, por una locación social
determinada o por una experiencia histórica trascendente.

50

 
historical moments and spaces exerted by dynamic political subjects. In so doing the black

communities should imagine other ways to articulate their struggles that does not imply the

instrumentalization of their identity and a reduction of their natural diversity (Restrepo,

2004: 244).

As I discussed briefly in the previous chapter, Wade does not agree with the idea of

the classification of the Afrocolombian movement as a resistant ethnic group, rather he

focus on the political and economic needs around which a social movements gathers.

Therefore, he openly avoids a deterministic approach regarding the African element in the

black communities in America, because they narrow down the political possibilities of the

analysis. As he explains:

If I can reveal the construction of blackness as a properly political process, rather

than something determined by the geographical concentration of blacks in the

Pacific region (as in Law 70) or by the supposedly resistant nature of a reified

construct called black culture (as in cimarronismo), then there is the possibility of

destabilizing essentializations without loosing the political force of mobilizations.

People can find the motive force for their actions in their politics rather than in their

or other´s natures or in reified histories. Ideas about essences and ancestral history

are bound to be important in ethnic mobilizations and challenges to mobilizations,

but the significance attached to them may be lessened by an emphasis on the

objective at which people are aiming rather than the place from which they have

come. (Wade, 1998:326)

51

 
2.4.3 Spaces of resistance
Resistance is an important part of the works that Arturo Escobar and Ulrich Oslender carry

out in the Colombian Pacific. With the analysis they do, one can perceive element from the

two perspectives I discussed before. On one hand they do believe that the ethnic identities

are a construction, but on the other hand they accept as true some of the components of

such construction. Escobar, for instance, highlights in several articles the natural tendency

of black communities to preserve natural resources (Escobar, 1999 &2005)34. As much

Oslender as Escobar argue that this identities are part of the empowerment of organization

to claim for their rights.

However, they do not consider resistance as something inherent to black

communities, it is rather, an act attached to a place. They inscribe this understanding of

resistance in a context where capitalism is looking for more territories to expand upon.

According to Oslender, the plans projected on the Pacific by inland or foreigner enterprises

did not considered the needs of the inhabitants neither the cultural meaning of their lands,

therefore, says the author, it was an obvious consequence the uprising of local resistances

that stand for their right to be different and to manage their territories in a different way

(Oslender, 2002). The defense of their territory is a defense of their culture, as Oslender

asserts:

The social movements resist this homogenization of the Pacific as an abstract space

of goods, creating a differentiated space that they defend culturally and politically.

                                                                                                                         
34
Eduardo Restrepo asserts that black communities as nature protectors is and imaginary promoted by
NGO’s. What would be more accurate to say is that their economy models are much less destructive than
those brought from the inland (Restrepo 2001).

52

 
 The Colombian Pacific is then a place of geographies, economies, and changeable

politics, which reflects at the same time the global processes of restructuration of

capitalism as well as the resistances at the local level (…) To explore the concrete

expressions of these resistances and the constitutive impact that the space and place

have in them, we resort now to social interrelations that are operated in the region,

conceptualized in the concept of the local.35

Escobar uses the concept of place instead of the local. Place can be understood as

human relations and culture production associated to certain territory, therefore implies the

existence of difference, place is places, which acquire a meaning through human practices.

And in a world where processes of homogenization and deterritorialization drive policies,

the struggles begin in places. (Escobar, 2001) Neither Oslender nor Escobar idealized the

local as the ‘right’ option against globalization. They believe that within the local there are

conflicts for dominations as well, and places can benefit from the global too, like for the

case of the Afrocolombian movements the globalization of their struggle makes them more

visible. There must be some a sort of balance between both of them, argues Escobar

quoting Paul Virilio “I love the local when it enables you to see the global, and I love the

local when you can see it from the global” (Escobar, 2001:157).

                                                                                                                         
35
Los movimientos sociales resisten esta homogenización del Pacífico como un espacio abstracto de
mercaderías, creando un espacio diferencial que defienden cultural y políticamente. La ubicación del Pacífico
colombiano es entonces una de geografías, economías, y políticas cambiantes, reflejando al mismo tiempo los
procesos globales del re-estructuramiento del capitalismo así como las resistencias al nivel local (...) Para
explorar las expresiones concretas de estas resistencias y el impacto constitutivo que tienen en ellas el espacio
y lugar, recurrimos ahora a las interrelaciones sociales que se actúan en la región, conceptualizadas en el
concepto de localidad.

53

 
 In any case, I believe it is truly important to highlight for the development of my

work, the notion these two authors expose that the struggles of the Pacific coast entail a

cultural struggle and a claim for the recognition of difference. Because I do ask myself as

Escobar does:

“To what extend [cultural practices, and for the particular case, playing marimba

music] pose important, and perhaps original challenges to capitalism and Eurocentered

modernities? Moreover, once visible, what would be the conditions that would allow

place/based practices to create alternative structures that give them a chance to survive, let

alone grow and flourish? (Escobar, 2001:1999)

54

 
 3. Bordón #3

The marimba resounds among exclusion, violence and homogenization

 

In the studies of culture the role of the state cannot be ignored, or saying it in other
words, the culture of the societies seen from the local, regional or national scale has
unavoidable political aspects generated by the practices of the state. Nonetheless, in
a similar way, it is also true that the realities of the state, likewise in his local
concretions regional and nationals derive from the cultural constitutions in these
scales of the society. The state is so a cultural reality in constant construction in
reciprocal relation of mutual influences with society36 (Pardo & Alvarez, 2001:
230)

Along the vast area of the Colombian Pacific several kinds of music are played. In the

north, in the national department Chocó, the Spanish influence on the musical practices was

very strong, nowadays the most popular local music, is played by a chirimía37a band

formed by clarinets, flugelhorns, euphoniums, crash cymbals, and snare drums, all of them

instruments of the European music tradition. In the south part of the pacific coast, in the

departments Valle del Cauca, Cauca and Nariño, the Spanish music influences were not as

deep as in the north; as result the marimba is still the main instrument in the vernacular

music of this part of the country.

In this chapter I will, firstly, set up some clarifications around the concept of

vernacular music. Secondly, I will present the musical bases of the south pacific vernacular
                                                                                                                         
36
En los estudios de la cultura no se pueden pasar por alto el papel del estado, o dicho de otra forma, la
cultura de las sociedades ya sean vistas desde la escala local, regional o nacional, tiene ineludibles aspectos
políticos generados por las prácticas del estado pero de manera análoga, también es cierto que las realidades
del estado, así mismo en sus concreciones locales regionales y nacionales derivan de las constituciones
culturales en esas escalas de la sociedad. El estado es pues una realidad cultural en constante construcción en
relación recíproca de mutuas influencias con la sociedad
37
In the Andean part of Cauca, southern Colombian the chirimías are a band of flutes made of plastic tubes,
and drums. They are more related to indigenous populations, though in Guapí, there is the weird case of
Ancestros: Chirimía del Río Napi, a band composed by afrocolombian persons who perform this music.

55

 
music: the instruments that take part in these practices, and the social contexts to which the

vernacular music is related. Afterwards, I will analyze the role of the marimba music in the

creation of the nation state, and then in the new national politics of multiculturalism.

Subsequently, as part of these politics, I will analyze the role of the Festival of music from

the Pacific: Petronio Álvarez. Finally, taking into account all the insights brought

throughout the chapter I will introduce some ideas about music and resistance in the context

of the Colombian Pacific.

3.1 Labeling music

Along these pages I have been talking about vernacular music without defining what it is,

so I will attempt to do that here. I say attempt because there is not a generally agreed upon

notion of what it is. Vernacular, traditional, folk, local, popular are concepts used for

different authors to name music with more or less the same characteristics.

In the musical formation I had in college the music labeling we used was traditional

music, art music38 and popular music, (Grebe, 1976). Grebe sets up some parameters in

order to distinguish the different categories. She focuses on the ways of transmission, on

the author, whether it is known or unknown, the diffusion, its duration of time, the

geographical location, whether they have theory or not and the function that type of music

accomplishes.

                                                                                                                         
38
The concept in Spanish is música docta or culta

56

 
MUSIC TRANSMISSION AUTHOR DURATION DIFFUSION GEOGRAPHICAL THEORY FUNCTION

LOCATION

ART Written Known lasting Limited International Complex Aesthetic

POPULAR Written known ephemeral Massive International Simple Commercial

TRADITIONAL Oral Unknown lasting Limited Local Non Social

(Grebe, 1976:10)

Thus, traditional music is that related to a specific place and has a social function. It

does not have a theory and therefore, its transmission depends on the oral tradition.

Likewise, it does not have a known author, the diffusion is usually limited but it has a

lasting existence.

In English musicology studies the term for what I have been referring to as

traditional music more often is termed Folk. However, different authors consider some

characteristics more important than others to find the limits between the different

categories. For instance, Gregory Booth and Terry Lee Kuhn highlight the importance of

economical and transmission factors. They do take into account many of the elements

Grebe suggested but they include them as part of the economical or transmission systems.

They argue that both factors will determine a music culture (Booth & Lee Kuhn, 1990).

According to them, Folk music is that which emerge in a society where the

economic system is oriented towards survival activities, therefore, musicians are not

professional and then, it is not clear the distinction between musicians and listeners. The

transmission systems leads to a incidental learning process that takes place in the same

moment that the music is performed while observing and playing. Those features take place
57

 
in a context where music is part of concrete socio-cultural events. The lyrics will be then

related to those events, while music tends to have a repetitive structure, with long

improvisation parts. Using and Lee Kuhn’s words:

All music activity is carried out by non specialist and non professional members of

the social group. This result in the relatively or completely indistinct boundaries

between musicians and listeners: there is no audience per se. Transmission occurs

primarily through this communal participation in music activities that are normally

tied to specific sociocultural events or settings. (Booth & Lee Kuhn 1990:418)

For the art music to exist the economic system has to go beyond the survival stages

so, certain amount of money can support the professionalization of musicians for pure

aesthetic purposes. While, the transmission system allows that the complex theory is

transmitted and reveals elaborated musical structures, where virtuosity is a clear objective.

In the pop music the economic system depends on massive audiences, therefore pop needs

technology in order to reach such a large amount of listeners. Likewise, the content of

music, following merchandizing rules, has to be homogenized, with short an easy structures

(Booth &Lee Kuhn,1990:418).

However, the terms traditional and folk have been heavily questioned. The concept

folk, dates from nineteenth century, it comes from the word folklore which emerged as the

romantic opposition to the modernization and industrial progress of those times. Folklore

was then, a conservative movement (Ochoa, 2003). Therefore, as we talk about folk music,

we are talking in the language of modernity, and so do we when we talk about the

traditional, because the traditional exist as long as there is something modern to compare it

58

 
to. In the last decades some other concepts have emerged to name this music range. In the

eighties the concept world music came to embrace musical practices, traditional or popular

related to a certain culture -non-western-. Along with this concept came out the notion of
39
local music, which denotes the space specificity of musical practices in a context of

global culture homogenization (Ochoa, 2003).

The concept of vernacular is less widespread, than local, folk or traditional. It has

the same connotations described by Both and Lee Kuhn referring to folk music or those

Grebe gave to traditional music. Nonetheless, it has other implications which makes it more

precise, as Margaret Lantis asserts: “[It]does not seem to suggest traditional or primitive,

but rather "of one's house," of the place. This is the connotation that we want: the culture-

as-it-is-lived appropriate to well-defined places and situations.”(1960:203) Wolfgang

Dietrich would say that the vernacular music is that which is performed in the here and

now, “in a very specific place, by very specific group of people, and under very specific

circumstances40;” (Dietrich, n.d.:4) Likewise, he emphasizes that vernacular music is

related to communitarian ways of life rather than urban.

This is to what I am referring when I talk about the vernacular music. I do not like

to consider it as a fixed label; it is rather flexible, as it should be in order to understand the

multiplicity of specific circumstances, groups of people and places that exist in the world.

However I do agree with Green when he says that:

                                                                                                                         
39
Space created by human relations, and so, bounded to a culture.
40
“En un lugar muy específico, por un grupo muy específico de personas y en circunstancias muy
específicas”

59

 
 Faced with old and new sounds, pure or mixed, we thrash about for adequate

descriptive language: pop, folk, traditional, native, local, regional, indigenous,

vernacular. No particular locution keeps pace with music's flexibility. Our naming

compass shakes, rattles, rolls, spins, wobbles. Do we throw this uncertain

instrument overboard? Alter-nately, do we recognize that living music demands

warm hearts, clear minds, fluid tags, and magic compasses? (Green, 1993:44-45)

Thus, these categories are constantly challenged by real musical practices, and as I will

present in the following chapters, so was my experience as confronting the vernacular

music to the music played in Guapí and in Cali in the frame of the Festival of music from

the Pacific Petronio Álvarez.

3.2 The marimba

Robert West said in 1957 that the music and some musical instruments of the Pacific

lowlands were few of the African elements that the black population retained. (West,

1957:185) In the hybrid cultures resulting after the mixture of Spanish, Indigenous and

African cultures it is hard to discern which elements belong to each culture.

The music from the Pacific coast is not an exception to such phenomenon, even if

one can identify the marimba as main African part of it, the marimba music has elements of

indigenous and Spanish influence as well, maybe not as many as other the music from the

northern Pacific, or that of the Andean zone, but the mixture is there.

3.2.1 Into the music

In the music from the south pacific coast the voices have a predominant role, as some

contexts in which the music is played, as some genres require the use of a cappella chants.

The ethnomusicologist Egberto Bermúdez asserts that despite the common belief the

60

 
percussion is not the most important feature of the African musical influence, but the

voices. In those situations the women are the ones who lead this chorus. In these chants one

can recognize easily one of the musical elements identified as an African legacy, it is the

responsorial form of the songs (Bermúdez, 2003:711). Thus, when the cantaoras41sing,

they have two different roles, one is the entonadora, it is the one who sings the refrain

while the rest of them are the respondedoras, those who answer with the chorus.

Although the voices are very important for this vernacular music, the marimba,

maybe for its uniqueness in the national territory, is the most representative instrument of

this music. The Colombian marimba is made of the wood of palm trees original from the

Pacific area, the most used is the palm of chonta, therefore the marimba is called marimba

de chonta, even if sometimes they are made from other kinds of palm trees. They use to

have between 19 and 23keys which originally had a diatonic tuning very similar to the

chromatic temperated scale -the one used in western music-. Nowadays, however, some

marimbas start to be made according to the western tuning. The resonators are made of

bamboo, the mallets are made of wood and at the end of the shaft they are covered with

rubber. (ed. Sevilla, 2008:39)

The main function of the marimba is to lead the harmony. As I briefly said in the

Prelude, the marimba is played by two people. While one is playing the bordón42, the stable

                                                                                                                         
41
This is the name given to the women singers of vernacular music

42
The English translation of bordón would be burden, which according to the Oxford Online Music
Dictionary is “(1) A term for a refrain repeated after the verses (or at other points) of a song (…) (2) A drone.
(3)The lowest of three voices singing together.” Since non of the meanings is exactly the same as the one used
in the marimba music I will use throughout the text the Spanish word.

61

 
harmonic and rhythmic pattern, the other, is playing the revuelta a pattern with a high level

of improvisation constructed over the bordón. When just one person is playing the

marimba, then he would play the revuelta. In the Colombian pacific, the marimba has been

a men´s instrument, there are myths that explain why women should not play the

instrument, many of them related to the evil forces related to the instrument, however, this

custom has been changing slowly and nowadays one can find some women performing the

marimba.

The marimba can be used to accompany all the genres that are performed in the

Colombian south pacific, however it is just indispensable for the currulao. This is the

marimba genre also called bambuco viejo in some villages of the zone. The currulao is a

festive rhythm and it is the only case in which a man, the one who is playing the marimba,

must sing the refrain. This singing role is called chureador because of the unique vocal

technique they use called chureo.

Along with the marimba there usually are two kinds of drums playing the

percussion, the cununo and the bombo. The cununo is a conical one- headed drum of

African heritage, while the bombo is conical two-headed drum which is beaten with

drumsticks and comes from the Spanish legacy. (Bermúdez, 1986:117) The bombo leads

the rhythm with a stable pattern, whereas the cununo can either follow a stable rhythm or

improvise. Drums, like the marimba, are men’s instruments. In most of the south pacific

area the marimba bands, play with two cununos and two bombos, but there are places

where they play just with one of each kind.

62

 
 Finally, the marimba group must have several guasás. The guasá is a percussion

instrument made of a tubular piece of wood filled with seeds. These instruments must

follow a stable rhythm. They are played by the cantaoras.

3.2.2 Music in its Socio-cultural Contexts

As I said before, the vernacular music is associated with specific social contexts. For the

case of the music of the pacific lowlands there are four main contexts in which it is played,

those are the arrullo, the chigualo, the adult funerals, and the currulao. Most of them

reflect the strong Spanish and catholic influences in the local culture.

The arrullos are the most important social events in the region. They are made in

honor of a saint or virgin. The most popular are Saint Anthony, Saint Peter, Saint Joseph,

and the Virgin of Carmen. They are celebrated also in important catholic holydays like

Immaculate Conception, Christmas, or Epiphany. The organization of these celebrations is

usually a women’s task. They are the ones who arrange everything and those who lead the
43
musical part. They sing throughout the celebration cantos de adoración. There can be

instruments, marimba, drums and guasás accompanying the singing but it is not mandatory.

Even if they are religious celebrations, the assistants drink aguardiente44, dance and sing all

night long. (ed. Sevilla, 2008: 32).

Sometimes the arrullos begin with a balsada, which is a procession through the

river. Father Bernardo Merizalde, who traveled through the Pacific in the early twenty

century, described the balsadas like this: “they raise an altar in a big raft, adorn it with

                                                                                                                         
43
Worship songs
44
It is an alcoholic drink made by the distillation of the juice of the sugar cane.      

63

 
flowers and pennants, they place the statue in there; and in this way they bring it to the

village in company of many people who sing at the rhythm of music and of the fireworks.

These fluvial processions are truly poetical” (Merizalde, 2008:156)45

The chigualos are the funerals for children up to 5 years old. Despite the sadness for

the death, they are considered somehow occasions of joy because when a child dies she/he

does it without knowing sin, so, she/he goes straight to heaven. In this event, the body of

the dead child is covered with flowers, children play around her/him and people sing cantos

de cuna46, and bundes, dance and drink aguardiente. The music performed in such situation

is more vocal than instrumental, though some drums or guasás might join the voices. (ed.

Sevilla, 2008:34).

When an adult dies it is certainly a dreadful situation, because adults have already

fallen into sin. The funeral takes places during nine days in which people come to the house

of the death person to eat, drink aguardiente play cards or domino and sing sad songs

called alabaos. For this occasion as for the chigualo, the music is only vocal.

There used to be songs made while people row their boats in the long journeys

through the rivers they are called cantos de boga which could be translated as songs of row,

however, to a great extent, this practice has been already forgotten.

                                                                                                                         
45
Cuando le hacen una fiesta a un santo cuya imagen conservan en una de sus casas levantan un altar en una
gran balsa, lo adornan con flores y gallardetes, en él colocan la estatua; y así lo traen al pueblo en compañía
de mucha gente que arrulla con cantos y al son de la música y de los disparos de los pedreros. Estas
procesiones fluviales son verdaderamente poéticas  
46
Lullabies

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 The only totally secular context in which the vernacular music is played is the

currulao47 or baile de marimba48. It is a party in which the marimba, as its name already

suggests it, is indispensable, and along with the drums and guasás music is played, while

people, sing, dance, eat and drink aguardiente for hours and even days. The musical

repertory in this context is broader than in the three other. Here, the currulao, juga,

torbellino, bunde and rumba enliven the party (ed. Sevilla, 2008:33-34).

3.3 The marimba seen from outside

The profound blending of local culture and Catholicism draws a thin line between the

pagan and Catholic religious celebrations. In both cases the vernacular music plays

important part. However, this mixture was not a pacific process at all; the currulaos and the

marimba were strongly fought by the church that considered them manifestations of the

devil.

This connotation of evilness given to the music from the Pacific were not ideas of

the church exclusively; they drove the way in which the national audience related to this

music for many years. Thus, this music was excluded from process of consolidation of the

national music.  

3.3.1 The persecution

In the territorial colonization of the Pacific, like in the rest of the country, the Catholic

Church had an important role. And later on in the independent state, the official presence in

frontier zones was made through the Church and its incisive evangelization endeavors. In

                                                                                                                         
47
As much the context as the genre are called currulao.
48
Marimba dance

65

 
this process the marimba was persecuted as an instrument of the devil as Friedemann and

Arocha tell:

The father Mera tackled a campaign against of what he considered "the wild dances

of blacks". The crusade, in the style of those of the missionaries of the sixteenth

century whose target were the Indigenous populations, became a real Christian

police operation realized through the terror of confession.

- Is there a marimba in your house? - asked the father Mera to whom approached

him to confess during his trips across the rivers Guapí, Patía, Telembí. A cold of

death took over the recipient of such question. According to the hoary father the

instrument was anything else but the personification of the demon49 (Friedemann &

Arocha, 1986: 418).

And so, many marimbas were thrown to the rivers. Nonetheless, when the Father

Merizalde came to the Pacific some years around 1920, he found that there were marimbas

in the houses of people of certain importance. Yet the church continued to banish the

vernacular music.

The dance of the blacks is the most vulgar and wild thing we have ever seen. When

in a river in which there is a party appears by chance a canoe that takes a

missionary, the music and shouting stop instantaneously; and if the father comes to
                                                                                                                         
49
el padre Mera emprendió una campaña contra lo que él consideraba "los salvajes bailes de los negros
costeños". La cruzada, al estilo de las de los misioneros del siglo SVI entre los indios, se convirtió en una
verdadera operación de policía cristiana realizada mediante el terror de la confesión. -¿En tu casa hay una
marimba?- interrogaba el padre Mera, durante sus viajes por los ríos Guapí, Patía, Telembí, a quien se
acercaba a confesarse. Un frío de muerte recorría al destinatario de semejante pregunta. De acuerdo con el
padre de marras el instrumento era ni más ni menos que la personificación del demonio.  

66

 
 the house he will find it perfectly empty, because everyone has already jumped

through the window and has fled to the mount. We have attended to this event

several times; and it proves that the blacks do not ignore what the priests have

worked to extirpate these abominable bacchanals.50 (Merizalde, 2008:155).

Micheal Agier found in Tumaco a 1910 newspaper associated to the Liberal Party in

which there was a harsh critic towards the immorality of marimba dances: “Back country

there are entire weeks that are used in dances, jollification, inebriations and general

corruption. The damages the morality of the people suffers with such looseness are

incalculable51 (quoted by Agier, 1999: 230).

For many years this was the image the cultural elites had on the vernacular music

form the pacific As the black population was stigmatized, so was their music; it was

considered too sexual and barbaric up to middle of the twentieth century (Birenbaum,

2006).

3.3.2 A National music

As I exposed in the previous chapter the construction of a national identity was a major

concern in the consolidation of the new state and music took an important role in this

process. As Egberto Bermúdez explains it:

                                                                                                                         
50
 El baile de los negros costeños es de lo más vulgar y salvaje que hemos podido ver. Cuando por acaso en un
río en que hay un baile aparece una   canoa que lleve a un misionero, cesan instantáneamente la música y la
gritería; y si el padre sube a la casa la encontrara perfectamente vacía, porque todos los de la parranda se han
arrojado por las ventanas y han huido al monte. Este hecho lo hemos presenciado varias veces; y ello prueba
que los negros no ignoran lo que han trabajado los sacerdotes para extirpar esas abominables orgías.  
51
En los campos, hay semanas enteras que se emplean en bailes, jolgorios, embriagueces y corrupción
general. Son incalculables los perjuicios que sufre la moralidad del pueblo con tales disipaciones

67

 
 [I]nnovation and creativity in music acquired a special interest in the eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries, when people of new territorial entities (with their

corresponding emergent nationalities) were trying to adapt their native musical

traditions to the social, political, and cultural contexts brought about by the new

order. They were also trying to shape particular cultures with clear and definitive

markers which could strengthen the coherence of those regional or national

collective identity projects (Bermúdez, 1994:226)

Hence, the cultural elites carried out a process in which some musical elements

were taken as elements of the national music while others were ignored. It is not precise to

say that all the African elements were left aside in this process, because as a matter of fact,

some of them were constituent parts of the national music, however, they were re-

interpreted, and therefore, transformed in such a manner that their origin was veiled.

The national music became the pasillos, bambucos and danzas. These were genres

born from the European influence of the European ballroom dances, and the mixture with

indigenous melodies, and some simplified patterns of African ways of dance and sing.

These genres, considered mestizo music, emerged in urban centers of the Andean zones

where the black populations were not representative. Therefore the centralism that guided

the political life of the new state was reflected in the music as well.

José María Samper a Colombian intellectual from the nineteenth century said about

the bambuco in a highly patriotic and romantic style that: “There is nothing more national

and patriotic than this melody whose authors are all the Colombians: it vibrates as the echo

68

 
of thousands of accents, it laments with all the lamentations and laughs with all the

laughing of the nation”52. (Samper, 1868)

The nation created by the elites disdained a great deal of its population. For the

mestizo national music, as well as for the population, the less the black component could be

distinguished, the more status the music had. Peter Wade asserts that: “in Colombia there

was not a national policy to promote a specific musical genre, but the consolidation of the

state was made on an ideology which preferred whiteness over blackness, and all its

different components including music” (Wade, 2000:28).

Meanwhile, in the Colombian Caribbean Coast the creation of music have had other

developments. The race mixture in this part of the country had been very high and so, the

music that emerged there had a much stronger black and indigenous influence. Likewise

this part of the country was influenced by North America. Because of this influence, traces

of jazz, blues, and big band’s music began to be heard, in the local music, porros,

fandangos and cumbias which were recorded in similar instrumental formats to those of the

big bands.

In the national territorial hierarchy the Caribbean coast had not been as important as

in the Andean zone. The north coast was too black, and therefore the music played there

was not welcome in the inland part of the country, where people guided by catholic and

                                                                                                                         
52
  Nada más nacional y patriótico que esta melodía que tiene por autores a todos los colombianos: ella vibra como el eco
de millones de acentos, se queja con todas las quejas y ríe con todas las risas de la Patria.

69

 
racist beliefs which considered music with black components a licentious practice. As Peter

Wade asserts:

The connections often made in Colombia between people from the country´s

Caribbean region, their music and dance, and their “hot” sexuality, have been

constructed, and not just imposed, in a particular history which includes slavery in

the region, African culture influences, and domination by a colonial power for

which dancing was often defined as sinful. (Wade, 2000:21-22)

However, at the beginning of the twentieth century the Caribbean started to gain

certain status as Barranquilla became the most important seaport of the country. It was the

main country’s door to the external influences, to modernity; and the ruling elite classes

were desperate to be modern. Thus, by middle of the twentieth century, musicians from

Inland Colombia started to adapt music from the Caribbean Coast making it more likeable

for the ‘white’ audience and then finally the Andean inhabitants started dancing with the

big bands at the rhythm of porros and cumbias.

The cumbia became the new national music due to a political will assisted by an

emergent discography industry. The consolidation of a national music was then, mediated

by the existence of and industry that could guarantee its massive distribution. Such union

between political interests and the discography business is responsible for the current

massification of vallenato, which was once a local music from some towns in the north part

of the country, and today it is the music with which most part of the Colombian population

feels identified (Bermúdez, 1994, Wade, 2000).

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 The partial acceptance of black musical influences, was limited to certain genres

from the Caribbean and the music from the south Pacific Coast did not suffered that process

of becoming ‘whiter’. It was always considered too black, too backward (Birenbaum,

2006). And as the Pacific was ignored by the national government for many years, so was

its music. Hence, when the policies of the national government towards the region changed

inspired by the new politic constitution, the status of the vernacular music of the Pacific

changed as well.

3.4 A multicultural country

As I have shown in the previous chapter, the political constitution of 1991 resulting from

the peace agreements and social mobilizations generated a new understanding of the

country as a multicultural and pluri-ethnic state. Following this, policies towards the

recognition of the different cultural legacies of the country were developed. The General

Law of Culture was promulgated in 1997 and within it cultural diversity was introduced as

one of the biggest country’s resources, in so doing, in the same measure that the

constitution brought a revaluation of local cultures, it opened the door to its

commercialization, and therefore standardization. Likewise, to a great extent, the

recognition has remained as a mere formality, due to the counter- reformation process that

the armed conflict imposed in the pacific. Thus, the multiculturalism invoked in the

constitution is a formality in order to legitimize de Colombian democracy (Romero, 2000,

Wade, 2000).

3.4.1 Getting lost in multiculturalism

According to Wade, the multiculturalist concept assumed by the Colombian government

was induced by a global movement that had two principal motivations. On one hand, there

71

 
were the social minorities seeking for the acknowledgment of the existence of other

cultures, and other stories besides the official Western version of history, in Wade’s words

“by the foregrounding and radical development of long-standing challenges to the unifying

metanarratives of Western science, progress, and modernity” (Wade, 2000:226). One the

other hand, there was the increasing capitalist interest in the local cultures, and territories

for its economic exploitation in what Wade calls the commoditization of places and

traditions (Wade, 2000).

Therefore, Wade asserts that in the so called globalization the local does not

disappears as it is often said, but it is reconstructed in order to make it profitable “Cultural

diversity is a commodity, and capitalist work through exploiting differences (of locality,

gender, “race”, and style) at the same time that homogeneity gives them profitable

economies of scale” (Wade, 2000:226). The world music phenomenon can be understood in

the frame of this ongoing multiculturalist-capitalist process.

For the vernacular music in Colombia multiculturalism has meant the creation of

spaces in which it can reach grater audiences, but from the very moment it comes to festival

stages or recorded versions, it is delocalized and decontextualized and therefore, music

changes inevitably. The diffusion patterns, learning processes, performing conditions, and

social function become closer to those of the popular music.

As one might expect, a simplification of musical models takes place because the

high levels of improvisation the vernacular music present do not fit in recorded formats and

so it is accepted easily by every kind of audiences. Likewise, as Both and Lee Kuhn assert:

the improvisation losses “the perceived need (perhaps less so today than ten years ago) to

72

 
“correct,” “modernize,” or “improve” the folk music content. Such corrections inevitably

proceed in the direction of standardization according to the rues of (usually) Western

music” (Both &Lee Kuhn, 1990: 436).

Vernacular music faces then, a profound paradox, looking for its recognition, and

preservation it might disappear as it loses its original meaning. We could say one more time

with Paul Virilio: “I love the local when it enables you to see the global, and I love the local

when you can see it from the global” (Virilio, 1999 quoted by Escobar, 2001:157). And in

this case, the local is getting lost in the global.

Elias Sevilla, a Colombian anthropologist, talks about the hybris as an exaggerated

will of becoming modern, and relates this concept with the marimba music arguing that the

desire of getting into the cultural diffusion channels, and being rewarded in local music

festivals can bring the vernacular music to a process of lose of meaning and finally to its

disappearance. On the other hand, asserts this author that leaving the music to its own

process can lead to the same end. It is, if the state does not promote festivals, and different

tools for its diffusion, the vernacular music might withdraw as result of harsh social

conditions like the armed conflict and extreme exclusion and poverty that many places of

the Pacific lowlands undergo. (ed. Sevilla, 2008:115).

Although the state’s support (or other kind of outside support) appears as a need for

the local music to survive, the policies oriented towards the preservation of the cultural

patrimony do not seem to take into account the social local conditions that might undermine

such attempts. Instead, they oversimplify the social conflicts as they present cultural

policies as an infallible instrument of peace. (Birenbaum, 2009)

73

 
3.4.2 Behind multiculturalism there is violence
Therefore, there are two parallel and contradictory phenomena related to the vernacular

music from the Pacific Coast, on one hand there is a growing interest in some parts of the

population and national and local governments to make it more visible and so, governments

create festivals to show this music, calling for its protection. And on the other hand, the

violent situation affecting the Pacific and the lack of the state’s protection are big threats

for the afro-Colombian populations and the preservation of their culture.

Michael Birenbaum analyzes in a chapter of his doctoral thesis The Musical Making

of Race and Place in Colombia´s Black Pacific, the way in which violence is experienced

by the inhabitants of the Pacific coast. The author establishes a link between the

invisibilization of the violence in Colombia and the cultural policy promoted by the

national government (Birenbaum, 2009).

Following Ochoa’s arguments, Birenbaum explains that:

[T]he foundation of the Ministry of Culture was directly linked to the search for

peace; in fact, it was frequently referred to both officially and unofficially as the

“Ministry of Peace”. The General Law of Culture specifying the uses of culture in

state policies was passed in 1997. Although the law borrows heavily from Unesco’s

language on cultural diversity and rights, its references to peace and “pacific

coexistence” should be understood in the Colombian context as an articulation of

the notion of culture-as-peace (Birenbaum, 2009:375).

Then, looking into the law one can fin references to the peaceful coexistence in

diversity easily; Article 9 states that “Respect for human rights, coexistence, solidarity,

74

 
interculturality, pluralism and tolerance are fundamental cultural values and the essential

base of a culture of peace” (Law 397, 1997) And further on, Article 17,

The State through the Ministry of Culture and the local entities will foment the arts

in all their expressions and other manifestations, as elements of dialog, interchange,

participation and as the free and primordial expression of human thought which

constructs peaceful coexistence (Law 397, 1997).

In the government’s discourse culture is equal to peace. Birenbaum’s point is not to

cast doubt on the effectiveness of cultural tools in order to generate more pacific

environments, but to understand that for contexts like the one of the Colombian armed

conflict, which has deep and diverse roots, motivations and actors, it is far too simplistic to

trace an automatic link between peace and culture. It implies the banalization of both peace

and culture. As Birenbaum synthesizes:

Historian Malcolm Deas has shown that this peace discourse is the product of

twenty years of political demagoguery in a context of repeated failures to actually

achieve it (1999, quoted by Ochoa 2003:129). It is, in a certain way, a necessary

gesture toward the possibility of peace given the public sense of frustration with the

lack of concrete gains, a kind of normalization process writ large over the whole

nation. For Ochoa, this discourse is a simultaneous banalization of peace, which is

rendered completely diffuse, of violence, which is essentially ignored, and of

culture itself, which is associated with peace as “’a done deal [una cuestión de

hecho]’ without understanding its dynamics or its [internal] conflicts” (Ochoa

2003:129). This discourse is very much present in the language of state cultural

75

 
 policy. The language of “culture as peace,” present at music festivals, book fairs,

and theater performances across the land, serves to normalize violence by refusing

to name it (Birenbaum, 2009:399-400).

The concept of peace presented by the Ministry of Culture is rather ethereal. We are

placed again in the field of metaphysics, where peace is the absence of conflicts attained

through culture. In so doing, peace becomes a utopia and culture is reduced to an

instrument of policies’ legitimation. Likewise, and as contradictory as it might sound, in a

discourse of peace where it is understood as the absence of violence, violence is ignored

deliberately in the empty discourses that equal peace as culture. Instead of address the

armed conflict as one of the threats for vernacular cultures to exist.

In this framework, festivals are the place where these contradictions befall:

minorities gaining a partial recognition of their culture while they struggle for their political

rights and for getting a total recognition of their unique identity in a context of armed

conflict and territorial disputes. At the same time, vernacular music gets to be known by

greater audiences although it loses many of its original characteristics and the identity for

which they fight starts to fade. For the music and people’s struggles of the Pacific Coast the

Petronio Álvarez Festival has become a major showground.

3.4.2 Petronio Álvarez Festival

The Petronio Álvarez Festival was created by the government of Valle del Cauca in 1997

with the aim of:

Stimulate the creation, investigation, interpretation, diffusion and projection of the

traditional music of the pacific Colombian, in the local, regional, national and

76

 
 international ambiences, by means of the generation of opportunities for the

circulation of this music across concerts, forums, recordings audio and video and

the production of specializing radio and television programs53 (Secretaría de Cultura

y Turismo de Santiago de Cali, 2009a).

Cali, the capital of Valle del Cauca is the main city of the Colombian Pacific is as well the

biggest recipient of migrant populations in this part of the country. According to the

National Department of Statistics, 25.7% of the population of Cali is afro-Colombian

(DANE, 2005).54 Manuel Sevilla argues that the creation of the Festival occurred in a

moment when due to the armed conflict afrocolombian communities were getting displaced

to Cali, and at the same time that the governmental discourse of multiculturality was

leading the cultural policies. Therefore, says the author the creation of a Festival for the

afros of the Pacific was a politically correct act. (ed. Sevilla, 2008: 95). The festival is

according to Sevilla oriented towards the black migrant populations, as he points out:

The rapid concentration of this population in Cali gave place to the construction of

an identity of the immigrant of the Pacific Ocean, based on a few common features

among which was the traditional music of marimba. The festival took advantage of

this identity, which is characterized -as many identities that are forged in conditions

of migration- for the pronounced romantization and idealization of the place of

                                                                                                                         
53
Estimular la creación, investigación, interpretación, difusión y proyección de la música tradicional del
pacífico colombiano, en los ámbitos local, regional, nacional e internacional, mediante la generación de
oportunidades para la circulación de esta música a través de conciertos, foros, grabaciones audio y video y la
producción de programas especializados de radio y televisión
54
The percentage could be much higher. The vice-president in a speech given in Cali in May 2009 made
reference to the 60% of afrocolombian population living in this city
(http://www.elpais.com.co/paisonline/calionline/notas/Mayo222009/cal7.html). However, I was not able to
find support for those numbers.

77

 
 origin and a strong tension between two worlds (rural and urban) (ed. Sevilla, 2008:

95)55.

Therefore, according to what Sevilla asserts, the Petronio Álvarez generated a new

source of identification for the afrocolombian communities around the music.

For the first edition of the Festival there were two rather undefined categories,

Orquesta and Conjunto56. The participants on the Orquesta modality were groups which

had an instrumental format of tropical dancing orchestras, with a repertory from the Pacific

Coast. The winning group of this category was La Contundencia a chirimía from Chocó, a

department of the north Pacific coast. On the Conjunto modality the participants were more

diverse, there were marimba bands, there was a band from Ecuador which played marimba

music and they had no marimba but a keyboard, and electric bass. There was a band from

the north Pacific which played with two little xylophones, and there was the winner, Bahía

Grupo, which had marimba, bombo, cununo, guasás, as well as set drum saxophone,

trumpet, and electric bass. (Final I Festival de Música del Pacífico Petronio Álvarez, 1997)

For the second festival categories were adjusted, three modalities were created,

Chirimía, Marimba and Libre. The Chirimía is for the music of northern Pacific, Marimba

for that of the south, and Libre (Free) for those bands whose essence is the music of the

                                                                                                                         
55
La rápida concentración de esta población en Cali dio lugar a la construcción de una identidad del
inmigrante del Pacífico, basada en unos pocos rasgos comunes entre los cuales se encuentra la m[usica
tradicional del conjunto de marimba. Naturalmente el festival ha explotado esta identidad, que se caracteriza
como muchas identidades que se forjan en condiciones de migración, por una marcada romantización e
idealización del lugar de origen y una fuerte tensión entre los dos mundos (rural y urbano)  
56
Orchestra and band.

78

 
Colombian Pacific but mixed with elements of other kinds of music, for instance, different

instruments, or arrangements.57

In 2008 the modality Violines caucanos was added to the festival giving space to a

musical practice from rural areas of the Cauca department, where peasants used to build

violins from bamboo. Nowadays, the violins they use are the used for western music.

Although the stricter categorization created a clearer evaluation criterion, it also

implied the standardization of the performances shown in the Festival in the chirimía,

marimba, and violins categories due to the specification of the organology these bands

should present. The innovation and the surprise elements are exclusive from the free

modality58. The rules of the Festival express that “For the Chirimía, marimba and violins

modalities, as they are representatives of traditional music, bands must adhere strictly to the

organology fixed” (Secretaría de Cultura y Turismo de Santiago de Cali, 2009a).

These rules evidence the romantic perspective from which vernacular music is seen.

Indeed it ceases to be vernacular and becomes tradition, or folklore, something attached

with the past, with a pre-modern rural stage, rather than consider it a living practice which

can still transform itself according to its own development.

                                                                                                                         
57
If there would have existed this third category in the first festival Bahía Grupo would have competed within
it. Bahía is the pioneer of a musical movement that is looking back to the marimba music and mixing it with
different elements.
58
I watched videos of first seven festival’s finale; it was very interesting to see how the standardization of the
categories worked out while the participant adjusted edition by edition to the festival’s rules. It would be truly
interesting to carry out a deep analysis of the transformation the bands and the musical content they present
have change throughout the 13 years of the Petronio Álvarez.

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 The protection of diversity turns to be a transformation of it, using Peter Wade´s

words: “[A] Nationalist project does not just try to deny, suppress, or even simply channel

an unruly diversity; it actively reconstructs it (…)Heterogeneity is constantly rediscovered,

and thus recreated, by a nation-building discourse that seeks to mold unity from diversity”

(Wade, 2000: 7).

Despite the fact that the Petronio Álvarez Festival was born in a highly political

environment and with clear political motivations, the political discussions are deliberately

excluded from the festival context. The social claims that the black communities might

pursue by the ratification of their identity through their music are silenced not just by the

standardization effect of the festival on music, but by direct rules towards the depolitization

of the event. A cause of disqualification can be “to show on the stage clothes or any type of

object that contains messages with commercial, religious, racial, or political publicity of

any class” (Secretaría de Cultura y Turismo de Santiago de Cali, 2009a)59.

It is also true that this rule can be easily overthrown by the bands, just by including

in their lyrics the message they want to transmit, so, despite the limits the context and rules

create, there are still some spaces for resistance. In highly controlled contexts subtle or

manifest spontaneous or organized ways of resistance can emerge.

3.5 Resistance
Throughout this chapter I have been talking mostly about the way in which the state has

used music in order to dominate. Now I would like to look to the other side and explore

some ideas from different authors on the possibilities of resistance that lie in music.
                                                                                                                         
59
lucir en el escenario prendas de vestir o cualquier tipo de objeto que contengan mensajes con publicidad
comercial, religiosa, racial, o política de cualquier clase

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 Wolfgang Dietrich studies in Guatemala a case very close to the one I am exploring

in the Colombian Pacific, in his work he analyses how the concept of a ‘national music’ is

part of the myth of a nation state; he argues that the ‘national music’ is, indeed, one of the

tools of domination used to create the illusion of homogeneity, which is one of the main

attributes of the nation. Dietrich explains how for many years the national music in

Guatemala ignored the vernacular music of marimba denying the diversity of the country,

and how then, the domination became more sophisticated when the marimba was

incorporated in the national music, after suffering a process of ‘westernization’. As we have

already seen, the domination does not just attempts to exclude, but to include by

transforming the other, through and homogenization process.

For Dietrich it is clear that music is a domain where both processes of domination

and resistance can grow. He argues that from the moment music is ritualized it stops being

the expression of individual thoughts or feelings and it becomes and expression of identity.

In Dietrich words:

[Music] turns to be an element that brings together the identity of a community and,

therefore, it becomes a way of domination since all power is legitimized by the

identity of the dominated entity. Thus, the disciplinary effect of the music expresses

itself in the use of the "correct", melody or the rhythm; the "correct" instruments,

interpretations and forms, according to every occasion. On the contrary, the fact of

not abiding by these rules, for instance, using a "incorrect" instrument or “singing at

81

 
 the wrong time”, can imply a subtle resistance against the established order and the

regime it represents.60 (Dietrich n.d.:4)

Ana Maria Ochoa agrees with Dietrich on the potentiality of resistance that is

hidden in a given order. Looking into the musical genres she argues that they are

conventionalized categories used to underpin certain discourses, it is to say, that genres are

not neutral, they are hierarchical and they imply the notion of homogenization, so genres

establish a determined order of things, as she says borrowing Mc Clary words:

[T]he musical genres and the conventions crystallize because they are accepted like

natural by a certain community: they define the limits of what counts as a musical

appropriate behavior. But the crystallization or legislation (concerning the genres)

also does that these norms are available to be broken, doing that the music

constitutes in an area and which the disobediences and the oppositions can be

registered directly 61“ (Mc Clary, 1992, quoted by Ochoa, 2003: 86).

Then the content of music, the way in which it is made and the instruments with

which it is played can be acts of resistance, but so can be the act of making music by itself.

So, it is possible that performing certain music is already breaking some norms, or

                                                                                                                         
60
[P]ara convertirse en un elemento cohesionador de la identidad de una comunidad y, por tanto, en un
medio de dominación ya que todo poder se legitima en la identidad de la entidad dominada. Así el efecto
disciplinante de la música se expresa en la utilización de la melodía o el ritmo “correctos”, los instrumentos,
las interpretaciones y las formas “correctas”, acordes con cada ocasión. Por el contrario, el hecho de no
atenerse a estas reglas, por ejemplo, al utilizar un instrumento “incorrecto” o “cantando a destiempo”, puede
implicar una resistencia asaz sutil contra el orden establecido y contra el régimen que lo representa.
61
[L]os géneros musicales y las convenciones se cristalizan porque son aceptados como naturales por una
cierta comunidad: definen los límites de lo que cuenta como un comportamiento musical apropiado. Pero la
cristalización o legislación (en torno a los géneros) también hace que esas normas estén disponibles para ser
rotas, haciendo que la música se constituya en un terreno e el cual las transgresiones y las oposiciones pueden
ser registradas directamente  

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underpinning other resistances. And here I come back to James Scott’s theory of the hidden

transcripts, and I would like to trace a link between the social space where the infrapolitics

emerge and that moment in which music turns to be part of a rite of what Dietrich

describes, because I think they are basically referring to the same phenomenon. When

music is part of a ritualized social practice it might become a hidden transcript.

Ulrich Oslender carries out an analysis on traditional oral practices in communities

of the south pacific considering them as a hidden transcript. He argues that the oral tradition

is the way in which black communities have kept their collective memory, and that the act

of using this instrument is itself a way of resisting against forgetfulness. But beyond this,

says the author, oral tradition has been used for NGO’s in order to raise awareness of the

concrete situations that are threatening them as community. Then, cultural events of

marimba music and oral traditions are taking place, in which the political denounces are the

axis. This would be an example on how the infrapolitics serve as soil for bigger acts of

resistance.

Oslender asserts that the cultural practices: oral tradition and music identity can

serve as foundations, and therefore, grassroots organizations come to these spheres in order

to make stronger the movement and get more visibility towards political aims. In Oslender

words: “In certain way the culture is politicized every day more and the cultural meetings

must express this development if they do not want to remain in the nostalgia only”

(Oslender, 2003:231).

I saw this kind of cultural-political awareness talking to a Pablo Cala a human rights

activist who works with communities of the Naya River, in the south Pacific. He said that

83

 
there is no doubt that the marimba music is an act of resistance. He did not hesitate to tell

me that the marimba represents the African ancestors, and to make a marimba in Colombia

was a way to resist the culturization to which they were forced in the new continent.

Nowadays, this resistance is inscribed in the struggle for their territories in a context of

armed conflict; however, the essence is the same. To keep on playing their vernacular

music is a way to make a claim for their right to live in their own way. Wolfgang Dietrich

expresses it very clear for the case of the Guatemalan marimba:

[W]hat they were defending above all else was their way of living, trying to

preserve at all costs his ways of speaking, of praying, of teaching, of recovering, of

working the ground and of doing music. In short, they were practicing, as they did

for centuries, a sort of resistance almost always passive and cultural against the

regimes that were trying to destroy them physically, deculturate them or, to a lesser

extent, aculturate them.62 (Dietrich, n.d.:3)

I find all his perspectives very useful in order to understand the resistance that might

grow from the marimba music, however, I do find a problem in such perspectives and it is

that they all seem to understand that resistance grows from a previous awareness which I

am not sure is true in all cases. I do not think political awareness and intention is a

prerequisite for the music to be a resistance act. Coming back to the categories of resistance

proposed by Hollander and Einwohner (2004), in the ‘target defined resistance’ and

‘external defined resistance’ there is not the previous intention to resist.

                                                                                                                         
62
[L]o que ellos defendían por encima de todo era su manera de vivir, tratando de preservar a toda costa sus
formas de hablar, orar, enseñar, curar, trabajar la tierra y hacer música. En resumen practicaban, como desde
hacía siglos, una especie de resistencia casi siempre pasiva y cultural contra los regímenes que intentaban
destruirlos físicamente, deculturarlos o, en menor medida, aculturarlos. P.3

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 The problem with the presumption of the existence of intentionality is that music

can become a simple tool of resistance. Scott asserts that infrapolitics live in the same place

of popular culture and they have, the infrapolitics are not just a manifestation of culture,

they make culture themselves. The case is the same with music, music is not just a

anifestation of culture, music makes culture as Wade asserts “Music is not a representation

of culture it is part of culture, it is part of the never-ending process of constructing culture

(…) It is to simplistic to say that music is an expression of identity. It is part of it” (Wade,

2000:24-25). At the same time it would be too simplistic to say that the act of playing

marimba music in the afrocolombian communities of the south pacific is for each one of

them an act of resistance.

I want stay as far as possible for any tendency towards reductionism. As I do not

want to assume a natural resistance identity of the afrocolombian communities, I do not

want to assume a natural resistance identity in the music from the south Pacific coast. I

want to be open to discover cases in which playing vernacular music can be seen as a

resistance act, either it is intended or not. But I am also open to discover that music might

not have any relation to resistance. Whatever the results are I will know that music is an

essential part of human lives, it is a creative act that can or cannot have political impacts

that can or cannot have the intention to resist.

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 4. Revuelta #1

Getting Involved
When I thought about carrying out a research on the music from the Colombian south

pacific I knew I should to go to Guapí I have heard stories from friends who went there to

learn how to play the marimba and they all came back to Bogotá amazed by the musicality

of that place. I was aware of the transformation marimba music is going thorough, I knew

Guapí is one of the larger towns in the area, through the stories my friends told me I

idealized the relationship that the population of Guapí had with marimba music, I thought

everyone who was born in Guapí should know how to play, sing or at least liked the

marimba music. Likewise, I imagined Guapí as a rather small and rural place. Somehow, I

imagined my travel as a travel in time, to a village completely isolated from external

influences.

Another previous image I constructed before going to Guapí was the one of a highly

conflictive area, what made me begin the trip with a little feeling of fear of what I may

encounter there. I will show in this chapter, how those preconceptions and fears I had were

challenged transformed or confirmed by the unique experience I had during the two weeks

I stayed in Guapí (between July and August 2009).

4.1 Fears and Facts

While I was planning my trip some news came out of Guapí. The 9th of May 2009

the president Álvaro Uribe went for a couple of hours to Guapí in order to hold the

Saturday’s community council63. During the council he stressed the need to improve
                                                                                                                         
63
This is a policy implemented by the current president who every Saturday goes with some other members
of the government to a different town or city in order to discuss the problems that such part of the country has.
The idea is to show that the state is everywhere and cares for everybody’s concerns.

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security in the pacific area (Presidencia de la República, 2009). On the 21st of May El

Espectador, a national newspaper, reportered the explosion of a bomb in the police station

in Guapí. There were not injured people but the station was totally destroyed. The guerrilla

movement, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was blamed for this act.

This was the first time such a thing took place in Guapí. One month later a merchant and a

young woman were killed in different attacks, apparently by paramilitary forces. A press

bulletin from the 3rd of July of 2009 published by the NGO, Black Communities Process

stated that:

The increase of the violence has frightened the population of Guapí. From early

hours in the night the streets are desolated and with little movement. On the other

hand there the information that some sectors of the commerce are arming

themselves and are ready to declare the war against the paramilitary.64

That was the last news I read before I left. I made some calls to contacts in Guapí. And they

confirmed that the situation there was becoming difficult.

There are two ways to go to Guapí, one is flying from Cali or Popayán straight to

Guapí, and the second is going to Buenaventura and from there taking a boat. I chose this

second option.. I traveled 14 hours by bus from Bogotá to Buenaventura, and from there I

took a trip of 5 hours in a little boat through the Pacific Ocean to Guapí.

                                                                                                                         
64
El incremento de la violencia tiene atemorizada a la población del casco urbano de Guapí con la calles
desde tempranas horas de la noche con poco movimiento y desoladas. Por otro lado se tiene información que
sectores del comercio se están armando y prestos a declarar la guerra contra paramilitares.  

87

 
 Travelling through Colombia one finds constant reminders of the armed conflict..

The roads are full of soldiers, and when they are not, there is the official advertisement

“Travel safe, your army is protecting you”. But somehow as I got closer to the Pacific I felt

the conflict was becoming more real, more oppressive, more threatening. When I arrived to

Buenaventura the first thing I saw was a poster of a NGO with the slogan “We live in Fear”

which was promoting psychosocial support for victims of the conflict. And as soon as the

boat in which I went to Guapí approached the town an army boat came out of nowhere

intercepting us. The

soldiers jumped to our boat

asking all the passengers,

including me, for our

identifications and the

reasons we had for going

to Guapí. It was pretty

clear the tension in the

area.

Once in Guapí I never felt I was in danger, the situation was rather calm, however.

talking about the security situation with people in town they agree that the situation was

getting worst, and they talk nostalgically about the times when there was no violence. They

say violence came to town around 2002. They say that before that anyone could take a

canoe and move freely through the rivers without fear. A man I talked to told me “people

do not fish as they used to fish before, because nowadays when they leave in their canoes

they do not know whether they will come back or not”.

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 None of the people I talked to blamed one specific armed group for their

impoverished situation, and when I asked which armed groups were in the region, I often

got the answer “they are all there”. They were right. According to a study carried out by the

Corporación Nuevo Arcoiris, as much as paramilitaries, as FARC members are in Guapí.

According to this study, the armed conflict in Guapí has the same characteristics as in the

rest of the Colombian Pacific area (see Bordón # 2), a territorial dispute by armed groups in

order to gain access to traffic routes, illicit farming, and incursion of oil palm industries

(Corporación Nuevo Arcoiris, 2007).

I did not have any frightening experience while I was in Guapí, neither I see people

getting armed in order to declare the war on the paramilitary. What I saw was some people

who were very worried, others who were scared. Nonetheless, while I am writing these

pages I am hearing a news report that 91 persons from the rural area of Guapí were forced

to leave their lands65. Some days might be more evident than others, but the conflict is

inevitably there.

4.2 The town

The harbor of Guapí is located just in front of the main square of the town. On one side of

the square there is the church and on the opposite side is the river. The square is the center

of social life in Guapí. There is a paved football field where there are always guys playing,

there are benches where old people sit to chat and to the sides there are some bars and the

busiest discotheque in town.

                                                                                                                         
65
In September 21st of 2009, 44 families were displaced from the basin of the river Napi in the rural area of
Guapí. The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs announced the possible displacement of 32 more
families. (OCHA, 2009)

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 Guapí grew around the main square. The streets next to it are paved, with houses

made of concrete. In this part of the town there are all the administrative bureaus, the

commerce, the school, the hospital, and two hotels, the only two hotels in town. As one

goes further from the river, the roads ceased to be paved, the houses get smaller and made

of wood, the water and electricity services are not always ensured there. In any case, in the

entire town there is not electricity from midnight until 6:00 AM.

According to the official census of 2005 Guapí has 28.663 inhabitants, 16.273 of

them are living in the urban part of the town, while 12.390 live in the rural areas. The

percentage of people living in the urban area is constantly increasing due to the displaced

population that comes to the town. According to the Nuevo Arcoiris Corporation, Guapí

has been the largest receptor of internal displaced people from southern regions. Likewise,

according to the national department of statistics 92% of the population has unsatisfied

basic needs (DANE, 2005, Corporación Nuevo Arcoiris, 2007).

For many years the principal economical activities in town have been the artisanal

fishing, gold extraction from the rivers, and farming. However, in the last few years there

has been a transformation in the economical activities in Guapí, as there has been in the rest

of the Pacific Coast. The cultivation of coca has become an alternative for many peasants,

as well as to become a worker in the gigantic oil palm plantations (Corporación Nuevo

Arcoiris, 2007).

One can see in Guapí the partial integration of the territory carried out by the

national government. The national army is there and the president comes to hold the
90

 
community council but still 92% of the population has unsatisfied basic needs. In this

context, the market has turned to be another way of integration; most of the people in town

have cell phone, and they watch HBO in their televisions. The lack of governmental

attention produces in the abandoned population a will to belong that many times tries to be

satisfied by the consumption in the culture industry.

It is common to hear among the population of Guapí that if they would have a road

that connects them to the Andean part of the country, they would have more economic

opportunities. The costs of taking products in and out from Guapí by airplane or by boat is

too high. People say that the only good thing the lack of the road brought them is that for a

long time they were isolated from the armed conflict, but not anymore.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find a source for the ethnic composition of the

population, but I would dare to say it must be something around 95% of Afrocolombians

and 5 % of mixed blooded people. Regardless their origin the mixed blooded are called

paisas66. The paisas are traditionally the owners of the markets, and in general of the

commerce area. But according to what I learned from local people, lately paisas are also

those who come to region to establish the palm oil plantations, and those who come to buy

the coca leaves. Many of the armed men threatening the population are paisas as well.

There are other paisas like me, who come to the town interested in the marimba music.

                                                                                                                         
66
 The paisas are people originally from the Colombian coffee lands. They are well known in the country for
being outstanding businessmen.  

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4.3 The sound of Guapí
Being in Guapí I had the feeling that I was trying to look inside while most of the

inhabitants of Guapí were looking outside. I thought that the marimba would be played all

around and that this music would be the soundtrack of my days while I was there. It was

not like that. When one walks through the streets of Guapí one listens to salsa, vallenato

and reggaeton. Lots of reggaeton.

It is true that for the fifteen days I was in town there were not any religious

holidays, and there were not any funerals, but I also proved that the currulaos are not very

common practices anymore. The parties take place in bars and discotheques where people

dance salsa, merengue, reggaeton or vallenato. The people I talked to in Guapí told me that

when there is a Christian holyday it is different and the marimba has the leading role in

parties, but not in the everyday life.

Nevertheless, those days in which I was in Guapí the world of the marimba music

was active in a different way. The Petronio Álvarez Festival was about to be held, so the

bands were preparing themselves for it, and getting the economic resources in order to be

able to participate.

The Festival gives to the participants the housing and food for the days the festival

lasts, but the cost of displacement from the hometown to Cali must be assumed by the

bands. Looking back again to the shocking statistics about the living standards in Guapí,

92% of unsatisfied basic needs, it seems pretty absurd to ask people who does not have

enough money to eat, to pay for a their own tickets. In many towns of the Pacific this is a

reason for the bands not to participate in the Petronio. In the last years in Guapí the local

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government has been assuming the cost of displacement of the participants albeit it is a

never-ending negotiation.

Four years ago, in 2005, the Mayoralty established a local festival, the Dalia

Valencia Festival in which all those aspirants to go to the Petronio should participate. The

best bands in the local festival would be the ones called to represent Guapí in the Pacific

Festival. This had been the modality to choose which bands would be sponsored until this

year, when the local government argued that there were not enough resources to hold the

Dalia Zapata.

Thus, for the time I was in Guapí, the principal of the House of Culture67, was

making lobby in the Mayoralty for the bands that wanted to go to Cali. She finally got the

resources, so the bands could go. However, there is nothing guaranteed for the participation

of the next year.

4.4 Breaking though

One day while I was talking to Nanny, the principal of the House of Culture, when a

curious woman came to ask me what I was doing in town. I explained to her the purpose of

my trip and told her I was asking Nanny for help. So the woman ask me “how much are

you paying her” I told her that I had no intention to give her any money, so the woman

totally upset told me “It should not be like that because you are coming here, you get the

information you need, write your thesis, get a diploma and then you will have a really good

                                                                                                                         
67
The House of the Culture is an institution that exists all across the country in every town. It depends on the
local governments and it is in charged of the cultural activities of town, from education, to promotion of
different cultural manifestations.  

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job. And us? What is it with us? We will remain here being as poor and abandoned as

always”.

This conversation hit me very deeply. From the moment I decided I wanted to carry

out a field research I had very clear I should be very careful in order to not use the people I

would interview. I was not very sure how could I pay back for the help I would receive, but

my aim was to establish honest relationships and then see what could I do. Therefore, when

I heard those words I got totally shocked.

Fortunately, this was just one isolated incident and for the rest of the days I did not

encounter anybody with sentiments similar to that woman. I must say I was very lucky

because I was accepted very quickly into the town thanks to the contacts I had.

Nanny Valencia, the principal of the House of the Culture, was one of them, Thanks

to her I was able to talk to the cantaoras and get in contact with the bands that were

preparing themselves for participate in the Petronio Álvarez Festival. But there were Doña

Argelia and Gustavo, they opened for me all the doors in town.

When I was in Bogotá the principal contact I made in Guapí was the one of Argelia,

a woman who owns one of the hotels in town, I call her a couple of times before I went

there just to make sure I would have a place to stay. When I arrived in Guapí, Argelia was

there with his godson, Gustavo, waiting for me. From that very moment we met they

assumed my work as their own.

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 Doña Argelia68 has a high social status in town, besides the hotel, she owns a

groceries store. She helped me to contact all the old marimberos and she introduced me as

her niece which turned to be a magic key. Gustavo, her godson, was my guardian angel. He

is a very popular sports teacher at the school, he has lived his entire life in Guapí, therefore,

he knows everybody and everybody knows him. He accompanied me everywhere and in an

absolutely generous way introduced me to the Guapí way of life so, the day I left I was

felling I was not a foreigner anymore.

Thanks to all of them I confronted the fear I had concerning using the people who

help me. They opened their lives to me, as all the people I interview did. Before I noticed it

we had established honest relationships. They gave me their stories, and I listened to. I gave

them my stories and they listened back to me.

                                                                                                                         
68
Doña is a respectful to way to call women.  

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 5. Revuelta #2

Living in music, for music, on music

 

Though the interviews I conducted with the marimberos and cantaoras, were of a more

informal nature, more like conversations than structured interviews, I established some

discussion topics that helped me to guide the conversations we had. The main topics were:

a. The meaning vernacular music has for them69: this was the way I used to infer

whether the act of playing vernacular music was meant for them an act or resistance

or not. I decided not to include the word “resistance” in the questions I asked,

because I thought that by mentioning the word I might influence their answer.

b. The learning process: by this question I wanted to establish whether there has been

a transformation in such processes or not. It can reveal in a clear way the turning

point of vernacular music towards popular music as the context and methods of the

learning process are totally different in both cases.

c. The Petronio Álvarez Festival: this issue evidences the opinions of the marimberos

and cantaoras about the transformation process that the marimba music is going

through.

d. Their everyday lives: there were many insights I got from this discussions, what

they do for living, what is the place that music has in their lives, what is it to live in

                                                                                                                         
69
When they talk about the vernacular music they refer to it as traditional, or folklore. In the extracts from the
interviews you will have throughout this chapter, I kept the exactly words they used.

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 a context of armed conflict, and exclusion, what sense of identity do they have,

what are their dreams and expectations.

Some conversations were more focused on one topic than on others. There was also a

clear difference between the conversations I had with the old marimba masters and those I

had with the cantaoras and to those I had with the young marimberos. What I found were

different ways in which they relate themselves to music, how they understand music. Some

see it as a field of consolidation of their identity, others as a source of joy, others as source

of sustenance, while others see it as a sphere of connection with their own spirituality. The

word resistance was never used by them.

The conversations I hade with all these people were invaluable magic moments of

honesty. With some of them I had the opportunity to develop a closer relationship than with

others, therefore, some conversations were deeper than others. I chose some extracts of

each interview, which I consider helpful to demonstrating the essence of each person and

her/his relation to music. Along with those pieces of conversations I will presents some

impressions I had when I met them and talked to them and the analysis I made of such

interviews.

5.1 The Marimberos

I talked to four old marimberos in Guapí, Genaro Torres, Silvino Mina, Guillermo Ríos,

and Dioselino Rodríguez. Although they all have different stories, there are many

similarities in their relationships to the vernacular music.

They do not have any discourse about the meaning of music, for them it is simple;

they make music because it gives them joy. They do not link it with their identity, they do

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not think much of the collective implications of music. When they talk about music they

talk about themselves, how they learnt and how they became very good marimberos. The

masters show a mix of feelings when talking about music, they seem proud for what they

have done in music but at the same time they look disappointed for not getting the

recognitions they feel they disserve.

The younger one of them is Don Genaro70, who is 65, Dioselino, age is 70, Silvino,

74 and Guillermo 98. There is a range of 30 years between them; however, the context in

which they lived the vernacular music was the same. They grew up listening to the

marimba music, it was the music of Guapí, when the currulaos lasted for three days. So,

they learnt in those parties, by looking at their parents. There was not any formal training at

those times. In the parties when the musicians got too drunk or tired the kids took their

chance and started to play. And then, for the rest of the days they tried to remember the

melodies with their whistles. They all told me they learnt by themselves. As Don Silvino

says “nobody took my hands to guide them as I have to do with many people that come

here to learn” (Mina (a)).

Maybe due to the image they have of how the learning process should be a personal

act, they never tried very hard to transmit their musical knowledge to their own children.

The masters told me that none of their sons or daughters are really interested in music.

Some of them can play one or two bordones, and a little bit of bombo but that is it. They all

turn sad when they tell me that their kids did not follow their paths.

                                                                                                                         
70
The word Don accompanied by the first name is a respectful way to call men. For the rest of this text I will
use it for naming the old marimberos.

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 One more coincidence between the four of them is that the context in which they

grew living out of music was not a possibility; it was rather a parallel activity to those with

which they could actually survive. They were born in families dedicated to the peasant and

fishing activities. So that is what they did most of their lives. Don Genaro and Don

Dioselino still work in those activities.

Now that I presented the similarities let us see some particularities that express a

little bit clearer who they are and where the music is in their lives.  

5.1.1Silvino Mina
Don Silvino wears the same clothes everyday, the same haggard pants and rusted shirt. He

is humble, very humble. He lives in a little wooden house with two rooms a kitchen and a

little back yard. Outside the door which is always open there is a sign with the words

“musical instruments” on it. Don Silvino is always working with his matchet on the

marimba’s keys trying to get the perfect tune. The people who know about marimbas, say

that the marimbas Don Silvino makes have the most beautiful sound.

Every time we talk we stay in one of the rooms, the saloon, where there are two

marimbas, pieces of bamboo and chonta for marimbas to be built and pieces of unfinished

drums. Hanging on one of the wooden walls there was an image of Jesus, there were also

clothes hanging there.

He does not like to speak much; he prefers to play and to teach me how to play,

even if he realizes from the first moment I will not be a good pupil. From all the people I

interviewed in Guapí he is the one I visited the most because his house is just 3 blocks

away from the hotel where I stayed, so when I had some time left I went to his house to

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persevere with my lessons and try to get some answers to the many questions I wanted to

ask him. From one lesson to the other I was able to talk to him, and I discovered that he

avoided conversations because thinking of the past and watching the present makes him

very nostalgic and sad.

He was born in Chamón, a settlement one hour down the river. He lived there

growing rice and fishing. But then when the demand for rice ceased71, Don Silvino traveled

to Bogotá looking for more opportunities, he was not very lucky there, he wanted to go

back to Guapí but the money he earned in the capital lasted just until Buenaventura where

he had to stay working as a construction worker. Then, when he got the money to go back

to Guapí he stated to work as a security guard in at the municipal hospital, and some time

afterwards he came back to work as fisherman. He, as many others, used to sell the fish at a

very low price, to big ships that were waiting for the product. But then the ships started

fishing their own fish and did not buy to them anymore.

Now his son comes to his house everyday to bring him and his wife something for

lunch. And sometimes when he sells a marimba, then he has money for buying food for

some days. A marimba made by Don Silvino costs something around €85 Euros. While in

Cali a marimba can cost € 350. But, he says, nowadays he sells them hardly ever.

Before I lived out of what I fished, and harvested; of the rice. There was a time in

Guapí where everybody harvested rice, the ships went out of the town full of rice.

And people had plantains and bananas. Now, all this things are gone. I had my fish,
                                                                                                                         
71
The rice produced in the lowlands of the Pacific was very important for the national consumption until the
decade of 1970 with the inauguration of a main road connecting the Andean zone with the Caribbean area,
where big fields of mechanized production of rice were emerging.

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 my rice, my corn, coconut… not anymore… Now those airplanes come and spread

that thing to kill what the people are growing. I think it was that what killed the

plantain trees I had in my backyard (Mina, (b))

He is talking about the airplanes that spread glyphosate, and herbicide used to kill

the coca plants. Indeed, while I was in Guapí I saw the airplanes flying over the town a

couple of times. And he continues:

I tell you that when I go to Chamón, it is not that I go there all the time, but if I

happen to pass by, I just feel like crying because there was a time when people lived

there and now it is desolated, and one sees oh! That is where this one lived, and that

is was were the other lived, and now, there is nobody (Mina (b)).

In Don Silvino’s story one can see the different consequences that the governmental

in the Pacific area of the governments policies. The peasants found themselves abandoned

once they no longer had any buyers for their rice. The lack of job opportunities and the

sense of alienation in which the peasants lived made the production of coca an attractive

alternative. The government[s solution to the growth of coca resulted in the fumigation of

large areas of land, land where food no longer grows.

Don Silvino seems to have no more expectations in life, not even the music seems

to motivate him anymore. He told me he was in the Petronio three times but he will not go

there anymore. He never won, so he is just no interested anymore. As he is not interested in

teaching:

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 I do not like to teach anybody here in town because one teaches them and then they

learnt never come back and start saying things about me. I taught many people here

in town because there was nobody who knew how to play, but then when somebody

ask them who taught them they say it was this, it was the other one, but not me, so I

do not teach anybody else. (Mina, (a))

Nevertheless, he does enjoy when people from other parts of the country come to

Guapí looking for him, and his marimbas. Then, he confirms that he is a very good

marimbero

5.1.2Genaro Torres
Don Genaro is part of a family that has been related to the marimba music for many years.

His grandfather Leonte Torres played the marimba and so did his father José Torres. His

younger brother, Francisco plays the marimba as well, while his older brother, José Antonio

Torres, the so-called ‘Gualajo’, is nowadays the most famous marimba player in Colombia.

The Torres have lived for many years in Sansón a settlement 10 minutes up the

river. Nowadays they live in two wooden houses in front of the river built on stilts. The

bigger one has two levels, and as one get closer, one can see through the windows of the

first level marimbas, cununos and bombos hanging out of the roof. It is the house of

Francisco, the younger brother. Don Genaro lives in the second house which is smaller,

with only one level. When the tide is high one sees his house built over the river, and the

marimbas hanging between the floor of the house and the water. It is a beautiful surreal

image. When the tide is down, one can actually stand on the sand that was covered before

and play the marimbas.

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 The first time I visited Don Genaro the tide was high, so I had to jump from the

boat to the stair that was coming out of the water and that took me inside of the house. His

house is one single room, with two little windows through which one can see the river and

the forest. In the room there is a bed, a table, a chair three marimbas hanging out of the

roof, and many others lying on the floor, nothing else.

Once I was there he began to play one of the marimbas. And to tell me stories about

the devil and how he used to teach men how to play the marimba. He also told me the story

about a man who could not walk and when he listened to the marimba music that Don

Genaro and his father were playing he walked again.

He played the marimba and told me many stories for hours and hours. He told me he

likes when people from Bogotá come to visit him because he feels they appreciate what he

knows. “The young people from inland come and they want to learn and they help me with

the things I need, so I am very grateful with them” (Torres, G. (a)). His relationship with

the people of Guapí is different.

The second day I visited him there were two guys working in his house installing

electrical components. He is his 65 years and he will have electricity in his house for the

first time. In the walls of the room he has posters from old candidates to the local

government; he told me they were the losers. He has little appreciation for the politicians of

Guapí, he says they are all the same, corrupt and nobody has done anything to support what

he does.

As we were having this conversation two boats approached his house, in one of

them was the mayor Florentino Obregón surrounded by people with foreign appearance, the
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second boat was from the army, who was escorting the first one. The people who were

with the mayor were in fact foreigners, from the U.S. Cooperation Agency, and they came

also with a Colombian woman with a Bogotan accent who told Don Genaro they were there

because they wanted to help him, so she asked him to play the marimba. He did it while all

the visitors made pictures of him. Five minutes later they left giving Don Genaro 10,000

pesos, (€3.3) and promising him that they would make of his house a place where people

could come to learn how to construct and play the marimbas. He remained more excited

about the money than about the promises, he does not believe in politicians anymore,

though living out of his musical knowledge would be his dream.

He, as Don Silvino did, used to live from the rice and those were good times, but

not anymore. Now, he lives from what he can fish and from what he gets from selling his

marimbas and guasás. “But there are times when it is very hard and I do not get enough for

the food of day, but I do not like to say it out loud” (Torres, G. (b)).

He is not interested in the Petronio Álvarez Festival, he has never been there and he

does not want to go. He says it is because he does not like to go with people from town,

because they are envious, they like to gossip and they just go to the festival to get drunk.

There are indeed many gossips and envies around the participation in the Petronio. As the

Festival does not guarantee all the financial support for the bands to go, there are intrigues

between the people that want to go so they can get the money from the Mayoralty, and on

the other hand the participants of town are also competing for the prestige that can give

them to win the festival. Don Genaro prefers to avoid all this

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 Nonetheless, he was once in Bogotá playing his marimba and that makes him very

proud:

I was once in Bogotá, they took me to the presidential house, yes I was there,

because they asked the priest who was here in Guapí for a marimba player and he

said that I should be the one to go. Because I do not like to mingle with the people

from the town if I get out of my house is to give glories to the nation. So I went

there and I let many others played before I did, but when I began to play and sing

the governor of Valle del Cauca said “he is the good one!.” And then the army guys

got crazy taking pictures of me, and the president came, and shook my hand, yes

Samper72 put his hand on me and asked me “when are we meeting again?” (he

laughs) and I told him “anytime we will meet, if God let us, any time” And when I

left the army guys were all around. Because I do not go to drink aguardiente

because I do not like to drink, I go to give glories to my country. (Torres, G.(a))

He feels more connection with a national country that has been ignoring his

community for years, than to a town that from his point of view has despised him.

5.1.3 Dioselino Rodríguez

Don Dioselino lives in San Francisco 6 hours up the river. I was lucky because when I was

in Guapí he was spending a few days in town so I could talk to him. Some relatives of his

have a crafts store in front of the most prestigious hotel in town. When I met him, he was

working on a marimba in front of the store. In San Francisco he works on his piece of land

                                                                                                                         
72
Ernesto Samper Pizano was the president of Colombia from 1994 until 1998.

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growing food for his own sustenance and fishing. One can see in his hands that he has

worked hard in life.

He is 70 years old but he has a childish playful laugh that expresses his

uncontrollable spirit. He says what he thinks without any fear. He speaks against the

politicians, and generally against people from the town who do not appreciate his talent. He

feels he has not received enough support in order to show all what he knows, but he does

not give up. Every time we met on the streets he asked me what we could do for him so he

could go to Bogotá for a concert.

He has never been in the Petronio Álvarez, he says nobody has supported him to go.

“Because I will not go to play as everybody else plays there” (Rodríguez), he will not

adjust his style to make it more likable, “people goes there and play stupid songs, I will not

go to make a fool of myself, I will go to play my currulaos! Good currulaos! That is what I

know, but nobody is interested in me” (Rodríguez). People in town see him as the crazy

master.

A friend who has been several times in Guapí told me when we talked in Bogotá

before I traveled, that I should definitely interview Don Dioselino if it was possible,

because from all the masters he is the best marimba player. I would not dare to say that he

is the best one. Each master has his unique style, and I found each one of them beautiful in

their own way, the one of Master Dioselino is playful as he is.

5.1.4 Guillermo Ríos

Compared to the three other masters, Don Guillermo is the one that is in a better

economical situation. He lives with a daughter who works as a nurse in the local hospital

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and who cares for him. They live in a nice part of town where the houses are all made of

concrete. He looks always vey well dressed and clean.

Don Guillermo is a magnificent poet and story teller. He is 98 years old and his

memory is intact. He remembers when he started playing the marimba when he was 8 years

old and he used to lie down under the marimba so he could see what the marimberos were

playing. He told me stories about how he traveled to all the villages around, playing from

one festival to the other. He also remembers with pried that he was the one who gave the

first marimba to the only woman who plays the marimba and has gained certain

recognition, Maria Angelica Anchico.

He does not show any other sadness than the one of being old and incapable to

remain standing for more than a couple of minutes so he can not play the marimba

anymore. “I do not have any more value! I can not play!” (Ríos) he used to say with a sad

sight, but then he thought he will turn 100 very soon and he started planning the big party

he will have.

He is somewhere beyond the good and the bad, he is happy with the life he had and

now, he can sit down in front of his house to remember the good times.

5.2 The Cantaoras

The conversations with the women were shorter. They did not tell me so many

stories about their lives rather they focused on the music. They were very interested to talk

about the transformation they think the vernacular music is going through.

They all agree that the vernacular music has lost a lot of importance in the social life

in Guapí. They say that young people do no like the marimba music anymore, they feel
107

 
more attracted to reggaeton, and rap and other music that come from outside. But on the

other hand, there were other cantaoras who complained because the young people that are

playing the marimba music because now they play it in a different way, not the way the

cantaoras used to do it.

They also feel like the marimberos do that they are not appreciated in town. Some

of them say that when they go out is when they really see the excitement of people about

their labor, but not in Guapí. They say they have worked very hard for their music and

nobody recognizes that. Likewise, they have to do many other things besides music to

survive. They work in the field, they go to get shrimps, they do crafts, and they wash and

iron clothes. Music is just one more thing in their lives, the one they enjoy the most.

I talked to six cantaoras, Natividad Orobio, Melania Obregón, Isidora Minas,

Eulalia Torres, Juana Viáfara and Sixta Perlaza. They are in a range of ages between 45 and

81, and there are certainly clear differences in their opinions depending on the age they

have.

5.2.1Natividad Orobio and Melania Obregón

They are the oldest of the group; Doña Natividad has 81 and Melania 71. They have sung

all their lives, as Melania says “I learned to sing by living” (Obregón). They have traveled

to all the villages in the region and to Buenaventura and Cali singing with marimba music

bands. They have been in the Petronio Álvarez Festival but they do not want to go back

there anymore. They both say that the music the bands perform there is not the authentic

marimba music:

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 When I went to Petronio it was to sing, to really sing, because we brought the

authentic currulao, the currulao we made before (…). Because, now, young people

sing a new currulao that they have invented, and they sing all at the same time and

the currulao was not like that. The currulao was sung by the glosador and two

people who respond. That is the real currulao (Orobio, N.).

Doña Melania agrees and explains her opinion telling me the story about her

experience when she went to the Festival

I went to Petronio but I do not like it anymore because they do not appreciate good

things but anything (…) They do not appreciate the authentic (…) and we bring the

authentic but we remained in the second place, when Candelario and his orchestra

won. How can the marimba band be the same thing than and orchestra? They can

not be the same thing! And Candelario won. Then when people say that we are

going to Petronio I do not go, because they just like those farces, not the authentic

(Obregón).

She refers to the first edition of the festival when the categories were not yet well

defined, and as she says, musical bands with brass instruments, were competing against

marimba bands, and Bahía Group, the band of Hugo Candelario González won the first

prize.

Doña Natividad does not refer specially to this case; she thinks that the marimba

bands that go to the Petronio have changed not just the original format but the music itself.

She says the young cantaoras have developed a new way of singing, and they not tune into

the same tune the old cantaoras did. She knows, however, that the new currulao is more
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accepted, and it is better valued by people in town. “People do not like to listen to us (the

old cantaoras) anymore, they want to listen to the young people (…) People say that I sing

well but then, the prizes and recognition is for the young cantaoras, not for me” (Orobio,

N.).

The complaint of a lack of recognition arises again. Nonetheless they say they have

already had their moment, now it is time to give space for the younger generation. All what

they want now is to record a CD to leave a legacy to their families “I would like to go

somewhere where they record my music and then I have something to give to my sons so

they can remember me” (Obregón).

5.2.2 Juana Viáfara and Isidora Minas

Doña Juana and Doña Isidora were preparing themselves for the participation in the

Petronio Alvarez Festival that was about to be held. Both of them were going with the band

Manglares, where the marimbero was Francisco Torres, the younger brother of Don

Genaro. Juana and Isidora had a more positive perspective on the marimba music. Though

they agree that the music is not played anymore in some original contexts, they think that

the Petronio has been doing a great job by promoting the marimba music in greater

contexts.

Doña Juana was going to the Petronio for the first time. For Isidora this would be

the fifth time attending to the Festival. One time she won the first prize. She says she loves

to go to see the way in which the people from Chocó sing, “with that proud, that energy”

(Minas) she also likes to see the different styles of the different bands. But this time she

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was especially excited because her grandson, who is 15 years old, would go with her

playing the cununo in the same band.

Doña Juana is trying to induce her sons and daughters to play marimba music, but

she has not been very successful

I am trying to convince them to create a band, because they sing well, so I tell them,

common learn to play the bombo, the marimba and lets make a band, but they do

not want, they just like the vallenato and the step of the dog73. They just like to go

to discotheques, not the traditional music (…) There are more young boys learning

how to play the marimba, but the young girls do not like to sing, they feel kind of

ashamed to sing traditional music (Viáfara (a)).

Doña Juana grew up listening to her father play the marimba and she says there is

nothing that can give her the joy of listening to a marimba band playing in the arrullos or

currulaos.

The music of CDs does not give joy to the body as the traditional music does. Look,

a very special currulao, singed by somebody that knows how to sing it, and then

plays the, marimba, and somebody else takes the bombo… Look, this is music that

goes to the deepest of the heart. If one has a sorrow it goes away with the music

(Viáfara (a)).

                                                                                                                         
73
El paso de la perra is a step in the reggaeton dance.

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5.2.3 Sixta Perlaza and Eulalia Torres
Sixta and Eulalia are part of the Torres family. Sixta is cousin of Don Genaro, Francisco

and José Antonio, and Sixta is niece of them. They both like the Petronio Álvarez festival

very much. When I talked to Doña Eulalia she was very disappointed because she used to

sing in Manglares, and this year they did not take her into account, so she was not going to

the Festival. Doña Sixta, on the contrary, was excited because her 14 years old daughter

was going to participate in the children’s version of the Petronio.

The reason why they like the Petronio so much is because they feel that when they

go there they get the recognitions they do not have in Guapí. Doña Sixtas says that:

Here in our land people do not valuated us much, this music is not appreciated as it

was before, but in the city it is different, there people do appreciate us. For instance

when I’m there people want me to sell them my guasá or my hat, they ask about

everything, they find amazing what we do.

Doña Eulalia agrees and says that “the people is so nice to you when you go there,

everything is better there, one gets better paid” Likewise, she really like when people from

inland come to Guapí looking for the marimba music “they come just to see the Torres, and

then we go their house and Oh! Virgin Marie!” (Torres, E.) She says that those are good

parties, but she also gets to sells all the guasás that she does not sell in the rest of the year.

5.3 The new generation

I interviewed five young men that represent the new wave of marimba music. They have

grown up in a context where this music is getting more recognition in a national level

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thanks to the Petronio Álvarez Festival. And that has definitely and impact in their relation

to music.

Four of them were born in Guapí, Yeiner Orobio, Freddy Walberto Cuero and

Marino Castro and Hugo Candelario González. Eneyder Hurtado was born in López de

Micay a town in the Pacific Coast some hours away from Guapí, but he learnt to play the

marimba when he visited his uncle Guillermo Ríos. Nowadays, just Yeiner lives in Guapí,

Hugo, Eneyder and Freddy live in Cali, while Marino lives in Puerto Tejada, a town near

from Cali which is a main focus of immigration for the Afrocolombian communities of the

Pacific. All of them can say that their main activity in life is music.

5.3.1 Yeiner Orobio

Yeiner Orobio is 22 years old. He is the son of one of the most respected cantaoras from

Guapí, Faustina Solís. It was her influence what made him become interested in marimba

music. But it was not always like that. He told me that when he was a kid he was part of a

gang called “la pandilla de los jodidos” something like the gang of the mischievous boys,

and according to him they were very mischievous! “if we were on the streets and we saw

somebody that we did not like, we beat him, and ran away” (Orobio, Y. (b)). In the gang

they used to listen to rap music, but then he became interested for the vernacular music and

left the gang.

Talking to the musicians from Guapí that are in their twenties they all refer to the

professor Hector Sánchez, as their major influence. Hector Sánchez learned from the old

masters, Don Silvino, specially. He knows that learning from them is not easy. So, when he

started the music school in Guapí he adopted a new methodology with more pedagogical

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tools for teaching to the young apprentices (Sánchez). Yeiner had the opportunity to learn

from both masters, Héctor and Silvino.

He says “Professor Sánchez had his own way, and professor Silvino had his own

way too, and they were not very compatible, although, Silvino was the teacher of professor

Sánchez. But the professor Sánchez was already into modernity. And it was very good

obviously!” (Orobio, Y. (b)) but due to personal problems that Yeiner’s mother had with

professor Sánchez he had to come back to learn with the Don Silvino and this process was

kind of a traumatic experience for him:“Master Silvino discouraged me very much,

however, I kept a marimba of him, a mangrove’s marimba. I will always thank to that

marimba all what I am nowadays. That little marimba he elaborated” (Orobio, Y. (b)).

Master Silvino used to get disappointed because Yeiner could not learn a revuelta

that he was trying to teach him, and Yeiner got frustrated many times but he persevered.

He says that he learnt how to play because he kept on playing despite adversities

There was a lot of discrimination! My mates used to mocked me because I was not

good enough (…) I play the marimba because I have studied a lot and because I

have put all my energies there. Because I have never been a marimbero! My thing

was the bombo and the cununo, you know? Neither singing was my thing. And right

now I am very much into the traditional singing (Orobio, Y. (b)).

I met Yeiner at the music school for adults; I went there with the intention of

interviewing him and became a student in his class. I was not very enthusiastic because at

that point I was already frustrated with the marimba lessons I was having with Don Silvino.

They were not going that well and he was already disappointed at my lack of abilities. As
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Yeiner told me his experience I could totally relate to it. Don Silvino had a good intentions

but it was very difficult for me to learn what he was trying to teach me: a revuelta in which

I had to make different rhythms with each hand at the same time. When I came to Yeiner’s

class, and he explained to me the rhythms and melodies with an onomatopoeia system, the

marimba seemed to be something simpler. It was just a matter of pedagogic tools.

Yeiner got those tools with a delegation of the Institute of Fine Arts from Cali that

came to Guapí in 2008 looking for the most talented musicians in order to give them formal

musical training. Yeiner was among the chosen ones. They held some courses on different

pedagogies applied to vernacular music as well as courses on of basic western music

theory. At the end of that training they received the title of Master in Traditional Music.

The Fine Arts institute also offered to the boys the possibility to go to Cali to study in the

Conservatory of that city. All of them accepted except Yeiner. He decided to stay in Guapí.

They could have stayed but they did not. I stayed doing the big work, the whole

work (…) I love Guapí! And the work I am doing is for Guapí, I hope someday,

somebody recognizes what I am doing. One of my dreams is to organize a group of

kids and train them to be very good marimberos, especially women. I want them to

be women so; we show that women are also capable. You know? Show to the world

that women can (Orobio, Y. (b)).

He is already working with kids in a group sponsored by a catholic organization. In

that group the main marimbero is a 14 year old girl, the daughter of Sixta Perlaza. He also

teaches in the local house of culture to the adults group. And he carries out his own

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research projects going to the old marimberos and cantaoras of the region trying to recover

the old style of playing and singing.

Yeiner says that for the vernacular music to survive one should make some

compromises. Although his main interest is the vernacular music itself, he has collaborated

with a band that mixes the local sounds with reggaeton, Chonta Urbana. He made some

arrangements and played the marimba in a home made CD they recorded. Yeiner says that

young people in Guapí love reggaeton so, by bringing some elements of the marimba music

into it, they induce them to look back to their origins.

Likewise, he is aware of the fact that the music that the bands play in the Petronio is

not the music that he grew up listening to, what people play there is “too polished”.

Nonetheless, he appreciate the festival very much,

It is the greatest thing! I think if it was not for the Petronio nobody would care for

the music of the Pacific, we would not be here if it was not for the Petronio. We

should be very thankful to the Petronio, because it moves so many things!

Everything depends on it… It should not be like that, but it is what we have, so,

thank God! (Orobio, Y. (b))

All Yeiner does in his life is for the marimba music, so it does not disappear.

Although his actions do not come from a previous analysis of what the music mean to him

or to the community, he seems to be very much aware of the importance of the vernacular

music for Guapí:

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 The importance of the traditional music for the community is a very hard question

to answer because I do not know; it is as if the music were a whole, because it is its

identity, the people’s identity. And people without identity are nothing. There are

other things obviously, the traditional customs, the rites, the religiosity, the food,

and everything, many other factors, the dances. But music is one of the strongest in

this field. For a child’s alabao music is needed, for the food, sometimes they are

cooking and they are singing at the same time, what I mean is that music is

everywhere. Music is the axis. Music is the axis and it is moved by people. And

Guapí is characterized by that. –Oh! The people from Guapí arrived! The currulao

is here! - Because it is its identity. Therefore, I think that the traditional music of the

Pacific is a whole. (Orobio, Y. (b)).

5.3.2 Freddy Walberto Cuero

Freddy is 21 years old, he grew up in a very musical family. As a weird thing, his

grandmother, the mother of his father was a drummer, she sang as well, but “she was the

greatest bombo player” (Cuero). Besides her, on the side of his mother there were a lot of

musicians and when they all came together the currulaos lasted for an entire week. Such

family environment put him in the vernacular music path and he began to learn with Héctor

Sánchez. Freddy says that all what he has done in music he has done it thanks to professor

Sánchez.

My first and only teacher in the music from the Pacific has been Héctor Sánchez.

He taught me to play because I had the feeling. He taught me to play the bombo, the

cununo (…) He is the most influential person in my life, he has gone so deep! The

master Héctor Sánchez is everything for me as a musician. (Cuero)

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 Freddy learned in the music school of Guapí and he was one of the chosen ones to

participate in the training offered by the Institute of Fine Arts. He obtained the title as

Master in Traditional Music, and since January 2009 he has been studying music at the

conservatory Antonio María Valencia in Cali on a scholarship.

His instrument is the bombo, as soon as he begins to talk about the bombo a big

smile lights his face. But he says he wants to learn the western theory because if he

understands the musical notes, then he can understand how the melodies are built. But his

bigger motivation for being in Cali that he wants to become a professional. He wants to go

to Guapí someday being a professional in order to create there a school of music from the

Pacific:

Where everybody who wants to know about the music from the Pacific goes there

and talks to me as a professional, and talks to other people that will be hired and

prepared for that (…) And then, what I want is that in ten years in the Pacific there

will be a new generation of musicians of music from the Pacific who will know how

to read partitures, that will have the music from the Pacific. So when they play, they

can play 3 songs of traditional music in a traditional way, and afterwards they can

play a song reading a partiture, so people see that the music is getting stronger. And

for that we need to study and become professionals in order to understand things.

And of course we have to bring the feeling into it, because if it does not have feeling

forget about it! There can be ability, but without feeling it is boring (Cuero).

Freddy has grew up as a participant of the Petronio Álvarez, he has been there nine

times, so the first time he participated he was 12. He has a good feeling towards the

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festival, he feels that it is making that the music from the Pacific begins to be appreciated in

the country.

Honestly the Petronio has meant so much for me, because thanks to it people know

who is Freddy Walberto (…) Thanks to the Petronio we got to be known as

musicians, as artists. Thanks to the Petronio the music from the Pacific has grown

and has gone one step forward. Therefore, I am really thankful to the Petronio.

(Cuero).

To reach big audiences is one of Freddy’s dreams, he says “What I want is that the

music from the Pacific can be heard all around the world and ceases to be despised, because

you can like it or not, but it is a music that has power!” (Cuero)

5.3.3 Marino Castro

Marino is a little bit older than the other three guys, he is 37, and has a life story a

little bit different, but right now he is in a similar position in his relationship to the marimba

music.

He was born in Guapí, but sixteen years ago when he was still a teenager he moved

to Puerto Tejada in order to work in the sugar cane plantations. When he lived in Guapí he

used to play the marimba, but as soon as he left the town he forgot about music. He worked

as a sugar cane cutter for three years until one day that he heard his inner voice “what is it

wrong with you? You liked music so much, why did you abandon that talent you had?”

(Castro)

This experience was so shocking for Marino that he went to the House of Culture of

the town and offered to give free music lessons. From that day he has been working there,
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first as a volunteer and then as a hired instructor. There have been seven years since then.

And now he knows for sure that he could not live without music. He says that:

If the traditional music disappears, the force of the Afrocolombian community

disappears as well. Because the music is a fundamental part of what we are as

Afrocolombians (…) if we stop making our music, it means that we will not have

any work to do, our source of sustenance will be gone (Castro).

So, on one had, he knows that they as Afrocolombians have a uniqueness that is

what makes them strong as a community, and part of that force is music. On the other hand,

he knows that currently, music is a source of sustenance as well.

5.3.4 Eneyder Hurtado

Profit is the last thing that crosses for Enyder’s mind when he thinks in the

marimba, nor identity struggles. For him it is a very intimate and spiritual act.

Eneyder was born in López de Micay a town in the north from Guapí. When He

was 10 years old he went to spend the holidays in the house of his uncle Guillermo Ríos

and there he felt in love with the marimba. For Eneyder the act of playing marimba has

mystic connotations, he says he gets connected with his ancestors as he plays:

I do not play marimba because I want to, I do it because I was born for playing it. I

am jungle, I am mangrove (…) For me playing marimba is something religious, it is

something to get in communication with other things When I play I feel in peace,

calm, I give myself to the instrument and I feel connected with everything.

(Hurtado, a)

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 When he was 20 he moved to Cali with his family, he worked with his father in his

carpentry. One day he was playing the marimba in front of the house and a man who was

passing by stopped to listen to him and after asking him a couple of questions invited him

to study in the Music Conservatory . Eneyder accepted the opportunity, and studied for

some time but he dropped out. He says that music for him is not something he can study, it

is something he feels.

It is something so spiritual that it represented a big step for him to make of the

marimba his source of survival, but the necessity made him yield:

I began to play with some bands, which I did not think was the right thing to do,

because it was something like making an advertising of the marimba, making

money out of it, and I did not like to mix the marimba with the economics. But then

I learnt because one has to be sociable in life and teach what you know (Hurtado

(b)).

He found something like a middle point in which he does not have to compromise

his principles. Nowadays he works in the children’s schools of traditional music in Cali

with children of social vulnerability situations74. Then he feels he is giving his knowledge

helping kids that appreciate what he gives them, and at the same time he is not exploiting

the marimba.

                                                                                                                         
74
The schools for traditional music are a derivative project from the Petronio Álvarez Festival. The kids are
prepared to participate in the Petronito, the children’s version of the festival.

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5.3.5 Hugo Candelario González
Hugo Candelario is from a generation in between the old masters and the young ones. He is

41 years old. He was born in Guapí but he grew up in Bogotá where his parents sent him to

study. He says that every time he came back home he spent many hours with José Antonio

Torres, Genaro’s brother. And he learnt to play marimba with him. And so, he developed

his own style mixing elements form the marimba music with structures of jazz, salsa, and

other western music. He says that when he is composing a new theme, he first thinks in the

marimba, then he can do an arrangement for a saxophone or a trumpet but the basis is

always the marimba. With this music he and his band Bahía, were the winners of the First

Petronio Álvarez Festival. He says that

The marimba music is like the purest source of water. This music is like drops of

water coming into your body through your ears. But I am not such a dreamer to

believe that it can survive just by itself. The tradition can not survive alone, because

the technology overthrows it. One has to mediate (González)

He told me that in a visit he made to Timbiquí, a town up north from Guapí, he

understood that his music should accomplish the function of mediation between the

vernacular cultures and technology. He was there for a catholic holiday. Throughout the

celebration he listened to the marimba music, and vernacular chants, but when the night

came, he saw that the vernacular music was replaced by sound systems on the streets

playing salsa, vallento and other foreign festive genres. This event made him think that the

marimba music should be recorder in order to survive. Then, people could still listen to it in

their sound systems.

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5.4. Different Contexts, different experiences
Through the different conversations I realized how different the perspectives on the

vernacular music are. Every one has their unique experience with music. There are

however, coincidences in some of the perceptions, most of all between the people of the

same age. The way in which the old masters experience music is very different than the

way in which the young musicians do it. All those similar or divergent experiences,

thoughts and emotions they shared with me help me to have a comprehensive view on the

vernacular music in Guapí.

5.4.1. Challenging categories

The transformation of the vernacular music is one of the things that became very

clear after talking with the cantaoras and marimberos. There is a transformation of the

contexts in which the music is performed, in the way it is learned, in the way it is

performed, and therefore in the music itself.

Looking back to the characteristics given to the vernacular music in the previous

chapter we find that the learning process take place in informal context and in informal

ways. Like the masters who learnt how to play the marimba in the currulaos by looking to

their parents, and playing when all the adults were too drunk to keep on playing. Or as

Doña Melania wisely said, “I learned to sing by living” (Obregón). That is it; the musical

learning process was not isolated from the everyday social life.

Although the incursion of the new generation was given by their participation in

contexts associated to the vernacular music, arrullos, funerals and currulaos, their learning

processes have characteristics associated with the popular and art music. They learnt in a

space designed for this specific task, they learnt in a class room with a specialized teacher.
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 This is the case of Yeiner and Freddy who learnt in the music school with Professor

Sánchez. For the girls and boys who are learning with Yeiner, their experience will be

completely different from that of the masters and from the experience the marimberos of

today. Since the original contexts of the marimba music are less common today, their

learning process will become totally isolated from their daily life. The marimba music will

not be the music that they live, but the music they study.

Likewise, this new way of learning entails the standardization of musical structures

that are rather diverse. The vernacular music has big parts of improvisation and that is

something that can not be taught. Therefore, in order to make the learning process possible,

structures must be simplified. Afterwards it depends on each marimbero to go beyond those

structures. As Freddy, who says that professor Sánchez taught him the music structures but

he had the feeling. The feeling cannot be taught.

This transformation of the learning processes also implies the professionalization of

musicians. Coming back to the characteristics of vernacular music we find that this music

is “carried out by non specialist and non professional members of the social group” (Booth

& Lee Kuhn 1990:418). Music ceases to be an activity that involves the whole community

but it becomes an activity reserved for those who ‘know’, for the musicians.

Freddy has seen that being a professional has great advantages and the most

important to him is that he gains credibility not just in front of foreign people but also in

front of the people from Guapí. He says he would like for the music from the Pacific to

cease being despised. He also thinks that by becoming a professional who works for the

music from the Pacific, people will value him and the music he is doing as well. There is

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the contradiction of trying to assert the own culture by evaluate it with patterns of a foreign

culture.

And then, we come back to the sensation I had while I was in Guapí, where I was

looking inside while most of the people were looking outside. The development of the

western model has been very insidious and it has penetrated the local culture making the

outside way of living very appealing and sometimes appearing better than the own culture.

Therefore, being a professional is seen as a status symbol that will give a better status to the

marimba music.

The professionalization of music has another side; it is that it becomes a

remunerated activity, a source of sustenance and likewise a source of entertainment, so it

ceases to be an integrant part of life and becomes an economic activity.

Eneyder did not accept formal musical training; however he had to yield to

everyday economic needs and makes music his profession. This represented a very big step

for him, since music for him has very strong spiritual connotations, so in order to be at

peace with himself he decided not to perform but to teach. He feels that when he performs

he has to adjust his style for entertaining others, while when he teaches he is just giving

what he knows and feels.

For Marino it is completely different, the fact that he can live out of music

represents for him an immense sense of joy and self affirmation. After three years of

working in a sugar cane plantation where he was nothing but a working body, he was able

to dedicate his life to play music, bringing him nothing but joy. It is a reaffirmation of

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himself as individual. He reintegrated the parts of his life that were left aside while he was

working as a sugar cane cutter.

For the old masters and cantaoras music has always been a part of their lives, such

as fishing, cooking or raising their children. It has never been their unique source of

sustenance, from time to time they earn some money from the marimbas and guasás they

sell or from sporadic performances. For the most part the possibility to live out of music

was never there for them. Music was not a commodity. And now that music has turned to

be a source of sustenance they feel as though it is not their time to be part of it as Doña

Natividad said “they do not want to listen to us, they prefer the young cantaoras” (Orobio,

N.) or they do not want to compromise on the music they do.

The reason for this refusal is that the professionalization of music causes a

transformation not just of the context in which it is performed, but of the music itself. In

this transformation one can see that marimberos, beginning to develop a virtuosity that was

not seen in the vernacular music (ed. Sevilla, 2008). And so the structure of the music

begins to change, so the musicians can show how good musicians they are.

The cantaoras notice this change and they say that young cantaoras do not tune the

way they used to tune. They have adjust the way they sing so diverse audiences will like

their music. And Don Dioselino says he will not go to Petronio to sing the stupid songs

people play there. In the context of the Petronio Álvarez festival the transformations of the

musical structures are very evident. We will have a more detailed discussion of this topic in

the next chapter.

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5.4.2 Music for the heart, music to resist
From those diverse ways in which music is experienced by the cantaoras and

marimberos, music acquires diverse meanings as well. It was also very clear that the

demarcation between the meaning the music has for the young and for the old ones, and the

way in which they express their ideas were also very different.

The young marimberos have a discourse abut their labor that the older ones do not

have. The boys link their music with concepts of identity. Yeiner and Freddy relate music

with an identity from the Pacific coast, while Marino does it with an Afrocolombian

identity. The older generations never made such links, for them their music is what they

know, what gives them joy.

Doña Juana says that what makes this music so important to her is that it can give

joy to the soul that no other music can give. And Don Genaro says “when you listen to a

currulao, you begin to feel this energy that comes to your body and then you don´t have the

will to died anymore!” (Torres, G.). That joy comes to the tied relation they have to music,

it is a part of their everyday living, so when they talk of music they come to a place of self

assertion. That is why in all the conversation I had with the old marimberos and cantaoras

they always mention how unevaluated they feel. Because the music they play is part of the

people they are. And by underestimating their music people underestimate their lives.

With the young marimberos the discourse was totally different. When they talk

about music they are talking not about self-assertion but about community assertion, more

specifically the Guapí, Pacific or Afrocolombian community. They say the importance of

music is that it is part of that identity, it makes the community stronger and that is why the

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music must be preserved. Nonetheless, this concern about the community harbors the will

of recognition for who they are.

Neither the young nor the old marimberos mentioned the word “resistance”, when

they were talking about the importance of the music from the south Pacific. However,

those acts of assertion collective or individual can be seen as acts of resistance. They are

not articulate, organized acts of resistance; they are rather isolated acts.

As I presented at the beginning of this work, Michael Foucault asserts that the

resistance that is taking place in the world has the shape of acts of self assertion.

They are struggles which question the status of the individual: on the one hand, they

assert the right to be different, and they underline everything which makes

individuals truly individual. On the other hand, they attack everything which

separates the individual, breaks his links with others, splits up community life,

forces the individual back on him- self, and ties him to his own identity in a

constraining way (…) Finally, all these present struggles revolve around the

question: Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and

ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal

of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is (Foucault,

1982:781).

Thus, the decision of the old marimberos and cantaoras to refuse to go to the

Petronio Álvarez Festival is their own way to a reaffirmation of themselves, and so is the

conviction of Dioselino that says that he will not go to the Festival to play as everybody

else does. They refuse the homogenization that the participation in the Festival represents.
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As Wolfgang Dietrich asserts in the case of the Guatemala marimba “what they were

defending above else was their way of living” (Dietrich, n.d.:3). And so are the old

marimberos and cantaoras, they are defending their unique way to perform, and in so

doing they are defending their unique way of life. However, this resistance, rather than a

conscious act seems to be a reaction towards the way in which the new forms of marimba

music are more valued than their own.

Another position in the relationship that the old generations have with marimba

music is the one of Guillermo Ríos. In this relationship there is not sign of resistance or

struggle. He cannot play anymore but when he did it he felt he was valued. Right now he

lives a comfortable life, he is not rich but he has enough to live. He can enjoy the memories

of the glory times he had when he was a marimbero and that is all what he needs.

For Eneyder Hurtado the act of the decline the education in Conservatory was his

own act of resisting standardization, while for Marino Castro the act of making music as a

profession was the way in which he asserted himself as an individual, after having losing

himself working

But Marino also understands his act of performing marimba music as an act that has

collective implications, as does Yeiner and Freddy do. They do not refuse to take part in the

Petronio because from their perspective it is a great platform to show their culture, so it can

be known and appreciated by others and subsequently it becomes stronger. In order to

preserve their music they make some compromises, they accept that music has to change to

a certain extent, in order to be accepted. And then Yeiner plays in his marimba a reggaeton

and Hugo Candelario asserts that one of the ways to preserve their own music is by

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recording it. They play with the elements of the dominant culture in order to ratify their

difference. In so doing, they run the risk of becoming one more standardized product.

When I was talking to Pablo Cala, a human rights activist who works in the Pacific,

I asked him about those differences I founded between the positions of the young ones and

the old marimberos and cantaoras, why the young boys had a more active discourse and

attitude towards defending the vernacular music than the masters? Pablo told me that he

thinks that it is because when the masters were young they did not have to worry about the

same things the younger generation has to. The music was there and there was nothing

threatening.

The context in which music can be seen as an act of resistance was also mentioned

by the marimbero Hugo Candelario González. He was the only interviewee to whom I

directly asked whether the act of playing marimba music is an act of resistance or not. He

told me that according to him it was not. He said that in the times when the African people

were brought to America to work as slaves, the marimba music was a way to assert their

African origins, and in such context music was an act of resistance. But now, that the

slavery is over it does not make sense to talk about resistance.

From my point of view the current socio-political context in the south Pacific Coast

presents several reasons for resistance: displacement, violence, exploitation of natural

resources and cultural homogenization, among many others. And I do believe that even if

the young marimberos never mention these reasons, and they never said they were resisting

through making music, they are aware of their threatening context. Therefore their acts are

oriented towards the preservation of their music. On the other hand, the old masters lived

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all his life in a context of exclusion but they were never threatened to leave their lands, the

cultural influence from outside were not so deep so they could thought it could overthrow

their own music. The different contexts are reflected then in the discourse from both young

and old marimberos have.

Likewise, one can see in the positions of Yeiner, Freddy and Marino the influence

of the afrocolombian movements. The new generation were born in a context of

transformation in the way in which the national government deals with the Pacific Coast.

Yeiner and Freddy, for instance, were born just a couple of years before the Constitution of

1991 was proclaimed. So they were kids when the activists of the afrocolombian movement

came to Guapí to explain to the population their rights as an ethnic community. Yeiner and

Freddy grew up at the same time while the afrocolombian movement was getting stronger.

While Marino lives in Puerto Tejada a town where the Black Communities Process has

been very strong, and so he speaks about the afrocolombian identity.

This was not the case for the old marimberos and cantaoras. It is quite significant

that during the conversation I had with them they never used the word “Afrocolombians”.

While Freddy even told me that his family had a very especial relationship to music, they

understood its real meaning because a relative of theirs had been a slave. This story

evidences how the young marimberos raise their struggle at the light of the process of

empowerment of the afrocolombian movement, which makes them aware of their slavery

past.

What I found among the marimberos and cantaoras from Guapí is that there is not

one single articulate movement of resistance that grows from their music. The act of

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playing vernacular music is not an act of resistance. But it might be, as the act of refusing to

play this music might be a resistance act too. What I found was a multiplicity of resistance

acts related to the vernacular music which are exerted in different ways.

I cannot say whether these acts of resistance might underpin bigger movements as

Scott says that the hidden transcripts do. What I see is that in the very moment they are

performed they pose a challenge to a system that seeks to homogenize. Underneath all

those acts what I found a need to affirm the uniqueness of their vernacular culture, a need to

be valued as the unique and diverse persons they are. A claim for the right to live in their

own peace.

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 6. Revuelta # 3

In the Festival
The 13 Petronio Álvarez Festival of Music from the pacific was held from the 12th to the
th

16th of August of 2009. In the official opening ceremony of the Festival which was held one

month before the Festival began. During the ceremony the Major of Cali, Jorge Iván

Ospina, gave a speech in which he highlighted some of the concerns that arose as soon as

one explores the influences that the Festival has in the vernacular music of the Pacific. He

said that the organizers of the Festival, (the local government) were concern about the

transformation of the music as it is moved from the original contexts in which it is played;

namely parties, funerals and Catholic holidays, to a stage.

He also said that the aim of the Festival was to preserve the African valueas in the

Pacific culture rather than to be a commercial platform. Finally he said that the Festival

could not serve as a veil to cover the difficult social and political situation of the region “In

the pacific coast there are paramilitaries, guerrillas, corruption, and that can not be hidden”

said the major that night. The other side of this discourse was given by Francisco Zumaqué

a Colombian composer who said in a video presented during the ceremony that besides the

Leyenda Vallenata Festival75, the Petronio Álvarez was the music Festival with the most

commercial potential in the country.

                                                                                                                         
75
I mentioned briefly in the chapter 3 how the vallenato, a local music, has become the national music. The
expansion of vallenato is a clear example of the how the official support can make out of music a source of
identity and political strength. The vallenato was original from some towns in the north-east part of the
country in the national state Guajira. In 1967 this state was divided and a new state was born: Cesar. In 1968
the Leyenda Vallenata Festival was created by the state’s gubernator of Cesar, Alfonso López Michaelsen,
who became president 4 years later. The vallenato became the most important element of reference in the
identity of the new state. Since the creation of the Festival the genre has become more and more popular in
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 During the five days of the Festival I was witness to the many contradictions of the

Festival. One hand there the Afrocolombian communities who see in the recognition of

their music a step towards the recognition of their value as a whole community. On the

other hand there is a commercialization of that same culture they defend. Different agendas

from different actors, musicians, cultural minorities, cultural industries representatives,

government representatives and academic people, take place in the frame of the Festival. In

this Chapter I will present an overview of some issues that called my attention during the

Festival. The space I will dedicate to this analysis is very limited and the effects the

Festival has on the music from the pacific are deep and wide and definitely deserve a

further analysis.

6.1 A trendy product

The Festival was born in 1997, since that year it was held at Los Cristales, an open Air

theater with capacity for 15.000 people. In 2008 the organizers moved the Festival to the

city’s bull ring. There were two main reasons for the change, one, Los Cristales is located

in a residential zone and the neighbors were complaining about the noise, and two, the

theater was already too small for the amount of people attending to the Festival. This year

the 30.000 people capacity of the Bull ring was exceeded again and the last two nights of

the Festival people had to stay outside. In the first edition of the Festival there were 36

bands participating while in the 13th edition there were 86 bands.

As much as the Major denied in his speech, the Festival represents a big business

for the city, and the more commercial it is the more tourists it will attract to Cali. One of the
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
the country, and as the vallenato became more popular the state gained more importance in a political level.
(Wade, 2000)

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parallel activities during the Festival was a business meeting where members of the tourist

industry were invited in order to promote Cali and the Festival as destination. There were

also guests from the discographic industry getting in contact with members of the

participating bands.

In this edition of the Petronio the commercialization of the event was particularly

visible. For the first time in 13 years a Colombian national network broadcast the final day

of the Festival live, and during the five days of the Festival the two private Colombian TV

networks were presenting the ‘entertainment’ section of the news76 from the different

events of the Festival. Cali became a stage for the national TV stars that wished to show

off.

As I mentioned before, the Petronio was born to originally be oriented towards the

afrocolombian people living in Cali, and so the public attending to the Festival have

traditionally been black. However, it has been changing, from year edition to year, and

although there is a predominance of the black people in the audiences, the amount of light

skin mestizos attracted to the Festival is constantly increasing. This new interest can be

understood in different ways. One reason fro this demographic shift is the increased

promotion of the Festival. The shift can also be attributed to the large movement of young

musicians from inland areas interested in rediscovering the local music of their country.

From them the Festival represents an opportunity to get in contact with the sounds of the

Pacific.

                                                                                                                         
76
The TV news broadcasted in the two private Colombian networks have a big session at the end of the
emission dedicated to the tabloids, that they call the ‘entertainment news’

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 Totó la Momposina, a singer from the Caribbean coast, sees the new interest of the

young musicians in the music of the Caribbean and Pacific Coast as a search for identity.

They are looking for their roots (2008). While Peter Wade asserts that the attraction

towards those black elements of music is driven by a kind of Dionysian impulse, as he says:

[T]he music they create, or use, although frequently looked down upon as inferior

and crude, noisy and licentious, may also be taken up again by the dominant

nonblack society and reincorporated into their world, perhaps because it seems to

embody some Dionysian impulse that is particularly attractive (Wade,1993: 273-

274).

Taking into account Wade’s and Totó’s opinions, one could assert that the act of

looking back to the black elements of music is an act of reuniting the Apollonian and

Dionysian principles which were split through years of catholic education. But this would

be the subject of a more careful analysis.

Jose Jorge de Carvalho studies the phenomenon of the popularity of Afroamerican

music in the case of Brazil, he concludes that this popularity is underpinned by a global

consume that reduces the music, that once was sacred, to a fetish of sensuality (de

Carvalho, 2002). For the case of the music of the Colombian Pacific I would not say that

the commercialization has gone se far as to reduce the music to sensuality fetishes, but it

has certainly changed in order to be more commercial. On the other hand the audiences

have taken the music and have given to it a new meaning away from the meaning the

music has when it is performed in the original contexts.

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6.2 Changing to be popular
While I was in Guapí I got to see the preparation the bands were making in order to

go to the Festival. One day I attended a rehearsal of Manglares, the band in which Juana

Viáfara and Isidora Minas sing. Among all the participants from Guapí they were the band

with the oldest participants. The afternoon I was at their rehearsal was maybe the most

special moment I had throughout the field research. All the members of the group gathered

in the house of one of the band members. The house was a wooden construction of two

levels. The band, the two cununos, two bombos, the marimba and the four cantaoras where

in the second level of house, along with 5 or 6 kids that were running all around the place.

As the band was playing I thought that that house could fall down at any moment. The

whole house was shaking, as if it was dancing at the rhythm of the drums.

Manglares played in the Festival on the second night of the eliminatory round. They

played as all the other groups three songs, one of them was a bunde which is a rather slow

genre, not as festive as the currulao or the juga might be. They were the only band that

performed a whole bunde. When the rest of the bands incorporated a bunde in their

repertories, they mixed it with a currulao or a juga, which are more cheery genres. Those

bands played one or two strophes from the bunde and then began to sing a currulao or juga.

Those changes have been motivated by the audience of the Festival for whom the

Petronio is a big occasion to party. Therefore, when a band decides to play a bunde it brings

down the festive spirit, while when a band performs the combination bunde- juga or bunde-

currulao, the audiences respond enthusiastic.

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 The amazing energy I had felt during the rehearsal of Manglares in the house in

Guapí fade away when they performed in the enormous and crowed bull ring in Cali. They

seemed old fashioned in front of an audience that was seeking for entertainment.

Manglares did not qualify for the final. The winner was other group from Guapí

Voces de la Marea a band formed by young musicians. They present a very ‘polished

version’ of the marimba music. When one listen for the first time a currulao the voices

might sound a little bit odd, they seem out of tune for somebody used to the diatonic

western music. The voice arrangements presented in the Festival are closer to the western

way of singing. So were the arrangements Voces de la Marea presented.

This is what the old cantaoras said to me in Guapí: “the young cantaoras do not

sing like we used to sing anymore”. One could think that these are typical words of old

people for whom past times were better. And one could argue that music is a living

practice, therefore, it is normal that changes as much as contexts change and people change.

However, what one sees in the Festival is that music is changing impelled by economic

interest that makes pressure so the music is more likeable to every kind of audiences.

When the Festival was over I had one more conversation with Isidora Minas and

Juana Viáfara, the cantaoras of Manglares, They were very disappointed because they did

not win. The excitement they had in Guapí was gone. Isidora explained to me why she

though they did not win:

From my point of view the traditional music is suffocated (…) In this way the music

is lost, because the music we make, this music that Manglares brought to the

Festival is lost. Because I did not think that we could have lost, with that bunde, that
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 currulao we played. If we would have known that the music played should be the

rumba77 music then, we could have won because we could have sang rumba too

(Minas (b)).

The music of the pacific out of their original contexts acquires the meaning of party

music.

Doña Juana said that if they would have known that the music should be rumba then

they could have sang a song that she used to listen in the radio when she was young called

La Piragua. This song is a very popular cumbia, genre from the Colombian Caribbean

Coast and popularized in the middle of the twentieth century when it was brought to the

ballrooms of Bogotá.

Here we are not just talking about the transformation of the music itself but about

the incorporation of a completely different genre into the marimba. The message the

Festival gives to the participants is very clear, they must adapt to foreign standards if they

want to gain recognition.

Although they seemed sad, they said they want to come back, now that they have

the experience, they want to learn from it and come back, and as Doña Isidora said “We

must change. We have already seen that our tradition is not valuable anymore, the old

people are not valuable anymore so, we have to learn from what we see” (Minas (b)).

                                                                                                                         
77
Rumba is another word used to say Fiesta which is party. So When Isidora say rumba music she is referring
to music that is played to enliven a party.

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 In an article published the 21th of August, in the principal national newspaper, El

Tiempo, Oscar Acevedo a Colombian musicologist claimed for the professionalization of

the musicians from the Pacific South, he said that

In order to obtain a massive recognition the bambasús78 and alabaos must go

through a process of professionalization. This professionalism can not be

appreciated in the participants of this Festival yet. Many of the bands we watched in

the TV transmission have still a rural sound, which prevents them from gaining

access to the media, which is a necessary step to achieve the interest of big

audiences79.

Acevedo accepts that this process might lead to a “boring standardization” however; he

sees this as the cost to be paid for recognition. He ratifies what the cantaoras of Manglares

thought; the music they presented has no more space in the Festival’s context. If they want

to come back, they have to change.

6.3 Other Expressions

Parallel to the Festival, the II Seminar of Research on the Traditional Music from

the Colombian Pacific was held. The seminar was open to academic researchers as well as

to members of the bands participating in the Petronio. During the first days of the seminar

there were lectures given by some academics on their research on the music of the Pacific.

                                                                                                                         
78
Musical Genre from the North Pacific coast
79
Para que los bambasús y los alabaos obtengan un reconocimiento masivo, deben pasar por un proceso de
profesionalización que todavía no se les aprecia a los participantes en este Festival. Muchas de las
agrupaciones escuchadas en la transmisión tienen todavía un sonido rural, que les impide acceder a los
medios, paso necesario para lograr el interés del gran público

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Most of the sessions were focused on the current situation of this music, and the

transformation it is going through.

There was also space for all the participants to share their opinions on these topics.

And generally people from the bands were very happy to get to share their opinions. It

became the space the Festival was lacking in which the people directly involved could

express their opinions on the effects the Festival and the national cultural policies are

having on the music from the Pacific. This space was especially important on the last day

when the discussion topic was “How the Petronio Álvarez Festival could be improved?”

On that day the participants let go all the frustration they had. Many of them were

disappointed for not having qualified in the final, so they were criticizing the criteria the

judges had for choosing the winners. The overall feeling was that the Festival was

promoting music styles very different to those they used to play in their hometowns. They

said the Festival is transforming their identity.

A young afrocolombian woman who was living in Cali spoke several times. She

was very upset because she said that the Festival was just a farce used by the government to

show that the Afrocolombians are totally integrated to the Colombian society, and

promotes the idea of the blacks as friendly festive people with no problems, while in reality

Afrocolombians are being killed and displaced all along the pacific coast.

It is indeed contradictory the large publicity the Festival generates promoting the

culture of the Pacific, while the armed conflict is getting worst in the same part of the

country. Here we come back to the invisibilization of violence studied by Michael

Birenbaum (see Bordón 3). Birenbaum says using Ochoa’s arguments that the government
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promotes culture as a way to attain peaceful societies. The government traces an automatic

link between those peace and culture turning them banal. The big promotion and

commercialization of the Petronio Álvarez Festival seems to send the message that the

armed conflict and the suffering endured by people of the Pacific are not important.

This situation of ignoring the harsh reality of the afrocolombian communities of the

pacific within the frame of the Festival is transformed for some bands that include in the

lyrics of the songs they perform on stage stories about the armed conflict situation in which

they live.

The band Santa Bárbara from Timbiquí sang in one of their songs to the internal

displaced people, the band Tambores de la Noche from Buenaventura sang “because those

from outside come to take away from us our plantain, our chontaduro80, our bread” Those

from Bahía Málaga said “I won´t talk to you about violence, how nice to talk about peace,

but if I don´t have a job what the hell will I give to my children, what future will they

have?” There was other band that was even more explicit in the lyrics and said “We do not

want anymore violence, we do not want anymore massacres, neither rapes. We want the

peace in Colombia; we want the peace in the world”

Therefore, even if the government uses the Festival to show the friendly face of the

Pacific, what was denied by the major of Cali in his inaugural speech, the bands use the

space they have to create awareness.

                                                                                                                         
80
The chontaduro is a native fruit form the pacific. It is the fruit of the chonta palm, the same whose wood is
used for the fabrication of the marimbas’s keys.

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 From the interviews I conducted and from what I saw in Guapí and the Festival I

see that different acts of resistance related to the marimba music can be see in two main

categories, one is the acts of resistance that aim to avoid the standardization of music. The

second is a resistance that aims to get the recognition of the Afrocolombian communities of

the Pacific and of their rights. As I mentioned previously I understand that both motivation

have the same essence: it is the recognition of diversity and therefore the recognition of

their own way of peace.

In the scenario of the Petronio Álvarez Festival I see that the struggles related to the

first category, those who aim to avoid the homogenization of vernacular music, do not have

much space. The bands should be able to go beyond the goal of winning, so they could

show at the Festival the music they like to do and not that the judges and the audiences

might like. However, the spaces in which the populations of the Pacific are recognized are

so limited that winning this Festival becomes a very important event for all of them.

In the Festival’s frame, the music is decontextualized and turned into a commercial

entertainment product. This goes beyond the limit of what could be catalogued as

vernacular and comes into the scope of the popular. Booth and Lee Kuhn assert that

vernacular music, they call it folk, will not resist technology, “As economic systems

become more diverse and complex, they support broader ranges and levels of available

technology. From these two interactions, it seems clear that no folk music system will

survive the advent of pop music styles themselves” (Booth and Lee Kuhn, 1990: 432).

The problem is not the change itself, the problem is that the change implies the

disappearance of the vernacular manifestations of music, “the spread of modern technology

143

 
together with the strength of market economy forces will continue to weaken, and perhaps

ultimately erase, those types of collective participational music performance” (Booth and

Lee Kuhn, 1990: 432).

Hugo Candelario disagrees with such a fatalist perspective. He sees in technology a

force that can threat vernacular music. But at the same time he sees that technology has the

instruments that can be used for the vernacular music to survive. Indeed, he says that

nowadays the marimba music can not survive without the technology. Right now the

struggles for the marimba music to survive seem to ask for compromises such as those

made by the young marimberos, where they play with the elements of the dominant culture

in order to keep alive their own music. This might be the way to avoid the total

standardization. The marimberos and cantaoras just have to know how much can they

compromise.

The second level of resistance, that whose aim is the recognition of Afrocolombian

communities seems to have more space in the Festival. Even if the Festival was not created

as a space for political claims, the context in which the communities of the pacific live

makes the Festival the ideal stage to create awareness at a national level about their

situation. As long as the armed conflict and exclusion are a reality for the communities in

which the music of the Pacific is created, political claims will take place at the Festival

every year. As the partial inclusion of the territory is the way in which the government

deals with Pacific region, and as the armed conflict gets expanded and becomes more

threatening to different communities and vernacular musics, new acts of resistance, big or

small intended or unintended, successful or unsuccessful will grow.

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 Finale

Plural Resistances for a Plural World

Some months ago when I began to work in this paper I had the idea that the Afrocolombian

community was a naturally resistant subject. I thought about the years of slavery and the

exclusion they have suffered throughout Colombian History and I immediately concluded

resistance was inherent to this group. From that point I created a picture in my mind where

the marimba music was a rather isolated practice that underpinned the resistance identity of

the Afrocolombian communities of the south Pacific coast. Those initial ideas were

theoretically and practically challenged and transformed by the authors I read and the

experiences I had during the field research.

The essential idea I had for the thesis was the concept of resistance as a call for

diversity and a way to perform peace and then I placed it in the frame of the afrocolombian

communities of the pacific coast. As I began to read about those communities I found the

work of Peter Wade, and Eduardo Restrepo who made me think that by believing in the

idea of natural resisting ethnic groups I was falling in a essentialization that was denying

the plurality of experiences within that group. So, I was considering the homogenizing

power of the dominators but I was not considering that from the oppressed movements

homogenizing power could grow as well.

Once I overcame the essential link between Afrocolombian communities, resistance

and marimba music I was able to assume the research process in a more open way. Though,

the concept of resistance I conceived resistance not a one single act, or articulated

movement but as a different acts that had as aim the call for plurality, when I imagined the

afrocolombian movement as a resistance movement and the act of playing marimba music
145

 
as an act of resistance I was already giving a one single unified answer to research. But

when I erased those automatic links I was able to see many paths and answers my research

could take.

I encounter many different discourses, ways in which people understand and

experience music and different acts of resistance related to vernacular music in Guapí and

in the Petronio Álvarez Festival. Some of then are intended some are not, some born just a

natural reaction towards exclusion situation or towards standardization of music.

I found that the contexts in which people live are fundamental in the ways

resistance, while the old marimberos lived in a context of exclusion, the young marimberos

live in a context of partial integration and armed conflict. For the old marimberos this

meant that they have never been taken into account, their music has not been valued and

neither their lives. They are just ignored. However, this exclusion in which they lived also

means that nobody was imposing them another way to life or play their music. Therefore

when nowadays they face that transformation music is having they reject those external

pressures and affirm their right to play their music as they have always do it. They do not

think about communities’ rights or identity, because they did not live in a context of armed

conflict they never saw their community under threat.

On the other hand there are the young marimberos who have grown up in a much

more complex context in which the government has began to look to the pacific with

economic interest, the afrocolombian movement has became stronger at the light of the

political constitution of 1991 and the armed conflict has come into the Pacific area. All this

events mark the way in which the young marimberos relate to music. They have heard the

146

 
discourses of the Afrocolombian movements so they are aware of their rights. They know

that their identity makes them stronger as community in order to claim for their rights. So

when they talk about the marimba music they always place it in the community. For them

vernacular music is important because it is part of their identity and it makes them stronger

as community.

As the contexts in which resistances grow are different so are the ways in which

they are exerted. The old generation of marimberos resists the standardization of music by

refusing to play in the Petronio Álvarez Festival of music from the Pacific which is leading

a transformation of the marimba music towards a more commercial version of it. Not

playing is an act of resistance. On the contrary, the way in which young marimberos resist

is by playing. Playing in the Festival, playing in Guapí, playing everywhere they can; their

aim is that the marimba music does not disappear. Therefore, young musicians make some

compromises; they play reggaeton in their marimba, record CD´s or get a formal musical

education. They want to be heard by large audiences so they can prove that their music and

community are valuable.

Although in the Petronio Álvarez Festival the participants seem to be caught in the

standardization of music other ways of resistance appear. Some participants rebel against

the invisibilization of the armed conflict in the frame of the Festival, where all what the

organizers want to show is the nice side of the Pacific. Therefore, some bands sing in the

songs they perform on stage the stories of forced displacements, mass murders and rapes

that they see in their communities.

147

 
 The travel to Guapí made me confront the reality of the armed conflict in the

Pacific area. Though I never had to face threatening situations, the stories the people told

me made me see that the conflict is getting worst. Eight years ago they said there were not

violent actions in the region, while in 2009 murders and displacements have occurred in

Guapí. Today 7th of December 2009 a hand grenade exploited during the celebration of the

Immaculate Conception and killed a young woman and her daughter. The means of

territorial control become more perverse.

According to Arturo Escobar the capitalist development project entails a constant

territorial expansion and the armed conflict that the Colombian Pacific is undergoing can be

understood under this logic. The dispute of the territory is a dispute for the expansion of

economic projects. Under this logic one could expect that the armed conflict, the forced

displacements and different outrageous effects they have on the population will not end

soon.

However, from what I have found, I would say that different ways of resistance to

those threats will arise. I do not know what shape they will have or how challenging will

they be. What I know is that personal and communities’ acts of self assertion will always

find their ways.

148

 
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OROBIO, NATIVIDAD, Personal Interview, Guapí, 28 July 2009.

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____________ (b), Personal Interview, Santiago de Cali, 16 August 2009.

PERLAZA, SIXTA, Personal Interview, Guapí, 28 July 2009.

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155

 
 RODRÍGUEZ, DIOSELINO, Personal Interview, Guapí, 24 July 2009.

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____________ (b), Personal Interview, Guapí, 30 July 2009.

VIÁFARA, JUANA (a), Personal Interview, Guapí, 28 July 2009.

____________ (b), Personal interview, Santiago de Cali, 17 August 2009.

156