| This work explores the adoption and resignification of salsa music in Cali, Colombia, as a case study in the development of contemporary popular identity and experience. By the 1980s, Cali emerged on the global scene as an important centre for salsa consumption and performance, but its roots do not originate in Colombia. Salsa is a transnational style based on Afro-Cuban forms and elaborated by Puerto Ricans in New York City during the 1960s and 70s. The adoption and resignification of this style in Cali sheds light on its diffusion to other Latin American cities, where it has also played an important role in developing transnational links and cosmopolitan sensibilities. This study anchors salsa's local adoption in the spread of Cuban-based antecedents to Colombia during the 1920s--50s, and its relationship to national musical styles during that period. Of particular importance in Cali's scene has been the centrality of recorded music, as both a source of musical sound and also as a commodity with great symbolic value. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the rise of a record-centred dance scene and the rise of record collectors and aficionados. Chapters 5 and 6 trace the influence of recordings on live musical performance in the boom of local orquestas in the 1980s and early 1990s, as Colombian artists absorbed and reinterpreted the sounds they heard on vinyl. Another strong feature of Cali's scene is the participatory ethos that has imbued all spheres of local popular life. These chapters explore how dancing, listening, collecting, and performing salsa have been key practices in framing and reinforcing community bonds during different stages of the city's rapid expansion since the 1940s. |
