In Colombia, the tumultuous second half of the twentieth century kicked off with a fierce conflict between the Liberal and Conservative parties known as La Violencia (The Violence, ca. 1948-1958). Following a brief period of military rule (1953-1957), a bipartisan system of shared governance, the National Front (1958-1974), brought about some respite to the sectarian bloodshed. However, the exclusionary two-party system precipitated new lines of conflict between the state and communist guerrillas. Along with the political turmoil, the nation was also undergoing an era of profound cultural change. This essay examines three countercultural-oppositional movements that captivated a wide swath of youth in Colombia’s biggest cities during the 1960s: the canción protesta (protest song) movement, the rock and roll subculture denominated as nueva ola (new wave), and nadaísmo, a rabblerousing avantgarde literary movement. I analyze the correspondences and discontinuities in the ways adherents of these movements conceived of the ideal means to carry out social, cultural, and political resistance. While there were fundamental tensions between the “discourses of resistance” linked to these three countercultural streams, I argue that their convergence in the late 1960s facilitated the emergence of a commercial form of canción protesta.
Este ensayo examina tres movimientos contra-culturales que cautivaron a un amplio sector de la juventud en las principales ciudades de Colombia durante la década de los sesenta: el movimiento de la canción protesta, la subcultura del rock and roll, cuya identidad local se denominó nueva ola, y el nadaísmo, un movimiento literario de vanguardia. Analizo las correspondencias y discontinuidades entre las formas en que los participantes de estos movimientos concibieron los medios ideales para llevar a cabo la resistencia social, cultural y política. Sostengo que, si bien hubo tensiones fundamentales entre los “discursos de resistencia” asociados a cada una de estas corrientes contraculturales, su convergencia a finales de la década de los sesenta facilitó el surgimiento de una variante comercial de canción protesta.
In this article, I follow the discourses elaborated around música latinoamericana (“Latin American music”), a broad musical category encompassing a wide range of Latin American—but especially Andean—folk genres within successive, interrelated “cultural projects.” I examine the extra-musical meanings attributed to this stylistic mode in the nueva canción (new song) movements of protest music in the Southern Cone, the transnational nueva canción latinoamericana network to which they gave rise, and ultimately focus on música latinoamericana’s development in Colombia. During the mid-1970s, the initial Colombian practitioners of música latinoamericana adopted several facets of the discourse pertaining to this music—along with the musical models themselves—from nueva canción latinoamericana. However, they later refined claims about the style’s significance, its distinctiveness from other musical genres, and its political symbolism to fit changing cultural contexts in the cities of the Colombian interior. I argue that the discursive “work” undertaken in these cultural projects has ensured that música latinoamericana continues to be equated with anti-establishment politics in Colombia, and hence that it remains closely tied to canción social (social song), the present-day category for socially conscious music.
En este artículo rastreo los discursos que circundan la denominada «música latinoamericana», una categoría musical bastante amplia que reúne diversos géneros folclóricos latinoamericanos, especialmente andinos, y que se encuentra inscrita en «proyectos culturales» sucesivos e interrelacionados. Examino los significados extramusicales que movimientos contestatarios como la nueva canción, en el Cono Sur, y la red transnacional de la nueva canción latinoamericana atribuyeron a este estilo musical, para luego enfocarme en el desarrollo que tuvo la música latinoamericana en Colombia. A mediados de la década de 1970, los primeros intérpretes colombianos de música latinoamericana adoptaron numerosas facetas del discurso relacionado con la nueva canción latinoamericana, incluyendo sus modelos musicales. Sin embargo, no tardaron en refinar sus argumentos acerca del significado del estilo, su peculiaridad frente a otros géneros musicales y su simbolismo político, con el propósito de adaptarlos a los cambiantes contextos culturales de las ciudades colombianas del interior. Sostengo que el «trabajo» discursivo que asumieron estos proyectos culturales ha conseguido que, en Colombia, la música latinoamericana siga siendo equiparada a tendencias políticas contestatarias y que, por tanto, se mantenga estrechamente vinculada a la «canción social», la categoría vigente para la música socialmente comprometida.
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