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Origins and Influence

of Música Antillana

in Cali and Colombia

One evening my husband and research collaborator Medardo Arias Satizábal took me to visit the artisan Hernán González. A colorful person much loved by his neighbors, González is renowned for the carnival masks he makes in his home in the older working-class barrio of Loma de la Cruz. He is also a veteran of Cali’s popular music scene during the 1940s and 1950s and maintains his passion for that era by collecting videos of old movie musicals. González was a youth when Cuban (and to a lesser extent, Puerto Rican) styles were spreading throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, gaining enormous popularity in urban centers in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, and Panama, and in the Latino community in New York City. These sounds also spread to Colombia, where they took hold in the Atlantic coast ports of Cartagena and Barranquilla, and in Cali.

González led us back to the dining area behind the grocery store that he also runs out of his house, where he turned on the television set and videocassette player to show us some choice excerpts from his collection. As we watched famous stars croon and mambo their way across the screen, he regaled us with anecdotes about Cali’s scene in those days—famous dancers who knew all the Cuban styles; the bars, cabarets, and brothels where you could hear the latest recordings of this music; the movie houses where you went to learn the dances from new musicals; and the ballrooms where local bands performed música antillana. Flashing us his mischievous and charismatic smile, González said, “En esos días llovió música sagrada sobre Cali” (In those days, holy music rained down on Cali).¹

González’s remark is hardly the raving of a lone music fan. His attitude is typical of working-class Caleños of his generation, who embraced Cuban and Puerto Rican sounds during the 1940s and 1950s. While the music they love is hardly “sacred” or “holy” in the literal sense (especially given its initial rise in the city’s red-light district), it certainly is revered as both the root of contemporary local tradition and the glorious musical emblem of a bygone era. González’s recollection of his youth as a time when “holy music rained down on Cali” points to a widespread Caleño origin myth in which the arrival of música antillana is constructed as a virtual genesis of the modern city. Indeed, his remark invokes the Old Testament book of Genesis, in which holy rain figures not only during the Creation, but also during the biblical flood that washed away the old and renewed the Earth again (Genesis 2:7 and 7:12).

Origin myths are a vital part of cultural beliefs, whether in the context of nations, ethnic groups, or subcultural scenes. They are intricately tied to discourses about authenticity and purity, anchoring subjectivity and social identities through a number of codes, representations, and practices.² In this chapter I explore the roots of Cali’s contemporary origin myths by looking at the city’s history in regional and national contexts, linking this to the development of música antillana and its influence in Colombia and Cali from the 1920s through the 1950s. I situate the emergence of música antillana as a widespread cosmopolitan dance music in Latin America, analyzing the political economy that led to the predominance of Cuban genres in música antillana but also made space for Puerto Rican elements and artists to be included. The transition from música antillana to salsa is explored through the influence of two pivotal groups that, not surprisingly, had a great impact in Cali—the Sonora Matancera and Cortijo y su Combo. I also explore the role played by música antillana in the formation of Colombian música tropical (“tropical” dance music based on Atlantic coast genres) and look at the ways in which both música antillana and música tropical competed for attention in Caleño musical life in the middle of the twentieth century—later replaced by the origin myth about música antillana’s predominance. This chapter contextualizes how struggles over local, national, and cosmopolitan identities in Cali set the stage for many cultural practices that I analyze in the rest of this book.