In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

| 5 Chichera Music The “Tropicalization” of Música Nacional T he 1970s was not only a period of “rocolization” of the Ecuadorian pasillo but also one of “tropicalization” of música nacional. By “tropicalization ” I mean the fusion of música nacional genres with AfroCaribbean rhythms, particularly cumbia and salsa, which in the 1960s and 1970s were at the peak of their popularity. In Ecuador, as in most Latin American countries, Afro-Caribbean musics such as salsa, cumbia, and merengue are collectively known as música tropical (tropical music), a term that points to both its geographic origin and the stereotypes of a happy dance music.1 Música nacional underwent two processes of tropicalization. The first took place in the 1960s and 1970s in upper-middle-class circles with the influence of the cumbia and salsa craze; the second began in the 1970s among the popular classes with the cumbia rhythm. While upper-middle-class Ecuadorians danced to salsa renditions of elite música nacional (pasillos, pasacalles, and fox incaicos) at private parties and social clubs, the popular classes danced to modern renditions of folk music of indigenous origin (sanjuanito, cachullapi, saltashpas, and yumbo) at their homes and on the streets. While the former is known as música tropical, a label that indexes cosmopolitan middle-class values and modernity, the latter is pejoratively called chichera music by the elites, a label that implies a lower-class mestizo culture, that is, the music of cholos and longos. In this chapter, I examine various discourses referring to the tropicalization of elite música nacional and the urban sanjuanito between the 1960s and the early 2000s. I view discourses in the form of opinions, praise, critiques,   Chichera Music | 131 and debates as sites where Ecuadorians make public their feelings and visions of the nation as well as their attitudes toward social change and modernity. I suggest that the upper-middle classes symbolically exclude indigenous and working-class Ecuadorians from their imagining of the mestizo nation by using derogatory labels, such as “chichera music,” which insinuate a low-brow and uneducated following. In contrast, indigenous and working-class Ecuadorians proudly and spontaneously express their sense of national belonging through the active production and consumption of chichera music, which they began calling música nacional in the 1990s. The term música nacional, in turn, had been applied by the upper-middle classes for most of the twentieth century to musics that they felt embodied the Ecuadorian nation—and these did not include the chichera style. I argue that the appropriation of the term música nacional by the popular classes symbolically reflects their selfinclusion in their own imaginary of the nation. Música Tropical in Ecuador The rise of música tropical in Ecuador in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with a period of economic prosperity based on the increased production of bananas, of which Ecuador is the largest exporter in the world. The value of Ecuador’s banana exports climbed significantly from 1948 to 1952 as a result of crop diseases in Central America and the increasing international demand for the fruit after World War II. In the mid-1960s, however, the volume of banana exports dropped significantly due to plant diseases and competitive markets. This downturn was soon overcome by the discovery of new oil fields in the Amazon region, which transformed the country into a world producer of oil and resulted in large increases in government revenue. The great wealth gave Ecuadorians a strong dose of optimism for a better future, to such a degree that the mass media began to disseminate images of Ecuador “as if the country had reached heaven’s doors and found solutions to its social problems and underdevelopment” (Acosta 2001, 130). The construction of modern buildings and national roads, the rapid urban growth of Guayaquil and Quito, and the increase in jobs in the public sector reinforced this perception. If the Cuban music craze (rumba, cha-cha-chá, and mambo) dominated the 1940s and 1950s, the Colombian cumbia became the new music fever in the 1960s. According to Wade, the urban form of the cumbia from the Atlantic Coast symbolized happiness, prosperity, and modernity in Colombia , and it acquired national overtones in the 1940s and 1950s to the point of displacing the Andean bambuco as Colombia’s emblematic music (Wade 2000). Simplified versions of the porro, gaita, paseíto, and merecumbé, known in Colombia as raspa music (literally, “scrape”), or chucu-chucu (referring to...

Share