Mass culture, commodification, and the consolidation of the Afro-Peruvian festejo.(Report)

There are two souls that exist in the contemporary world, those of revolution and decadence.... [T]he consciousness of the artist is the agonizing circus of struggle between the two spirits. An understanding of this struggle sometimes, most of the time, escapes the very artist. But ultimately one of the two spirits prevails. The other ends strangled in the sand.

--Jose Carlos Mariategui (1981)

There is a familiar pattern characteristic of some discussions about popular music in Latin America. Initially, musical practices associated with one particular group or local community undergo a process of "discovery" and subsequent canonization as part of the symbolic imagery of one or more emerging group identity projects. The relative success of this endeavor is often predicated on the ability to promote this music among wider audiences, thus leading to its entanglement with the mass media and mass-market interests, as well as with institutions of groups of individuals who seek to impose particular stylistic, aesthetic, and performative standards in order to maintain a monopoly over its means of production. Such a process has led to two contrasting yet consistently iterated assessments. More often than not, practitioners, audiences, critics, and musicologists conclude that such commodification and institutionalization leads to creative stagnation and that, as social, political, and economic circumstances change, this genre loses its ability to engage with audiences in meaningful ways, thus bringing about its untimely demise or a nostalgic longing for a former golden age. See, for example, discussions regarding the commodification of salsa (Katz 2005), the nationalization of local musical genres such as the merengue (Austerlitz 1997) Afro-Cuban traditions (Moore 1997), and Colombian musica tropical (Wade 2000) or the mainstreaming of popular genres such as bachata (Pacini Hernandez 1995) or the Brazilian choro (Livingston-Isenhour and Caracas Garcia 2005), among many others. Other scholars, practitioners, and listeners suggest that mass distribution is not necessarily bad. Some even suggest that an embrace of consumer culture, particularly of the transnational kind, can provide individuals with new sources for identity formation that resist the local dominant hegemony. Such is the case with discussions concerning salsa as a source of pan-Latino or transnational identity (Aparicio 1995; Arias Satizabal 2002; Berrios-Miranda 2003; Hosokawa 2002), or the resistive and transgressive power of rock (Pacini Hernandez, Fernandez L'Hoeste, and Zolov 2004; Zolov 1999), rap (Giovannetti 2003), tropicalia (Dunn 2001), and various types of Caribbean and Caribbean-influenced popular genres (Lipsitz 1994).

This is not to suggest that these authors, or others who have undertaken similar topics in Latin America and elsewhere, have simply endorsed particular ways of envisioning the relationship between music and mass culture. In most cases, these studies seek to problematize various aspects of this relationship and bring to light those counter-hegemonic tendencies that at times can, at least temporarily, upset the status quo. Frances Aparicio (1995, 244), for example, wrestles with the polarizing ideas of the hegemonic and the resistive, providing pointed critiques regarding various distortions and appropriations of salsa by different social, ethnic, and gendered groups, in the end suggesting that "women, as consumers of popular music, are active subjects in their role as listeners, rather than the passive consumers that industries perhaps expect them to be. Consumption then, cannot be seen exclusively as a unidirectional process of subordination but rather as a cultural practice in which individuals, groups and institutions negotiate cultural identity and social, class, and racial meanings, as well as naturalizing or contesting gendered relations." This dialectic between homogenizing or attenuating tendencies of mass culture and the possibility of countering those tendencies by actively embracing consumerism has been a hallmark of popular music studies for a number of decades. The various positions and proposed alternatives concerning this issue can generally be traced back to an unresolved debate between ideas regarding the generally negative influences that mass culture can have on music as a meaningful art form as introduced by Frankfurt scholars like Theodor Adorno (1995a, 1995b, 1997, 1998a, 1998b) and Herbert Marcuse (1998) and the counterargument proposed by Walter Benjamin (1969, 1986) that suggests that artistic production in a mass culture context, while not necessarily aspiring to the type of artistic autonomy that Adorno considers essential, can have its own type of resistive or critical character precisely because it is accessible to the masses. Regrettably, the polarization of these positions has often meant that discussions about musical style focus on confirming of contesting a particular position rather than problematize them.

In Peru, especially, one sees this pattern in discussions about the different types of popular music found in Lima and their relationship to the mass media. In the case of popular musics connected to the experiences of Andean migrants in Lima and their children, mass media's role has been considered generally beneficial, often aiding the diffusion of popular genres and helping to bolster identity among those who, until recently, have been seen as marginal despite their large numbers and socioeconomic influence (Alfaro 1990; Hurtado Suarez 1995; Llorens 1983, 1991; Romero 1992, 2001, 2002; Turino 1988, 1990). In contrast, musics that have been historically perceived as belonging to Lima's locality or surrounding coastal region are generally regarded by their practitioners and critics as having entered into a bargain with the mass culture devil, having traded away, in classic Adornian fashion, their autonomy, individuality, and originality (in short, their "authenticity") for the promise of financial success and recognition (Feldman 2001; Leon 1997; Llorens 1983; Romero 1994; C. Santa Cruz 1989; Tompkins 1981; Vazquez 1982). (1)

The bifurcation between the fates of coastal and Andean popular musics in Lima is perhaps most pronounced in Jose Antonio Llorens's (1983) two-part study on Peruvian popular music. In the section devoted to criollo music, he concludes that the diffusion of criollo popular music (2) through the mass media led to the homogenization of individual neighborhood styles, as well as the appropriation of this music for nationalist purposes by the middle and upper sectors of Limeno society, a process that markedly altered its working-class spirit and its context of performance. Conversely, Llorens's discussion of Andean music suggests that, while radio broadcasts and the local recording industry may have contributed to some homogenization along regional lines, the mass media--through regional folklore radio programs, fan clubs of particular artists, and migrant regional associations--helped Andean musicians create a space on the airwaves that allowed Andean migrants in urban environments such as Lima to connect with their regional identities. More recent studies on urban popular music of Andean origin, for example, chicha (Hurtado Suarez 1995; Romero 2002), mention musical style as a means of providing examples of, and by extension, validating the presence of, non-Andean musical elements (e.g., Colombian, Caribbean, rock) as markers of creativity and ingenuity rather than as agents of global homogenization or cultural dilution. Other studies echo similar positions, most often legitimizing the notion that for local musics, such as the vals criollo, the mass media have been instruments of the upper-middleclass capitalist and nationalist hegemony, whereas for migrant and second-generation Andean popular musics, like the huayno, chicha, or technocumbia, they have been a counter-hegemonic force that helped open up an informal socioeconomic space that challenged the capitalist and nationalist hegemony.

These approaches have been useful in understanding how different social groups in the twentieth century belonged to different historical and cultural backgrounds and occupied different positions with the Limeno social hierarchy. At the same time, however, they have tended to naturalize the role of the mass media, making it difficult to deviate from what seems like an increasingly familiar script. Recently, however, Raul Romero (2002) has indirectly brought this trope into question when addressing the mainstream appeal of techno-cumbia, the most recent incarnation of the popular music associated with recent emigres to Lima. Romero's discussion regarding techno-cumbia's popularity among various sectors of Peruvian society, not just the historically marginalized community of "new Limenos," reveals an unresolved tension between commodifying and counter-hegemonic tendencies so that techno-cumbia can be seen both as the triumph of the subaltern and as the homogenization of the same by transnational musical trends. This kind of ambivalence has recently been associated with changes brought about by the "globalization era" and the degree to which different schools of thought continue to debate "the celebration of global currents, on the one hand, and the criticism of its homogenizing trends" (Romero 2002, 218). These dual concerns can also be extended to other forms of popular music in Peru, something that has the potential to provide a more nuanced and detailed examination of the relationship between these musics and the mass media.