Salsa in Cali
INTRODUCTION
Salsa music is a Latin Pan-Caribbean musical expression, with its roots in Afro Cuban music. Traditionally Cuba, Puerto Rico, Latin New York and Latin Miami are considered the main centres for Salsa yet neither of these can rival Cali’s fascination with Salsa music and its dance.
This makes an interesting case study for anthropologists of popular culture as this music style and its dance are closely related to the history and development of this Colombian city. This Caribbean music and dance genre is what ultimately gives a particular cultural identity to Cali and its inhabitants, the ‘caleños’.
Although this two and a half million city is not in, nor near the Colombian Caribbean coast, the feel, mood and spirit of Cali is closer to the Caribbean than what a city at the foot of the Andes should be like.
Cali is the capital of the Cauca Valley province, the main centre for the sugar cane industry in Colombia and the most important city in southwest Colombia, which is also a centre for one of the largest African descent populations in the country. The Colombian Pacific coast is almost entirely of black origin, one of the most backward and forgotten areas in the country, where African culture has remained very strong. It is argued that after Bahia in Brazil and Havana in Cuba, Cali is the city with the largest black population in Latin America; over 50% of its population is considered to be black or of black origin. Slavery was central to the economic and social organization of this region, during the 16th to the 19th centuries. Throughout the 20th century Cali grew into an important city thanks to the migrations of people from the various neighbouring regions, including black populations coming from black areas west, south and east of Cali. Eventually, this also gave rise to a large mixing of the races in the city.
Perhaps this can help explain how Cuban music became so popular in the city since the 1930s, when popular Cuban music of the period was broadcast and listened to all over the city on Cuban radio stations, such as Radio Progreso, or Radio Habana. This was reinforced by the record industry and Mexican films of Afro Cuban music in later decades. This is probably also aided by the fact that the city never had its own music, despite people’s acceptance of the black music from the Pacific coast, which in any case is considered folk music. This cultural progression and assimilation of Afro Cuban music, seems to have culminated in the late 1960s, when Cali made Salsa its own music rejecting strong and internationally well established Colombian rhythms such as Cumbia and Vallenato; Cumbia in particular had years before already conquered Latin America, up north Central America to Mexico, down South America to Argentina and Chile.
