Música Típica

This book tells the story of a form of music that enjoys unparalleled popularity in a country that itself possesses instant name recognition but is very little known and very little studied. Panamanian música típica or cumbia, as this music is variously called, is intrinsically linked to the social and political history of a sliver of land that connects North and South America while providing passage between two great oceans. This book shows that to appreciate música típica is to appreciate the development of the isthmian crossing, the construction of the Panama Canal, and, most significantly, the lives of rural people living along this waterway and deeper in the Panamanian interior. The author draws on both ethnographic and archival research to reconstruct a twentieth-century social history of Panamanian música típica, examining the music in relation to the development of Panamanian nationalism. Notwithstanding its widespread popularity and identification with rural society, música típica has only infrequently been promoted as a form of official musical nationalism. Indeed, its links to Panamanian nationalist sentiment are often indirect and ambiguous. In focusing on musicians and their approaches to musical fusion, their varied performance practices, and links they forged with both rural and urban audiences, this book shows how, while these performers may not have self-identified as “nationalists,” their music was central to the development of a sense of nationhood even as they actively cultivated performance identities that straddled some the most pronounced ethnic and social class schisms in Panamanian society.