CMM-5. the Viejoteca Revival

7/21/2019 CMM-5. the Viejoteca Revival

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cmm-5-the-viejoteca-revival 1/5

The

ity

o

usical

emory

Salsa

Record Grooves

and Popular Culture

n

Cali Colombia

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown

Connecticut



Published by Wesleyan University Press

Middletown, CT 064 59

©

Copyright by Lise A Waxer, 2002

All rights reserved

ISBN

0 8I95 64 4 1 9

cloth

ISBN

0 8I95 64 4 2 7 paper

Printed in the United States of America

Design and composition by Chris Crochetiere,

B. Williams Associates

4 3

2 I

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dat a

Waxer, Lise.

The city of musical memory : Salsa, record grooves, and popular culture

in Cali, Colombia by LiseA Waxer.

p. cm. - (Musicjculture)

Includes bibliographical references, discography, and indexo

ISBN

0 8195 64 4 1 9 (cloth : alk. paper)

-

ISBN

0 8195 64 4 2 7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Salsa Music)-Social aspecrs-Colombia-Cali.

2.

Salsa Music)-History and criticismo

3. Salsa

Dance)-History

and criticismo

4 .

Cali Colombia)-Sociallife and customs.

l. Title. II. Series.

ML3918.S26 W38 2002

78r.64--dc21 2002066162

For

Medardo Arias Satizábal,

el

poet de

l s

noches

c leñ s



The Viejoteca Revival

The first viejotecas appeared

in

1993, during the height

of

the live scene.

They were created initially as a recreational activity for senior citizens and

were gradually adopted by a few venues in Cali s working-class neighbor

hoods as a special sort of dance

not

only for senior citizens, but for anyone

over

forty.

The key draws

of

the viejotecas were cheap liquor prices a flask

of

aguardiente cost mIly one or two doilars aboye grocery store prices, a

chance to be among people

of

one s own generation (and

not

feel

overrun

by youth), and, most important, the opportunity

to

dance

all

afternoon

long to the music one had grown up with.

The turning point for the viejoteca phenomenon carne in July-August

1995, shortly after the leaders

of

the Cali cocaine cartel were captured and

many of those associated with their illicit trade left town

or

went under

ground. (Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, the supposed leader of the carrel,

was arrested on 9 Tune

1995).

For luxury nightclubs, this meant a signifi

cant

10ss

of dientele. Looking for new

ways

to salvage plummeting busi

ness, they adopted the viejoteca idea, with unprecedented success. A huge

and long-negleeted market had been tapped, one that had feh alienated by

modern salsa, high prices, and the threat

of

violence that pervaded the

nightclub scene by the eady

1990S.

Viejotecas mushroomed thro ughout the

city. Many

places

abandoned the age restriction, and teenagers and young

adults who had grown up listening to their parents play this music at home

also attended en masse. Sorne oIder customers told me they resented the

presence

of

younger folle, seeing the viejotecas

as

their special territory,56

but most seemed to enjoy the convivial family atrnosphere that emerged in

these places-recuperating the

feel of

the I940S and

I950S

neighborhood

dance scene.

Notably, the viejoteca scene witnessed a revival of he unique local dance

style associated with the agüelulos and salsa nightclubs

of

the 1960s and

1970S. While the dance style

of t is

earlier scene did

not

die completely

during the

I980s-it

was maintained in small bars and casetas in Juanchito

by the rnid-1980s most Caleños had adopted the standard shorr-short

long step of international salsa dancing. 7 With the emergence of the

viejotecas, many older dancers unpacked their old dance shoes, ruffied satin

shirts, fringed dresses, and other garb associated with the golden era of

local salsa dancing. Professional troupes suchas Evelio Carabalí s Ballet Fol

dor de Urbano presented tightly choreographed routines in the viejotecas.

Some dancers made a junket, going around to viejotecas on weekends and

performing impromptu nUlllbers for dubgoers in return for a few pesos or

106 Chapter

a round of drinks. remember one feilow, outfitted in a ruffied shirt and

baggy pants, who performed an outrageously funny aet with a life-size rag

doil attached

to

his shoes; he never failed

to

bring down the house.

Many peopIe with

whom

1 spoke talked about the viejotecas as a return

to the good old d a y s ~ when Cali was pure festivity and dance. My subse

quent return trips to Cali in 1997 and 2000 confirmed mat the viejotecas

were still going s trong. They had even spreadto other Colombian cities, in

duding Medellín and Cartagena.

58

t is dear tha t me viejoteca revival repre

sents a symbolic victory over the perceived evils wrought by the Cali co

caine cartel

on

the local salsa scene. The economic bonanza associated with

the cartel certainly fostered an extraordinary and rapid growth of the local

scene, providing resources for the presentation of international salsa bands,

the rise of local orquestas, and the promoti on of salsa in local media. This

expansion, however, caused a significant rupture with the older dance

scene, displacing a large sector of salsa fans who did

not

identify with the

new style of salsa being promoted.

How in the DCPiI

Do We

ituate

the Viejotecas

Among most Caleños animosity toward the cocaine cartel and its domina

tion over city life ran deep,

but

public críticism

of

this intrusion could not

be openly voiced without incurring certain reprisal. A tale that began to

circulate widely in the early

I990S

about the appearance of the devil in a

salsa

nightdub reveals these prevalent but necessarily muted sentiments.

Tales of Faustian encounters with the devil are found throughout Latin

America and the Caribbean, as Michael Taussig (1980), José Limón (1994),

and others have discussed. The Cali devil story concerns a diabolically good

salsa dancer (wh at else?) who seduces local women with his charms. 1 know

four versions of the Cali devil story, but, given the Colombian penchant for

spinning a yarn, 1 arn sure that more existo Notably,

all

of the variants are

located in Juanchito, the Caleños preferred after-hours party spot.

1 will not recount

all

the versions 1 know of this tale, in which the devil

ish dancer s racial identity

is

portrayed variously as black

or

white. n the

rendition that concerns me here, a handsome, weil-dressed white man pulls

up at Agapito (the most popular salsa nightdub in Juanchito) in a brand

new red Jeep. Red Jeeps are a status symbol that by the eady 1990S were

associated with the upwardIy mobile ranks

of

cocaine mafiosos in the city.

t

s

not

enough that he pulls

up

in a flashy car, however-he also cornmits

the

bLatant

sacrilege of pulling up to

this

club to dance salsa during Holy

Week, a time of solemn religious observance in this very Catholic countty.

His expensive dothes and elegantly pomaded hair catch the

eye

of Other

The Record Centered Dance Scene 101



nonbelievers who have also gone to dance, and people crowd around his

charismatic and seductive figure before realizing that he is the devil in dis

guise. While this fellow is dancing with an attractive young woman, he be

gins to levitate, before disappearing in a billowing, sulfuric cloudof smoke.

This sighting supposedly occurred in

1991 or 1992

and was reported in all

the newspapers the next day.

This story resonates with a similar tale shared among black campesinos

of the rural area south of Cali, who have encapsulated their losing battle

with the powerful sugarcane industry as an encounter with the green

devil (Taussig 1980). The Cali devil narrative parallels this. It is clearly a

metaphor for the encroachment

of

the cocaine mafiosos

on

the local

scene an allegory about their unholy traffic and its conspicuous intrusion

into the

lives

of

decent folk?' The identity

of

Juanchito

as

a poor Mro

Colombian settlement further underscores this similarity. Most of Juan

chito's actual inhabitants do

not

own the nightdubs built there and profit

only indirectly from this trade (the main subsistence activity of the village

is

dredging sand from the Cauca River for sale 1 contractors in Cali's con

struction industry).

s

in the case of the black peasants, the devil is cast

as

a white male whose evil stems from wealth (white, in this case, also indexes

the color of cocaine powder). The presumably working-dass female dancer

and onlookers of both sexes are inferred

to

be the innocent and guileless

victims (perhaps of darker skin1) taken in by his power. According to vari

ous informants, this metaphor was dearly understood by Caleños, espe

cially because of the red Jeep, associated with the mafiosos. In this version

of

the Juanchito devillegend, there

is

also an implicit pairing of racial and

gender terms, where blackness and femaleness - represented in the figureof

a women dancer from the working-dass barrios are constructed as cate

gories of weakness and vulnerability in a way that mirrored the actual rela

tionship between the cocaine barons and the citizens of Cali.

Viejotecas and Collective Memory

Recent scholarship in psychology suggests that the emotional intensity of

a memory resides

less

in its meaning at the time an event took place than

in its significance at the time

of

its recall (Singer and Salovey

1993:

SI-52).

Understanding the mechanics of collective memory therefore involves

looking at the ways recollected moments are selectively chosen and sus

tained by a group in the present as a tool for maintaining a cohesive so

cial identity during times of flux and upheaval. The reenactment of those

moments in Cali's case, through dancing to dassic salsa

records is

recre-

hapter

ational not only as a leisure pastime, but also as a constant reconstitution of

the social body. Cali has undergone successive

waves of

rapid urbanization

and instability since the middle

of

the twentieth century. Working-class

Caleños, however, have chosen to remember the 1960s and 1970S

not

as

a time of struggle and precarious existence at the

city s

margins, but as a

time of innocent fun, when new friendships and cornmunity bonds were

forged through dancing together to records. The semantic and affective ties

linking memory, dance, and recordings have cemented a collective identity

that continued to anchor the city's working

classes

through the new and

unsettling changes wrought by the cocaine economy during the 198 s and

1990S.

A 1995 poster advertising the viejoteca at a nightclub called Changó in

vokes these links.

59

Framing the central image

of

two dancers, nostalgic

images of Hollywood and Mexican movie stars are interspersed with those

of phonographs, palm trees, and famed singers and instrumentalists

of

the

194 S and 1950S At the top of the poster appears a poetic manifesto of

viejoteca philosophy:

Disfrutar recordando

tiempos

de

ayer

al compás de

música

aprendida

a

uerz de

bailarla

Rcrivir la emoción de aquellos

momentos

inolvidables

y sentir que

somos

los mismos

Enjoy yourself remembering

the times

of

yesterday

to the beat

of

music learned

by the power of dancing to it.

Relive the emotion of those

unforgettable moments

and feel that we are the same.

In

this epigraph, memory, music, dance, and emotion are tightly linked.

Music

is

literally incorporated into one's body and feelings by the power

of dancing

to

it;' and listening to and moving to these rhythms in tum un

locks powerful and pleasurable memories. The finalline, sentir que somos

los mismos:' is particularly evocative and points to the mythic image of a

kinder, gent ler Cali before the advent of the dr ug cartel.

The viejoteca revival can be seen as a grassroots response

to

the up

heavals caused by the Cali cartel. Significantly, in contrast to the tendency

of

cultural revivals

to

be romantidzed, middle-dass appropriations

of

working-dass expressions (Livingston 1999), the viejotecas are primarily

working-dass venues, established by and for the populace, who developed

the record-centered dance culture in the first place. The economic boom

associated with the cartel

not

only changed the local

salsa

scene, it also

galvanized a huge wave of migration from other, non-salsero regions of

Colombia. This development, in conjunction with other cornmercial styles

The

Record Centered

Dance Scene

10



that were being promoted by the national media and record industry,

opened the

ity to

new cultural flows, further threatening

to

displace the

established image of Cali

s

a

s ls

capital. The viejotecas hence mark a seiz-

ing back of

oc l

popular culture at the moment the cartel s hold on the city

w s

broken, before other factions that had entered

s

a result

of

the canel s

influence were able to dislodge salsa s primacy. n shon the viejoteca

re-

viv l

constitutes a symbolic victory dance for the forces

of

musical memory

that created and continue to fashion Caleño popular culture.

11 hapter

CMM-5. the Viejoteca Revival

Documents

Transcript of CMM-5. the Viejoteca Revival