The música tropical world in Medellín in the 1960s

Abstract

Based on Howard Becker’s concept of “art worlds”, this paper intends to analyze how tropical music operated in Medellín in the 1960s, within its entire context of production, diffusion, distribution and consumption (although with much less emphasis on the latter). Becker’s model allows us to think about the behavior of musical genres not just by analyzing the operation of record labels or the working of the phonographic industry as a whole; it has the potential to include all actors directly or indirectly involved in the creation, diffusion and consumption of cultural goods. In other words, all people involved are relevant, in one way or another, for these cultural products to exist and function within a social context. Drawing information from interviews with musicians, former workers of record labels, owners of record stores, and radio commentators, as well as from archival examination of the newspaper El Colombiano, this study aims at comprehending the actors involved in the world of tropical music, and to indicate relevant forms of relation and interaction among them in order to understand the particular dynamics used and the conventions created for interaction. At the end, it presents a consideration about the implications it has for understanding power positions and decision-making in the world of tropical music.