“Highland Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba and Identity along the Black Pacific at the Turn of the...

Highland Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba and Identity along the Black Pacific at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Francisco Lara, Diana Ruggiero

Latin American Music Review, Volume 37, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2016, pp.135-164 (Article)

Published by University of Texas Press

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/638597

Latin American Music Review, Volume 37, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2016 © 2016 by the University of Texas Press

DOI: 10.7560/LAMR37201

Fr ancisco L ar a and diana ruggiero

Highland Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba and Identity along

the Black Pacific at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

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aBsTr acT: This article addresses music and identity in the black Pacific through a dis-cussion of the highland Afro-Ecuadorian bomba (genre of music and dance). Marginal-ized through much of the twentieth century, bomba is today recognized and celebrated throughout Ecuador as a prominent signifier of highland black ethnic, or afrochoteño, iden-tity. Current manifestations of bomba, however, present competing interpretations and representations of bomba and afrochoteño identity: one static in its adherence to authentic-ity and tradition, and the other dynamic in its embrace of hybridity and modernity. Through a social history of bomba’s recent development and examination of current stylistic trends in bomba performance, this article shows how bomba, in its diverse manifestations, indexes the shifting afrochoteño experience of blackness in Ecuador. This study updates the extant academic literature on Afro-Ecuadorian bomba as well as contributing to a growing body of literature documenting and theorizing black music and identity along the black Pacific.

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keywords: African diaspora, Afro-Ecuador, bomba, black Pacific, music and identity, race and nation

resuMe n : Este artículo abarca la música y la identidad en el Pacífico negro a través de una discusión de la bomba afroecuatoriana (género de música y danza). Marginalizada du-rante gran parte del siglo XX, la música bomba es reconocida hoy en día en el Ecuador como un símbolo de la identidad y la cultura afrodescendiente (afrochoteña) de la sierra norte. Las manifestaciones actuales de la música y la danza bomba presentan interpretacio-nes conflictivas del género de la bomba y la identidad afrochoteña: por un lado estática en su adherencia a la autenticidad y la tradición, y por otro lado dinámica en su acercamiento a la hibridez y la modernidad. A través de una historia social y de un análisis de las tenden-cias estilísticas actuales de la música bomba, este artículo muestra cómo el género musical y de danza bomba, en sus diversas manifestaciones, funciona cómo índice de la experiencia subalterna afrochoteña. Este estudio contribuye a la literatura académica sobre la bomba afroecuatoriana y la música y la identidad afro en el Pacífico negro.

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palabras clave: diáspora africana, afro-Ecuador, bomba, Pacífico negro, música e identidad, raza y nación

136 ■ Fr anci sco L ar a an d diana ruggie ro

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Building on Paul Gilroy’s (1993) notion of the black Atlantic, Heidi Feldman (2005) has suggested that perhaps something unique is occurring along the periphery of the African diaspora. The Afro-descendant communities of the black Pacific, as she dubs this geo-conceptual space, are character-ized by an attenuated historical-cultural proximity with Africa, given local sociohistorical and sociopolitical circumstances. As such, the negotiation and, as in the case of the Afro-Peruvian revival, reconstruction of black ethnic identity and culture within the black Pacific occurs in relation not to Africa per se but to the black Atlantic as a surrogate for Africa.

Following Feldman’s call to chart the black Pacific, this article ad-dresses the highland Afro-Ecuadorian genre of music and dance known as bomba. The term bomba refers to a specific type of drum, rhythm, genre of music and dance, and socio-musical event. Particular to the Afro- descendant communities of the Chota-Mira Valley (in the provinces of Imbabura and Carchi), the once-marginalized bomba is today synonymous in Ecuador with afrochoteño identity and culture.1 Yet bomba’s privileged place as a positive signifier of highland black ethnicity is relatively new, as is the very conception of black ethnicity in the Chota-Mira Valley (see Coba Andrade 1980, 40; Schechter 1994, 297–300). Considering this ap-parent transformation in the representation of bomba and highland Afro- Ecuadorian identity, this article examines bomba’s recent development and current manifestations as a means of better understanding its relationship to afrochoteño identity today as well as situating bomba and afrochoteños within the broader context of the black Pacific and black Atlantic.

Two seemingly disparate interpretations of bomba have predominated since the turn of the twenty-first century: one that explicitly emphasizes tradition and African heritage, and another that tends toward hybridity in its fusion with contemporary global popular musics culled largely from the greater African diaspora. This divide follows generational lines, though not exclusively, with younger afrochoteños leaning toward contemporary bomba fusions. In addition, the recent bifurcation of the genre along di-vergent poles (traditional-modern) has sparked debate among afrochoteños concerning authenticity and local identity. While raising questions related to musical and cultural change, this debate, as well as the distinct repre-sentations of afrochoteño identity evident in contemporary interpretations of bomba, perhaps more significantly mark the shifting sociohistorical re-alities of the afrochoteño communities and the ways in which afrochoteños have, at times, either implicitly or explicitly responded to the discrimina-tory ideology of mestizaje in Ecuador since the 1960s.

Indeed, as the following shows, bomba’s recent development and its relation to black ethnicity is directly linked to contemporary afrochoteño

Highland Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba and Identity along the Black Pacific ■ 137

struggles for social and political equity. As in other parts of Latin America, mestizaje, or race mixture (specifically European and indigenous), along with its concomitant notion of whitening, served as a master narrative and ideal of progress, development, and national identity for the Andean na-tion for much of the twentieth century (see Walmsley 2004; Whitten and Quiroga 1998).2 For Afro-descendants, this has meant not only marginal-ization but also stigmatization and invisibility as noncitizens within Ec-uador (see Antón Sánchez 2007; Pabón 2007; Rahier 1998; Walsh 2006; Whitten 1999). As we show here, mestizaje and its negative impact on per-ceptions of black ethnicity left an indelible mark on bomba in its develop-ment and relation to local identity through the late twentieth century. Yet a counterhegemonic ideology known as interculturalidad (interculturality), born of the indigenous uprisings of the 1990s, has led to a revindication and fortification of ethnic identity in Ecuador, realized in part among Afro-Ecuadorians through the didactic project known as etnoeducación (ethno-education). Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Afro- descendants in the Chota-Mira Valley, with the bomba (drum) as their emblem, have emerged onto the national stage not only as citizens of the nation but also as a regionally distinct ethnic group—as afrochoteños.

Bomba’s recent development and contemporary manifestations as well as afrochoteño representations of blackness and debates over authenticity must be understood relative to the broader sociopolitical and historical context informing afrochoteño perceptions of black ethnicity in Ecuador. Specifically, we can understand bomba’s recent development and current bifurcation as a manifestation of the afrochoteño encounter with and re-sponse to mestizaje. In negotiating the shifting boundaries of identity in the Chota-Mira Valley, bomba serves as an index, marking the particular afrochoteño experience of blackness within the black Pacific.

Bomba: Overview

The region known as the Chota-Mira Valley in Ecuador’s northern high-lands is home to more than thirty communities populated primarily by Afro-Ecuadorians, many of whom are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans brought to labor on local sugarcane plantations in the seven-teenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (see Feijoo 1991; Noboa 1992).3 Afrochoteños are distinguished from Afro-Ecuadorians along the coastal northwestern province of Esmeraldas as well as from the neighbor-ing indigenous and dominant mestizo populations in terms of their cul-tural traditions and ways of life.4 This much has to do with the particular origins and historical trajectory of the afrochoteño communities, which are intimately linked to the history of colonial slavery and its lasting legacy as experienced and confronted by afrochoteños to this day.


Among the cultural traditions most visibly and audibly associated with the afrochoteños is bomba. The word bomba refers to an actual drum, a rhythm, a genre of music and dance, and a socio-musical event. As a mu-sical genre, it is characterized by a specific rhythm and its variations in du-ple meter (both simple and compound duple) played on the bomba (drum) as well as by the use of paired couplets (coplas) in its setting of song texts. Since the 1980s, it has also been identified with a core music ensemble consisting of a bomba (drum), guitar trio (bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and lead requinto), a scraper or shaker, and lead as well as secondary harmo-nizing vocals. Historically, as well as to this day, bomba is predominantly associated with socioreligious occasions such as weddings, baptisms, Christmas, and Holy Week. Today, however, bomba may also be heard per-formed live or recorded within various other social and commercial con-texts (e.g., night clubs, hostels, restaurants, regional and national cultural events and festivals).

Bomba’s exact origins and development up through the mid-twentieth century have been obscured because of a lack of written documentation. There are only three known references to bomba from before the 1960s (i.e., Festa 1909; Hassaurek 1868; De Costales and Costales 1958). Though scant, these early descriptive accounts, along with afrochoteño recollections and contemporary practice of bomba, provide compelling evidence to sug-gest that, at least historically, bomba was first and foremost a socio- musical event wherein various musical genres, song forms, and dance types were subsumed and interpreted through the bomba (drum) and its rhythm (see Bueno 1991, 190). From its inception sometime in the colonial pe-riod or early republic up to the 1960s, bomba may therefore be best under-stood as a socio-musical process rather than as a specific genre of music per se.

It is certainly the case, however, that bomba since the mid-1960s has emerged as a musical genre in its own right. Indeed, recent scholarship on bomba focuses predominantly on outlining the salient musical and linguistic characteristics identifying and differentiating bomba as a dis-tinct genre of music and oral poetry (Bueno 1991; Coba Andrade 1980; Lara 2011; Schechter 1994). In addition to the use of the bomba drum and rhythm, coplas, and standard instrumentation noted earlier, bomba is also notably characterized by a propensity for the use of bimodality and for in-corporating locally relevant song texts (e.g., that incorporate local expres-sions, history, or express social commentary) as well as the songs and rhythms of other musical genres (e.g., the highland indigenous sanjuan, the highland mestizo albazo, and Colombian vallenato; see Bueno 1991; Lara 2011; Schechter 1994). Remarkably, this hybrid quality of bomba is consistent with descriptions of bomba from before the 1960s, which make reference to a variety of songs and dances interpreted to the rhythm of


the bomba drum. This is significant when considering recent questions about the relative authenticity of contemporary bomba. As shown in the following section, while bomba has indeed continued to develop as a mu-sical genre since the turn of the twenty-first century, it has nonetheless remained within the bounds of its core defining features, including its propensity toward hybridity. The following presents two exemplary bomba groups in the Chota-Mira Valley perhaps best representative of current trends in bomba composition and performance.

Marabú and Sol Naciente: Bomba tradicional and Bomba moderna Post-2000

Marabú

April 2008, Ibarra: Nearly three hours and six bands into the bomba mar-athon concert event fittingly advertised as El Bombazo, the venue, the Coliseo (coliseum), located in Ibarra’s north side, is only just beginning to fill with people in anticipation of the headlining band, Marabú. The lead vocalist and bandleader, Plutarco Viveros, walks casually around the open gymnasium, occasionally pausing to greet and converse with members of the audience as his bandmates and sound crew begin to set up their equip-ment on stage. Plutarco slowly makes his way to the stage, laughing and shaking hands as he does. His elegant button-down red silk shirt, white pleated pants, and shiny black shoes match those of his five band mem-bers: guitarist and vocalist Patricio Viveros, bass guitarist Lester Viveros, bomba player and vocalist Gustavo Viveros (all relatives of Plutarco), bongo player Augusto Espinoza, and guiro player Esteban Borja. Exchanging only a quick glance at his bandmates as he picks up his requinto, Plutarco briefly adjusts the tuning before launching directly into a lively bomba set in compound duple meter. With great force, Gustavo accents the slap tones played near the rim of the drum, producing a two-against-three pattern heard against the bass and propelling the song in a forward mo-tion. The energetic and attention-grabbing introduction brings the audi-ence members to their feet, and they quickly fill the space in front of the stage as they dance and holler in approval. They join in song as Patricio begins to sing his latest hit celebrating afrochoteño identity and culture, “Vivencias.”

“Vivencias” “Lived Experiences”

Con el permiso de los patrones With the permission of our masterscelebremos el santo de nuestra

devociónlet us celebrate the saint of our

devotion


Y les ofrecemos nuestra cultura And we offer you our cultureporque se siente que es nuestra

identidadbecause we feel it is our

identity

Mujeres negras danzando en procesión

Black women dancing in procession

sacando a flote lo que es la tradición

showcasing that which is tradition

Y con vestuarios queremos demostrarle

And with dress we want to show

que fueron vivencias de nuestros ancestrales

what were lived experiences of our ancestors

As the bandleader of one of the more renowned and respected bomba groups in Ecuador today, Plutarco Viveros maintains an active performing and touring schedule. More than six feet tall and with an athletic build, the former professional soccer player commands an authoritative presence offset by his warm smile and congenial and humble persona. During an extensive interview conducted in Ibarra in April 2008, Plutarco spoke at length about his involvement with bomba and about the origins and his-tory of the group Marabú.

Bomba has its origin, he stated, in the memory of the slaves. It was they who recalled this tradition and why it was done. He explained that, though not permitted to make music other than on specific days desig-nated for festivities, the slaves were allowed to hold their own celebration apart from that of the slave master. This, he notes, is where bomba first started. He added that his grandfather, a former slave who lived to more than one hundred years of age, told him long ago that bomba is a rich part of afrochoteño cultural heritage with which all afrochoteños should be fa-miliar. It was this sentiment that inspired the formation and mission of the group today known as Marabú.

The original intent of the group, noted Plutarco, was not to make money, but to bring people together and impart awareness among afrochoteños of bomba as a distinct part of their cultural heritage. He commented that during the 1980s, many of his peers gravitated toward foreign commercial popular music and dance rhythms, such as the music of Michael Jackson and break-dancing. At the same time, contended Plutarco, existing record-ing bomba groups became more commercialized as concerns with money began to supersede those of maintaining and sharing bomba as a cul-tural tradition. Thus, in 1980, at the age of sixteen, Plutarco, along with Gustavo Viveros and Marcelo Acosta, formed a group called Bomba Nueva Generación in their hometown of Mascarillas in the Chota-Mira Valley.


Throughout much of the 1980s while Plutarco lived in Quito, where he played soccer professionally with La Liga, the group would perform cul-tural programs at local hostels and museums such as the Oasis and the Honka Monka for tourists during the weekends. As the group grew in popularity, they were presented with the opportunity to play at local, pro-vincial, and regional festivals and competitions that eventually provided them with their first recording opportunity. It was in the context of one such regional festival that the concept for Marabú was born.

As Plutarco recalls, the idea and name for the group Marabú emerged in 1990 during a collaborative project involving indigenous and Afro- Ecuadorian musicians and music. Weary of the motives of the indige-nous and mestizo producers, the group initially declined, only to change their minds after a successful performance at a celebration of Inti Raimi among neighboring highland indigenous communities. It was at that mo-ment that one of the producers of the project, then director of the ministry of indigenous affairs, encouraged Plutarco and the other band members to change their name to something more “African.” Consulting with lo-cal friend and afrochoteño scholar José Chalá Cruz, they scoured the dic-tionary, eventually agreeing on the name Marabú. As Plutarco explained, marabú is the name of a large and endangered stork native to Africa. Al-though hesitant to adopt the name at first, because they knew that the bird in question is a scavenger, the group decided that it suited their purposes nonetheless in making direct reference to the continent of Africa. It was thus with the intention of foregrounding and sharing the origins of bomba and afrochoteño culture that Marabú was conceived.

As Marabú’s compositions attest, the artistic vision outlined by Plutarco directly informs the group’s interpretation of bomba. Indeed, Plutarco proudly noted that on every one of the five albums recorded thus far, there are at least a few tracks that speak to bomba as afrochoteño cultural heri-tage, such as “Bomba caliente” from the first album, “Bomba bomba” from the second album, “A golpe de bomba” from the third album, “ Vivencias” from the fourth album, and “Coangue” from the fifth album. As the song titles suggest, these compositions continue a trend begun in the 1980s of treating topical themes in bomba song texts, though not necessarily at the expense of the paired couplets closely associated with traditional bomba. This is most evident in the song “Vivencias” and the title track from the album Agua viva. Both “Vivencias” and “Agua viva” treat themes of lo-cal concern, afrochoteño cultural heritage and water conservation, respec-tively, through the use of coplas not necessarily arranged to form a specific narrative.

In addition to their treatment of song texts, Marabú’s compositions share with previous bombas similarities in instrumentation, rhythm, harmonic treatment, and performance style. Marabú’s instrumentation,


for example, includes the use of the guitar-trio format accompanied by a bomba drum and scraper. Though at times augmented with an ampli-fied bass, bongos, and a clave, Marabú’s instrumentation supports and enhances the existing characteristic harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic parameters of bomba. Indeed, the bomba, as drum and rhythmic pattern, remains prominent in the music of Marabú, providing the rhythmic ba-sis for the composition. Similarly, the paired couplets continue to inform the phrasing of the melody, in its antecedent and consequent structure, as they did previously. This, in turn, likewise informs the underlying har-monic structure, which, though incorporating more complex harmonies, nonetheless continues to favor bimodality. Marabú, in its interpretation of bomba, thus continues along a path defined during the 1980s that has sub-sequently become characterized as traditional bomba.

It is perhaps in part because of this link with and conscious projec-tion of tradition that Marabú has gained such popular appeal since 1990 among audiences in the Chota-Mira Valley, the nation, and beyond. They have performed at numerous festivals, cultural and community events, and competitions throughout Ecuador, such as Carnaval Coangue and El Bombazo. In addition, the group was honored with an invitation to tour and perform in South Korea during the summer of 2005 as cultural am-bassadors. So enthusiastic was their reception by the people of South Ko-rea that the invitation was extended for three months. To date, Marabú is the only bomba ensemble to have traveled so far beyond the borders of Ec-uador. And though bewildered by their success, Plutarco is well aware, as his comments indicated, that the manner in which the group has posi-tioned itself vis-à-vis bomba and cultural heritage has allowed Marabú to create a niche within a fast-growing market, both locally and globally, for all things Afro.

When he paused to reflect on the differences between Marabú and the various other bomba groups active in the Chota-Mira Valley, however, Plutarco reaffirmed his belief that Marabú’s success lies precisely in its fo-cus on the group’s original mission of preserving and sharing bomba as a tradition particular to the Afro-descendants of the Chota-Mira Valley. As though to emphasize the relevance of Marabú’s artistic vision, he pointed to a recent bomba mix CD in plain view during the interview and asked, “¿Y esto, qué tiene de bomba?” (“And this, what does it have of bomba?”). Many of these groups, he noted, started as cover bands emulating the rep-ertoire and style of older-generation bomba groups like Marabú. Some of these groups even took on the name of the original bands imitated, distin-guishing themselves only with the prefix mini, as in Mini GDR ( Genuinos del Ritmo) and Mini Marabú. Although Plutarco admitted that he was pleased that afrochoteño youth are learning the music and continuing with an interest in bomba, he is afraid that they are blurring the distinction


between traditional bomba and that which other groups like Sol Naciente profess to be bomba. Shaking his head, he stated again even more firmly, as if to leave no uncertainty, “Eso no es bomba” (“That is not bomba”).

As Plutarco made clear, Marabú consciously maintains and presents bomba as a traditional music genre emblematic of afrochoteño identity and culture. This is not to say, as noted earlier, however, that the group’s in-terpretation of bomba is static. Indeed, while Marabú adheres closely to the instrumentation and performance style of bombas recorded during the 1980s, it has nonetheless developed a sound that is undeniably the group’s own. Though Marabú’s music transcends generational lines in terms of preference, the band is yet distinguished from newer generations of bomba groups such as Sol Naciente, who bring to the genre a new sensi-bility, aesthetic, vision, and therefore sound.

Sol Naciente

April 2008, community of Chota, Chota-Mira Valley: Another young woman takes the stage and proudly walks around the raised platform, pos-ing every few moments and moving her hips to the bomba playing in the background, much to the delight of the cheering audience. Barefoot and her hair covered with a scarf, she wears a pleated knee-length skirt and a beige blouse. The MC, ushering the next model onto the stage, moves the program along while encouraging the boisterous audience: “Muy bien, ahí tenemos una niña mas. Son vestimentas autenticas de la comunidad, del ayer, ¡como vestían las abuelitas! ¡Que sigan!” (“Very good, we have yet an-other young lady. They are authentic clothing of the community of yester-day, as our grandmothers once dressed! May they continue!”). The parade of models continues for another twenty-five minutes featuring girls and boys, as well as young women and men, donning both traditional and contemporary clothing of the Chota-Mira Valley: bare feet give way to high heels, modest skirts and blouses to tight jeans and elegant dresses, button- down white collared shirts and indigenous-style hats to soccer jer-seys, sunglasses, and sideways-worn baseball caps as the event wears on.

By the end of the fashion show, the Coliseo in the community of Chota is filled with people of all ages and from various neighboring communi-ties, and even Ibarra and Quito. They stand huddled in groups or as cou-ples, some purchasing and sharing beer in the customary communal fashion, while others wait outside smoking or sharing the potent local homemade sugarcane liquor known as puntas. The evening’s festive pro-gram and mood stand in stark contrast to the otherwise somber events of Semana Santa (Holy Week) consuming the community of Chota that week, and it is evident from the restless shuffling of feet that the audience in attendance is ready to dance. They make their way toward the center of


the hall in anticipation as Sol Naciente, the only band scheduled to per-form that evening, finishes the sound check.

The eight-piece band crammed onto the rectangular stage features a drum set, electric keyboard, electric bass, timbales, congas, bongos, gui-tar, and a metal scraper. With a brief introduction, the band sets the audi-ence to dancing with a fast-paced song in simple duple meter reminiscent of a bomba in its rhythmic foundation but with the melodic and harmonic characteristics and lyrical content of a contemporary romantic pop bal-lad. Furthermore, the addition of the timbales, conga, bongos, guiro, and clave provide a generic tropical- or salsa-tinged flavor that the audience im-mediately responds to in the adjustment of their dance movements. Sol Naciente moves from the bomba-salsa-ballad fusion to another song fea-turing the keyboard mimicking in voice and style the sound and rhythms of the coastal marimba. This song quickly transitions in tempo to a fast-paced musical fusion similar to the first song. The audience dances with-out pausing just as the band moves from one bomba to the next for the duration of the evening.

Sol Naciente has a loyal following in the region and has grown in pop-ularity especially among youth as a result of its innovative compositions. Originating in the community of Chota, the band in its entirety consists of Vladimir Borja on bomba, Daniel Minda-Lara on bomba and congas, Alejandro Carcelén on bongo, Fidel Chalá on congas, Jorge Calderón on the drum set and timbales, Luis Ángel Acosta and Elmer Acosta on auxil-iary hand percussion (e.g., guiro), Andrés Chalá on guitar, Vladimir Minda on bass guitar, Jason Chalá on keyboard and voice, and Calixto Calderón on voice. Although they do consider themselves purveyors of bomba—and indeed often share the same stage with such groups as Marabú—they are aware that their unique approach sets their music apart from what may be considered more traditional bomba. For this reason, they tend to infor-mally distinguish their music as bomba moderna.

Daniel Minda-Lara, a percussionist with the group, explained during a 2008 interview the perspective of Sol Naciente with regard to bomba and tradition in nonessentializing terms. He noted that while they did start by imitating the sounds of more conventional bomba groups such as Mario Diego Congo (from Oro Negro), they have consciously sought to keep up with the changing trends over time:

[Sol Naciente] maintains the tradition, right? But at the same time they do something different, mark the difference, that is what Sol Naciente does: mark the difference, not just stay in one single genre. . . . Ob-viously we are [making music] with traditional instruments, but now we are implementing some instruments like the timbale, congas, the


twins (as we call the bongos), we play with drum set. . . . [T]oday we are doing it also with piano, the keyboard. Even before [bomba] was played with a bass instrument: traditional bomba was done with gui-tar, requinto and nothing else. The bass was done using a gourd which is played in the banda mocha. So today, [we play] according to what is in style, so to speak. But one is not into what is stylish, but rather those things that one should be [concerned with]; the best, right? So we do it [bomba] with those instruments that have come out and that are ex-tremely important for the music that we make. Sol Naciente is in a genre that no one else does. It is our own genre, which is very different from the rest of the groups. One must never for-get about tradition, about culture. [But] we are focused on not doing solely traditional bomba, but rather to make [bomba music] so that each place that we go [to play], those people feel the pleasure of that music which they like. So we do bomba, obviously, merengue, salsa, we even play bachata, as it is obviously very popular today, we do ballads, and in this way a little of the musics that there are, not just stay within the genre of bomba.

As Daniel suggests, Sol Naciente adapts to the interests, tastes, and de-sires of the audience in an effort to maintain bomba not as a static tradi-tion but as a popular music genre responsive to contemporary trends and needs. Sol Naciente is thus not concerned with the preservation of bomba as a static tradition but instead with engaging bomba as an integral aspect of life as lived in the Chota-Mira Valley and Ecuador today.

Sol Naciente’s artistic vision, as articulated by Daniel, allows the group greater license to extend the compositional practices established by previ-ous generations of bomba musicians. This is most evident in the group’s treatment of rhythm. Though the group often performs without the bomba (drum), choosing instead to substitute the congas, bongos, and at times even an indigenous-style bombo (a large, double-headed drum as-sociated with the neighboring highland indigenous communities), they nonetheless maintain the fundamental and characteristic rhythm of bomba, whether explicitly or implicitly, in their compositional fusions. Sol Naciente’s use of the bomba rhythm as a rhythmic foundation for their compositions allows for the appropriation of a variety of foreign musi-cal genres in both simple and compound duple meter. For example, the rhythm patterns characteristic of salsa, bachata, vallenato, and reggaeton are readily adapted by bomberos in a simple duple-meter bomba, while the rhythms of a coastal marimba tune, highland albazo, or Afro- Peruvian landó (which may be felt in a compound duple meter) are likewise inter-preted using a compound duple-meter bomba. Although the particular


types of fusion produced by Sol Naciente are indeed novel to bomba, the tendency to adapt foreign musical genres and rhythms to the fundamen-tal rhythm of bomba is a practice that constitutes continuity with previous generations of bomba musicians and groups, including Milton Tadeo and Marabú (Bueno 1991; Schechter 1994).

Of particular interest is the apparent preference on the part of groups such as Sol Naciente to draw primarily, though not exclusively, on musical genres and rhythms hailing from the greater African diaspora. Frequently heard alongside bombas playing from open windows in the Chota-Mira Val-ley, for instance, are the sounds of son, salsa, merengue, bachata, reggae-ton, vallenato, and coastal Afro-Ecuadorian marimba themes and rhythms such as andarele and bambuco. These genres, which constitute the current soundscape of the Chota-Mira Valley, inform not only the rhythmic groove of bomba but also its harmonic possibilities.

In Sol Naciente’s approach to harmony, it is therefore possible to hear how bomba moderna speaks to current afrochoteño sensibilities while still maintaining a foothold in tradition. As noted earlier, previous bombas tend to exhibit bimodality, oscillating between the relative major and relative minor. This much is similarly due to the musical soundscape inform-ing bomba compositions in years prior. The bombas of Sol Naciente, how-ever, develop more fully a single tonality, either major or minor. This is in keeping with trends evident in the compositional practices of those genres most frequently appropriated by current bomba groups.

This is not to say, however, that bimodality is entirely abandoned. In-deed, a survey of Sol Naciente’s repertoire to date reveals an equal num-ber of bombas set in a single key to those exhibiting bimodality. Though admittedly not as prominent or clearly defined as in previous bombas, the continued use of bimodality suggests that while there is a diversification of compositional practices with regard to the tonal setting of bomba, the use of bimodality continues as a favorable option in Sol Naciente’s com-positional tool kit. Indeed, further musical analysis remains to determine with greater certainty whether Sol Naciente’s harmonic treatment consti-tutes a fundamental break with previous bomba compositional practices or, as with the group’s approach to rhythm, merely an extension thereof.

Bomba, the Nation, and Afrochoteño Identity, 1960–2008

While “authenticity” remains a salient and contested category for bomba musicians in Ecuador, the difference between Marabú and Sol Naciente and their respective interpretations of bomba presents two interrelated manifestations of the contemporary afrochoteño experience of blackness in Ecuador post-2000. This becomes even more apparent when considered relative to a broader social history of bomba since the 1960s. As shown in


the following, bomba’s development during this period is intimately linked to the afrochoteño encounter with the nation.5 In Ecuador, a dramatic shift in the national imaginary at the turn of the twenty-first century, from the exclusionary and homogeneous ideal of mestizaje to the inclusionary and heterogeneous ideal of interculturalidad, marks a telling division in bomba’s perception, reception, and representation vis-à-vis black ethnicity among afrochoteños.6 It also hails a cultural revival, of sorts, propelling the musical genre to the fore of the nation as a cultural symbol and tradition to be safeguarded, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, as a dynamic commercial popular music genre reflective of a newfound transregional and transnational diasporic sensibility. Viewed from this perspective, con-temporary bomba, in both its neo- traditional and modern guises, marks a significant historical moment in the afrochoteño encounter with and re-sponse to the nation.

Mestizaje and the Dual Marginalization and Proliferation of Bomba, 1960s–1990s

As elsewhere in Latin America, the mestizo as ideal citizen and model of national identity undergirded Ecuador’s state social and economic devel-opmental agendas, policies, and projects for much of the twentieth cen-tury (Walmsley 2004, 18). Implicit in this model, however, is a notion of whitening or acculturation that seeks to deny while at the same time re-ifying ethnic and cultural differences within the nation (see Wade 1993). Although this model is variously conceptualized as a triangle, with white mestizos at the apex and blacks and indígenas on its lateral sides (Whitten and Quiroga 1998), as a hierarchical continuum ranging solely between white European and indio (excluding blacks altogether as noncitizens; Rahier 1998), and as a generally more fluid and dynamic continuum be-tween the defining poles of white mestizo and black (Wade 1993), the end result is a hierarchical social model that conflates difference (racial, cul-tural, ethnic) with class. Though indeed more fluid and dynamic, such a structure effectively equates the white mestizo with social, cultural, and economic prosperity and progress while at the same time associating nonwhite mestizos (e.g., Afro-descendants, indígenas, zambos, mulattos) with an inferior social and economic standing and status within the na-tional ethnic and racial imaginary. State aspirations toward Western ideals of modernity and modernization projects in Ecuador during the twenti-eth century therefore implicitly, whether or not with intended malice, har-bored an element of racism that accounts for many of the negative cultural changes evident in such marginalized rural regions as the Chota-Mira Valley during that time (see Chalá Cruz 2006; Jaramillo 1994; Pabón 2007).


Within the Chota-Mira Valley, the impact of mestizaje on local ways of life and cultural traditions such as bomba is most evident in the de-cades following the agrarian reforms of the 1960s, as such an encounter with the state necessarily implied a local engagement with the national discourse of mestizaje.7 As elsewhere in Latin America during this time, land reform was conceived as a broader statewide effort toward modern-izing and further integrating the nation’s marginal and largely indig-enous poor rural areas within the national infrastructure and market economy (Blankstein and Zuvekas 1973, 78). In the Chota-Mira Valley this entailed the dissolution of the region’s haciendas, the redistribution of land among the inhabitant population, and the implementation of vari-ous state-sponsored infrastructural, economic, and social developmental projects (see Jaramillo 1994). Among these projects were the construction of the Pan-American Highway, the introduction of electricity, the trans-formation of the region’s agricultural economy from long- to short-cycle crops (e.g., from sugarcane to tomatoes and other market crops), and the implementation of the region’s first schools and standardized educational curriculum (Pabón 2007). Ease of mobility, a dependence on the market economy, and access to information and education led to an increase in emigration as well as to an abandonment of certain aspects of life in the Chota-Mira Valley considered antithetical toward the goals and aspirations of modernization and upward social and economic mobility (Pabón 2007; see also Chalá Cruz 2006; Medina Vallejo 1996, 1999). Thus, although the agrarian reforms did indeed hail the end of a long era of exploitation in the Chota-Mira Valley, they ushered forth modernization projects that, whether intentionally or not, effectively inculcated or helped foster among afrochoteños negative attitudes and perceptions regarding their own cul-tural traditions and heritage.

Yet the same processes that contributed to the stigmatization of lo-cal cultural traditions also allowed for bomba’s dissemination beyond the Chota-Mira Valley and its development as a commercial music genre. In-deed, it was during this period of marginalization following the agrarian reforms of the 1960s that the first commercial bomba groups and bomba re-cordings emerged from the region. Individuals and groups such as Milton Tadeo and Los Hermanos Congo, Mario Diego Congo and Oro Negro, Neri Padilla and Los Hermanos Padilla, Grupo Juventud de Carpuela, Los Románticos del Valle, Los Hermanos Lastra, Los Hermanos Espinoza, Grupo Bantú, and Los Genuinos del Ritmo formed, in part, in response to the need to diversify local household economies and as a result of the new income-earning opportunities that music as profession afforded local bomba-playing agriculturalists in the post–agrarian reform Chota-Mira Valley (Schechter 1994). Music recording labels with national distribution further incentivized the professionalization of bomba as companies such


as Estrella, Onix, and Fuentes sought to create and take advantage of niche markets among urban afrochoteño immigrants. As a result, bomba moved from household gatherings linked to specific socioreligious occasions in the 1960s to concert stages, hostel and restaurant patios, concert halls, festival platforms, and radio airwaves throughout Ecuador’s major urban centers in the 1970s and 1980s.

As with other such commodified music genres, the professionaliza-tion of bomba served to consolidate its stylistic elements as well as orient its development toward market trends. Both aspects of bomba’s develop-ment during this period are well documented by John Schechter (1994) in his survey of the repertoire of Milton Tadeo and Los Hermanos Congo. Schechter observes continuity in the group’s instrumentation (guitar trio, bomba, idiophone, and an orange leaf used as a kazoolike instrument) as well as in their compositional practice (use of bimodality and coplas) but notices a gradual emphasis on the role of the requinto and the virtu-osity of the requinto player (293). He also observes an increased tendency to incorporate or appropriate foreign genres into their playing repertoire (e.g., pasacalle, albazo, cumbia, and joropo; Schechter 1994, 294). He sug-gests that these last two developments are indicative of the group’s profes-sionalization and expanding audience base beyond the Chota-Mira Valley (see pages 293 and 295, respectively). In other words, they speak to con-scious stylistic and repertoire decisions informed by a growing awareness of audience, or market-driven trends.8 Given the relative success of Milton Tadeo and Los Hermanos Congo, many other bomba groups during this period likewise followed these trends. As a result, the instrumentation and style to emerge from this period is considered by many contemporary afrochoteño bomberos as a standard of professionalism and marker of au-thenticity (Bueno 1991, 185).9

Thus, while modernization allowed bomba to flourish as a commercial music genre, it nonetheless marginalized the genre among afrochoteño youth as a result of the inherently exclusionary and racist assumptions upon which state-conceived ideals of modernity and social progress were premised. Youth educated in the region’s newly formed schools aspired to mestizo values and became sensitive to class distinctions drawn along cul-tural and ethnic lines. As Chalá Cruz (2006), Pabón (2007), and others have observed, the ideal of mestizaje propelled them to eschew their own cultural values and stigmatize their own cultural traditions as backward and antithetical to those to which they now aspired. Although they may have listened to bomba in their own homes, these youth took to faster and more modern rhythms, genres, and sounds imported from Quito, greater Latin America, and the United States, such as salsa, cumbia, merengue, Latin pop ballads, and North American pop—music that spoke to their emergent sense of modernity. Indeed, many considered bomba the music


of an older generation, one with which they no longer either identified or wished to identify. That bomba remained relevant during this period is likely because of the conscious efforts of bomberos such as Milton Tadeo and Los Hermanos Congo to incorporate and interpret foreign musical genres alongside those bombas considered traditional.

Interculturalidad, Etnoeducación, and Bomba as Symbol of Black Ethnicity, 1990s–2008

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, a new generation of afrochoteño youth had taken up bomba as a positive affirmation of local cultural heritage and black ethnic identity. Groups such as Oro Negro, Marabú, and Poder Negro reaffirmed pride in and promoted the visibility of afrochoteño history, cul-ture, and identity through their lyrics, artistic vision, and cultural work as musicians, educating afrochoteños and nonblacks alike about bomba. This was supported and spurred in part by the ongoing work of individuals, centers, and institutions such as Juan García Salazar, the Afro- Ecuadorian Cultural Center, the Federación de Comunidades y Organizaciones Negras de Imbabura y Carchi (FECONIC), and the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar that advocated on behalf of Afro-Ecuadorians and provided the space and venues for Afro-Ecuadorians and others interested in discuss-ing, learning about, sharing, promoting, and developing projects related to Afro-Ecuadorians, their history, culture, and issues of concern. Much of this work and its reason for being is due to broader social and political changes in Ecuador as well as to the specific Afro-Ecuadorian confronta-tion with race and racism. Collectively, this work has arguably led to the reconceptualization of bomba as a tradition linked to a particular ethnic group, rather than as a popular music genre associated with a broad trans-cultural and regional “highland ethnicity” (Schechter 1994, 300).10 Yet it has also led to the simultaneous proliferation and development of bomba as a commercial popular music arguably linking the Chota-Mira Valley with the greater African diaspora.

The abrupt change in attitude concerning black ethnicity and, con-sequently, understandings of local cultural traditions such as bomba oc-curred in tandem with broader social and political shifts in perceptions and representations of national and ethnic identity. Specifically, the exclu-sionary ideology of mestizaje gave way—in rhetoric, if not in fact—to that of the inclusive plurality of interculturalidad (interculturality) during this time. This alternative ideal of national citizenship takes as its point of de-parture the validity of difference as it has and continues to inform the for-mation and direction of the nation (Walsh 2006, 26; Whitten 2007, 367). Within Ecuador, interculturalidad originated with the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador (CONAIE) during the 1990s as a


means of unifying the diverse social and political interests and agendas of the various and competing sociocultural organizations representing the disparate social and political needs of Ecuador’s numerous and distinct in-digenous communities toward the creation of a plurinational state (Walsh 2006, 25). As CONAIE makes explicit, the ultimate aim of the plurina-tional state, whose principles are founded on the ideals of interculturalidad, is to put an end to those social and economic woes inherited from the colo-nial period that have maintained the marginalization and exclusion of Ec-uador’s indigenous and Afro-descendant population (CONAIE and ICCI 2003, 2; Walsh 2006, 27). As an ideology, interculturalidad thus posits a vi-sion of society distinct from and counter to that characterized by mestizaje: an exclusionary and homogenizing model of citizenship premised on the erasure of cultural difference.

Interculturalidad emerged in national discourse soon after its adop-tion by CONAIE as the sociopolitical organization and the movement it came to represent grew in political power and influence (Becker 2011, 57).11 Indeed, this is most evident in the language of the 1998 revision of the national constitution that recognizes for the first time the nation’s eth-nic diversity and affirms Ecuador as a plurinational state (Van Cott 2002, 58; Walmsley 2004, 22).12 The indigenous uprisings coupled with popu-lar dissent over the nation’s economic woes, corruption, and lack of politi-cal leadership hastened the shift as interculturalidad and its premise were taken up by Rafael Correa on his way to the presidency in 2007 (Becker 2011, 12–17; Pallares 2002, 2007). Well into his third term in office, Correa today continues to foreground the ideals of interculturalidad in his plat-form, policies, and rhetoric.13

Though not directly taken up by Afro-Ecuadorian organizations, the discourse of interculturalidad nonetheless provided the space and terms for the visibility and engagement of Afro-Ecuadorian social and political concerns, struggles, and aspirations at the national level (Walsh 2006, 17). Toward the end of the 1990s, Afro-Ecuadorian intellectuals, organi-zations, and political leaders sought to reclaim, strengthen, and validate their cultural heritage and identity.14 While certainly strengthened by an emerging transnational discourse on race and racism,15 this effort was most effectively articulated and enacted in Ecuador in the objectives and projects of the ongoing educational and sociopolitical process known as etnoeducación (ethno-education).16

Founded by Juan García Salazar, an Afro-Ecuadorian intellectual and social activist long involved in the documentation of local history and cul-tural traditions, etnoeducación involves the collection, preservation, and dissemination of Afro-Ecuadorian history and culture specifically by and for Afro-Ecuadorians. The express purpose of etnoeducación, as García Salazar (n.d., 14) himself explicitly states, is the cultivation, affirmation,


and thus consolidation of Afro-Ecuadorian cultural and ethnic identity toward a more successful engagement with the state in its current inter-cultural dialogue and process. With the support of such institutions and organizations as the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito and FECONIC in the Chota-Mira Valley, etnoeducación has resulted in workshops on oral history documentation and Afro- Ecuadorian history and culture, as well as publications, educa-tional curricula, and other materials used in schools in the Chota-Mira Valley and audiovisual productions, such as El camino de los abuelos (Pabón 2007, 101; FECONIC 2001, 2005). Thanks, in part, to etnoeducación and the national dialogue on race and racism made possible by the events of the previous twenty years and the emergent discourse of interculturalidad, bomba ascended from relative obscurity to a level of national prominence as a positive signifier of afrochoteño identity.

Thus it was that the turn of the twenty-first century witnessed the for-mation and proliferation of new youth bomba music and dance groups in Ecuador. Today, more than twenty bomba ensembles actively perform at cultural festivals, tourist venues, concerts, and local events throughout Ec-uador. Bomba dance groups are likewise abundant, and are often linked with either local schools or communities. Musicians and dancers alike are frequently featured in local events, festivals, and competitions such as Día del Afroecuatoriano (a nationally recognized event commemorating Afro-Ecuadorian identity and culture), Fiesta de la Virgen de Las Nieves (in the Chota-Mira Valley), Carnaval Coangue (a carnaval celebration in the com-munity of Chota, Chota-Mira Valley), and El Bombazo (a bomba concert and competition held in the city of Ibarra). Moreover, CD projects, films, and workshops such as Bomba: Por el camino de los abuelos (Bomba: Toward the Path of the Grandparents), produced by FECONIC and Proyecto de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas y Negros del Ecuador (PRODEPINE); the film Cómo poder olvidarte (How to Forget You); and the documenta-ries Más allá del fútbol (Beyond Soccer) and Alpachaca prominently feature bomba. In Quito, organizations such as Fundación de Desarrollo Social y Cultural Afroecuatoriano (known as Azúcar) provide spaces for maintain-ing and disseminating bomba through workshops and concerts. This ac-tivity reflects an understanding among afrochoteños of the value of bomba in cultivating and representing a distinct black ethnic identity.

Yet while the renewed interest in bomba helped preserve and maintain it as a tradition vital to the identity of the communities of the Chota-Mira Valley, it likewise contributed to its continued development as a commer-cial music genre. The process of commoditization begun in the late 1970s and early 1980s intensified through the 1990s and the early twenty-first century, in part as a result of globalization and the growing marketabil-ity of bomba not only within the Chota-Mira Valley but also among the ur-


ban immigrant afrochoteño population and curious tourists and nonblack Ecuadorians as well. The arrival of the Internet in Quito and Ibarra in the mid-1990s, and then later in the communities of the Chota-Mira Valley in the late 1990s and early 2000s, made music from around the world fur-ther accessible to afrochoteños. By the turn of the century, hip-hop, pop, rock, and tropical music genres from Colombia and the Caribbean islands were popular among afrochoteño youth living in Quito, Ibarra, and the Chota-Mira Valley. Capitalizing on the growing market for bomba and the popularity of these imported dance genres, bomba groups and small in-dependent record labels aided by readily accessible pirated audio record-ing and editing software began to produce and disseminate low-budget recordings featuring innovations influenced from abroad. The result was a significant output of bomba CDs, including club mixes and remixes, fea-turing a broad interpretation of bomba, from the classic instrumentation and sound of the early 1980s bomba groups to salsa and hip-hop bomba fusions incorporating keyboards, timbales, congas, and bongos. These CDs can be found alongside other popular dance genres in pirated music stands throughout Ibarra and Quito.

As a result of the social, political, and economic processes currently informing afrochoteño identity, bomba’s recent development moves along two parallel paths: one of preservation and maintenance as a tradition, the other of appropriation and transformation as a popular music genre. Mu-sicians in the former category consciously uphold bomba as a vital link with their ancestral cultural heritage and thus tend to stay within certain stylistic parameters considered definitive of the genre, such as the use of the bomba (drum) and its associated rhythmic patterns, as well as the guitar trio and its corresponding function relative to the bomba rhythm. These musical and stylistic elements now considered traditional are in re-ality those consolidated between the mid-1960s and early 1990s. It is no surprise, therefore, that musicians and groups belonging to this strain of bomba most notably include those who emerged and recorded during the 1980s and early 1990s, such as the late Milton Tadeo, Marabú, Oro Negro, Neri Padilla, and Grupo Bantú, among others.

Those in the latter category likewise perceive bomba as central to the identity of afrochoteños today but differ from the former in terms of their innovations in musical instrumentation and style. As noted already, con-gas, bongos, timbales, cowbells, the clave, and even the indigenous high-land bombo either supplement or entirely replace the bomba in ensembles such as Roy Diaz and Los Soneros del Barrio, Sol Naciente, and Poder Negro, heavily influenced by salsa, son, cumbia, and merengue. Other mu-sical instruments added more recently include the keyboard and the drum set, as heard in Sol Naciente and Mini GDR. As previously in bomba’s de-velopment, these innovations at the same time follow and allow for the


appropriation of foreign musical genres and stylistic elements such as salsa, son, and coastal Afro-Esmeraldeñan music. Of particular interest is Sol Naciente’s use of the horn and marimba voice settings on the elec-tronic keyboard to mimic salsa bands’ horn sections and the sound and style of the coastal Afro-Esmeraldeñan marimba. Similarly, the adoption of new genres also involves the adaptation of their related song forms. Most notable in the development of bomba song texts in this more com-mercial-oriented strand of bomba is the move toward topical lyrics dealing with universal themes commonly heard in commercial popular music, such as love and loss. The result is a broad range of interpretations, from the more salsa-oriented music of Los Soneros del Barrio to the bomba fu-sions of Sol Naciente.

The degree to which such fusions alter bomba is a topic of much de-bate among bomba musicians in both categories. While those in the camp of tradition perceive the recent trends in the newer bomba groups as a cor-ruption of the genre fueled by commercial interests, those producing what they consider bomba moderna (modern bomba) understand their music as an expression of their current reality. Both, however, strive to produce mu-sic that inspires people to dance. As such, they are both equally listened to and appreciated by afrochoteños today.

Although the current changes to bomba do partially reflect trends from the commercial music industry, they also reflect a growing awareness of an emergent sense of identity that transcends regional and national bor-ders. Just as the incorporation of mestizo highland genres in bomba dur-ing the 1980s and early 1990s reflected the region’s integration into the national imaginary, the most recent innovations of groups such as Sol Naciente, which draw primarily on the musics of the African diaspora, speak to the transregional and transnational affinity and linkages engen-dered by the recent afrochoteño identification with black ethnicity.

Bomba, Afrochoteño Identity, and the Black Pacific

The present case study in many ways conforms to and corroborates Feldman’s (2005, 2006) observations about the black Pacific. As with Afro-Peruvian musical traditions before the Afro-Peruvian revival, the marginal status of bomba and its lack of identification with black ethnicity up through the 1990s reflect the negative impact of mestizaje on highland Afro-Ecuadorian awareness of and esteem for ethnicity and local cultural traditions. Similarly, the sudden change in perception concerning bomba and black ethnicity, as well as the ensuing revival, reinterpretation, and concern for safeguarding bomba as an emblem of African cultural heri-tage, marks a strategic maneuver on the part of afrochoteños correspond-ing to their contemporary experience of blackness and engagement with


the nation. As is evident in the artistic vision and compositional practice of groups such as Marabú and Sol Naciente, the African diaspora, like the Afro-Peruvian revival, provides both the reference point and source ma-terial for the creative processes currently informing the contours of this struggle (see Wade 2008).17

Yet this case study also diverges from the Afro-Peruvian experience in one important sense, namely that afrochoteño collective memory and the practice of bomba were never fully lost even during a period of marked marginalization and stigmatization. Indeed, part of what makes the Afro-Peruvian revival so intriguing is that there was a noticeable degree of re-cuperation, reinvention, and re-creation (Feldman 2005, 210; see also Tompkins 1981). In the afrochoteño bomba case, however, the musical genre itself remained fundamentally unchanged between the 1980s and the turn of the twenty-first century. While new instruments and rhythms were added to bomba’s compositional vocabulary, they were incorporated as a supplement to rather than a replacement for the basic bomba rhythm, as Minda-Lara of Sol Naciente attests. What changed, rather, was bomba’s interpretation and perceived relationship to black ethnicity.

That this is the case foregrounds and further illuminates an important aspect of the experience of blackness in the diaspora and music’s relation-ship thereto, by now well documented in the academic literature and made exceptionally visible in the context of the black Pacific: musical expres-sions of blackness, regardless of their geographical point of articulation, index not fixed cultural or racial essences but particular historical trajec-tories and sociohistorical experiences of blackness within the African di-aspora (see Feldman 2006; Gilroy 1993; Radano 2003; Ritter 2011; Wade 2000). Indeed, this point is illustrated not only in the growing academic literature on national perspectives on race and nation in Latin America (e.g., Andrews 2010; Busdiecker 2006; Feldman 2006; Wade 2000; Wolf 2013) but also in the juxtaposition of regional differences within national boundaries, such as between the Chota-Mira Valley and Esmeraldas, and between the rural and urban black communities in Ecuador (e.g., Chalá Cruz 2006; Lara 2011; Pábon 2007; Walmsley 2004; Ritter 2011). This trend is likely only to increase as current and emerging scholars continue to delineate in greater detail the profile of the black Pacific.

What is perhaps most interesting about bomba’s recent transformation from a marginalized and stigmatized local tradition to a nationally recog-nized popular genre intimately associated with highland black ethnicity is therefore not the current debate over authenticity nor the extent to which afrochoteños relate to the black Atlantic and Africa itself, but what it tells us about the afrochoteño experience of blackness within this specific region of the black Pacific and during this specific time period. Musical change in this context becomes not a question or matter of reconciliation (between


tradition and modernity, Africa and Ecuador, the black Atlantic and the black Pacific), but rather an opportunity to further examine and better un-derstand the complexity of those processes and power dynamics inform-ing identity construction and musical expression in the African diaspora.

Conclusion

The African diaspora simultaneously connotes unity and difference (Wade 2008). While common origins and struggles define the diaspora, the di-versity of cultural expressions that constitute it arises from the divergent sociohistorical trajectories necessitating creative adaptation on the part of local communities. Marabú’s emphasis on cultural origins and regional diversity and Sol Naciente’s celebration of black cultural creativity and transnational unity within the African diaspora reflect two distinct yet in-terrelated perspectives on what it means to be afrochoteño in Ecuador dur-ing this particular moment in history. It also shows the extent to which current artistic choices in the representation of afrochoteño identity are in-formed by the rhetoric and discourse of etnoeduación and interculturalidad.

As shown in this article, bomba’s development since the 1980s is in-extricably linked to the afrochoteño experience of blackness in Ecuador. What we “hear” in the marginalized yet commercially ascendant bomba of the 1980s and in the absence of its association with black ethnicity is the afrochoteño encounter with the nation, by which is meant the darker side of the ideology of mestizaje, following the integration of the region into the national economy after the agrarian reforms. What we “hear” in bomba’s bifurcation and transformation in its association with black ethnicity at the turn of the twenty-first century is likewise the afrochoteño engagement with the nation. In this instance, however, it indexes the afrochoteños’ con-scious response to mestizaje as enabled by the emergent counter hegemonic ideology of interculturalidad and channeled by the project of etnoeducación. Bomba and afrochoteño identity are linked in this case not by the degree to which the genre expresses afrochoteño cultural ties with Africa or even with the diaspora, but by the very fact that bomba is an expression of that particular difference (ethnic and/or cultural) informed by the particular subaltern condition of the afrochoteño communities. To speak of bomba and its development is therefore to speak of the afrochoteño experience of blackness along the black Pacific.

Notes

We wish to thank the Fulbright Commission of Ecuador, the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino, and FECONIC for their sup-port toward the completion of our research. Many thanks also to the reviewers and


editorial staff of LAMR and to the many colleagues and friends who commented on previous versions of this paper. We are also grateful to Plutarco Viveros and the members of Marabú, Daniel Minda-Lara and the members of Sol Naciente, Alex Schlenker for his assistance with the related documentary film (Más allá del fútbol), and our many friends and family in the Chota-Mira Valley, Quito, and Ibarra.

1. This self-identifying term has appeared only recently and is predominantly used by and debated among highland Afro-Ecuadorian intellectuals such as José Chalá Cruz (2006, 2007) and Ivan Pabón (2007). Though not unproblematic, it is useful in conveying the distinctly regional sense of black ethnicity emerging in the Chota-Mira Valley since the turn of the century as well as in distinguish-ing highland Afro-Ecuadorians from the Chota-Mira Valley from the coastal Afro- Ecuadorian population of Esmeraldas. In general, Afro-Ecuadorians typically self-identify first and foremost by community, region, province, or nation (depend-ing on the context), and only second (and when faced with non Afro- Ecuadorians and non-Ecuadorians) by ethnicity. Common signifiers of black ethnicity in Ec-uador include moreno, afroecuatoriano, afro, and even negro (applied either pejora-tively or more recently positively as co-opted by black youth to express a sense of “black pride”).

2. For a discussion of state co-optation and implementation of mestizaje as an ideology of national identity in Latin America in general, see Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt (2003); Graham (1990); Radcliffe and Westwood (1996); and Wade (1997). See Roitman (2009), Walmsley (2004), and Whitten and Quiroga (1998) for a discussion of mestizaje in Ecuador specifically. See also Whitten (2007) for a discussion of the lasting impact of mestizaje relative to the re-cent multicultural turn in Ecuador.

3. According to the 2010 Ecuadorian census conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos (INEC), the Afro-Ecuadorian population is es-timated at 7.2 percent of the national population (up from 5.0 percent in 2001). More specifically, Afro-Ecuadorians constitute 5.2 percent of the population in the province of Imbabura and 6.4 percent of the population in the province of Carchi (provinces encompassed by the region known as the Chota-Mira Valley). The re-sults of the 2010 census are available at the website http://www.ecuadorencifras .gob.ec/resultados/.

4. See Whitten (1974), Ritter (1998, 2011), and Walmsley (2004) for more infor-mation about coastal Afro-Ecuadorian history and culture.

5. By this we mean state-sponsored ideologies of national identity underlying and informing social and economic developmental agendas, policies, and projects directly affecting discourse about, as well as perceptions and representations of, ethnic identity at the national and local levels.

6. See Walsh (2006, 2008, 2009) and Whitten (2007) for a discussion of the origins and trajectory of interculturalidad in Ecuador as well as its implica-tions for national and ethnic identity. See also CONAIE (1997) and CONAIE and Instituto Científico de Culturas Indígenas (2003) for a definition and discussion of interculturalidad as it relates to CONAIE.

7. The Agrarian Reform and Colonization Law of 1964 effectively ended the huasipungo system with the dissolution and redistribution of the haciendas. This


law sought to redress both the abuses of precarious land ownership and the un-even distribution of land in an effort to improve the living and working conditions of small, rural agriculturalists. It did so primarily by providing access either to land acquired by the state or, as in the case of the huasipungueros and arrimados, to land worked over an extensive period of time. Its goals additionally encompassed the economic development of the marginal rural sectors and their integration into the national economy through access to programs of assistance, the formation of cooperatives, and the ability to participate in the nation’s social security program. Instituted by the military junta, the law reflected in part an increasing concern with impeding the advance of communism in Ecuador as well as with the project of modernization (Gondard and Mazurek 2001, 15). For additional information on the agrarian reforms in Ecuador, see Blankstein and Zuvekas (1973), de Costales and Costales (1958, 1971), and Kofas (2001). See also Dorner (1992) for an overview of land reform in Latin America.

8. This is not to say that stylistic and repertoire changes were conscious de-cisions solely informed by market-driven trends. Yet as documented by Schechter (1994), and as is evident in the musical choices of Sol Naciente, bomberos afrochoteños with professional aspirations are very much aware of current trends in popular music as well as audience preferences.

9. Although certainly problematic from an academic perspective, the terms professionalism and authenticity are here used in accordance with the ways in which afrochoteños themselves understand and use these terms in relation to bomba.

10. Schechter (1994) concludes that bomba, in its musical characteristics, is identified more with a regional, pan-highland, and ultimately Imbabureño and mestizo identity than with black ethnicity per se. Though certainly associ-ated with black ethnicity by the turn of the twenty-first century, his observation nonetheless corroborates and further underscores the notion that the ideology of mestizaje negatively affected perceptions of bomba and black ethnic identity up through the late 1990s. Schechter’s astute observation therefore stands as a tell-ing record of the negative imprint of mestizaje on bomba and the Afro-descendant communities of the Chota-Mira Valley.

11. On indigenous movements in Ecuador, see Becker (2011), Clark and Becker (2007), Field (1991), MacDonald (2002), Pallares (2002, 2007), Van Cott (2002), Viatori (2009), Yashar (2005), and Zamosc (2004). See also Walsh (2006, 41; 2009) for discussion of interculturalidad as it relates to multiculturalism.

12. Indigenous and black populations were not officially recognized as citi-zens per se under the constitution until 1998 (Walmsley 2004, 19). For an over-view of the 1998 and 2008 constitutional amendments relating to the indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian populations, see Pineda (2013). It should also be noted that the struggle to recognize and codify ethnic and cultural plurality in the constitu-tions of many South and Central American nations is intimately linked to ongo-ing struggles for land rights (see Madrid 2012; Rahier 2012b).

13. Despite the populist rhetoric of Rafael Correa and his affirmation and implementation of the ideals of interculturalidad at the levels of national and lo-cal government, scholars as well as Afro-Ecuadorian and indigenous leaders re-main skeptical of state co-optation of the discourse of interculturalidad. See, for


example, de la Torre and Sánchez (2012), Rahier (2012a, 2012b), Walsh (2012), and Whitten (2007).

14. For more detailed information about Afro-Ecuadorian mobilizations, see Johnson (2012); Medina Vallejo and Castro (2006); Rahier (2012a, 2012b, 2014); Walsh (2009, 2012); and Walsh, León, and Restrepo (2005).

15. See Rahier (2012a, 2012b) and Fontaine (2012) for a discussion of the Afro-Ecuadorian social movement and connection with transnational discussions of blackness, race, and racism.

16. See García Salazar (n.d.); see also Pabón (2007, 2009), Walsh (2004, 2009), and Walsh and Santacruz (2009) for more information on etnoeducación.

17. This corroborates observations made by other scholars concerning Africa and the African diaspora as sources of contemporary black creativity in the ne-gotiation of identity and culture. See, for example, Crook (1993), Feldman (2005, 2006, 2012), Gilroy (1993), Ritter (1998), and Wade (2008).

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