Entre pasos de Champeta: marginalización e industria en la ciudad de Cartagena

Abstract

Within the framework of an enormously unequal city with a marked African heritage, a musical genre develops that has evolved over the years, receiving strong influences from various types of music from Africa that have been mixed with our own rhythms. It is a type of music strongly associated with popular neighborhoods and also with their problems. However, the champeta went from being a rhythm that was played mainly in the Colombian Caribbean and that was danced in the streets to positioning itself in a network of commercial dynamics that have allowed this genre to be heard in traditional neighborhoods of Cartagena and, in addition, has expanded to different cities and areas of the country. This project tries to see how today, the musical phenomenon that this type of music has become deals with issues such as exclusion - segregation, the relationships and appropriations between popular and mass culture, the mediation that cultural industries can have between social tensions and also the consolidation of a strong cultural industry around formerly rejected or marginalized practices. So here, through the journalistic chronicle, is presented a journey through the history of a musical genre that transits between marginalization and industry. The voice of some of its main actors and the search for the recognition of a dance, a rhythm and a tradition.