"Composer and Community"
An Inter-Disciplinary Colloquium
The Use of Music as a Politics of Peace
in Colombia in the 1990s
Ana María Ochoa
Department of Music
Columbia University
Abstract:
The rise of social movements and the newly written Constitution of 1991 in Colombia, heralded a time of search for cultural solutions to the country's armed conflict. This implied both a redefinition of the concept of culture and the relationship between music and culture in the public space as well as of a transformation in the implementation of projects of cultural policy. Culture and the arts, especially music, were seen as possible avenues for peace. But the 1990s was also a decade of intensification of the Colombian armed conflict. By the beginning of the twenty first century and, in the context of an increasingly globalized war after September 11, this has meant a simultaneous process of implementation of politics of security and of processes of militarization. This process of globalization of the armed conflict also coincides with a renewed process of globalization of Colombian popular musics, especialy from the Caribbean. This paper looks at the transformations in the realtionship between music and culture in the midst of the processes of globalization of both the armed conflict and the music industry. It explores tensions in the significance of music in this complex context characterized by the rise of a politics of diversity in the midst of an intensification of the armed conflict.
Please email questions or consultations
to |