El bambuco, música “nacional” de Colombia. Entre costumbre, tradición inventada y exotismo

Abstract

This article discusses the problem of bambuco as traditional Colombian music. Folk literature, music scores and recordings, specially produced during the mid nineteen-century, where contextually analyzed in order to find out the particularities of that problem. An historic but non-chronological reading of that material was organized having in mind three analytical categories: custom, invented tradition and exoticism. That reading revealed that the problem of bambuco as traditional Colombian music requires non-singular interpretations, such as those that seemed to proclaim that there is only one genre speaking as a representative of one single reality. Therefore, the complex nature of reality forces us to diversify the theoretical, methodological and analytical frames from which we approach to the study of bambuco.