8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

1/28

This article was downloaded by: [b-on: Biblioteca do conhecimento online IPB]On: 02 February 2012, At: 17:50Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Cultural StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors

and subscription information:

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcus20

MUSIC RADIO AND GLOBAL

MEDIATION

Joshua Tucker

Available online: 22 Jul 2010

To cite this article: Joshua Tucker (2010): MUSIC RADIO AND GLOBAL MEDIATION,

Cultural Studies, 24:4, 553-579

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2010.488409

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-

licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make anyrepresentation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up todate. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should beindependently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liablefor any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damageswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection

with or arising out of the use of this material.

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcus20http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2010.488409http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcus20

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

2/28

Joshua Tucker

MUSIC RADIO AND GLOBAL MEDIATION

Producing social distinction in the

Andean public sphere

This article offers a model for studying the dynamics of globalized popular musics,that fills methodological and theoretical lacunae in existing scholarly approaches.

It deals with the emergence and circulation of a hybrid popular music calledmusica ayacuchana, which over the 1990s became an important site ofidentification for the emergent Andean migrant middle class of Lima, Peru.Describing the role of radio stations and, particularly, DJs actions in this process,I suggest that attention to the working practices of mediators can reveal how popular music becomes attached to new identities, particularly in the context ofbroader social changes. Further, I use this example to show why scholarly accountsof globalization, which rarely attend to the everyday mechanics of mediation, musttake them into account, to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of the way thatthese processes engage, challenge, and/or reproduce social hierarchies.

Keywords popular music; radio; public sphere; globalization; Peru

Introduction

In early 2005, Lima FM station Studio 92 aired a new, socially perceptive

segment on their radio program Mal Elemento (Bad Element).1

It was a satirein two parts, each lampooning a social type familiar to citizens of Perus coastalcapital. The first half, entitled Vida en Lima (Life in Lima), was dedicated tothe foibles of Limas wealthy white criollos (Creoles).2 Invariably it was set ina tony locale such as an ambassadors residence, foreign electronica pulsing inthe background. Here, shallow consumerists engaged in activities stressingtheir admiration for Euro-American trends, all the while addressing oneanother by mannered, foreign-sounding nicknames. In this way, theprogramme ridiculed Perus dominant class as xenophilic pitucos (roughly,

snobs), poking merciless fun at a criollo who are perceived to define the valueof material culture in relation to its cosmopolitan origins.

Cultural Studies Vol. 24, No. 4 July 2010, pp. 553579

ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online 2010 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2010.488409

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

3/28

The programmes second part also sent up social climbers, but was insteadentitled Veda en Lema. This orthographic change, replacing Vida en Limas iswith es, mimicked the speech of indigenous and mestizo (mixed-race) peoplefrom the countrys Andean highlands, where Spanish pronunciation is inflected

by the indigenous Quechua language. Signalling a change of social scene, thesegment began with a jarring shift in musical background. Slick techno wasreplaced by the song Como has hecho (What have you done?), as performedby the Duo Hermanos Gaitan Castro. The outstanding hit of the contemporaryhuayno ayacuchano genre, Como has hecho fused traditional Andean stylisticswith international balada and rock. The track was a favourite of then-PresidentAlejandro Toledo, Perus first modern leader of indigenous heritage, and thestyle in general had become publicly identified with Limas ascendant Andeanmigrant community. Turning back centuries of racist exclusion by a powerstructure anchored in the coastal criollo sphere, Perus highland majority has inrecent decades achieved representation in the political and public realms, andVeda en Lema skewered the perceived nouveau riche sensibilities of a new Andeanmiddle class. Aiming its barbs at the emergent migrant bourgeoisie, hungry todemonstrate its unaccustomed wealth and status, the segment was set at localestypifying their lifeworld, such as a successful merchants stall in Limas centralmarket. It satirized their acquisitive pursuit of cultural and economic capital,focusing in particular upon objects connoting cosmopolitan savvy, marker par

excellence of bourgeois sophistication. As such, the hybrid style of Como hashecho, displaying cosmopolitan sophistication via elements of musical form,perfectly underlined Veda en Lemas knowing portrait of consumerism andsocial distinction.

Vida en Lima/Veda en Lema can be read in part, as an astute commentaryon the intertwining of popular music, mass mediation, and social change incontemporary Peru. In this article, my interest is to account for the associationbetween musical style and social position that it takes for granted. Specifically,I want to show how one traditional style, huayno music from the highland cityof Ayacucho, became consolidated as a figure for Perus Andean middle class,in Ayacucho and Lima alike. I argue that this depended upon its public framingas cosmopolitan, and hence potentially modern, in contradistinction to othertraditional Andean musics. More broadly, by focusing on key agents whocrafted this imagery, and the media channels through which they worked, Iadvocate an ethnographic model for studying the relation between popularmusic, globalization, and the production of cosmopolitan sensibility. Byfocusing upon a limited group of agents, I hope to demonstrate that a

methodological focus on mediators can yield important insights about themechanics of contemporary public culture.

5 5 4 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

4/28

Popular music, globalization, and cosmopolitan forms

Since its inception, scholarship on popular music in the global South has beendominated by studies of those processes, tied largely to the spread of Western

capital and communications, conventionally labelled globalization. Movingfrom apprehensive accounts ofwesternization (Nettl 1985) to studies praisingthe socially productive nature of hybridity, this work has provided key insightsinto the way that musicians reflect and shape emergent social formations (see,for example, Waterman 1990; Erlmann 1996; Turino 2000; Perrone & Dunn2001). In an age of intense commodity circulation, the conviction thatidentities are shaped by the life of the imagination (Appadurai 1996) inrelation to mass media thoroughly informs contemporary musical scholarship.However, scholars of globalization increasingly recognize that globalization is

hardly experienced in a homogeneous manner (Turino 2000; Vertovec &Cohen 2002).3 As globalizing processes reorder conceptual worlds, commu-nities knit together different aspects of translocal material culture, findingmeaning in travelling forms by adapting them to local constraints and interests.Local regimes of custom and taste, as well as the unequal spread of capital andinfrastructure, each ensure that the putatively global reach of images,discourses, and ideologies remains uneven (Mazzarella 2003; Abu-Lughod2005).

Some studies of music have attended specifically to the variegated nature ofglobal processes, acknowledging that local socio-economic structures, and theactions of those who mediate between local and global levels, condition thespread of musical sounds and ideologies (see, in particular, Meintjes 2003).Nevertheless, most do not describe the specific contexts and channels in andby which translocal artefacts, the material basis of Appadurais imaginativecosmopolitan worlds, take effect in consumers lives. Instead, they often relyupon analyses of musical structure, backed up by statements elicited frommusicians (or, rarely, listeners), which are taken as analogous to the mindset of

consumers. Even in recent work on music production, which has greatlyenriched scholarly understandings of mass mediation, analysis tends to reify theproducer as auteur, taking the production of expressive culture to be theequivalent of the effective adoption of social identities more broadly.4

Such ideas have been widely critiqued in scholarship on popular music, andscholars have resisted the notion that any given piece of music exteriorizes apreconstituted social identity (Frith 1996b). A more nuanced approach insteademphasizes the way that a sense of groupness is constructed by agents whoshape and circulate music, thus drawing listeners into evolving structures of

shared meaning (see especially Frith 1996a). As Richard Middleton hasrecently stated, it no longer seems desirable to:

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 5 5

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

5/28

[examine] popular music with a view to deciphering there representationsof identity that have already been laid down elsewhere: rather, we shouldbe looking for mechanisms of practice and orders of discourse throughwhich sites of musical work contribute to the construction, maintenance

and dissemination of identities. (Middleton 2003, p. 3)

Analyses of performed or recorded texts are, on their own, particularlyinsufficient for scholars interested in the relation between musical globalizationand its effects on social identity. Such an analysis is unable to account for themechanisms by which subjects come to understand cosmopolitan forms aspersuasive signifiers of personal and collective experience. It is also unable todescribe why different collectivities, all of which interact within a nominallyshared public sphere, come to identify with different kinds of cosmopolitan

forms. While it is clear that sound can be a vehicle for shaping common values,neither musical ideologies, nor the abilities and dispositions that underwritetheir adoption, are evenly distributed. Understanding the ways that peoplecome to possess and share a sense of investment in new musical idioms, andhence a potential site of identification, means describing where such ideas arespread, how they are made persuasive, and who can gain access to them.5 Sucha framework is especially imperative for scholars invested in interrogating thepolitics of musical globalization, for only this kind of study can move beyond

banal generalities affirming the universality of hybridity, to show howtranslocal structures of sound and meaning engage, reproduce, or transformlocal hierarchies. In other words those of anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod hybridizations and cosmopolitanisms are worth specifying . . . the effects ofmedia on what Appadurai calls the work of the imagination, and self-fabrication are worth tracing to particular configurations of power,education, age, and wealth in particular places (Abu-Lughod 2005, p. 50).

My analysis of huayno ayacuchano builds upon these foundations, showingthat it recruited particular kinds of listeners by tracing specified paths through

local media networks. Musicians and, more particularly, mediators, includingDJs, station managers, and record producers, actively constructed tiesbetween the style and a specific image of bourgeois cosmopolitanism.6 Asan object of identification, the style contested dominant discourses of Andeanbackwardness. Its mediators recognized the reality of a nascent Andeanbourgeoisie, one craving legitimacy but still marginalized in a racist society.Stated differently, musicians and mediators publicly created via contemporaryhuayno ayacuchana an Andean cosmopolitan subject position that could beinhabited by individual listeners, and successfully interpellated consumers into

it. In making this argument, I do not wish to exaggerate the power of music ormedia to shape identities. These actions took place against a background ofeconomic and political change, seismic shifts in Perus demographics whichfostered the ascendancy of the Limas migrant community. However, I do

5 5 6 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

6/28

want to suggest that in times of societal restructuring, mediators and musiciansoften work in tandem to organize new modes of identification. In the case ofPeru, the self-consciously cosmopolitan subject position of the migrantbourgeoisie that came to be associated with huayno ayacuchano, was not

grounded in a collective sentiment that predated the styles dissemination:rather, it arose from the public mediation of an emergent class sensibility.7

Shaping difference in the public sphere

Recent scholarship on public culture offers an effective model for studying therelation between popular music and social change that I link to huayno

ayacuchano (see especially Appadurai & Breckenridge 1995; Pinney 2001;Warner 2002).8 For these purposes, a public is a social formation defined notonly by shared attributes, or the common social-structural position of itsmembers, but by the identification of their groupness and their commoninterest in the public sphere. Collective subjectivity arises not primarilythrough reference to pre-established commonalities (culture), but via theeveryday interactions of private citizens who mutually recognize one another asobjects of public discourse. In an age of theory after culture (see Ortner1999), wherein accounts ofidentity that emphasize coherence and unity over

power-laden processes of group definition have become suspect (Brubaker &Cooper 2000; Hall & du Gay 1996), the figure of the public is an increasinglyfruitful analytic lens.

This model invites specification of the actors involved in addressing andframing publics, the conditions that grant them the right to speak in thepublic sphere, and the means by which their models of groupness becomepersuasive. In this way, a public appears as a contingent framing of. . .structures and practices that, while moveable, malleable, and borrowable, is

hardly inevitable (Gal & Woolard 2001a, p. 9). Such an approach recognizesthat dynamics of inequality restrict certain classes of people from goingpublic, but it also shows that power-laden imageries nevertheless take ongreat force in peoples lives. Further, in an age where the public sphere hasbeen irremediably colonized by capital, these ideas can illuminate the massmediation of social identities, offering means of theorizing the formation ofcollectivities that cross ruptures of space and are outside formal definitions ofculture (Ginsburg et al. 2002, p. 5). Following work on the sociallycreative dimensions of consumption (Miller 1994; Garca Canclini 2001),

scholars of public culture have effectively shown how publics come to lifewhen groups are projected as markets for particular media, named as userswith a particular interest, and understood as having a historical endurance assuch (Warner 2002).9

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 5 7

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

7/28

Such publics are omnipresent social formations, and scholars require a modelfor studying the emergence and endurance of mass-mediated intersubjectivity.Methodologically, this means showing how mediators occupy subsectors of thepublic sphere, interpellating particular citizens as consumers. The task of the

analyst is to show how audiences are semiotically constructed, signaled, andtypologised within media practice, and . . . [to link] these analyses to the societymore broadly, specifically in terms of how they connect . . . people together(Spitulnik 1994, p. 18). In any given situation the relative prominence ofparticular media, and the strength of the habits tied to them, should make certainchannels especially active fields of organization. For these reasons, popular musicradio is a critical site for the construction of public distinctions in Peru.

Radio broadcasting and the construction of musicalexperience

The dynamics of radio broadcasting have received little attention in scholarshipon popular music.10 Commercial radio, particularly in North America, isassumed to be inherently alienating: guided by the specific requirement tomaximise audiences rather than a concern for listeners or music (Hendy2000a, p. 743), broadcasters serve only to deliver demographically calculated

slices of a population to advertisers (Berland 1993; but see also Barnes 1988).DJs are thus overwhelmingly absent from studies of popular music as well.Limited in originality, pandering to audiences of the broadest possible kind,they are of negligible interest compared to their creative colleagues in publicor college radio (Berland 1998).11

However, the structure of local radio industries and the nature of localbroadcasts matter quite a lot in assessing such claims, and there is a markedneed for attention to the agency of DJs in contexts where their actions are lessoverdetermined (see also Ahlkvist 2001). Especially where the listening public

is much larger than the record buying public, radio is an important site ofpublic ideological work, and should be of prime interest to scholars of popularmusic (Hennion and Meadel 1986). In contemporary Peru, as explained later,many DJs exert a greater leeway in selecting musical content for broadcaststhan their counterparts elsewhere. More importantly, as elsewhere, the driveto develop an individual style of delivery means that DJs can exert other kindsof agency in their workplace, effectively controlling the overall tone andmeaning of the broadcast space. And finally, the omnipresence of radio inPeruvian life is difficult to overstate. Sound emanating from transistor radios

saturates the urban soundscape. Few businesses leave the radio off duringbusiness hours. It accompanies work and leisure, it eases the solace of timealone, it provides a context for socializing, and it is rare for a household to passan entire day without tuning in.

5 5 8 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

8/28

The nature of radio consumption in Peru is distinct from that of othermedia artefacts, such as soap operas or news programmes. Rather thanattending to a specific message or narrative, listeners use music radio primarilyto create a context, whether designing a relaxing home environment via a

broadcaster of romantic baladas, or by a stimulating workplace via a loud andlively salsa stations, among other possibilities. Interaction with radio sound istherefore often transitory and distracted. Nevertheless, embedded in broad-casts are framings and categorizations by which people internalize keydispositions and distinctions (Bourdieu 1993). In fact, the relativelyunremarked nature of radio is what ensures that its ideological effects becomepervasive, naturalized, and hard to disavow (see also Turino 1999). Like theEgyptian television programming described by Abu-Lughod, Peruvian radio issocially efficacious because it weaves its magic through pleasures and

subliminal framings (Abu-Lughod 2005, p. 9) rather than didactic suasion.Commercial radio thus requires modes of analysis distinct from those

usually applied in studies of popular music, or talk radio. As noted by Ahlkvist(2001), the gatekeeper metaphor still dominates accounts of pop radio DJs,and their elision in popular music scholarship is perhaps linked to the fact thatthey are not perceived to do much of anything. Since music itself is consideredto be the real locus of signification and ideological work, DJs are treatedmerely as conduits. Their significance is primarily assessed in terms of the

materials they allow to pass, and an enumeration of the songs that arebroadcast substitutes for effective analysis of DJ work.I argue instead that a primary aspect of DJ work is to shape the public

values of the music that is admitted to the public sphere. As noted byHennion and Meadel (1986), DJs organize ideas about music by linking it toother materials over the course of a broadcast. Understanding their activitiesthus requires analysing the entire inventory of particular programmes. In thisway, it is possible to show how DJs situate music within a broader experientialfield, placing songs and genres in proximity to other kinds of marked public

cultural artefacts. Two intertwined aspects of DJ work are of particularinterest. The first relates to categorization, and requires attention to broadcastmarkers that hierarchize musical styles. By positioning them in different spotsover the broadcast day, and within individual programmes, mediators sortmusical objects and imply that particular musical and discursive styles belongtogether. They also imply that some styles are more important ormainstream than others, by programming them at peak listening hours(Berland 1998; Hendy 2000b).

More significant, however, is the atmosphere and affect generated by DJs,

explicitly designed to hail particular audiences for particular programmes.Spitulniks (1994) work on cosmopolitan nationalism and radio broadcasting inZambia provides a particularly astute analysis of this matter. Spitulnik focusesprimarily upon DJ talk, emphasizing how DJs attract their audience using an

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 5 9

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

9/28

easy, bantering style of popular DJ locution that she labels the upbeat beat.This discursive style, familiar to listeners of pop radio around the world,conveys primarily a mood of optimism, prosperity, having fun, and being intouch with a wider modern world . . . an imagined cosmopolitan community

of affluence and excitement (Spitulnik 1994, p. 315). Critically, Spitulnikargues that this has become a globally-circulating speech genre primarilybecause it provides a certain quality of experience to listeners, assuring themthat they possess the requisite bourgeois modern orientation to legitimatelyconsume cosmopolitan cultural forms. As such, DJs use it in:

a very deliberate effort to signal a certain kind of audience and moregenerally a certain kind of lifestyle. [This] lifestyle, and the moodassociated with it, is one of modernity and cosmopolitanism: being up to

date, listening to the latest music and lingo, and having fun

or evenmore precisely having the leisure time and the sensibility to enjoy radiolistening. (Spitulnik 1994, p. 321, original emphasis)

It is critical for scholars to understand media and mediators not merely aschannels and gatekeepers. Rather, they are agents who construct contexts, inwhich listeners are encouraged to inhabit particular identities: they provide atechnology for the production of new kinds of selves (see Abu-Lughod 2005,p. 113).

These tools of analysis are particularly useful in showing how huaynoayacuchano accrued its public over the 1990s. Seeking to tap emergentmarkets among Perus Andean middle class, mediators drew listeners into amutual awareness that they inhabited a new kind of subject position. Thiswould not have been possible without shifts in the Peruvian social landscape, towhich I now turn.

Models of groupness and disjunct musical cosmopolitanism incontemporary Peru

Historically, social discourse in Lima has been structured by a pervasivedivision between two supposedly irreconcilable lifeworlds: that of aprogressive, white, Eurocentric minority centred in the coastal capital, andthat of the Andean highlands, dismissed as a reservoir of backwards indigenesslated for inevitable extinction. A general distaste for things Andeanamong Perus dominant classes has until recently extended to Andean cultural

practices as well. In musical terms, this has meant that the public airwaves,particularly the more prestigious FM band, have been devoted to suchmodern, cosmopolitan genres as rock, salsa, bolero, and the local musicacriolla of the coastal region.

5 6 0 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

10/28

However, due to an influx of Andean migrants seeking work and better lifechances in Lima, the last several decades have seen a massive shift in the sociallandscape. Peru remains profoundly stratified by race and regional origin, butroom has been made for Andean mobility, virtually unthinkable only decades

before. It may be somewhat premature to speak of a stable Andean bourgeoisie(see Fuller 2002), but it is certainly the case that the marginalized have accruedsignificant power. Viewing such changes, scholars once predicted theAndeanization of Lima (Matos Mar 1984), with the sociocultural authorityof the criollo minority waning in favour of an Andean national identity.However, instead of a linear Andeanization, life in Lima today is characterizedby intense fragmentation. Far from homogeneous, Limas Andean migrantcommunity is rent by internal divisions of class, race (that is, indigenous versusmestizo), and region.12 And finally, in an age of intense media circulation and

increased linkage between the capital and the provinces, Limas nascent socialformations also restructure life in the provinces, where people realign theirlifeways by following the emergent patterns of the capital. Similarly, as in thecase of huayno ayacuchana, which was consolidated in the Andean city ofAyacucho before moving to Lima, developing patterns in the provinces have thepotential to reverberate in the national capital.

Contemporary Peru is characterized by dynamic change, in whichdistinctions of class and race are being reworked into new configurations.

Public cultural manifestations, and popular music in particular, play a key rolein organizing, reproducing, and disseminating these emergent social forma-tions. Scholars have long noted the development of distinct expressivepractices within the bubbling cauldron of Lima (see Turino 1988, 1993; Vich2001; Romero 2001, 2002). Musics that hybridize international and localelements have been interpreted as public manifestations of an emergentAndean migrant identity, positioned between an adherence to traditionallifeways and participation in a global culture of modernity.

With its use of the Gaitans hit song Como has hecho to mark the Andean

middle-class milieu, Veda en Lema demonstrated that Peruvian audiences areassumed to recognize this as well. However, by acknowledging that differentsectors of society seek cosmopolitan cultural capital via different kinds ofconsumption, the programme also signalled the development of distinct localmilieux of globalized consumption. The existence of disjunct cosmopolitanismsin contemporary Peru becomes especially evident in the way that new musicalfusions have typically been dismissed by Perus traditional elites. Oftencontravening hegemonic categories of good taste, the cosmopolitan forms ofPerus emergent Andean middle class tend to be dismissed as ham-fisted

products of the mere parvenu instead of aesthetic objects with their ownvalidity, rooted in a system of musical appreciation different from that of criolloaesthetes. Veda en Lema both drew upon and satirized these discourses ofuncultured arrivisme. Juxtaposing elite and subaltern modes of consumerist

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 6 1

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

11/28

cosmopolitanism in its equal-opportunity skewering, the programme recog-nized that patterns of globalist consumption are not uniform.

In point of fact, such distinctions also exist within the sphere of Andeanmusic itself. Though it is often left unstated in studies of Peruvian popular

music, the blanket term Andean music includes a very heterogeneous set ofcommercial styles. Many of these are seen as aesthetically incompatible,associated with distinct listening communities. Within the system of distinctionsthat structures the field of Andean popular musical production (Bourdieu1993), individual genres often derive their meaning from opposition to oneanother. At the same time, however, artists often borrow features from othermusicians in a continual attempt to capture new markets. Social and stylisticdifferences are thus constantly reconstructed and repositioned, generating newaffective alliances, new audiences, and hence new consuming publics.

By focusing on one musical strand alone, existing literature has tended toelide this dynamic of the Andean music scene (see also Straw 1991), eventhough it has been crucial to the emergence of styles such as contemporaryhuayno ayacuchano. For instance, Perus dominant Andean popular music,commonly denoted huayno (after the genres most prevalent song type) andbased on earlier oral forms, is relatively well attested, and scholars frequentlynote its intense regional variety (see for example Llorens Amico 1983 Turino1993; Romero 2001).13 Nevertheless, few scholars have noted that certain

regional huayno styles are marked as especially elegant, cultural property ofthe privileged mestizo (mixed-race) sector of Andean society, rather thanindigenous peoples (see however Llorens Amico 1983). This is particularly trueof Ayacuchos older, traditional huayno style, which became publicly identifiedas the most elegant variant when introduced on record in the 1960s.

Similarly, there is a scholarly literature treating the pan-Andean style ofartists like Inti-Illimani, Quilapayun, Los Kjarkas, and Vctor Jara (see forexample Wara Cespedes 1984, 1993; Bigenho 2002, 2007). The worlds best-known Andean style, it is this music that generally represents the region in world

music record bins, and in the repertoires of Andean street performersworldwide. However, it is at best tenuously traditional or Andean, havingbeen developed by the regions elite leftists as a vehicle for anti-imperialistideology. Further, it has historically been quite unpopular in Perus Andeanregion, and that there has been a powerful animosity between its practitionersand the huayno musicians who represent older traditions, indigenous to thePeruvian Andes properly speaking.14 Instead of a truly popular style, pan-Andean music within Peru has mostly been consumed on and around universitycampuses, and it is often seen as a misguided appropriation of Andean musical

signifiers by outside performers, an alienated music of refined intellectuals. Atthe same time, however, an appreciation for pan-Andean music has long been asign of serious intellectual engagement, a marker of musical and socioculturalerudition.

5 6 2 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

12/28

Another strand of literature deals with the fusion of Peruvian huayno,Colombian cumbia, and international rock music called chicha (Turino 1988,1990; Hurtado Suarez 1995; Romero 2002; Tucker in preparation). Chichagained massive popularity among Andean migrants in the 1980s, seducing the

traditional audience base of huayno with its modernized keyboards, wah-wahguitars, and tropical beat. Camouflaging its Andean roots, much of chichasmarketing apparatus revolved around its presentation as a hip, danceable, lessAndean and more fun music than the parochial huayno listened to bygenerations past. As such, it was widely decried as a hopelessly lowbrow, andit became associated in the popular press with a highly-stereotyped proletarianunderclass imagery.

By the time that contemporary huayno ayacuchano appeared in the mid-1980s, all of these musical distinctions were widely recognized. The styles

musicians and mediators drew upon them to redefine Ayacuchos huayno style,bringing a new audience to their new sound. They combined elements ofAyacuchos elegant huayno tradition with rock and pop, showing that themusical semiotics of Andean tradition could co-exist in the same expressivevehicle as the musical affect of cosmopolitanism. They consciously presentedthe style as an alternative to the mode of musical fusion presented by chicha,using the respectable, educated legitimacy of pan-Andean musical stylistics asa counter to the declasse proletarian imagery of the former. Most importantly,in contrast to chicha, the practitioners of contemporary huayno ayacuchanoargued that their music showed an appreciation for Andean heritage, ratherthan seeking to bury it beneath chichas electronic instrumentation andtropical dance moves. Overall, the style bespoke itself as a cosmopolitanform that was simultaneously educated, refined, and respectful of tradition,eminently suitable for an emergent Andean middle class.

Instead of countering the discourses of Andean backwardness that longdominate Peruvian public discourse, contemporary huayno ayacuchano seems tosurrender to those very stereotypes, its legitimacy tied to its claim on

foreign, less parochial, cultural spheres. I will return to this issue in theconclusion to this article. Here, however, my goal is instead to show how,faced with the task of rendering an outdated traditional style into a vehicle ofcosmopolitan identification, huayno ayacuchano achieved its image of cosmo-politanism in the popular sphere, and how the actions of mediators werecentral to this achievement.

Music radio and huayno ayacuchano in the 1990s

Between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, Ayacuchos huayno style grewfrom a largely localized music of marginal interest, to become a massphenomenon in Peru. It attracted a following due to musicians exploration of

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 6 3

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

13/28

politically sensitive themes, and to experiments in formal innovation andmusical fusion. However, its transformation into a social fact of massimportance owes more to the way that media workers repositioned the stylewithin the Peruvian musical field. And though their techniques of sociomusical

engineering later became generalized throughout the countrys larger andmore lucrative markets, DJs working at Ayacuchos FM radio stations werepioneers in demonstrating that audiences could be convinced to think abouthuayno in new ways.

Developments in Ayacucho were underwritten by the sudden appearanceof several new stations. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, after decades ofdominance by three AM stations, Ayacucho saw a sudden boom in FMbroadcasting. At this time, a decrease in the cost of transmitters made FMradios stereo-capable and high-fidelity signal affordable after many years of

financial impossibility. By one experienced directors estimate, setting up anFM operation required less than one-fifth the capital needed for an AMtransmitter: further, whereas an AM antenna required a hectare of open highground, FM antennas could be set up on rooftops in the city centre.15 Virtuallyovernight several aficionados became small radio impresarios, working fromtheir homes or back gardens.

Even so, the creation of a new market for huayno ayacuchano rested uponthe way these channels were put to work. In particular, the FM station

Frecuencia A Record is acknowledged to have had a decisive role in thisprocess. Licensed in 1997, it was the first station in the city exclusivelydevoted to traditional music, an innovation reflected in the stations motto:The first folkloric station of the department. Its employees built upon earliermethods tested elsewhere, but even rivals attribute the rise of huaynoayacuchano to Frecuencia A above all else. In a typical testimonial, one DJ atanother station responded to my query about the reasons for the styles successby saying, simple: it was Frecuencia A. How else would it have happened?

By 2001 contemporary huayno ayacuchano was central to the programming

of well over half of Ayacuchos radio stations.16

This was a marked contrast tothe situation that prevailed throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, whenlocal music was largely absent from the airwaves. This change in the localmusic scene derived from the willingness of innovative programmers to takerisks with unproved music. As noted earlier, Peruvian broadcasters oftraditional music function differently than their counterparts in the commercialoperations of North America or Europe.17 This relates to the manner in whichsuch broadcasting emerged, in 1950s-era Lima, where procedures emergedthat became generalized as radio stations appeared in other Peruvian cities.

At this time, though radio broadcasting had existed in Lima for over twodecades, there was no regular programming of Andean music, since it waswidely considered by station managers to be both socially worthless andunremunerative. Despite this, in the late 1950s a handful of hobbyists

5 6 4 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

14/28

proposed to rent unused airtime from existing stations, devoting the space tomigrant audiences from the Andean highlands. These first programmes thusappeared in the wee hours between 4 and 7 a.m., and they tended to targetlisteners from a single Andean locale, transmitting the music of one area. As

such, the funds to rent the airtime often derived from sponsors within themigrant community associated with that region itself.

Following these efforts, the radio stations that emerged throughout theAndean highlands in the 1960s functioned as concessionaires. Rather thanmaintaining managerial control over the days broadcasts, they rented hourlyblocks of airtime to other individuals or organizations, who directed thecontent of their programmes largely at their own discretion. Theseprogrammes transmitted different musics, targeted to distinct listeningconstituencies, and were usually hosted by non-professionals, who raised

money for their efforts from local businesses, from friends and acquaintances,or from their own activities as artists or concert promoters. To this day mostDJs begin as hobbyists, aficionados with a desire to communicate their ideasand disseminate their musical dispositions. They often retain strong opinions,fitting comfortably into the musicologist paradigm described by Ahlkvist, inhis study of programming philosophies: [their] real challenge . . . is balancingtheir personally high standards with what the market will bear (2001, p. 347).And while some stations are now run as format stations, with a unified

broadcasting structure, most tend toward the concessionary model.Though many DJs work for record companies or concert promoters, andare required to highlight the recordings associated with them, many do not.Principles of DJ independence continue to structure huayno broadcasting,according individual mediators a significant hand in structuring the publicexperience of Andean music. Instead of striving to maximize profits, hobbyistradio directors are often content merely to attract enough income to keeptheir stations afloat. Airtime is inexpensive, and since a sufficient number ofadvertisers are usually available to replace any that are lost, DJs need not

slavishly follow the path of greatest cost-effectiveness. Mandated playlists arerare: even at format stations DJs are hired for their musical expertise, and theyare largely trusted to programme according to their personal dispositions.Consequently, many use the time slots guaranteed by advertising money toinnovate, allowing the safe repertoire that retains audiences to underwritethe parallel programming of new materials.

Like other stations, Ayacuchos Frecuencia A functioned strictly as aconcessionaire in its early years, and DJs dedicated to creating an audience forcontemporary huayno ayacuchano found considerable leeway to do so over the

1990s. The agents involved relied upon two key strategies, both designed toneutralize the associations of moldy traditionalism and racially-markedbackwardness that had accrued to huayno in the local imagination. Theyrevamped the nature of on-air DJ performances, on the one hand, and

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 6 5

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

15/28

challenged received wisdom concerning the position of huayno within radiospace, on the other hand.

By the time that musicians began to record huayno ayacuchano in the late1980s, radio broadcasting and listening habits in Ayacucho were solidly

structured around parallel models of musical categorization and radiotemporality. The profitable hours between 7 a.m. and midnight were reservedfor two distinct kinds of programming. One targeted urban elites, tuninglisteners into rhetorically modern styles such as the elitist musica criolla,bolero, rock, and synthesized musica tropicalthat Limas elites consumed in lieuof folklore. The second instead sought a listenership among Ayacuchosproletarian underclass of indigenous peoples. These spaces were largelydevoted to chicha, and to related styles. As such, these stations were marked astacky, backward, and understood to lie outside the respectable sphere.

Ayacuchos huayno style, understood as a respectable idiom unlike chicha, butalso marked as an antiquated and parochial music of generations past, wasconfined to the unglamorous hours between 4 and 7 a.m., marking it as amusical has-been.

This trend began to shift in 1991, after the initial phase of experimentationwith huayno ayacuchano among local performers. The leading producer of thenew style, a young student of obstetrics named Julian Fernandez, purchasedoff-peak morning hours to promote his record companys wares. Produced by

Fernandez himself, Ayacucho en el corazon de todos (roughly, Ayacucho inall our hearts) was consistently devoted to local huayno music. It remainedmarginal within the daily schedule, airing in a rented slot from 4 to 7 a.m. onthe station Radio Cinetica, but between 1991 and 1993 it inspired a cultfollowing. Such success showed that contrary to widespread perceptions, amarket for local huayno existed among the citys population.

Despite this beachhead into the realm of mainstream radio, however, theshow did not find a mass listenership, instead remaining limited to a faithfulcore audience. It was hosted by Miguel Angel Huaman, a young DJ who had

been working in radio since 1985. His background was in pop radio, and whilehe was also a private aficionado of huayno, he described the uniqueness of thisorientation in a 2002 interview: There was a kind of complex among mygeneration, there was no acceptance, no, none at all, it was degrading to listento [huayno]. I dont know who made it that way, but it was strong, thattendency. They all wanted something that was more modern.

Huaman became pivotal in recasting the nature of huayno ayacuchano after1993, when Fernandez moved to Lima and left his show to his employee. IfAyacucho en el corazon de todos had established Ayacuchano huayno as a

fixture on local radio, it also gave Huaman inside connections. This wasfortuitous, since as a result of his earlier work he had also mastered thecharismatic and bantering style of a pop music DJ. Taken together, thesefactors equipped him to decisively alter the status of huayno within the public

5 6 6 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

16/28

sphere. In 1996, he rented space on Frecuencia A, boldly assuming a spot atthe peak hour of 10 a.m. The financial risk of this move should not beunderestimated. Through long familiarity and listening practice, associationsbetween genre and schedule had come to be experienced as normative

expressions of distinction in Ayacucho. DJs opened themselves to monetaryruin and social censure by thrusting huayno onto a stage normally occupied bysalsa, rock, and other supposedly modern musics.

By all accounts it was a startling experience for local listeners. Huamanhimself confessed his apprehension about placing musica ayacuchana in the mostimportant slot of the broadcast day:

Ill tell you, I had that experience, that it wasnt right. Listening tohuayno, it wasnt the right space; I mean I also thought, this isnt the right

space. So many years Id done this, I said huayno, at 10 a.m.? It doesntfit, I said it myself, you know? So, I thought Id be disappointed, but I saidwell, Ive got to try.

Nor was he the only person to find the placement inappropriate:

A lot of people criticized me, said Miguel Angel, you used to do pop,contemporary music, now you do [huayno]? They made fun of me, saidId lowered my standards. To my face, they said that. So, I was pretty

embarrassed, but I kept doing it, kept on that road, you know?

Huaman, however, was and remains a talented DJ, and his programme soonbecame the radios central show. As the programmes listenership increased,Isaac Argumedo, the stations manager, decided to change the stations format.They converted it entirely to huayno programming, filling the midday slotswith contemporary huayno ayacuchano, and hired regular employees with ademonstrable talent for radio presentation rather than unproved amateurs.

Such an idea had never been attempted in Ayacucho, and success was not

immediate. The proposition that contemporary huayno was an Andean musicunlike other styles, functionally interchangeable with the pop genres thatproperly occupied the days central hours, was far from self-evident. Huamandescribed Frecuencia As Christmas celebration, after their initial three monthsof work, as a spare affair, featuring small rolls and no traditional paneton(Christmas fruitcake). Nevertheless, the station soon attracted a regularaudience, rising to become one of the most successful in the city by the late1990s. The listenership of a radio station is difficult to assess in Peru: mostradio workers rely on word of mouth and personal observation to determinetheir level of success, especially in a small market like Ayacucho.18 Anindication of their success, however, was the rapidity with which other stationsmoved to imitate them. Rock station Radio Melody became a huayno stationliterally overnight, and others developed shows in the middle of the day. In

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 6 7

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

17/28

Huamans words, Thats where this idea that huayno should only be on in themorning ended for good.

Constructing context in broadcasting space

Naturally, Frecuencia As success rested in part upon the perceived quality ofthe music that they transmitted. However, the convincing way in which thatmusic was presented was equally important in attracting an audience. Thisinvolved a major shift in discursive style, derived from DJs knowledge of locallistening habits, and popular modes of radio interaction. Knowing that listenerssought not only music but also a particular atmosphere in radio consumption,they sought to exploit the cosmopolitan DJ speech genre as a way oflegitimating the new huayno ayacuchano style. They adopted mannerisms andpatterns of interaction similar to those used on pop stations, especially onesthat targeted a relatively young, affluent, urban audience. Poachingexperienced pop DJs from other stations, they adopted the same easy,charming discursive mode as salsa and rock shows:

Institutions, everyone was listening to Frecuencia A. We were prettysmart with our programming, you know, because we thought about it:

how can we get an office to listen to us? It was tough, because Ayacuchowas always invaded by stations from Lima, and people liked their style,no? So, we had a really nice programming style, we made adjustments,that is, we made it so that you could listen to this music in a kitchen, or inan office. I tell you, we made ourselves sweet, we did nice things.

Significantly, in this quote Huaman describes the switch as a calculated attemptto reach a particular audience, implicitly evaluated in class terms. Offices andinstitutions are sites where middle-class professionals are employed, rather

than the indigenous migrants who formed the audience for other kinds ofAndean music. After long years of degrading associations, it was the middleclasses who most required convincing, who most needed reassurance that anAndean style like huayno ayacuchano could be their music. By publiclyperforming their own cosmopolitanism via a stylish form of address, DJsunderscored for listeners huayno ayacuchanos potential as a site of a differentAndean identification, one that could be recognized and appropriated withoutshame.

What Huaman refers to as the style of Lima-based radio is not primarily

a matter of musical selection, but rather something like Spitulniks upbeatbeat. Frecuencia As DJs interspersed broadcasts with humorous asides,flirting and joking on-air with callers. They spoke rapidly in the character-istically slick, slangy, and melodious manner of Latin American FM DJs.

5 6 8 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

18/28

Within this milieu, DJs are regarded as skilled for the degree to which they canentertain listeners and maintain interest in the programme, rather than theirdetailed knowledge of music itself, though a mastery of both is ideal.

Creating the requisite atmosphere is a matter of both language register and

of using key contextual devices during a broadcast. The importance of thelatter was emphasized for me during a meeting that took place at Frecuencia Ain January of 2003. At this time, some of the citys trend-setting DJs stillworked at the station, and it was still a central institution. Many DJs aroundthe city and in Lima had seen stints of varying lengths in its broadcast booth.However, due in part to the widespread adoption of their model by otherstations, their listenership had decreased substantially. The meeting wastherefore convoked by the stations director to remedy the situation viaprogramming changes.

However, this meeting featured neither the hierarchical instruction sessionnor the definition of playlists that I had anticipated. It was conductedinformally, in a small room just outside the stations broadcast booth, againstthe background noise of a weekend broadcast hosted by DJ Coco C, whoseselections of upbeat huayno were bridged, incongruously, by brief snatches ofseashore sound effects.19 Instead of repertoire choices, most of theconversation was devoted to the metapragmatics of broadcasting. Talkrevolved around revamping the stations overall tone, in order to achieve a

style in line with that being used at more successful stations around the city.The use of catchy station identifications; sound effects called cunas, such asthose in use by Coco C; clips signalling the opening of the broadcast day and ofindividual programmes; and pre-recorded pilot CDs containing current hitsto use in DJ absences were all proposed as improvements.

Huaman was especially vocal. In addition to his role at Frecuencia A, hewas also involved with rival Radio La Caribena, the most popular in the city.In a fashion similar to a North American Contemporary Hit Radio station, LaCaribena had attracted a wide audience using a calculated blend of musical

genres, monitoring the airplay of other stations and constantly renewing theirmixed sets based on the hits emerging elsewhere. Like Limas FM stations,La Caribena trafficked in musical genres such as rock, pop, salsa, andtecnocumbia (a Peruvian variant of chicha). Significantly, however, the neo-traditional huayno ayacuchano by this time received roughly equal airplay, atestament to the extent to which these musical categories had becomecommensurable.

All of this musical content was framed by attention-grabbing cunas andelectronically-processed station identifications. The signature phrase La

Caribena: siiiii, suena! (roughly, La Caribena, yeeeah, it rocks!), accom-panied by an energetic swooshing sound, was one of many cunas usedcontinually to foreground a mood of animated entertainment. Others includedfemale giggles, laser sound effects, and similar noises connoting fun

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 6 9

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

19/28

and excitement. Aware that these devices had become important means ofsignalling a cosmopolitan aura of bourgeois leisure, the DJs at Frecuencia Awere eager to capitalize on their semiotic value. Therefore, the meetingfeatured no specific instructions as to musical content. Instead, it would be the

intentional borrowing of these stylistics, necessary signifiers of modernity foran audience in search of a particular mediated experience, that would allow thestation to continue operating at its previous level. In effect, Frecuencia Asradio workers were, in Angs memorable phrase, desperately seeking theaudience (1991) by making the broadcast style resonate with the way thatlisteners had come to imagine themselves and their place in the world.

Constructing context: DJ style

Even more important than cunas, though, is the work of DJ performance. It isprimarily through their on-air actions that identification with a cosmopolitansocial space is not only achieved, but more importantly, tied to the listenersimmediate milieu. Contemporary huayno DJs like Huaman do not merely playmusic. They create a certain mood and atmosphere through the force of theiron-air personalities, encouraging listeners to tune in as they go about theirdaily business. In Huamans case, the engaging sound world generated over the

course of his show stood in stark contrast to the limited conditions underwhich it was realized. The first time that I sought him out at Frecuencia A,after having heard his voice on the airwaves for weeks, I was sure that I hadcome to the wrong location. The adobe-walled house with a door openingonto a large, bare courtyard, and the tiny hand-lettered sign bearing the stationname, did not portend the slick musical empire that the sound of his show hadled me to expect. Once I located the broadcast booth, opening off the back ofa dark, empty room hung with posters of huayno stars, I was further amazed by

the stations sparse setup: the two old CD players, cassette deck, and stereo,miniscule mixer and ancient-looking microphone atop a tiny wooden deskwere a far cry from the Macintosh G4s and glassed-in booths I had seen at localpop music stations.

Huaman often seemed like he was in constant motion from the momenthe arrived at Frecuencia A. At roughly 10:00 a.m., he eased himself intothe closet-sized broadcast booth, where a pilot CD had been playing sinceArgumedos 9:30 a.m. departure. Lowering the volume and bending to themicrophone, he announced the time and gave the stations identifying slogan.

His melodious tenor instantly conveyed a sense of humour and diversion,ranging over the breadth of his vocal capacity as he energetically set theprogrammes tone for his listeners. He tended to grin as he speaks, thoroughlycomfortable in the role of entertainer:

5 7 0 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

20/28

10:03 a.m. at Frecuencia A, the first folkloric station of the region . . .Im a little sick, as you can see, really too bad, Ive been taken by a cold,two days ago, and it doesnt want to let go. Well have to wait four days,six days still, because a cold lasts eight days, no? Theyve recommended

that I take. . .

vitapirena, whatever that is. Anyway, Ill get better thenatural way: drug-free [laughs].

Such banter is central to his job. Unique to the nominally commercial DJ, itis a mode of discourse reviled by older intellectuals and huayno presenters. Formany of them, formed at a time when radio work held the status of an amateurintellectual pursuit, the job of a radio worker is to inform and educate.However, his radio style is shaped by the need to communicate a cosmopolitanaesthetic, indissolubly knitting huayno ayacuchano and a modern sensibility toone another.

Huamans goal was for listeners to feel a sense of rapport; that they werespending time with a particularly cool friend. His personalized humourbrought listeners into a sphere of public intimacy, a space of familiarity thatwas conspicuously shared with others in broadcast range. Establishing amediated space that people will want to inhabit for two hours requires notonly discerning musical taste, but also an ability to interweave the humour,intimacy, trendiness, and information that listeners expect from a broadcast.

Spitulniks description of good deejaying on Zambian radio closely parallelsthe assessments of Perus contemporary huayno DJs, who also evaluate howskilfully the disc jockey blends a personalised commentary with time checksand channel identification . . . and with the musical selections themselves(Spitulnik 1994, p. 340).

Huaman dexterously wove elements such as station identifications, timechecks, song titles, artist names, and advertising, into a relentless patter thatdrove the overall mood of his programme. He continually drew on hisrepertoire of linguistic skills and verbal signifiers to communicate such

elements with a mix of hip, worldly slang and local references, such thatlisteners were both reassured of his programmes cosmopolitanism and itspersonal relevance: that it was locally directed, and that they were fashionablyhip for hearing it. Using local idioms and toponyms, saluting specific listenersaround the city, his projection of familiarity made listeners aware that theywere both personally addressed and part of a larger public that could recognizeand appropriate the products of mediated cosmopolitanism as fast as Huamandeployed them.

These various elements and functions typically interanimated one anotheracross the broadcast. A sense of humour pervaded the entire show, oftendeployed via inside references of the kind that flesh out playful interactionsbetween friends in daily life. It was often used improvizationally, to liven up

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 7 1

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

21/28

aspects of the programme that would otherwise remain functional and dry,such as song introductions and advertisements:

Lets go, with the Americas Orchestra, orchestra of the quack quack

brothers, the ducks, the ducklings, Ronald and Hugo Dolorier. . .

. Hereat Frecuencia A, arriving to your homes courtesy of the Tres Mascarasclinic, of Dr Jorge Luis Fernandez, member of the Peruvian ophthalmo-logic college, with a degree from the US. Dont trust self-trained doctors,trust a clinic where you get service from a professional, like DrFernandez. Hes always there, not like these dudes who, you know, theycome, they go, theyll be back next week . . . what a lost cause! Your eyesneed good attention.

In these cases, a lighthearted reference to the nickname of local musician HugoDolorier, and a droll extrapolation upon a daily advertisement, each allowHuaman to turn even the most functional aspects of his programme into asource of amusement for listeners.

A second, complementary mode of discourse that was pervasive overHuamans show was the evocation of romance, frequently building upon thesongs themselves. This normally appeared during the instrumental lead-in, asHuaman dropped his voice to its lower range and softened his tone, oftenending with a recitation of the opening lyrics:

Also, a shout out to Sandra, Sandrita, where are you Sandra? Ah, thereyou are, a kiss for Sandra. And to you as well, a shout out to you, so youdont get sulky. And this song for you, for you with love: Tu eres angelde mi vida, angel de mis ilusiones [roughly, Youre the love of my life,love of my dreams].

Here, by insinuating an anonymous romantic intrigue, Huaman allows listenersto be drawn imaginatively into his personal space, suggesting an intimate

rapport with his public.This passage also demonstrates a third key discursive activity of DJs, that of

addressing specific listeners. Many of these comments are directed toHuamans personal acquaintances and sponsors, but they are also solicitedby callers who respond to his invitation for requests. Fulfilling such requestsand saluting callers by name establishes a sense that the programme is directlyconnected to the community itself. It audibly ties Huamans hip on-air personato persons within the immediate milieu, assuring listeners that simply bypicking up the phone, they can participate in his world of savvycosmopolitanism. By engaging with potentially-recognizable locals day afterday, he makes the public both audible and visible to itself, encourages theperception that the programme is identified with the community, and ties bothto the global sphere.

5 7 2 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

22/28

Huamans frequent mixture of local idiomatic expressions with a translocalcolloquial vocabulary achieved a similar effect. His speech was liberally pepperedwith expressions that form a part of Perus street lexicon. He also drew onphrases particular to the Ayacucho region, especially cries of encouragement

from traditional huayno performance, frequently using the Quechua language.These are especially used in performance to maintain forward motion, and togenerate the atmosphere of fun attending musical consumption:

A shout out to the hottie (cuerazo)!Yeah! Hey! Lets go . . . to the Muyurina Valley, where we met, andwhere you put horns on me (cuckolded me: me pusiste cachos).Sapachallan warmi! Ama waqaspalla! (Quechua: Lonely woman! Dont crynow!).

In articulating contemporary huayno ayacuchano to an Andean middle-classpublic, DJs such as Huaman created both spaces in which to experience it, anddrew upon their knowledge of radio stylistics to convince listeners that theycould do so without fear of ridicule. They encouraged people to tune in byplacing music within a discursive frame identified bourgeois leisure andcosmopolitan discourse. By 2001, these tactics had largely succeeded inredefining the public image of huayno ayacuchano, a fact well evidenced by itsappearance on the cosmopolitan, youth-oriented station La Caribena, and byits massive presence in local and media channels, as well as the position that itlater attained in Lima.

Conclusion

As contemporary huayno ayacuchano became a mass-mediated object, both adistinctive listening market and a distinct subject position took shape along

with it. This identification between music and sociality was not merely alogical culmination of tendencies latent within the countrys changing socialclimate. The success of the style did not depend in any simple way upon theway that the music represented a pre-existing social group. Rather, artistsand mediators organized audiences, linking them into a new kind ofcosmopolitan Andean public. Publicly interpellating listeners, making themaware of counterparts hearing elsewhere within broadcast range, and tying theexperience of radio listening to known locales in the vicinity, DJs helpedindividual consumers of huayno ayacuchano to understand themselves as

members of a social entity with a historicity superseding the immediatemoment of listening. It is in this way that radio publics take on social body:when radio listeners have an awareness of one another and a sense ofsimultaneous participation, they are more than just a social aggregate of

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 7 3

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

23/28

listener who happen to use radio. They have a sense of intersubjectivity(Spitulnik 1994, p. 19).

Understanding the mechanics of globalization requires attention to medianetworks and to the actions of such agents. Only by demonstrating how the

vehicles of cosmopolitan identification are inserted into everyday life can asatisfying portrait of globalization, one that accounts for its unevenness anddisjunct nature, be achieved. This allows for a description of how globalprocesses both subvert and reproduce hegemonic aspects of local and translocalpower relations. It is quite clear that contemporary huayno ayacuchanos successis at best an ambivalent victory for Andean public representation. In adapting itto the dominant discourses of respectability, which take affiliation with theGlobal North as the only legitimate mode of cosmopolitan identification, thestyles mediators would in effect seem to have succumbed to the notion of

Western superiority that has attended Peruvian colonialism for five centuries.As such, the account of music, media, and social change presented here bringswith it none of the satisfying, counterhegemonic claims of liberating hybriditythat often accompany studies of globalization.

However, the case of huayno ayacuchana does show how mediators engageand redraw the categories imposed by local hegemonies. While submitting todominant codes, mediators working with the tools they are granted do manage toreformulate such codes, just enough to create some space for powerful new ideas.The emergence and coherence ofhuayno ayacuchanos public may not portend arevolution in Andean representation. However, its existence as a distinct class ofobject is in and of itself a challenge to the historic Peruvian paradigm, premised onthe swallowing up of Andean distinctiveness. It is precisely for this reason that thecontexts and processes of globalization and cosmopolitan identification requiremore attention than they have so far received in studies of popular music. In orderto understand how those involved with global processes get inside hegemonicstructures, reworking them as best they can; in order to show how, as both agentsof social change and as mediators of the hegemony, people manage to redirect the

effects of broader social changes; studies of popular music must move beyondreading style and assuming that their subjects do the same. Instead, attendingto the way that mediators create contexts in which to experience music, andshowing the underlying conditions that legitimate such contexts, will aid in thecreation of a theoretical toolkit for working effectively with globalization andcosmopolitanism.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on research conducted between 2001 and 2003 in Peru.Support is gratefully acknowledged from the Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearch Council of Canada, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological

5 7 4 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

24/28

Research, and the University of Michigans Rackham School of GraduateStudies and Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. I would also liketo thank Jonathan Ritter, Javier Leon, Jessaca Leinaweaver, and Paja Faudree,all of whom commented on some version of this piece in a most helpful way.

Notes

1 This article is based primarily on fieldwork carried out in Lima andAyacucho, Peru, between 2001 and 2003. All citations are taken frominterviews conducted by me during that period.

2 In wide use since the colonial period as a term for persons of European orAfrican heritage born in the New World, today criollo properly refers to

that population, largely confined to Perus coastal region, that is consideredto be non-Andean (neither indigenous nor mestizo) in terms of both culturalpractice and descent.

3 This is not to deny that the rhetorical shift to cosmopolitanism obeys otherconsiderations as well: however, those studies focusing on vernacularcosmopolitanisms and the uneven distribution ofglobal process is my mainconcern here.

4 For other key studies of recording studio work see Greene and Porcello(2005) and Zak (2001).

5 A similar approach, focusing on other media and methods of organization, isadvocated in Thornton (1996).

6 By the term mediator, I mean specifically to designate those individualswho are involved in processes of musical distribution and sales, as opposedto those whose musical talents generate the sound contained in the waresthat they circulate.

7 A full account of this process would specify which global factors wereselected to appeal to whom, by whom, the methods by which audienceswere persuaded of their logic of compatibility. It would also assess the

everyday situations in which ideas are appropriated by consumers, and inwhich they are deployed as positional markers. In this article, however, Ilimit myself to the actions of key agents working in the field of folkloricradio: for a fuller discussion see Tucker (2005).

8 It should be noted that Habermas has to a large extent disavowed studiesadapting his ideas about the public sphere and public culture (Habermas1989), which has substantially revised, expanded, and reconsidered hisoriginal work. See especially Fraser (1990), Calhoun (1992b), Spitulnik(1994), Gal and Woolard (2001b) and Warner (2002).

9 Note that such an analysis does not assuage Habermass own fears about theetiolation of the democratic public sphere, wherein the rise of mass mediaand consumer society reduces the publics role to that of spectator.However, it does invite further scholarly specification of the consequences ofthis shift.

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 7 5

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

25/28

10 Instead scholars have tended to provide broad histories of particularbroadcasters without addressing the internal dynamics of radio work: seefor example Laird (2005). Conversely, studies of talk radio, such as thosecollected in Scannell (1991), do not address popular music DJs.

11 In accounting for the dearth of radio studies by popular music scholars itmight also be suggested that the products of DJ work radio programmes do not lend themselves to the kind of rich, satisfying semiotic analysis towhich many have been accustomed: pop radio does not generate narrativetexts that can be deconstructed.

12 Simultaneously, criollo society has retrenched, maintaining its authorityand its distinct cultural practices at a social remove from the Andeaninvasion.

13 Everyday citizens often use the term huayno to denote all music of the

Peruvian Andes, treating this dominant song form as a synechdoche fortraditional music in general.

14 It is, however, popular in tourist-laden regions such as Cuzco and Puno.15 Fernando Cruz, director of La Voz de Huamanga, told me that an FM

station could be set up, equipped, and begin running with $3000.00 or$4000.00 while founding an AM station meant an investment of more or less$20,000 to $30,000.

16 There were, on average, 25 to 30 FM stations on the air at any given time inAyacucho, a city of approximately 125,000, during this period.

17 For a fuller account of these developments see Llorens Amico (1983, 1991).18 Many radio directors are also distrustful of the informal methods they say are

actually employed by those who measure ratings. Similarly, many claim thatratings organizations are susceptible to bribery.

19 I expect that these were meant to signal summer to listeners, despite thefact that Ayacucho is several hundred miles from the ocean.

References

Abu-Lughod, L. (2005) Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt,Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Ahlkvist, J. (2001) Programming philosophies and the rationalization of musicradio, Media, Culture and Society, vol. 23, pp. 339358.

Ang, I. (1991) Desperately Seeking the Audience, London, Routledge.Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,

Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press.Appadurai, A. & Breckenridge, C. (1995) Public modernity in India, in

Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, ed.

C. Breckenridge, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, pp.115.

Barnes, K. (1988) Top 40 radio: a fragment of the imagination, in Facing theMusic, ed. S. Frith, New York, Pantheon, pp. 850.

5 7 6 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

26/28

(1993) Contradicting media: toward a political phenomenology of listening, inRadiotext(E), ed. N. Strauss, New York, Columbia University Press, pp.209217.

Berland, J. (1998) Locating listening: technological space, popular music,

Canadian mediations, Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 343

358.Bigenho, M. (2002) Sounding Indigenous: Authenticity in Bolivian Music Performance,New York, Palgrave.

Bigenho, M. (2007) Bolivian indigeneity in Japan: folklorized musical perfor-mance, in Indigenous Experience Today, eds M. de la Cadena & O. Starn,Oxford, Berg.

Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, NewYork, Columbia University Press.

Brubaker, R. & Cooper, F. (2000) Beyond identity, Theory and Society, vol.

29, pp. 1

47.Calhoun, C. (ed.) (1992a) Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

Calhoun, C. (1992b) Introduction: Habermas and the public sphere, in Habermasand the Public Sphere, ed. C. Calhoun, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, pp.148.

Erlmann, V. (1996) Nightsong: Performance, Power, and Practice in South Africa,Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Fraser, N. (1990) Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of

actually existing democracy, Social Text, vol. 2, pp. 56

80.Frith, S. (1996a) Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, Cambridge, MA,Harvard University Press.

Frith, S. (1996b) Music and identity, in Questions of Cultural Identity, eds S. Hall &P. du Gay, London, Sage, pp. 108127.

Fuller, N. (2002) El papel de las clases medias en la produccion de la identidadnacional, in Interculturalidad Y Poltica: Desafos Y Posibilidades, ed. N. Fuller,Lima, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, pp. 419440.

Gal, S. & Woolard, K. (eds) (2001a) Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority,Manchester, St Jerome Publishing.

Gal, S. & Woolard, K. (2001b) Constructing languages and publics: authority andrepresentation, in Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority, S. Gal &K. Woolard, Manchester, St Jerome Publishing, pp. 112.

Garca Canclini, N. (2001) Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and MulticulturalConflicts, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press.

Ginsburg, F. L. Abu-Lughod, L. & Larkin, B. (2002) Introduction, in MediaWorlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, ed. B. Larkin, Berkeley, CA, Universityof California Press, pp. 156.

Greene, P. & Porcello, T. (eds) (2005) Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologiesin Sonic Cultures, Middletown, Wesleyan University Press.

Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry intoa Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Hall, S. & du Gay, P. (eds) (1996) Questions of Cultural Identity, London, Sage.

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 7 7

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

27/28

Hendy, D. (2000a) Pop music radio in the public service: BBC Radio 1 and newmusic in the 1990s, Media, Culture & Society, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 743761.

Hendy, D. (2000b) Radio in the Global Age, Cambridge, Polity Press.Hennion, A. & Meadel, C. (1986) Programming music: radio as mediator,

Media, Culture & Society, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 281

303.Hurtado Suarez, W. (1995) Chicha Peruana: Musica De Los Nuevos Migrantes, Lima,ECO.

Laird, T. (2005) Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music along the Red River, NewYork, Oxford University Press.

Llorens Amico, J. (1983) Musica Popular En Lima: Criollos Y Andinos, Lima, IEP.Llorens Amico, J. (1991) Andean voices on Lima airwaves: highland migrants and

radio broadcasting in Peru, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 10.Matos Mar, J. (1984) Desborde Popular Y Crisis Del Estado: El Nuevo Rostro Del Peru En

La Decada De 1980, Lima, IEP.Mazzarella, W. (2003) Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in ContemporaryIndia, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Meintjes, L. (2003) Sound of Africa!: Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio,Durham, NC, Duke University Press.

Middleton, R. (2003) Introduction: music, modernization, and popular identity,in Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity, and Society,ed. H. Dauncey, Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 112.

Miller, D. (1994) Modernity, an Ethnographic Approach: Dualism and Mass Consumption

in Trinidad, Oxford, Oxford University Press.Nettl, B. (1985) The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival,New York, Schimer Books.

Ortner, S. (ed.) (1999) The Fate of Culture: Geertz and Beyond, Berkeley, CA,University of California Press.

Perrone, C. & Dunn, C. (eds) (2001) Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization,Gainesville, FL, University of Florida Press.

Pinney, C. (2001) Introduction: Public, Popular, and Other Cultures, in Pleasureand the Nation: The History, Politics, and Consumption of Public Culture in India,

ed. C. Pinney, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, pp. 1

34.Romero, R. (2001) Debating the Past: Music, Memory, and Identity in the Andes, NewYork, Oxford University Press.

Romero, R. (2002) Popular music and the global city: huayno, chicha, andtechno-cumbia in Lima, Peru, in From Tejano to Tango: Essays on LatinAmerican Popular Music, ed. W. Clark, New York, Routledge, pp. 217239.

Scannell, P. (ed.) (1991) Broadcast Talk, London, Sage.Spitulnik, D. (1994) Radio Culture in Zambia: Audiences, Public Words, and the Nation-

State, MPhil Thesis, University of Chicago

Straw, W. (1991) Systems of articulation, logics of change: scenes andcommunities in popular music, Cultural Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 361375.Thornton, S. (1996) Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Hanover,

Wesleyan University Press.

5 7 8 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012

8/3/2019 09502386%2E2010%2E488409

28/28

Tucker, J. (2005) Sounding out a New Peru: Music, Media, and the Emergent AndeanPublic, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan.

Tucker, J. (in preparation) From The World of the Poor to the Beaches of Eisha:Chicha, Cumbia, and the Search for a Popular Subject in Peru.

Turino, T. (1988) Music of Andean migrants in Lima, Peru: demographics, socialpower, and style, Latin American Music Review, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 127150.Turino, T. (1990) Somos El Peru (We are Peru): Cumbia Andina and the

children of the Andean migrants in Lima, Studies in Latin American PopularCulture, vol. 9, pp. 1825.

Turino, T. (1993) Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and theExperiment of Urban Migration, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Turino, T. (1999) Signs of imagination, identity and experience: a Peirciansemiotic theory for music, Ethnomusicology, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 221255.

Turino, T. (2000) Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe,Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Vertovec, S. & Cohen, R. (2002) Introduction: Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, inConceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice, ed. R. Cohen, NewYork, Oxford University Press, pp. 122.

Vich, V. (2001) El Discurso De La Calle: Los Comicos Ambulantes Y Las Tensiones De LaModernidad En El Peru, Lima, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru.

Wara Cespedes, G. (1984) New currents in musica folklorica in La Paz,Bolivia, Latin American Music Review, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 217242.

Wara Cespedes, G. (1993) Huayno, Saya and Chuntunqui: Bolivian

identity in the music of Los Kjarkas, Latin American Music Review, vol. 14,no. 1, pp. 52101.

Warner, M. (2002) Publics and counterpublics, Public Culture, vol. 14, no. 1, pp.4990.

Waterman, C. (1990) Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African PopularMusic, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Zak, A. (2001) The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records, Berkeley, CA,University of California Press.

M U S I C R A D I O A N D G L O B A L M E D I AT I O N 5 7 9

Down

loa

de

dby

[b-on:

Biblio

teca

docon

hecim

en

toon

line

IPB]a

t17:5

00

2Fe

bruary

2012