Music, blackness and national identity: three moments in Colombian history

The study of music and national identity has been limited, in my view, by some underlying assumptions. The first is connected to some influential ideas on nationalism, while the second has to do with long-standing ideas about the relation between music and identity. On nationalism, many approaches place too much emphasis on the homogenising tendencies of nationalist discourse, whereas, in my view, homogenisation exists in a complex and ambivalent relationship with the construction of difference by the same nationalist forces that create homogeneity. In a related fashion, with respect to music and identity, several studies of Latin American musical styles and their socio-political context – for example, ones focusing on the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Brazil – display a tendency to set up a model of homogenising elites versus diversifying and resistant minorities.