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Rites, rights and rhythms: a genealogy

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Rites, Rights & Rhythms
ALEJANDRO L. MADRID, SERIES EDITOR
WALTER AARON CLARK, FOUNDING SERIES EDITOR
WALTER AARON CLARK, SERIES EDITOR FOR CURRENT VOLUME

Nor-​tec Rifa! Music and Youth Culture in Latin America


Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World Identity Construction Processes from New York to
Alejandro L. Madrid Buenos Aires
From Serra to Sancho: Pablo Vila
Music and Pageantry in the California Missions In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13
Craig H. Russell Alejandro L. Madrid
Colonial Counterpoint: Tracing Tangueros
Music in Early Modern Manila Argentine Tango Instrumental Music
D. R. M. Irving Kacey Link and Kristin Wendland
Embodying Mexico: Playing in the Cathedral
Tourism, Nationalism, & Performance Music, Race, and Status in New Spain
Ruth Hellier-​Tinoco Jesús A. Ramos-Kittrell
Silent Music: Entertaining Lisbon
Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Music, Theater, and Modern Life in the Late 19th
Eighteenth-​Century Spain Century
Susan Boynton Joao Silva
Whose Spain? Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early
Negotiating “Spanish Music” in Paris, 1908–​1929 Francoist Spain
Samuel Llano Eva Moreda Rodríguez
Federico Moreno Torroba: Carmen and the Staging of Spain
A Musical Life in Three Acts Recasting Bizet’s Opera in the Belle Epoque
Walter Aaron Clark and William Craig Krause Michael Christoforidis
Representing the Good Neighbor Elizabeth Kertesz
Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream Discordant Notes
Carol A. Hess Marginality and Social Control in Madrid,
Danzón 1850-1930
Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance Samuel Llano
Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore Rites, Rights and Rhythms
Agustín Lara A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia’s
A Cultural Biography Black Pacific
Andrew G. Wood Michael Birenbaum Quintero
Rites, Rights & Rhythms

A G E N E A LO G Y O F M U S I C A L M E A N I N G

I N C O LO M B I A’ S B L A C K PA C I F I C

Michael Birenbaum Quintero

1
1
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the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press


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© Oxford University Press 2019

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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Names: Quintero, Michael Birenbaum, author.
Title: Rites, rights & rhythms : a genealogy of musical meaning in
Colombia’s black pacific / Michael Birenbaum Quintero.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Series: Currents in Latin American and Iberian music |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018032429 (print) | LCCN 2018035028 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780199913930 (updf) | ISBN 9780190903213 (epub) |
ISBN 9780199913923 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780199913947 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Folk music—Colombia—History and criticism. |
Blacks—Colombia—Music—History and criticism. | Blacks—Colombia—Social conditions.
Classification: LCC ML3575.C7 (ebook) | LCC ML3575.C7 Q54 2018 (print) |
DDC 781.6409861—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032429

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
For my parents.
For the memory of my grandfather, Phillip B. Roth.
For Kenan, hombre del Pacífico.
For the people of the Colombian Pacific.
For the memory of José Antonio Torres and Alicia Camacho Garcés.
Community of Punta del Este, Buenaventura. Arrullo for the Vírgen del Carmen, 2017.
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
About the Companion Website xv
A Note on Images xvii

Introduction 1

1. The Sounded Poetics of the Black Southern Pacific 27

2. Music in the Mines: Black Cosmopolitans and Musical Practice in the Colonial
Southern Pacific 61

3. Modernities and Nonmodernities in Black Pacific Music 115

4. Race, Region, Representativity, and the Folklore Paradigm 161

5. Between Legibility and Alterity: Black Music and Self-​Making in the Age of
Ethnodiversity 213

Conclusion 275

References 281
Index 309

vii
Acknowledgments

I’ve been going back and forth to Colombia for more than fifteen years now,
and it’s increasingly impossible to disentangle those to whom I’m thankful for
contributing to this project and those to whom I’m grateful for passing through
my life (some of whom, by now, have passed beyond this life). There are also people
whose privacy I will protect by not thanking. This list is something like a kinship
map of most of my life, and could never be comprehensive—​but I’ll try.
I am profoundly grateful to my academic mentors and interlocutors during grad
school. My dissertation committee: Ana María Ochoa, Jairo Moreno, Aisha Khan,
Jacqueline Nassy Brown, and George Yúdice. My New York University (NYU)
professors: Gage Averill, Mike Beckerman, Arlene Dávila, Fred Myers, Diana Taylor,
Suzanne Cusick, J. Martin Daughtry, Maureen Mahon, David Samuels, Mercedes
Dujunco, Kyra Gaunt, and Jason Stanyek. My fellow grad students: Christopher
Ariza, Bill Boyer, Danielle Brown, Amy Cimini, Ryan Dorin, Michael Gallope, Ivan
Goff, Monica Hairston, Clara Latham, Winnie Lee, Yoon-​Ji Lee, Dan Neely, Brett
Pyper, Scott Spencer, Ben Tausig, Eric Usner, and Wynn Yamami. I owe much to
Jan Maghinay Padios. Ethnomusicologist Lise Waxer was particularly supportive
of this project, and I’m saddened that she passed away prematurely, before seeing
her encouragement come to fruition.
I also want to thank members of the New York Colombian musical community,
especially Sergio Borrero, Lucía Pulido, Pablo Mayor, and Martín Vejarano. The

ix
x Acknowledgments
NYU departments of music and performance studies, as well as the Center for
Latin American and Caribbean Studies, supported a series of workshops taught
by the Colombian musicians Irlando “Maky” López and Maestro Gualajo (José
Antonio Torres). Two semesters of dissertation writing were funded by a fellowship
from the NYU Humanities Initiative, where I was privileged to talk with Marcela
Echeverri, Alex Galloway, Bambi Schifflin, Jane Tylus, and others. A Mellon Post-​
Doctoral Fellowship in Concepts of Diaspora at John Hopkins Univeristy pro-
vided me with generous interlocutors in Gabrielle Speigel, Juan Obarrio, Emma
Cervone, Deborah Poole, Andrew Talle, Anand Pandian, Clara Han, Naveeda Khan,
Valeria Procupez, Isaías Rojas Pérez, Veena Das, Bode Ibironke, Sana Aiyar, and
Maya Ratnam.
At Bowdoin College, Mary Hunter was an invaluable mentor, and I’m grateful for
my time there with Tracy McMullin, Vin Shende, Femi Vaughan, Krista Van Vleet,
Allen Wells, Judith Casselberry, Jessica Marie Johnson, Charlotte Griffin, Marcos
López, and many other colleagues, friends, and students. My colleagues at Boston
University have been tremendous, especially Marié Abé, Jeff Rubin, Julie Hooker,
Adela Pineda, Louis Chude-​Sokei, Saida Grundy, Ashley Farmer, Ben Seigel, John
Thornton, Victor Coelho, and Brita Heimarck.
Thanks to all those who crossed my path along the way and took the time
to talk: Ana María Arango, Santiago Arboleda, Medardo Árias, Margarita
Aristizábal, Kiran Asher, Paul Austerlitz, C. Daniel Dawson, Michael Iyanaga,
Agustín Lao Montes, Claudia Leal, Robin Moore, Paola Moreno Zapata, David
Novak, Juan Sebastián Ochoa, Ulrich Oslender, Deborah Pacini Hernández,
Tianna Paschel, Eduardo Restrepo, Anne Rasmussen, Jonathan Ritter,
Axel Rojas, Matt Sakakeeny, Carolina Santamaría, Gavin Steingo, Carlos
Valderrama, Peter Wade, Fatimah Williams Castro, Debbie Wong, and Catalina
Zapata Cortés. Having gifted students who keep me on my toes has been a
true privilege: Carlos Alberto Velasco, Patricia Vergara, Walker Kennedy, Ian
Coss, and Brian Barone—​who also provided life-​saving editorial grunt work
for this book.
Suzanne Ryan and Alejandro Madrid have been true allies to this book, and I ap-
preciate Walter Clark’s influence as well. A Minority Book Subvention Grant from
the Society for Ethnomusicology has also been instrumental.
My fieldwork in Colombia was supported by a Tinker Foundation summer
grant administered by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at
NYU and a Fulbright Institution of International Education (IIE) grant. The staff
of the Comisión Fullbright in Bogotá were important in the logistics of this proj­
ect. I originally went to Colombia to work with champeta music; Edgar Benítez,
Acknowledgments xi
Elizabeth Cunín, and the late Adolfo González provided important support, de-
spite the fact that I switched coasts on them.
In Bogotá, I found important resources and crucial interlocutors. At the
Ministry of Culture, Alejandro Mantilla, Leonardo Garzón, Doris de la Hoz, and
Marta Traslaviña; Jaime Quevedo of the Centro de Documentación Musical,
and Leonardo Bohórquez at ICANH (the Colombian Institute of Anthropology
and History), then also the base for Mauricio Pardo. Thanks to Carlos Miñana,
Egberto Bermúdez, Jaime Arocha, and Susana Friedmann.
Cali is a city very dear to my heart and history, and so are many of its inhabitants.
Fernando Urrea, Mario Diego Romero, Darío Henao, Renán Silva, and the doctoral
students in humanities at UniValle, as well as Aurora Vergara at ICESI University
and Manuel Sevilla at Universidad Javeriana have been essential. Germán Patiño
(RIP) and other functionaries at the Petronio Álvarez Festival were generous with
their time. In Buenaventura: Lucy Mar Bolaños, Hebert Hurtado, and Carlos
Palacios at the Universidad del Pacífico. Jorge Idárraga is a friend, a collaborator,
and a gifted photographer whose work I’m proud to include in this book.
This project would have been unthinkable without the collaboration of many,
many musicians, culture workers, dancers, teachers, instrument makers, and
academics. Thank you to Estreisson Agualimpia; Los Alegres del Telembí; Juana
Álvarez; Olga Angulo; Leonidas “Hinchao” Valencia, Jackson and Panadero,
Neibo Moreno (RIP), Heriberto Valencia, and the members of ASINCH; Marta
and Diego Balanta; Fortunata Banguera; Pacho Banguera (RIP); Begner and
Manuel of Herencia; Esperanza Bonilla; Samuel Caicedo (RIP) and Oliva
Arboleda; Pascual Caicedo and family; Cali Rap Cartel and the rappers in Charco
Azul, especially Fernando; the members of Grupo Canalón, especially Nidia
Sofía Góngora and July “Chochola” Castro, saludos to Moño, Hermés, Moisés,
Celia, and Ñaño; Mauricio Camacho; Isaís “Saxo” Carabalí; Juan Davíd Castaño;
Tostao, Goyo, and Alexis of Chocquibtown; Carlos Colorado; Esteban Copete;
Baudilio and Alí Cuama; Enrique Cundumí; Douglas from Orilla; Alex Duque and
Tamborimba; doña Daira and Ferney; Epifa; Mayor Ernesto Estupiñan and Katia
Ovidia in Esmeraldas, Ecuador; Daniel Garcés; Humberto and Jhon Jairo Garcés;
doña Teodocia García “Tocha”; don Agustín García; Hugo Candelario González;
Esteban González; Libia Grueso and Conti; Marino Grueso; Liliana Guevara;
Victor Guevara; Myrna Herrera; Teodora Hurtado; Juancho López and Cristian;
Alexis Lozano; “El Negro” Cecilio Lozano (RIP); Magnolia; Naka Mandinga; Zulia
Mena; Markitos Micolta; Hugo Montenegro Manyoma; Joselín Mosquera; Juan
de Dios Mosquera; Sergio Mosquera; Nancy Motta; Zully Murillo; la profe Nelly;
Octavio Panesso; Madolia de Diego Parra (RIP); Heliana Portes de Roux; Addo
xii Acknowledgments
Obed Possú “Katanga”; Alfonso Portocarrero; doña Raquel Portocarrera; Carlos
Rosero, Julio, Elizabeth, and Yosú of Proceso de Comunidades Negras in Bogotá;
Augusto Perlaza and the Chirimía del Río Napi; Erney, Larry, Armando, Quique,
Lucho, and César of Quilombo; Fanny Quiñonez; Enrique Rentería; Victor Hugo
Rodríguez; Ernesto Santos; Urián Sarmiento; Raquel Riascos; Hector Sánchez;
doña Lycha Sinisterra; Benigna Solís; Alirio Suárez; the Torres family in Sansón,
especially don Genaro and don Pacho; doña Eulalia Torres; Jayer Torres; Jacobo
Torres and La Mojarra Eléctrica; Tumbacatre; Hector Tascón; Rocky Telles;
Enrique Urbano Tenorio “Peregoyo” (RIP) and doña Inéz; Taincho; Delio Valencia
and Chencho; Miguel Vallecilla; and Alfredo Vanín. I am deeply grateful to the
late Alicia Camacho Garcés, whose knowledge and warrior spirit continue to
inspire.
I also learned from sharing daily life and countless other experiences with
generous and hospitable people. Thank you: Hernán and Paola in Bogotá; Carlos
Valentierra, Jader Gómez, Rocío Caicedo, Katty, and Joanna; Astolfo, Juan Peter,
and Zully; Rocky, Silvio Gabino, Atlético Pacífico, and the Galaxcentro crew (not to
mention Mulenze, La Ponceña, Guararé . . .)! Christopher Dennis, John Myers, Tara
Murphy, Chucho Hernández, and Mike Shoemaker—​the gringada. Washington,
Yuuiza, Ana Bolena; the Bonilla family, especially Clemira Bonilla, Oliva Bonilla,
doña Sixta (RIP), Power, doña Dora, Kevin, doña Luz, Yoly, Nanín, Nicol and
Wendy, Richard Bonilla, Miguel Bonilla. Officer Zuluaga, and the personera in
Santa Bárbara literally saved my life.
In San José, doña Agripina and Faizuri. Thank you to Yineth. The Obregón family,
especially el profe Hugo Obregón and his family and Mayán; the Caicedo family, es-
pecially Pascual; Enrique and his group; Pájaro in Guapi; Aquino in Mariano Ramos;
doña Alba and Lucy; the Angulo family—​doña Francy, Hawer, Chava, Arbey, and
Carol, thank you for your friendship; doña Otilia, Gerónimo, and Seviliana, Cuchi
(RIP), Cocora (RIP), doña Dalia, Pirobo, Proyecto, and Encho; Ober; doña Rosa,
doña Blancura; and Javier and Gacho. Saludos to the whole Aramburo family, as big
as it is: doña Aura, my compadre Harinson and his family, Astolfo, el Negro, Noemi,
Ros Ester (RIP), Emilsen, Harlin, Viviana, and don Zaca (RIP).
I want to single out some of the musicians who were my primary teachers and
who continue to contribute to my growth as a musician and an academic alike.
Juana Angulo (RIP), Ana Hernández, Carlina Andrade, and Gladys Bazán: the
Cantadoras del Pacífico. Maky López and Diego Obregón are my teachers and my
friends, and I thank them for both. José Antonio Torres, maestro Gualajo, who
gave me so much, died as this book went to press. I, and the many others who he
has touched with his music and his mischievous spirit, miss him tremendously.
Acknowledgments xiii
This project has often taken me away from you, Aura and Kenan, but you are at
the center of it. Thanks for sticking with me.
To all of the people who made this possible: I hope I have described this music
and this world in a way that approaches a truth that you recognize and believe;
I hope my work can begin to reflect all that you have taught me.
Cali, Colombia
May 2018
About the Companion Website

URL: www.oup.com/us/ritesrightsrhythms​

Username: currulao

Password: chonta

Oxford University Press has created a password-​protected website to accompany


Rights, Rites, and Rhythms. The site includes photos, audio, video, and supple-
mental resources, organized to correspond with the book’s chapters. Examples
available online are indicated in the text with Oxford’s symbol .

xv
A Note on Images

All the photographs in this book, unless otherwise indicated, were taken
by the Buenventuran photographer Jorge Idárraga. For more information
about Idárraga and his work, visit Jorge Idárraga on Facebook or contact him
at idarragapublicidad@yahoo.es. Maps were created by J. D. Kotula at Boston
University Libraries.

xvii
Map 1. Colombia.
Rites, Rights & Rhythms
IN T RO D UC T I ON

Nidia was livid. It was the height of the ritual music season in the remote
Colombian Pacific village of Timbiquí, and in the town square, thronged by their
fellow townspeople, she and a dozen or so other friends were singing and playing
ritual music—​or rather, attempting to. Squinting angrily and pointing her guasá
shaker at one of the little saloons on the town square, she yelled, “I can’t hear my-
self sing with that goddamn stereo playing so loud. I can’t even hear the drums!”
Curiously, the music blasting from the saloon was itself traditional music, re-
corded by many of the same people trying to play in the plaza. The recorded voice
above which Nidia struggled to be heard was, in fact, her own.
Rights, Rites, and Rhythms examines this kind of feedback, interference, and
overlap between the various experiences of local currulao music—​ as ritual,
folklore, popular music, identity-​ marker, and political resource—​ among the
black inhabitants of Colombia’s southern Pacific coast. The complexity of these
interactions is a product of the friction between the kinds of temporality that they
are taken to embody and the points along the historical trajectory of the southern
Pacific at which they emerged: the ancestral past, the dislocations of the modern
present, and the political struggle for a future that integrates both. Therefore, this
book relies on both ethnography and historical research to trace the emergence,
development, maintenance, and in some cases abandonment of the systems of
meaning that frame these musical sounds. It also describes how this history of
1
2 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
musical meaning manifests itself in current musical practice. Thus, the book serves
as a genealogy of what—​and how—​black southern Pacific music means today.
Nidia’s struggle to be heard over her own recorded voice suggests familiar
regimes of authenticity and a somewhat facile opposition of the human against
the technologically mediated. Other cases in the book turn that binary inside out.
The traditional chigualo ceremony, a child’s funeral-​cum-​fertility rite, might be cel-
ebrated these days with recorded reggaetón music rather than the old drumming
and song-​games, which are often consigned to the performances of folkloric dance
troupes. In this case, ritual function and sociality have been folded into an entirely
new set of sonorities, while the old sonorities are refashioned into markers of a
ritual function that they no longer have.
This marking, however, has functions of its own. Currulao is often Exhibit
A in claims by the Afro-​Colombian social movement about the ethnocultural
distinctiveness of the black Pacific. The movement has parlayed these claims
into state legislation of collective territory and other culturally based rights
for the people of Timbiquí and other black communities in the Pacific rain-
forest. Meanwhile, the Colombian state has provided venues for currulao
music, in the interest of expanding its own influence in the Pacific region and
of demonstrating to international bodies its commitment to Afro-​Colombian
human and cultural rights, in the context of violent armed conflict and the
massive displacement of black communities in the Pacific. All of this puts
currulao music—​as rites, rights, and rhythms—​at the center of contestations
over blackness and its place in the Colombian nation.
This book is about musical meaning, specifically the musical practices of black
people living on Colombia’s southern Pacific coast. These musical practices are
imbricated within a number of different systems of meaning, often simultane-
ously. A song in praise of a saint may also hold meaning as an example of re-
gional folk culture, as supposed evidence of black backwardness, or as a political
claim. Approaching these questions of musical meaning requires both a histor-
ical approach, to uncover the genealogies through which these meanings become
sedimented, and an ethnographic approach, to understand the ways in which both
the practitioners and the publics of these musical practices apprehend the various
resonances which these histories of meaning have.
Therefore, this book is both something of a historically informed ethnography
and something of an ethnographically informed history. By “ethnographically in-
formed history,” I do not mean only that I have used ethnography as a source for
the writing of history. I also mean that I have intended, when possible, to bring
an ethnographer’s sense of the importance of the everyday into the examination
of the past. By “historically informed ethnography,” I mean simply that I have
Introduction 3
examined people’s actions in the present and understood them as informed (al-
though not determined) by history.
A central field of meaning for currulao music is its close association with black-
ness. Examining the historical processes by which this music came to be under-
stood as black provides a view into how the people of the southern Pacific came
to be black.1 Of course, I do not mean the term black in the physiognomic sense;
the Pacific region is overwhelmingly populated by the descendants of Africans
and Colombians. But the notion of blackness in the Pacific as a racial, ethnic,
regional, cultural, and political constituency—​glossed in recent usage as Afro-​
Colombian—​is not as self-​evident as it might seem from a vantage point here in
the United States, where the inscription of absolute difference between black
and white is both primordial and persistent. Black Colombians in the southern
Pacific share an African cultural heritage and the historical experiences of en-
slavement, marginalization, and struggles with other black populations, but
the specific meaning of blackness, the terms in which it is lived, or the relative
weight of those terms, is not the same as in the United States, Brazil, or the
Caribbean—​or even Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
Omi and Winant’s term racial formation2 is useful because its possibilities for
being used in the plural provide a helpfully relativizing way of looking at how
race is constructed in different settings and what is at stake in those varied
constructions. My argument assumes that, although socially real, race is not a self-​
evident or autonomous fact. As we will see, in the case of the Colombian Pacific,
race—​like music—​is a category interpenetrated by and coconstituted alongside
other factors, such as regional, cultural, and political constituencies. As Gary
Okihiro has suggested, racial formations are simultaneously subsumed into na-
tional, class-​inflected, spatial, gendered, and sexual projects—​even as race itself
remains salient.3
I mention this point because I want to avoid the tendency of race to become a
self-​fulfilling prophecy, by which the local manifestations of such global projects
as white superiority, racialized divisions of labor, modernity, or hierarchies of
culture are described with recourse to deterministic racial or cultural teleolo-
gies from other settings. I by no means abjure race; rather, I approach it induc-
tively: from the ground up. This is not a matter of what Matory has playfully
called “ ‘but among the Bongo-​Bongo . . .’ contrarianism,” or what Brown calls
the “reduc[tion of] diaspora to ‘another Black community heard from,’ ” al-
though Colombia’s southern Pacific coast does indeed have its particularities
and has not been much “heard from”—​or listened to.4 Rather, paying atten-
tion to local particularities—​such as the importance of geographic space and
the processes of both the black cultural formation (i.e., ethnogenesis) and racial
4 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
interpellation from without (i.e., racialization) in the Colombian context—​is key
to understanding both national ideologies about race and space and the partic-
ular contours of black life in Colombia.
These, in turn, have broader manifestations, such as the consolidation of the
Afro-​Colombian social movement, which galvanized around the drafting of a new
national constitution in 1991 that recognized the nation as “pluricultural and mul-
tiethnic” and recognized black Colombians, particularly rural communities in the
Pacific, as constituting an official ethnic minority deserving of particular rights.
The Afro-​Colombian movement also participated in the drafting of Law 70 of 1993,
the “Negritudes Law,” which outlined some of the specifics of these rights, most
prominently the right for black communities to collectively hold land title over
the territories that they have traditionally occupied—​a new articulation of the
relationship between race and space. The legal recognition of black cultural and
territorial rights is one of the most important and influential developments in
black politics in the hemisphere, but understanding and deriving political lessons
from it for other black populations also require understanding the specificities
from which it emerged.
Given the contingency of these processes, in examining the traditional music
of the black inhabitants of the southern Pacific, neither music, nor tradition,
nor blackness, nor the geographical entity of the southern Pacific should be
taken as eternal or as givens, as either a process of imposition or of resist-
ance. Indeed these qualifications are fairly clichéd, suggesting the necessity
of a different set of questions. If the sounded poetics traditional to the black
inhabitants of the Pacific are not to be taken as given, what are they to be
taken as? Or, to move the question out of the rarified zone of ontology, what
is the work they do, in both people’s lives and the social and political realms
that structure these lives?

Blackness and Invisibility in Colombian Racial Formations

Colombia has a significant black population—​ indeed, the largest African-​


descended population of any Spanish-​speaking country in the world, and the
third-​largest in the hemisphere.5 What for me is even more compelling than the
statistic itself is the fact that it is practically unknown, even in Colombia itself.
How is it that such a large black population has been “invisibilized”6 for such a
long time? What is it about Colombian racial formations that have so emphatically
resisted attention? Certainly the size of the black Colombian population is poorly
reflected in academic production of research into the descendants of Africans in
Introduction 5
the Western Hemisphere.7 There are a number of reasons for Colombia’s absence
from academic (not to mention popular or journalistic) understandings of black-
ness in the hemisphere.
The anthropological canonicity of countries like Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti as the
star exponents of New World blackness has largely overshadowed attention to
Colombia. In part, this canonicity is heir to the Herskovitsian ranking of various
New World black populations in terms of their degrees of African retention, a dis-
tinction with strong normativizing and authenticating repercussions—​indeed,
the role of anthropology as a legitimizing force in ethnocultural mobilizations
is discussed throughout this book.8 In Melville J. Herskovits’s ranking of black
populations by African retention, the Colombian region of Chocó received an av-
erage of D in total Africanness.9 Debating the relative merit (or lack thereof) of
Colombia’s inclusion in the anthropological canon of black American10 populations
that exhibit the persistence of the “entire strata of African civilizations,”11 or of
the usefulness of that criteria of anthropological validity, obviates neither the
workings of racism for black Pacific Colombians nor the sense of cultural kinship
they feel with their paisanos (people from the same area). This last is not to say that
many black Colombians, particularly in urban settings outside the Pacific, do not
feel pressure to assimilate and leave these same paisanos behind. Yet even this pro-
cess is part of a common dynamic, which Wade has described as a continuum be-
tween “nucleation” and “dispersal” of black Colombians12—​a model that describes
not only individual behavior, but also broader dynamics of the conformation of
blackness in Colombia.
An even more important key to the invisibilization of black Colombians, both
within Colombia itself and relative to certain other nations, is the place of black-
ness in nation-​building. While the regimes of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, François
Duvalier in Haiti, and Getúlio Vargas in Brazil13 needed to cater to some degree to
the black urban working classes of their respective nations, Colombia, which was
already later than other countries to the kinds of mass-​media-​aided populism that
promoted cultural nationalism in the rest of Latin America, instead descended
into a protracted period of civil war14 in the middle of the twentieth century.
At any rate, the overwhelmingly rural black population of the time left few black
proletarians to be coopted, even if this had been a priority of the government.
Furthermore, as we will see in a moment, the regionalization of race in Colombia
folded blackness into a spatial-​civilizing project rather than one of political coop-
tation. Therefore, black Colombians did not emerge as a constituency; rather,
blackness in Colombia remained a feature, partly physiognomic and partly behav-
ioral,15 imputed to only particular segments of the population, especially those
residing in specific regions of the national territory.
6 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
A number of ethnomusicological or ethnomusicologically influenced studies16
have noted that Latin American national-​populism coincided, in broad terms,
with the growth of the modern media, particularly the recorded music industry.
This is a crucial point because music has been an important medium for the dif-
fusion of notions about blackness. Therefore, the visibility provided by political
nods to blackness had its aural corollary in the recording of local black artists and
musical forms that were understood as black in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil—​an effect
bolstered by the interest in black cultural forms on the part of local cultural avant-​
gardes, who themselves were influenced by the Jazz Age primitivism of France and
the United States.
In Colombia, the black-​influenced musical forms of Colombia’s Caribbean coast
were also central to the rise of the local recording industry. Nonetheless, these
forms had a far more ambiguous relationship to blackness, such that naming their
regionality obscured their blackness, and vice versa, as Peter Wade has masterfully
shown.17 Even in the corpus of staged folkloric music and dance, explicitly black
forms were far less central than the musics of highland mestizo peasants until they
began to be staged by pioneering black folklorists such as Delia Zapata Olivella,
Teófilo Potes, and Mercedes Montaño. Neither were black musical forms partic-
ularly important in avant-​garde art music, either by Colombians or foreigners, as
occurred in Cuba and Brazil.18
Region has long been a central trope in Colombian history and its state-​forma-
tion processes, as well as its processes of racialization. Split by the three separate
chains of the Andes that run the length of the country, contact between these re-
gions has long been rather tenuous. This has created different demographic char-
acteristics, economic bases, local political arrangements, degree of contact with
other regions, and social particularities across the histories of the various region.
This is manifest in the cultural differences and varied processes of racialization
in the various parts of the country where black Colombians live (see Map 2): the
Caribbean coast (including the Guajira peninsula, the central coast, the south-
western coast, and San Basilio de Palenque near Cartagena, a culturally distinct
maroon town founded by fugitive slaves) (video I.1 ); the Protestant, tradi-
tionally Anglophone inhabitants of the Caribbean islands of the San Andrés ar-
chipelago off the Nicaraguan coast;19 the upper and middle Magdalena and Cauca
river valleys; the lower Cauca valley from Cartago to Popayán; some scattered
settlements in other inter-​Andean valleys like the Patía and Tierradentro; the
northern Pacific departamento (department)20 of Chocó; and the focus of this study,
the southern Pacific coast.21 Some black Colombians count among the settlers who
have migrated to the sparsely populated frontier regions of eastern Colombia.
Map 2. Black population in Colombia, by municipality (self-​reported).a
a.
Adapted from OCHA Colombia (n.d.). The fact that these figures are derived from the 2005 census,
which relied on self- identification (Zúñiga 2006), means that areas such as the Caribbean coast in
the north, where phenotypical evidence of African descent is not necessarily synonymous with ethnic
self-identification, have significantly higher black populations than as represented on this map.
8 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
The particularities of space and the processes of place-​making, therefore, are neces-
sarily central to my analysis. The meanings of both blackness and black musicality
in Colombia are deeply indebted to struggles over the nature of space, its proper
usage, and the carving of place out of it. The process of ethnogenesis described
in Chapter 2 entailed the integration of the particular environment of the Pacific
into both the means of material subsistence and the social, cultural, and spiritual
matrix of its black inhabitants, producing the soundworld described in Chapter 1.
The racialization of the Pacific revolved precisely around the disparagement of the
noncapitalist, nonaccumulationist, and nonmodern terms in which black Pacific
Colombians occupied their territory.

Racial Epistemes, Enframing, and the Movement of History

As compelling as Omi and Winant’s notion of racial formation is for describing


the specificities of the Colombian Pacific, this book is not exactly the tracing of a
singular racial formation. This is because the discussion of racial formations, while
not ahistorical, tends to be inflected by history only insofar as history could ex-
plain it in the present time. The exploration given here focuses instead on tracing
a series of racial formations that have changed over time—​both from the colonial
obsession with lineage to the republican performance of decency, and from the
nationalist formulation of black folkloricity to the neoliberal instrumentalization
of identity.
Thus, what emerges is less a presentist story of how a single, definitive racial
formation consolidated in the Colombian Pacific than the chronicle of a series of
transforming racial formations that enframed various conditions of racial possi-
bility there over the course of the region’s history since the Conquest. This more
or less brings Omi and Winant’s notions of racial formation—​the socially spe-
cific and historically emergent structure of racial identifications in a particular
milieu—​together with Michel Foucault’s archaeology of the epistemes through
which the world and the conditions of possibility within it were ordered at dif-
ferent moments in modern history in The Order of Things.22
Another way to think about this is that an episteme is permeated by the
field of discourses that can be intelligibly uttered, and whose contravention
conspires against hegemonic common sense—​what Pierre Bourdieu called
“doxa.”23This “hegemonic common sense” and the regimes of intelligibility
that it supposes constitute the reason for the importance of recognizability
when new utterances are to be made. As we will see in this book, especially its
second half, the meanings of reified musical objects have been pushed in certain
Introduction 9
directions; diagnoses of black atavism, for example, have been reconfigured as
attractively pastoral alternatives to the alienating and violent effects of moder-
nity for the cultural market, and the heterogeneous sounded practices of the
black Pacific folded into a more intelligible idea of “music of the Pacific.” This
process, by which new content infuses the molds into which it is poured, is one
important way in which doxa changes over time.
This model might be seen as failing to account for more drastic epistemic rupture,
by which new epistemes begin to emerge and older ones to attenuate. By “account
for,” I do not mean that historical change need take place along the lines of the kinds
of grand historical narrative of which a Foucauldian genealogy is so wary.24 But
I do find that historical rupture, however contingent in its immediate causes and
catalysts, does concentrate itself near particularly constituted fault lines. As Sylvia
Wynter explains,25 ruptures often emerge from the internal contradictions of an
episteme, which tend to be concentrated in the blind spots at its margins—​to
which, she argues, black humanity has so often been consigned. (A corollary for this
contingent but not aleatory model might be found in the history of capitalism: the
capitalist epoch has not, as Marx prognosticated, collapsed under the weight of its
own internal contradictions, but the mutations that have allowed it to continue
seem to emerge from those contradictions.) Thus, for example, it is precisely from
unresolved tensions (about, on the one hand, the relation of particular regions to
the Colombian nation and, on the other, the regional geography of blackness in
Colombia) that black intellectuals were able to parlay nationalist representations of
the regions into a frame for including blackness within the nation in the twentieth
century (see Chapter 4).
As this example suggests, however, epistemic rupture is never total. Even at-
tenuated paradigms leave occluded discursive latencies than can be activated by
different kinds of catalysts; in the example given here, if the figure of the region
works at one moment as a euphemism articulating race, then even after the re-
gion has been recontextualized as a component of the nation, the figure of race
(if not necessarily its historical specific meaning) might remain latent within it,
or be abandoned, or be reactivated, although this reactivation might take place on
entirely new terms.
This, in turn, suggests that a single moment in time might feature frames of ref-
erence and meaning-​making that derive from various epistemes jostling against
one another in uncomfortable simultaneity, as when Nidia sings against her own
voice. Indeed, this multiplicity makes the possibilities for the reactivation of dis-
cursive latencies, as well as their resignification, even more likely.
This simultaneity of multiple temporalities of varied provenances is an impor-
tant source for the multiplicity of regimes of meaning that continue to be borne
10 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
by black southern Pacific traditional music. This is particularly the case for the
concept of modernity that is premised on the notion of an originary temporal
rupture with the past—​a before and an after. Nonetheless, the champions of mo-
dernity (e.g., nation-​builders) are unable to erase other nonmodern epistemes,
which, if imagined under modernity as lingering traces of the past (such as
musicoreligious rites), are in fact experienced as entirely coeval in the lives of
the people who practice them. Not only are these epistemes not diachronic, they
are also not hermetic: they interact and entangle with one another. In the words
of As Achille Mbembe:

[L]‌ong-​term developments, more or less rapid deviations, and long-​term


temporalities are not necessarily either separate or merely juxtaposed. Fitted
within one another, they relay each other; sometimes they cancel each other
out, and sometimes their effects are resolved.26

Music can be helpful to trace the reappearance and recontextualization of laten-


cies; latent signification is something of a musical specialty. As ethnomusicologist
Michael Iyanaga explains, black musical practices in the Western hemisphere re-
tain the thumbprints of history:

Histories accrue. A new history can never substitute a forgotten one, as if


taking its place in a relay race. Rather, the new history simply joins the move
through time as yet another layer of a diachronically rich performance . . . in
a dense network of thick, multilayered horizontal sweeps, . . . extend[ing] out
along a historical plane as lineages of an ever-​expanding family tree, ran-
domly intersecting at other historically dense moments, which then inter-
sect with other moments, and so on. For this reason, performances burst
with a multiplicity of histories.27

Even when the particular frames of reference that once gave meaning to those
historical traces have been abandoned, forgotten, or suppressed, the particular
combination of ambiguous referentiality and embodiment that characterizes mu-
sical practice and performance more broadly allows these frames of reference to
reshuffle and emerge. Iyanaga continues:

[S]‌ilences typically go unnoticed, for the seamlessness of the narrative


collapses all of these constituent silence-​amassing moments under the de-
ceptive guise of linearity and factuality. Performances, on the other hand,
when mined in the diachronically dense way I am suggesting, flash all of
Introduction 11
their constituent histories at once. Embodied in behaviors and ideas, these
histories can never be the whole story. Partial and incomplete, these are
never readymade linear narratives. Instead they are the snippets of silenced
narratives, the fragmented traces of unofficial histories that have been sti-
fled by official accounts.

The varying degrees of explicitness that characterize the relationship be-


tween any musical sound and its possible meanings seem to be what ethnomu-
sicologist Thomas Turino is evoking in his extensive use of Peircean semiotics
to describe musical meaning, a vocabulary that also might be used fruitfully to
describe the historical processes for the musical coding of those meanings to be
conventionalized—​or made latent. The tripartite division of the sign in Peircian
semiotics, for example, is essentially C. S. Peirce’s recognition that the materiality
of the sign—​as a product of human action, contingency, and history—​affects the
way it signifies.28 Further, Herzfeld notes that resemblance (“iconicity”) is partic-
ularly seamless and more difficult to challenge than a flat-​out verbal statement
because it “ ‘backgrounds’ . . . its own semiotic character.”29
As such, what I am perhaps most concerned with in this book is the framing of
certain discursive notions within the doxa of a given historical episteme. What
does it mean when blackness—​or music—​is posited in such a way as to become
commonsensical? The subsuming of ritual sound into music helps it enter the
market and the stage and become a political and economic resource—​but it also
subjects it to the criteria by which music is valorized in the West and abandons
categories by which ritual is valorized. And the framing of blackness as a com-
monsensical social fact helps build a political constituency, but it also creates rigid
delimitations of boundaries of blackness.
In other words, the particular characteristics of an enframed category like
music or blackness foreclose certain kinds of action, even as they afford a cer-
tain degree of ambiguity, doubling, punning, and subversive interpretations and
uses.30 In this sense, the arc of this book’s argument might be described (although
a bit heavy-​handedly, I’d think) as an account of the increasing enframing of
Pacific music as iconic of blackness in Colombia. Examining the changing set of
connections between music and blackness—​Pacific music as a heuristic for diag-
nosing and pathologizing black atavism (Chapter 3), as the source of resources
at the margins of modernity (Chapter 3), as a means to dramatize black partic-
ularity (Chapter 5) or the Colombian nation (Chapter 4), or as practiced across
racial groups (Chapter 2)—​certainly lies at the book’s heart, even if the histor-
ical trajectory between these regimes of meaning is far from unidirectional, and
even if the means by which these connections are made—​by external observers’
12 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
interpretations or by musical practitioners’ own aesthetic tendencies or political
goals—​are not uniform.

Frames, Reifications, and Mobilizations

A fundamental question concerns how the music of the Pacific came to be


constructed as an object bearing these kinds of meanings in the first place.
Anthropologists and scholars of cultural policy see culture in two registers: the ar-
tistic register of cultural objects (material culture and expressive practices) and the
anthropological register of lifeways, epistemologies, and affective relations—​what
might be called the cultural matrix in which they are embedded.31 Mobilizations of
culture require cultural objects and work to constitute them by isolating mate-
rial/​expressive cultural forms from culture-​as-​lifeways and reproducing them as
objects. These objectifications emerge as metonyms—​or reifications—​of the cul-
tural matrix from which they were extracted.
Music is easily reified, isolated, decontextualized, and disseminated, particu-
larly through the “schizophonia” of its recording. But it is characterized by a par-
ticular paradox: music travels far but feels near.32 As mobile as it is, music is also
apprehended as authentically and organically representative of deeply rooted cul-
tural experience, as uncommonly visceral, in the sense that it is experienced as
having a particularly privileged relationship to emotion and to the body.33
As far as a recording of marimba music might travel from the jungles of the
Pacific, even the most ingenuous listeners cannot help but notice the unfamiliar
sonority of the instruments and voices and its curious 6/​8 sway, whether or not
they like it. All of this imbues music with a particular affordance for the dissem-
ination of representations of cultural alterity—​representations that, given the
plasticity of music as a diffused material, make it subject to unexpected shifts in
meaning that are deeply implicated in power relations.34
This makes one strand of the genealogy of musical meaning especially signifi-
cant. Even beyond these mobilizations of music as a representation of the black
southern Pacific, the questions of how musical practices were reified into what is
understood as music by common sense, the southern Pacific as a regional entity
to be represented, or blackness as a bearer of meaning are answered via processes
of delineation and reification far older than the current cultural mobilizations.
This book follows these processes from the relative formlessness of the colonial
period, during which the racial ascriptions of marimba music were still in flux, to
the incipient delineation of marimba music, blacks, and the southern Pacific as
savage, and finally into the rise of full-​blown concepts of the black southern Pacific
Introduction 13
and the canonization of particular musical forms to represent it in mid-​twentieth-​
century folklore. Although seminal, even this folkloric form has continued to have
different content “nudged” into it as elements such as race and ethnicity became
salient points to be mobilized through music. This nudging shows that black Pacific
Colombians themselves also have played a part in their own self-​construction.
If black actors have always needed to work within discursive fields and material
and political conditions that were, more often than not, not of their own making,
their tactics and micromaneuvers and their constant search for and expansion of
openings within the often-​oppressive conditions posed from outside present a
sterling example of popular ingenuity.

An Ethnomusicological Approach

Music and sound seem like somewhat unlikely vantage points for a theme as broad
as a historical epistemology of blackness. But I don’t think it is hubris to suggest
that they are crucial. (Even if it is, a bit of hubris in ethnomusicology’s long his-
tory of self-​mortification over theoretical lag behind other disciplines might be
salutary.) First, sound and music have long lain, for better or for worse, at the
center of formulations of blackness by both black and nonblack observers. Second,
ethnomusicology, as a discipline that engages ethnographically with meaning-​
making through sound, provides a set of theoretical concerns, terms, a capacity
for analyzing form, and a supple sense of music on the concrete experiential, eth-
nographic level.
For example, one way to get at the relationship between black Colombian iden-
tity-​formation, the regimes of credibility that mold it, and the older forms of
racialization and ethnogenesis from which it draws is to look at cultural policy—​
that is, at the ways in which culture is mobilized by different actors for different
ends. However, unlike ethnomusicology, academic studies of cultural policy, in
their focus on the management of culture, generally do not attend to cultural
practitioners’ aesthetic labor in producing meaning, insisting that “[c]‌ultural
politics fundamentally determine the meanings of social practices,”35 thus subor-
dinating symbolic production to its mobilization, whether by the state (cultural
policy) or by social movements (cultural politics).36
Mirroring the artificial sublimation of the sphere of formal politics rather than
the more general realm of conflict that Chantal Mouffe calls “the political,”37 this
ignores the political ramifications of symbolic practices and aesthetic experiences
on a more everyday level. This more modest scale is even more drastic in some
respects than the formal sphere of politics; for Ranciére, for example, aesthetic
14 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
manipulations of form can redistribute human beings’ very perceptions of the
world.38 Musical practice can also engender politically charged subjectivities, as in
the radical transformation of notions of the body produced in the West’s encounter
with black music.39 In this sense of producing politically valent subjectivities,
music is related to notions of cultural policy as a subject-​producing “technology
of the self.”40 Finally, music’s plasticity, as a material that can circulate broadly in a
variety of media, makes ethnomusicological discussions of music’s media circula-
tion41 useful for interrogating the mobilizations of cultural forms.
Ethnomusicology, however, is far from perfect. A positing of culture as fun-
gible, countable, and segmented is implicit to the ethnomusicological partition
of the world into a series of ethnoi, each of which has a music that we presume
to know (logos)—​ whatever “music” and “know” are supposed to mean—​ in
ethno+music+ology. I would argue, as I hope this book does, for the theoretical,
historical, ethnographic, and political problematizing of ethnomusicology’s delin-
eation of human groups; of its bracketing of their sounded practices as music; and
especially of its unproblematic correlation of the two.
Also, ethnomusicology has not quite reckoned with history (in part due to a
desire to distinguish itself from a historical musicology caricatured as stuffy and
elitist). There has been ethnomusicology that deals with the past, but it is fre-
quently a transplantation of the same model to the past rather than an attempt
to devise an ethnomusicological theory of the past. This, in turn, might arise from
a frustrating tendency for theoretical lamentation, by which ethnomusicologists
decry their own theoretical backwardness in relation to anthropology, cultural
studies, comparative literature, and other disciplines. This is the case even as so
many scholars in those disciplines are interested in studying sound and music—​
and so frequently fail in the attempt from lack of a coherent method, vocabulary,
or theoretical framework for parsing out music’s constituent elements. Above all,
Ethnomusicology’s focus on musical ethnography enable us to make interventions
that are useful for disciplines beyond our own.

Ethnography

This project did not begin as a historical project. I was initially interested in
history only insofar as it worked to contextualize what was essentially ethno-
graphic research. But I kept finding in history a way at getting at some of the
frames of reference that I was encountering ethnographically. For example, as
I recount in Chapter 3, I repeatedly encountered terms like monte (the wild)
and chimpa (a country person) that exemplified a grid cast across much black
Introduction 15
experience in the Pacific that counterposed densely packed notions of nature
and culture, the past and the future, and the savage and the civilized, and that
had direct ramifications in local understandings of music and race. Tracing the
history of the incorporation of the Pacific into national and global modernity
gave me a foothold for understanding exactly what was being plotted along the
axes that these terms evoke and what is at stake, both in the field of the social
everyday and on the scale of broader political claims. This, in turn, engendered
new realizations as I began to find that even as the current racial formation
emerged from and bore traces of history, it had also changed radically over
historical time.
One of the things that I was listening and looking for as an ethnographer was
the ways in which musical practitioners performed their relationships to the ex-
tant scripts of these musical objects. Musical practitioners make music in relation-
ship to preexisting musical discourse (as Mikhail Bakhtin might remind us). This
consideration sits at the center of the notion of genre, which should be seen less as
an objective system of classification than as a relation to extant musical utterances
and associated significations that are bolstered by particular positions of power.42
For example, musical claims to so-​called tradition or blackness must be posited in
relation to extant notions of tradition and blackness, which may differ from other
understandings—​or they may not.43
But musicians are not condemned to mimic preexisting forms. They may also
deliberately part from preexisting forms, “maximizing intertextual gaps”44 in ways
that creatively call attention to their own difference and originality and implic-
itly undermine the authority of the texts from which they diverge. For example,
the incorporation into traditional music of extant texts about musical blackness
that can be found in modern, transnational forms like salsa, rap, and reggaetón
works to reformulate understandings in Colombia of blackness as rustic and tra-
ditional, breaking with tropes of tradition but rearticulating tropes of blackness.
Even in more strictly traditional music, microlevel decisions (such as extended
instrumental solos or lyrical allusions to Pacific life) make particular claims about
instrumental virtuosity and cultural situatedness that become part of their sym-
bolic content.
Examining these intertextual maneuvers is perhaps possible only through eth-
nomusicological ethnographies of performance,45 which can attend to musical sym-
bolic practice in its own terms. The ethnomusicological approach avoids conflating
musical practices and the musical texts with which they engage. Musical texts are
material traces of musical practice, but they must be understood as extracted and
objectified, while musical practices (such as intertextual negotiations) are better
seen as active, agentive, and embodying symbolic production.46
16 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
Looking at practices and their engagements with texts, as I propose, plunges
us into the messy realm of human action. But it is in practice, rather than in “the
clean air of meaning and textuality,” that the human acts of self-​conception,
symbolic production, and engagement with circuits of power take place.47 I un-
derstand these crucial tactics of intertextuality as a kind of “performativity,” in
Judith Butler’s sense.48 This intertextual performativity is a crucial site for exam-
ining questions of agency and structural impingement in aesthetic practice.
The ways in which musical practitioners embrace, acknowledge, or pointedly
ignore extant musical scripts of blackness, nationalism, or tradition evince their
own negotiations of these notions and create new utterances. In the case of the
traditional black music of the Pacific, there are instances when its traditionality,
its blackness, its regional location, or its musicality is emphasized—​or obscured.
Again, this provides an important methodology in this book for examining the
crucial question of the relationship between recent processes of identity forma-
tion and extant ethnogenesis and racialization.
It is also important to look at the organizations and institutions that put for-
ward these meanings in their mobilizations. Ethnographies of institutions49 and
grassroots social movements,50 as well as their points of contact with the public
sphere,51 create a particularly useful methodology. During my time in Colombia,
I was able to locate myself within two important state institutions responsible
for the presentation of southern Pacific black music: the Petronio Álvarez Festival
and the federal Ministry of Culture. Another important field looks at consumers,
the targets of cultural policy mobilizations.52 Ethnographic approaches to audi-
ence are notoriously complicated to undertake, given the size and heterogeneity of
most audiences and the atomizing effects of the technological mediation of music.
Attending the Petronio Festival a number of times over the years, enjoying black
Pacific music in recorded form countless times along with black Colombians in
the Pacific, Cali and Bogotá, and engaging in endless conversations on the sub-
ject of southern Pacific music with peasant musicians, young experimentalists,
bureaucrats, black professionals, and members of the black urban working class
helped me understand some of the practices of some audiences.
I have carried out fieldwork in Colombia beginning with a stint in Cali in the
summer of 2002, with sporadic visits as often as I could that lasted from about
a month to a few months, mostly to Cali or Buenaventura. The bulk of my field-
work for this book was carried out between January 2005 and August 2006. I spent
the first few months of that time in Bogotá, mostly at libraries, accumulating as
much written material as possible, carrying out interviews with figures from the
Afro-​Colombian movement and with musicians, and living with a family from
Tumaco, the head of which is an important figure in the Proceso de Comunidades
Introduction 17
Negras (PCN) activist organization. I ended up collaborating with the PCN on a
few projects. At nights and on weekends, I hung out at the places where Pacific
coast migrants in Bogotá socialized: barbershops, salsa clubs, soccer matches, and
private homes. I also returned to Bogotá in 2006, working on an archival project
with the Ministry of Culture.
In June 2005, I moved to Cali, where I lived alone. There, I carried out more
interviews with musicians and cultural figures and spent most days in the offices
of the Secretary of Culture of Cali, working alongside the organizers of the
Petronio Álvarez Festival. As the festival approached, I spent many afternoons
at group rehearsals. The Pacific community in Cali is far larger and more dis-
persed than in Bogotá, but again, I spent most of my free time in people’s homes,
barbershops, salsa clubs, and other spaces of black socialization in the eastern part
of the city. I also traveled to various towns on the Pacific coast, especially during
times when traditional events, such as the December holidays and Holy Week,
were held, something that I have been doing since 2003. In the Pacific, I would
stay with friends or their families, carry out interviews, and participate in the
events—​often at the expense of not filming or recording them, although a friend
would often borrow my video camera and record for or with me. I met my wife,
who is from Buenaventura, in Bogotá in 2005, and I have visited her family in
Buenaventura repeatedly over the years. I also have frequently returned to Cali,
spending my 2013–​2014 sabbatical there.
In general, the people of the Pacific have been friendly, open, and hospitable with
me, even in places most affected by violence, where friendliness can be a liability.
Although I’m the light-​skinned, US-​born son of a mestizo Colombian father and
a mother from a New York Ashenazi Jewish family, I was often treated as an em-
issary from the black US youth culture, since I am moderately conversant in hip
hop and have lived in places with mythical names like Brooklyn and the Bronx. I
was frequently questioned, with an ethnographic interest rivaling my own, about
New York, whether I knew any famous rappers and whether Tupac Shakur faked his
own death. I was also constantly invited to soccer matches, to listen to music, or to
drink rum and hang out. I received business proposals to import sneakers and hair
extensions, requests for advice on emigrating to the United States, and invitations
for lunch at people’s houses, sometimes several gut-​busting times a day.
A central ethnographic concern during my time in Colombia was to become
fluent in southern Pacific musical forms as a musician and dancer, in order to have
a deeper understanding of the kinds of compromises that musicians make on a
musical level between the respective “gravitational pulls” of the discursive fields
in which southern Pacific musical practice, as a metonym for southern Pacific
blackness, is embedded. Despite the complexity of these musical forms, I was
18 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
able to learn enough to engage music and musicians in recording studios, rural
religious ceremonies, urban jam sessions and parties, and folkloric festivals, as an
ethnographer-​musician.
I began with private lessons in Cali. I learned even more in 2003, when I was
able to invite several Pacific musicians to participate in workshops at New York
University, and I even accompanied them (playing as unobtrusively as possible so
as not to throw everyone else off) at several concerts. My real education came on
the Pacific coast itself, where I learned as children there do—​by grabbing any in-
strument or dance partner left unattended and playing, first discreetly, then more
boldly, until someone heckled me or, more often, politely asked for the instru-
ment. By 2006, I found myself able to play alongside musicians and dancers with
only occasional embarrassment, to their endless bemusement, astonishment, and,
for those who had taken the time to show me something, pride.

The Southern Pacific

Colombia’s Pacific coast is the strip of land between the westernmost chain
of the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. Culturally, historically, and ecologically, it
includes portions of Panama, the entire northwestern Colombian departamento53
of Chocó, and the remainder of the Colombian Pacific coast, running south into
the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas. This book focuses on what is called the
Pacífico Sur or Centro-​Sur, the central-​southern Pacific coast of Colombia, bor-
dered on the north by Chocó departamento and on the south by Ecuador. Although
there are very deep cultural and socioeconomic affinities, this region is differenti-
ated from most of Chocó in many senses: in the different musical formats of the
two areas,54 by the fact that Chocó is a self-​governing departamento, and because of
the strong influence from the Caribbean coast in Chocó via the northward-​flowing
Atrato River. There are even more affinities, and even family ties, between the
inhabitants of the Colombian Southern Pacific and the people of Esmeraldas in
Ecuador, but their incorporation into two different nation-states has necessarily
affected the two populations and their cultural production in various ways, at least
since the end of Spanish rule in the early nineteenth century.
Most human settlement in the southern Pacific is along the many streams and
rivers that, fed by the frequent and heavy rains of the wet seasons, flow down
from the mountains, descending into the jungly foothills and lowlands and fi-
nally feeding into the sea at the numerous swamps and small islands that front
the Pacific ocean. The rivers provide the major arteries of transportation and the
hubs of human settlement in the area, although there are always boats and canoes
Introduction 19

Map 3. Southwestern Colombia, northeastern Ecuador, and the Pacific coast.

plying the open seas from the mouth of one river to others. The river currents ebb
and flow in twelve-​hour cycles with the tides, themselves subject to the monthly
wax and wane of the moon and the three-​month-​long oscillations between bi-
annual wet and dry seasons. People take advantage of the vaciante (downstream
tide) to row their canoes downstream to the plots, a few minutes’ hike into the
jungle, where they have crops to gather: bananas, plantains, coconuts, chontaduro
(Bactris gasipaes) fruit, and papachina (taro).
In the downstream communities, women head to the oceanfront swamps to dig
for mollusks, and men head out to sea at the predawn vaciante, a candle and a
cooking pot burning in each of the prows of their canoes. They return at the noon-
time upstream marea, which also brings salt water to the downstream settlements,
to the excitement of the thousands of tiny crabs that emerge from their holes.
In the midstream communities, the marea washes away the dirty, branch-​strewn
20 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
water brought from upstream at the vaciante, and women assemble at the shore-
line to wash their laundry in the fresh water and gossip while children swim and
fill plastic receptacles with the day’s drinking water and men descend to the river
with bars of blue laundry soap on sticks for a bath. Afterward, the men gather in a
shady spot with a vantage point on the river to greet the passers-​by who ride the
marea upstream, or to help unload an arriving boat.
In the larger towns, the rising tides bring women in canoes to the local markets
(galerías) to sell excess produce, herbs, and especially fish and mollusks. The up-
stream communities are often more than a day’s journey up from the river mouth,
and one must frequently jump out and push the canoe through dry patches. They
are thus little affected by the tides, but they are subject to the cycles of wet and
dry seasons. During the rainy months, they build sluices and runoffs to pan the
riverbed for gold, as they have since their ancestors were brought to the region as
slaves beginning in the seventeenth century. During the dry months, they may
go downstream, or even to another river, where they have land to farm. However,
the use of motorized pumps has recently obviated the need for rain for gold pan-
ning, and temporary work (construction for men, food preparation and domestic
service for women) in the larger towns and villages like Tumaco, Guapi, and
Buenaventura, or even in the cities of the Colombian interior, like Cali and Bogotá,
has often replaced subsistence agriculture and traditional fishing and mining, as
it has in many towns along rivers in the area. With the arrival of guerrilla groups
and other armed groups in many parts of the area since about 2001, the cultiva-
tion and processing of coca have also become a major source of income in parts of
many rivers.
The entire Pacific region, including the Chocó, has 1.3 million inhabitants.55 The
vast majority of them (some 90 percent) are black, especially in the rural areas.
They are the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the region to mine gold.
People’s last names tell these stories. Most bear either the surnames of the mine-​
owning families of the region—Arboleda, say, or Castillo—or of the missionaries
that first baptized them—​Perlaza. Many others bear the names of the ethnicities
that their African ancestors were part of—​Carabalí, Cundumí, Dajomé, Ocoró,
Balanta—​or at least the names that they were sold under.
As a category, the black river-​dwellers call themselves negros (blacks), morenos
(dark people), libres (free people), or renacientes (a complex term related to the
verb “to be reborn or to reappear”).56 A total of 46 percent of the population live in
larger towns and cities like Guapi (with a population of 11,687), Tumaco (64,337),
and Buenaventura (217,680), or in the larger towns on the rivers.57 In some of
these urban centers, a few families, frequently lighter-​skinned (de color, or “col-
ored”) and often part of the regional elite, bear surnames of the Lebanese-​Syrian,
Introduction 21
French, German, Italian, Chinese, or inland Colombian immigrants who arrived
there in the early twentieth century: Klinger, Yacub, Yip, Kaiser, Martán.
There are also newer waves of white and mestizo immigrants, whom local blacks
call paisas, a term suggesting their origin in regions of the Colombian interior like
Antioquia, the neighboring coffee-​growing region, or northern Valle departamento.
These newcomers, some 5 percent of the Pacific’s total population, have set up
stores in the towns and larger villages like Santa Bárbara de Timbiquí, which, if
smaller than Guapi, are nonetheless the largest towns of their respective rivers.
Along some rivers, especially in the most remote upriver communities, there are
indigenous enclaves, such as the Eperara Siapidara of the Saija River and the Awá
of Barbacoas, which sometimes form their own neighborhoods in the larger towns,
like in parts of the Puerto Cali neighborhood in Guapi. The indigenous, whom
the black river-​dwellers call cholos, make up some 5 percent of the regional pop-
ulation.58 Finally, there are a handful of white-​mestizo families called culimochos
(loosely translatable as “flat-​buttocks,” although the term might also refer to the
square stern of the ships they build) that have lived for generations along a few
oceanfront beaches near Iscuandé, where they fish and are renowned shipbuilders.
Life on the Pacific coast can be rough, especially outside the major towns. There
are poisonous snakes, vampire bats, gastrointestinal parasites, and numerous
tropical diseases.59 Health coverage, aside from traditional herbalism, is minimal,
with small hospitals in Tumaco and Buenaventura and a decrepit clinic in Guapi
serving a large geographical area. Electricity is fairly new in the region, arriving in
the large town of Guapi only in 1998.60 Telephone coverage is also scanty, although
the recent erection of cell-​phone towers in the larger towns (for example, in Santa
Bárbara de Timbiquí in 2005) has helped expand coverage.
The only road connections with the interior are along the highways (often
two-​lane roads) from Cali and Buga to Buenaventura in Valle departamento, and
Pasto to Tumaco in Nariño departamento. Aside from being prey to deadly (and
traffic-​blocking) landslides, and, in the 1990s and early 2000s, to guerrilla attacks,
branches of the highway such as that leading to Barbacoas in Nariño or Sabaletas
in Valle are made more precarious by tremendous craters and mud pits that often
render them completely impassible. For those who can afford it, there is air service
to Buenaventura, Tumaco, Guapi, and Santa Bárbara de Timbiquí. Otherwise, all
transport takes place by river and sea routes, subject to the moods of the sea and
the occasional attacks of pirates.
Many people of the area have chosen—​or been forced by economic need or the
mass displacements favored as a tactic by the actors in Colombia’s civil war—​to
move to the larger towns of the area, like Guapi or Bocas de Satinga, larger coastal
cities like Buenaventura and Tumaco, or large inland cities like Cali, Medellín, and
22 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
Bogotá.61 In places like Guapi and Buenaventura, and in the poorest shantytowns
of Cali, many have reproduced the lives that they may have lived on the coast,
living in wooden houses, cooking with wood and charcoal, and maintaining large
matrifocal households, although wage and informal labor necessarily supplant
subsistence farming, fishing, and mining.
In other cases, where they have the will and means to do so, or in cities where
coastal ways are difficult to keep up, the people of the black Pacific have struggled
into working-​or middle-​class identities in many (but not all) ways undistinguish-
able from those of their mestizo neighbors. But many only stay for a while, vis-
iting relatives, undergoing treatment in the hospital, working as live-​in domestic
workers, studying, or staying as long as a particular job lasts.

A Road Map

This book is ordered chronologically, from the eighteenth century to the twenty-​
first, except for Chapter 1, which is structured more synchronically. The sonorous
world and sounded poetics discussed in Chapter 1 emerge from the colonial period
discussed in Chapter 2 and continue to be relevant in the twenty-​first century
context discussed in Chapter 5. Chapter 1 examines how the poetics of sound con-
struct, mediate, and enact in the black southern Pacific world. By the same token,
deeply felt epistemologies, affectivities, and forms of sociality that characterize
this world structure the ways in which sound is understood and used. These sonic
structures of feeling are a constant reference, and a lived reality, in the periods
covered by the other chapters.
That soundworld is the product of the human clash and mesh of colonial slave
society in the gold mines of southwestern Colombia, as described in Chapter 2.
The chapter, populated by white marimberos, black violists, multilingual enslaved
cosmopolitans, and other unexpected figures, provides a glimpse, from what
little the historical record can tell us, about a moment before the definitive racial
and musical ideologies that frame our understandings of black musicality in the
Americas were fully set in place.
The question that arises then, given its deeply entangled origins, is how southern
Pacific music came to be understood as being “black.” Chapter 3 suggests that the
question might be rephrased, with music occupying a more structurally promi-
nent place; rather than assume that preexisting ideas of blackness influenced
understandings of music, I offer that notions of musicality were integral to the
consolidation of notions of blackness in the southern Pacific. Both are understood
as measured by the yardstick of modernity, which is also a reference for people’s
Introduction 23
everyday microtactics for negotiating, and at times contesting, the relationships
between music, race, and modernity. I suggest that rather than mutually exclu-
sive positions, and even less as periodized stages of development, these stances
and practices are more properly considered as repertoires of scripts and modes
of social affiliation, which individuals freely borrow from and shift between the
micropolitics of their social interactions and the contingencies of their engage-
ment with ongoing processes of modernity in Colombia’s southern Pacific
Chapter 4 examines the assimilation of Pacific musical practices into the par-
adigm of folklore at the mid-​twentieth century, marking a new relationship be-
tween the palpable (and audible) manifestations of culture and the epistemologies
and socialities that undergird it. Folklore was part of a broader resignification of
the nature and the role of the much-​invoked figure of “the people” (el pueblo) in
the Colombian nation, including racial thinking about the people. The chapter
traces the structure of this invisibility of blackness from conceptualizations of the
nation’s cultural foundations, and it also shows how innovative practitioners were
able to parlay a much-​circulated discourse about the Colombian regions into rec-
ognition of the Pacific as a culturally salient region, but also of blackness as being
among the nation’s cultural wellsprings. Paradoxically, it was through the same,
often disempowering practice of reification that the affirmation and representa-
tion of the local became possible, even as the circumscription of the folkloric ob-
ject made it possible for a number of different meanings to be injected into it.
Chapter 5 discusses how, over the past three decades, black southern Pacific tra-
ditional music has been recast as a touchstone for cultural difference through its
mobilization by the Afro-​Colombian social movement. The ability of black artists,
activists, and intellectuals to posit a credible black identity in Colombia depended
on what might be called a “politics of resemblance,” the couching of local black cul-
tural practices in such a way as to be recognizable as legitimate bearers of credible
difference. Once adopted by the state in the 1991 multicultural Constitution, the
sounded poetics of the black Pacific, reconstituted as música del Pacífico, has been
taken up in a context of neoliberal multiculturalism, as a resource for a variety of
divergent, even contradictory agendas, including economic development, social
amelioration, governance, and local activism.

Notes

1. I am trying to be careful with terminology. The term Afro-​Colombian originated in


midcentury anthropology (Arboleda 1950), although it became widely adopted only in the
1990s. In part because I trace that process as a self-​conscious, reflexive discursive move, I gen-
erally do not use the term here unless I am referring to a very specific form of identitarian
24 Rites, Rights & Rhythms
self-​presentation in the 1990s. Instead, I generally use terms derived from the fairly generic, if
still imperfect, word black (with a lowercase b).
2. Omi and Winant (2014[1986]).
3. Okihiro (2008).
4. Matory (2005:73); Brown (2005:6).
5. Monge Oviedo (1992). The precise numbers vary depending on how blackness is iden-
tified. The 2005 national census estimate of 4.5 million (10.6 percent of the total population)
has been broadly criticized (Zúñiga 2006). Urrea, Ramírez, and Lopez (n.d. [2000], cited by
Wade 2002:21) have estimated a figure of 18 percent (5.4 million). An estimate by the National
Planning Department (DNP 1998:16 and appendix) suggested that 26 percent of the total pop-
ulation is black or “Afro-​descendent,” equaling about 10.6 million black Colombians in 1998
(11.15 million in 2005).
6. Friedemann (1984).
7. See Restrepo and Rojas (2008).
8. Cf. Restrepo (2005).
9. Herskovits (1966:53, 61).
10. The word America refers to the entirety of the Western hemisphere, of course.
11. Losonczy (2006:35).
12. Wade (1993).
13. See, respectively, Moore (1997); Averill (1997); and Vianna (1999 [1995]); Rafael
Trujillo’s Dominican Republic provides another outlier.
14. This is the so-​called Violencia of interparty killings that lasted from 1948 to about 1958,
before being attenuated first by the brief dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla, and then by a power-​
sharing arrangement between the two major political parties.
15. Or, as we might say now, “partly cultural.” The anthropologizing shift from elite culture,
in the singular, to an idea of multiple cultures, in the plural, has been central to the conforma-
tion of to multiculturalism (Williams 1975; Ochoa 2003; Miller 1994).
16. Austerlitz (1997); Averill (1997); Moore (1997); Vianna (1999 [1995]); Turino (2003);
Wade (2000).
17. Wade (2000).
18. Moore (1997); Vianna (1999 [1995]).
19. This is not rendered on the map shown here.
20. A department (departamento) in Colombia is an administrative and territorial entity
akin to a state or province.
21. There is a certain amount of canonicity in place between these regions as well, with
some receiving more academic attention than others.
22. Foucault (1994). See Foucault (1977).
23. Bourdieu (1977).
24. Foucualt (1977, 1987).
25. Winters (2003:322); cf. Bogues (2006); Chude-​Sokei (2015:221).
26. Mbembe (2000:261).
27. Here and next, see Iyanaga (2015:185).
28. Keane (2005:186).
29. Herzfeld (1997:58).
30. Samuels (2004).
31. Miller and Yúdice (2002:1); Álvarez et al. (1998).
32. Erlmann (1999); cf. Feld (1996).
Another random document with
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The “Violette” mentioned in the fourth reference above may not be
identical with the Violet of the older writers but it seems to be similar.
According to Parkinson the Violet is “a small and long blackish blew
plum, ripe about Bartholomew tide, a very good dry eating plum.”
Victor Sand Cherry. (Prunus besseyi × Munsoniana) × Domestica.
1. Am. Br. Assoc. Rpt. 2:184. 1906.
Theodore Williams of Benson, Nebraska pollinated Prunus
besseyi with Wild Goose and the resulting seedling was fertilized
with pollen from Quackenboss. This final cross resulted in the variety
under discussion. Fruit nearly two inches in diameter; apparently of
value.
Violet Imperial. Domestica. 1. Horticulturist 4:196. 1849.
Die Violette Kaiserpflaume 1. Impériale Violette 1.
Violet Imperial is usually considered the same as Red Magnum
Bonum but Liegel describes it as distinct in that its leaves are
shorter, its fruit smaller, darker and ripening period three or four
weeks later.
Violet Royal. Domestica. Mentioned in Miller Gard. Kal. 155. 1734.
Violette Americaine. Species? 1. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 452. 1889.
Mathieu found reference in Revue Horticole 351. 1869.
Virgata. Species? 1. Ga. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 51. 1889.
A tender shrub of value only as an ornamental. Flowers semi-
double, rose colored; fruit of medium size, oblong, yellow; flesh
yellow, juicy, subacid; quality fair; clingstone; very early.
Virgie. Hortulana mineri × Hortulana. 1. Vt. Sta. An. Rpt. 12:229.
1899.
Originated with A. L. Bruce of Texas; a cross between Miner and
Crimson Beauty. Fruit medium, nearly round; suture a line; cavity
very shallow; deep crimson with many yellow dots; flesh yellow;
good; stone small, round, slightly flattened, clinging.
Virginia Damson. Insititia. 1. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 151. 1891.
Mentioned in the preceding reference as doing well in Virginia.
Von Berlepsch Zwetsche. Domestica. Mentioned in Mathieu Nom.
Pom. 453. 1889.
Berlepsch’s Violette Zwetsche.
Von Bose Rote Zwetsche. Species? Mentioned in Mathieu Nom.
Pom. 453. 1889.
Von Lade Späte Mirabelle. Insititia. Listed in Mathieu Nom. Pom.
453. 1889.
Von Moro Reine Claude. Domestica. 1. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 453.
1889.
Mathieu’s reference taken from Pomologische Monatshefte 1.
1878.
Voslauer Zwetsche. Domestica. 1. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 453. 1889.
2. Guide Prat. 163, 367. 1895.
Similar to the Italian Prune.
Vulcan. Triflora ×? 1. Vt. Sta. An. Rpt. 12:229. 1899.
A hybrid grown by Luther Burbank; much like Wickson. Fruit very
large, oval, with sides unequal; cavity large, abrupt; stem short, very
stout; suture deep at the top; purple with darker shades; dots
numerous, yellow; flesh red next the skin, sweet and pleasant;
excellent; stone large, elliptical, slightly flattened, clinging.
Wabash. Species? 1. Ind. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 72. 1868.
Noted as a native variety grown in Gibson and Posey Counties,
Indiana. Tree low and shrubby, bearing early; fruit large, conical.
Wady. Species? 1. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 286. 1887. 2. Cornell Sta. Bul.
38:80. 1892. 3. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:62. 1897.
Wady’s Early 1, 2, 3.
Reported as of little value except for early ripening and
productiveness; fruit small; good for canning.
Wagner. Americana. 1. Ia. Sta. Bul. 46:291. 1900.
Wagner No. 9 1.
A seedling of Weaver fertilized with a wild variety; grown by J. F.
Wagner, Bennett, Iowa, in 1894. Fruit small, ovate; cavity broad,
shallow; suture clearly defined; yellowish-red; bloom thin; flesh
brownish-yellow, sugary, sweet; quality best; stone large, flattened,
clinging; mid-season.
Wahre Frühzwetsche. Domestica. 1. Lucas Vollst. Hand. Obst. 473.
1894. 2. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 453. 1889.
August Zwetsche 2. Couetsche Précoce 2. Couetsche Précoce La
Vraie 2. Diel’s August Zwetsche 2. Frühe Gemeine Zwetsche 2.
Frühe Haus Zwetsche 2. Frühe Zwetsche 2. Précoce Veritable 2.
Tree large, a quick grower; fruit medium, oval, dark blue; stone
completely free; valuable for dessert and drying.
Wahre Weisse Diaprée. Species? Mentioned in Mathieu Nom. Pom.
453. 1889.
Dorell’s Neue Weisse Diaprée.
Wakapa. Triflora × Americana. 1. S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 108. 1908.
A hybrid between De Soto and Red June reported by Hansen, the
originator, in the preceding reference as worthy of further testing.
Walker Seedling. Domestica. 1. Can. Hort. 21:390. 1898.
A seedling raised by A. W. Walker, Clarksburg, Ontario. Fruit of
medium size, dark maroon; flesh greenish, tender, moderately juicy,
sweet, pleasant; freestone; early.
Wallace. Americana. 1. Meneray Cat.
A seedling of Harrison grown by H. A. Terry; introduced by F. W.
Meneray, Council Bluffs, Iowa. Tree healthy, vigorous and
productive; fruit large, inclined to oblong, bright yellow overspread
with red; flesh firm; good; semi-clinging; mid-season.
Walter. Domestica. 1. Oberdieck Deut. Obst. Sort. 431. 1881.
Produced by Herr Walter in Altenburg, Germany; valuable for table
and market purposes. Tree vigorous; shoots glabrous; fruit roundish-
oval, medium; suture deep; halves usually equal; stem thick, straight,
strongly hairy; skin not adherent, dark brown; bloom thick; flesh
yellow, tender, very juicy; like Reine Claude in flavor; early.
Walther Pflaume. Species? 1. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 453. 1889.
The reference by Mathieu came from Monatsschrift für Pomologie
281. 1858.
Ward October Red. Rivularis ×? 1. Munson Cat. 10. 1902-3.
Found in Clay County, Texas, by Robert Ward; introduced by T. V.
Munson, Denison, Texas. Tree very vigorous and hardy, spreading
habit, very productive; fruit dark bright red with meaty flesh; excellent
quality; stone small; ripens in Texas in September and October.
Warner. Domestica. 1. W. N. Y. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 31:60. 1886. 2.
Cornell Sta. Bul. 131:193. 1897.
Warner’s Late 1. Warner’s Late Red 2.
Warner originated in Schoharie County, New York, and was
introduced by S. D. Willard, Geneva, New York. It is a late variety too
small and unattractive for commercial purposes. Fruit below medium
in size, roundish; cavity shallow; suture a line; stem three-quarters of
an inch long; skin moderately thick, dull greenish-red; bloom thin;
flesh yellow, juicy, firm, sweet, mild; quality fair to good; stone oval,
slightly flattened, clinging; season very late.
Warren. Americana. 1. Terry Cat. 5. 1900.
Grown from seed of Hawkeye by H. A. Terry; first fruited in 1897.
Fruit large, mottled light red, with thin bloom; late.
Wastesa. Species? 1. Cir. S. Dak. Exp. Sta. 1910.
State Fair No. 16 1.
A seedling of some native plum; grown and sent out by N. E.
Hansen of the South Dakota Experiment Station.
Waterloo Pflaume. Domestica? 1. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 453. 1889.
Duc de Waterloo 1. Prune de Waterloo 1.
This may be identical with Golden Drop although Mathieu
separates them.
Watson. Triflora × Angustifolia varians? 1. Vt. Sta. Bul. 67:21. 1898.
A seedling of Kelsey thought to have been pollinated by Lone Star;
originated with D. H. Watson, Brenham, Texas; introduced by W. A.
Yates in 1897. Tree vigorous, open; fruit large, pointed, red when
fully ripe; flesh yellow, juicy, melting; stone nearly free, small.
Watts. Species? 1. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 166. 1885.
Mentioned as grown by Dr. D. S. Watts of Madison County,
Mississippi.
Waugh. Triflora × Hortulana. 1. Vt. Sta. An. Rpt. 14:273. 1901. 2.
Rural N. Y. 61:658. 1902. 3. Ibid. 65:730. 1906.
Grown by J. W. Kerr, Denton, Maryland, from seed of Chabot
fertilized with Wayland; introduced in 1901. Favorably reported
where tested. Tree vigorous, rapid and shapely in growth; fruit
medium to large, roundish inclining to oblong; cavity shallow; stem
slender; dark purplish-red; dots few and indistinct; flesh yellow, firm,
meaty; very good; stone small, semi-clinging; mid-season or early.
Wax. Domestica. 1. Cultivator 3:19. 1855. 2. Mathieu Nom. Pom.
425. 1889.
Cire 2. Wax Plum 2.
Raised by Elisha Dorr of Albany, New York; thought to be a cross
between Bleeker and Denniston Superb; resembles Bleeker in
growth and productiveness of tree; fruit large, slightly oval; stem very
long; deep yellow overspread with carmine; flesh greenish-yellow,
juicy, firm, sweet with a sprightly flavor; clingstone; late.
Wazata. Nigra? 1. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:42. 1892. 2. Bailey Ev. Nat.
Fruits 190. 1898. 3. Waugh Plum Cult. 171. 1901.
Found wild in Minnesota; introduced by P. M. Gideon and W. F.
Heikes. Tree upright, very ornamental in bloom; fruit small to
medium, round, dull red; flesh yellow; inferior; clingstone; mid-
season to late.
Webster Gage. Domestica. 1. Watkins Cat. 1892. 2. Guide Prat.
157, 364. 1895. 3. Garden 56:344. 1899.
Reine-Claude de Webster 2. Webster Gage 2. Webster’s Gage 1,
3.
Tree bears regularly but sparsely; fruit larger than Reine Claude, a
little more oval in shape, yellowish-green; flesh yellowish, tender,
soft, juicy, rich; mid-season.
Weeping Blood. Triflora. 1. Hill Side Nursery Sp. Cir. 1895-6.
From J. L. Normand of Marksville, Louisiana; produces blood-red
plums of good quality; valuable only as an ornamental.
Weisses oder Grünes Zeiberl. Species? 1. Mathieu Nom. Pom.
454. 1889.
Weisse Zeiberl 1.
Mathieu found reference to this variety in Wiener Garten-Zeitung
290. 1884.
Welch. Americana. 1. Meneray Cat.
Grown by H. A. Terry from seed of Hammer; introduced by F. W.
Meneray, Council Bluffs, Iowa. Tree upright, vigorous; fruit large,
bright red on a yellow ground; flesh yellow, rich; clingstone; mid-
season.
Welcome. Americana. 1. Can. Exp. Farms Rpt. 100. 1903.
A handsome seedling of De Soto grown by the Central
Experimental Farm, Ottawa, Canada. Tree vigorous and productive;
fruit above medium size, oval, flattened; cavity narrow, shallow; rich
yellow, more or less washed with red; dots very small, yellow,
indistinct; bloom thin; skin moderately thick, tough; flesh yellow, juicy,
sweet, pleasant; good; mid-season.
Weisse Kaiserin. Domestica. 1. Oberdieck Deut. Obst. Sort. 418.
1881. 2. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 431. 1889.
Datte Jaune 2. Gelbe Marunke 2. Grosse Gelbe Dattel Pflaume 2.
Grosse Gelbe Dattel Zwetsche 2. Imperial Jaune 2. Prune Datte 2.
Weisse Kaiserin 2.
Probably of German origin; tree medium in size, a rapid grower,
productive; fruit medium in size, roundish-oval; suture shallow; stem
short, glabrous; skin not adherent, whitish-yellow, the sunny side dull
red, sometimes dotted with red; dots numerous, fine, yellowish;
bloom thin; flesh whitish-yellow, firm, very juicy, highly flavored; good
for dessert and cooking; clingstone; late.
Werder’sche Frühzwetsche. Species? Mentioned in Mathieu Nom.
Pom. 454. 1889.
Stengel Pflaume.
Wetherell. Domestica. 1. Mag. Hort. 6:92. 1840.
Col. Wetherell 1.
Originated by Henry Corse, Montreal, Canada, about 1830.
Spoken of highly at the time of its origin; valuable for commercial
purposes.
Wetherill’s Sweet. Insititia. 1. Prince Treat. Hort. 27. 1828. 2. Lond.
Hort. Soc. Cat. 154. 1831.
A Damson-like plum; small, sweet and delicious; clingstone; early.
Whatisit. Prunus besseyi × Americana. 1. Kerr Cat. 18. 1899-1900.
Grown by Theodore Williams of Nebraska from seed of Prunus
besseyi pollinated by an Americana; introduced by J. W. Kerr. Tree
upright and vigorous, bears early, productive; fruit small, spherical
inclining to oblong, dark purplish-red.
Wheat. Insititia. 1. Parkinson Par. Ter. 576. 1629. 2. Rea Flora 209.
1676. 3. Ray Hist. Plant. 2:1529. 1688. 4. Lond. Hort. Soc.
Cat. 154. 1831. 5. Floy-Lindley Guide Orch. Gard. 293, 383.
1846. 6. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 913. 1869. 7. Hogg Fruit
Man. 730. 1884.
English Wheat 6. Great Whitton 4. Nutmeg 2. Nutmeg 4, 5, 6. Red
Wheate 1. Wheaten 3. Wheaten 4, 5. Whitton 4, 5. Wheat Plum 5.
Wheat Plum 6. Wheaton 6. Whitlow 6.
During the Seventeenth Century this name was applied to all
Insititia plums and is still so used in parts of Europe.
Whitaker. Munsoniana. 1. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:51, 86. 1892. 2. Am.
Pom. Soc. Rpt. 74. 1895. 3. Waugh Plum Cult. 190. 1901. 4.
Ill. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 212. 1904.
Whitacre 4.
Whitaker is a seedling of Wild Goose raised and introduced by J.
T. Whitaker of Tyler, Texas. Fruit of medium size, oval; cavity
shallow; suture a line; skin thin; bright red; bloom thin; dots many,
distinct; flesh yellow, sweet; quality fair; stone small, long-oval,
pointed, flat, clinging; mid-season. Listed in the catalog of the
American Pomological Society since 1899.
Whitby. Species? 1. Can. Hort. 18:350. 1895.
A seedling exhibited at the Toronto Industrial Fair in 1895 by the
originator, J. K. Gordon, Whitby, Canada.
White Corn. Domestica. Mentioned in Lond. Hort. Soc. Cat. 154.
1831.
White Diaper. Domestica. 1. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 952. 1869.
Diapre Blanc 1. Diaprée Blanche 1.
This variety seems to have been known only by Downing who
says it is a small, round plum with a whitish-green skin covered with
bloom; flesh rather firm, pale yellow, sweet; good; mid-season.
White Honey Damson. Insititia. 1. Wild Bros. Cat. 1892.
A sweet yellow Damson.
White Muscle. Domestica. 1. Parkinson Par. Ter. 576. 1629.
White Mussell 1.
A strain of the Muscle plum differing from it only in its greenish-
white color.
White Otschakoff. Domestica. 1. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 61. 1887. 2.
Bailey Ann. Hort. 18. 1889.
Bielaya Otschakorskaya 1.
One of the numerous varieties imported from East Europe by the
Iowa Agricultural College about 1882. At one time recommended for
the prairie states by Professor Budd.
White Pear. Domestica. 1. Parkinson Par. Ter. 576. 1629. 2. Langley
Pomona 96, 97. 1729. 3. Lond. Hort. Soc. Cat. 154. 1831. 4.
Prince Pom. Man. 2:104. 1831.
Late White Pear 1.
A variety of ancient and unknown origin. Fruit medium in size,
obovate; flesh adhering to the stone.
White Peascod. Domestica. 1. Parkinson Par. Ter. 576. 1629. 2.
Rea Flora 208. 1676.
Peascod Plum 2. White Pescod 1.
Mentioned by the early writers; similar to the Green and Red
Peascod.
White Prune. Americana. 1. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 228. 1909.
Grown by H. A. Terry, Crescent, Iowa; not yet introduced. Fruit
long-oval, yellow, partly over-spread with red; bloom thick,
conspicuous; skin thick, tough, acrid; flesh very firm, meaty,
sweetish; good; freestone.
White Queen. Domestica. 1. Ann. Pom. Belge 7:95, Pl. 1859. 2.
Mas Le Verger 6:101, fig. 1866-73. 3. Hogg Fruit Man. 721.
1884. 4. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 454. 1889. 5. Mich. Sta. Bul.
177:42, 43. 1899.
Neue Weisse Kaiserin 4. Prune Reine Blanche 1. Reine Blanche
2, 3. Reine Blanche 2, 4. Reine Blanche de Galopin 4. Weisse
Königin 2. Weisse Königin 4.
Raised by M. Galopin, a nurseryman of Liege, Belgium, about
1844; introduced into America by the United States Department of
Agriculture about 1890. Tree vigorous, upright; fruit medium in size,
roundish-ovate, flattened at the ends, yellowish-white, sometimes
tinged with red; suture shallow; cavity shallow, wide; flesh greenish-
yellow, juicy, aromatic; good; stone small, oval, clinging; late.
White Sweet Damson. Insititia. 1. Mag. Hort. 6:123. 1840.
Originated as a seedling in Essex County, New York, sometime
previous to 1840.
White Wheat. Insititia. 1. Parkinson Par. Ter. 576. 1629. 2. Knoop
Fructologie 2:63. 1771.
Spilling Jaune-simple 2. White Wheate 1.
A yellow variety of the Wheat plum of Europe. Fruit small, oval,
yellow; fair quality.
White Virginal. Domestica. 1. Prince Pom. Man. 2:73. 1831. 2.
Poiteau Pom. Franc. 1. 1846. 3. U. S. Pat. Off. Rpt. 306.
1854. 4. Bridgeman Gard. Ass’t 130. 1857. 5. Mas Le Verger
6:129. 1866-73. 6. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 454. 1889. 7. Guide
Prat. 158, 367. 1895.
Altesse Blanche? 6, 7. Double Beurre Witte? 6, 7. Peach 3.
Précoce 7. Prune Précoce? 6. Prune Virginale 2. Virginal à gros fruit
blanc 1. Virginal blanc 1. Virginale 4. Virginale à Fruit Blanc 6, 7.
Virginale à gros fruit blanc 5, 6, 7. Virginal Blanche 6. Virginale
blanche 3, 5, 7. Virgin 6. White Virginal 4. White Virginale 6. Weisse
Jungfernpflaume 6. Weisse Jungfernpflaume 5, 7.
A variety confused by Downing with the Red Virginal. Fruit
medium in size, roundish-oblate; suture a line; greenish-yellow;
bloom heavy; flesh pale greenish, juicy, melting, sweet, pleasant;
good; clingstone; mid-season.
Whyte. Nigra. 1. Can. Exp. Farm. Bul. 2nd Ser. 3:57. 1900. 2. Ibid.
43:39. 1903.
Whyte’s Red Seedling 1.
Grown by R. B. Whyte, Ottawa, Canada; under test at the Central
Experimental Farm, under the name “Whyte R. B., No. 3.” Fruit
medium in size, roundish; cavity narrow; suture a line; apex rounded;
deep red; dots and bloom lacking; skin thin, tender; flesh yellow,
juicy, sweet; good; stone long, semi-clinging; mid-season.
Whitley. Domestica. 1. Hogg Fruit Man. 731. 1884.
Whitley’s 1.
Fruit below medium size, round; suture faint; stem on a slight
elevation, of medium length, slender; red with yellow dots, darker on
the side next the sun; flesh yellow with white veins, juicy, sweet and
well flavored; clingstone; late.
Wier. Americana. 1. Am. Gard. 13:460. 1892. 2. Cornell Sta. Bul.
38:45, 86. 1892. 3. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:63. 1897.
Wier Large Red 1. Wier’s Large Red 2, 3.
Originated by D. B. Wier of Illinois; resembles Miner, but is no
better than that variety. Fruit large, round; skin thin, red; flesh yellow,
moderately firm; fair to good; clingstone.
Wier No. 50. Americana. 1. Kerr Cat. 1894. 2. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:63.
1897.
Wier’s No. 50, 1, 2.
From D. B. Wier of Illinois. Tree vigorous, healthy, productive,
bears annually; fruit large, round, dark red over yellow; good;
clingstone; mid-season.
Wilde. Domestica. 1. Horticulturist 7:402. 1852. 2. Downing Fr. Trees
Am. 953. 1869.
Wilde’s 1.
Raised by a Mr. Comack from a stone brought from Italy by R. H.
Wilde. Tree productive; fruit medium to large, oval-oblong, greenish-
yellow; flesh yellowish-green, firm, dry, sweet; clingstone; early.
Wilder. Munsoniana. 1. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:78. 1892. 2. Terry Cat.
1899. 3. Ala. Coll. Sta. Bul. 112:178. 1900. 4. Waugh Plum
Cult. 175. 1901.
Col. Wilder 1, 2. Colonel Wilder 4. President Wilder 3.
Wilder was grown from seed of Wild Goose in 1885 by H. A. Terry,
Crescent, Iowa. Fruit of medium size, roundish-oval; suture a line;
skin firm, dark red; bloom thin; dots distinct; flesh yellow, juicy,
sweet; quality good; stone large, oval, clinging; mid-season.
Wild Goose Improved. Munsoniana. 1. Stark Cat. 29. 1910.
An improved strain of Wild Goose introduced by Stark Brothers,
Louisiana, Missouri, in 1910.
Wildrose. Americana. 1. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 134. 1887. 2. Cornell
Sta. Bul. 38:45, 86. 1892. 3. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:64. 1897.
A wild seedling found in Minnesota; introduced in 1880 by A. W.
Sias, Rochester, Minnesota. Fruit large, round, yellow blushed with
red; flesh firm; clingstone; early to mid-season.
Wilkinson. Domestica. 1. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 400. 1857.
Tree vigorous; branches smooth, rather slender; fruit of medium
size, oval, slightly necked; skin reddish-purple; bloom thick; stalk
medium, set in a small cavity; flesh dark yellow, firm, sweet, not rich;
semi-clinging; late.
Willamette. Domestica.
For a discussion of this plum see the Pacific.
Williams. Nigra? 1. Kerr Cat. 1894. 2. Ibid. 15. 1897. 3. Wis. Sta.
Bul. 63:64. 1897.
Tree vigorous, healthy, moderately productive; fruit large, oblong,
pointed, red; clingstone; early.
Wilmeth Late. Species? 1. Tex. Sta. Bul. 32:490. 1894.
Noticed in the preceding reference as on trial.
Wilson. Americana. 1. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:64. 1897.
Noted in the preceding reference as a very early fine plum.
Wine Plum. Domestica. 1. Coxe Cult. Fr. Trees 237. 1817. 2. Prince
Pom. Man. 2:101. 1832.
Much like the Yellow Egg in appearance but smaller, oblong, pale
green; stem long; flesh rich, juicy and well flavored; early.
Winesour. Insititia. 1. Forsyth Treat. Fr. Trees 21. 1803. 2. Prince
Pom. Man. 2:101. 1832. 3. Floy-Lindley Guide Orch. Gard.
294, 383. 1846. 4. Mas Pom. Gen. 2:17. 1873. 5. Mathieu
Nom. Pom. 453. 1889. 6. Guide Prat. 163, 367. 1895.
Rotherham 3, 5, 6. Sauere Weinpflaume 4. Sauere Wein Pflaume
Von Yorkshire 5, 6. Sour Wine Plum of Yorkshire 5, 6. Vineuse
acidule 4, 5. Vineuse-Acidule 6. Vinisour 6. Weinsauerliche Pflaume
5. Weinsauerliche Zwetsche 4, 6. Winesour 6. Winesour Plum 5.
Yorkshire Winesour 5, 6.
An old English variety from Rotherham in Yorkshire, where it is
highly esteemed for making preserves. Fruit of the Damson type,
small, oval; stem one-half inch long; dark purple; dots dark colored;
flesh greenish-yellow, sometimes tinged with red towards the stone,
sour; stone long, slender, pointed, clinging; late.
Winnebago. Americana. 1. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 286. 1887. 2. Wis.
Sta. Bul. 63:64. 1897. 3. Colo. Sta. Bul. 50:47. 1898.
From Minnesota; tree vigorous, rigid and thorny, moderately
productive; fruit medium in size, round, irregular; stem long, slender;
cavity deep; yellow overspread with deep red; skin thin; flesh
yellowish, soft, of inferior flavor; stone elliptical, somewhat oblique,
rather flat, rounded at both ends, clinging; mid-season.
Winter Creke. Domestica. 1. Parkinson Par. Ter. 576. 1629.
Noted by Parkinson as very late.
Winter Damson. Insititia. 1. Lond. Hort. Soc. Cat. 146. 1831. 2.
Prince Pom. Man. 2:89. 1832. 3. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 297.
1845. 4. Hooper W. Fr. Book 244. 1857. 5. Mas Pom. Gen.
2:145. 1873.
Black Damson 3. Blue Damson 2. Blue Damascene 2. Common
Blue Damson 2. Common Damson 3. Damas d’Hiver 5. Damson 2.
Damson 2, 3. Damson Winter 4. Early Damson 3. Late Damson 2.
Late Purple Damson 2. Purple Damson 3. Purple Winter Damson 2.
Winter Damson 2, 5.
Mas thought that this variety originated in America, but since it
was first noted in England it is probably an importation to the New
World from that country. Downing distinguished it from the common
Damson by its extreme lateness. Tree medium in size; fruit roundish,
small; suture a line; purplish-black; bloom thick; flesh greenish-
yellow, juicy, acid, with a slight astringency; good for preserving;
clingstone.
Wiseman. Domestica. Mentioned in Wild Bros. Cat. 1908.
Wiseman’s Prune.
Wohanka. Triflora × Americana. 1. S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 108. 1908.
A hybrid between De Soto and Red June grown by Hansen of the
South Dakota Experiment Station who considers it worthy of trial.
Wolf and Japan. Triflora × Americana mollis. 1. Ill. Hort. Soc. Rpt.
424. 1905.
Listed with a number of plums which were tested by H. T.
Thompson, Marengo, Illinois.
Wolf Clingstone. Americana mollis. 1. Wis. Sta. Bul. 87:18. 1901. 2.
S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 93:13. 1905.
Clingstone Wolf. Wolf Cling 1.
Propagated and sent out in many cases as the true Wolf which it
much resembles except that it is darker in color and is a clingstone.
It seems to be more resistant to diseases and insects than Wolf.
Woolston. Domestica. 1. McIntosh Bk. Gard. 2:53. 1855. 2.
Horticulturist 13:168. 1858. 3. Mas Le Verger 6:153, fig. 77.
1866-73. 4. Mathieu Nom. Pom. 454. 1889. 5. Can. Exp.
Farms Rpt. 433. 1905.
Reine-Claude de Woolston 5. Reine-Claude Noire de Woolston 3.
Woolston Black 4. Woolston Black Gage 1. Woolston Gage 2.
Woolston’s Black Gage 3, 4. Woolston’s Violette Reine-Claude 4.
Raised by a Mr. Dowling of Southampton, England. Tree vigorous,
productive; fruit medium in size, roundish, purplish-black; suture not
pronounced; cavity deep and wide; stem medium in length, slender;
flesh yellow, juicy, sweet, sugary, tender, aromatic; very good;
freestone; mid-season.
Wooster. Munsoniana. 1. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:65. 1897.
Mentioned in the preceding reference as not being hardy in
Minnesota.
Wooten. Munsoniana. 1. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:65. 1892. 2. Thomas
Am. Fruit Cult. 492. 1897. 3. Waugh Plum Cult. 191. 1901.
Wootton 2.
Wooten was found growing wild in Burnet County, Texas, in 1876,
by F. T. Ramsey; introduced by A. N. Ramsey & Son. Fruit oval;
cavity shallow; suture a line; skin thin; bright red; bloom thin; flesh
yellow; quality good; stone large, clinging; mid-season.
Worth. Americana. 1. Kerr Cat. 7. 1902-3.
Originated by Theodore Williams of Nebraska; named and
introduced by J. W. Kerr in 1902. Tree vigorous, healthy and
productive; fruit large, round-oblong, purplish-red on a greenish-
yellow ground; semi-clinging; mid-season.
Wragg. Americana. 1. Meneray Cat.
A seedling of Hawkeye grown by H. A. Terry; introduced by F. W.
Meneray, Council Bluffs, Iowa. Tree vigorous, healthy, productive;
fruit very large, yellow blotched with dark red; flesh yellow, firm, rich;
good; clingstone; mid-season.
Wragg Freestone. Species? 1. Wis. Sta. Bul. 87:18. 1901.
Received by the Wisconsin Experiment Station from Edson
Gaylord, Nora Springs, Iowa. Fruit medium to small, roundish, dark
purplish-red with numerous elongated yellowish markings; bloom
heavy; stem long, slender; skin tender, not harsh; flesh greenish-
yellow, crisp, very rich but harsh near the center; stone round,
grooved, semi-clinging.
Wunder von New York. Species? Mentioned in Mathieu Nom. Pom.
454. 1889.
Merville de New York.
Wyandotte. Species? 1. Mich. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 290. 1889.
Professor Budd of Iowa mentioned this plum as hardy and as
bearing continuously.
Wyant and Japan. Triflora × Americana. 1. Ill. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 420.
1905.
Mentioned in a list of varieties under test by H. T. Thompson,
Marengo, Illinois. Said to be a hybrid seedling; fruit light red; fair
quality; freestone; mid-season.
Wyckoff. Munsoniana. 1. Linn County Nur. Cat.
Wyckoff was found growing wild along the Cedar River, Iowa, by a
Mr. Wyckoff; introduced by Snyder Brothers, Center Point, Iowa.
Wyedale. Domestica. 1. Hogg Fruit Man. 732. 1884. 2. Garden
58:395. 1900. 3. Thompson Gard. Ass’t 4:159. 1901.
From Yorkshire, England; much grown in the northern parts of
England. Tree very productive, strong and upright in growth; fruit
small, oval; cavity small; dark purple, almost black; flesh greenish-
yellow, brisk, juicy, agreeably flavored; clingstone; late.
Wyzerka. Domestica. 1. Kan. Sta. Bul. 73:191. 1897. 2. Ibid.
101:121, Pl. 6 fig. 1. 1901. 3. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man.
328. 1903.
Wiezerka 1, 2.
Wyzerka is one of the numerous Russian varieties imported by J.
L. Budd of the Iowa Experiment Station. There seems to have been
some confusion in the distribution of this plum, for Budd and Hansen,
in reference three, describe Wyzerka as a large, oval, yellow plum
with a fine peach-like flavor; the variety sent to this Station under this
name bears a small, purplish-black, Damson-like fruit, long-oval in
form, cavity shallow; suture a line; skin thin; bloom very heavy; flesh
yellow, juicy, slightly fibrous, sweet, mild; flavor good; stone oval,
small, free; mid-season.
Yates. Triflora × Angustifolia varians. 1. Vt. Sta. Bul. 67:22. 1898. 2.
Vt. Sta. An. Rpt. 14:275. 1901.
From seed of Kelsey thought to have been pollinated with Lone
Star; originated with D. H. Watson, Brenham, Texas; introduced by
W. A. Yates, 1897. Tree thrifty, healthy; fruit large, roundish, red
when fully ripe; clingstone; mid-season.
Yellow Americana. Species? Letter from Kerr.
Originated by Theodore Williams, Benson, Nebraska.
Yellow Egg. Species? 1. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:66. 1897.
Goff mentions a variety under this name which differs from the
older plum of the same name. Tree of weeping habit, productive; fruit
long; freestone.
Yellow, 43 Fischer. Domestica. 1. Bailey Ann. Hort. 18. 1889.
Introduced into this country from Russia by Professor J. L. Budd of
Ames, Iowa.
Yellow Impératrice. Domestica. 1. Ann. Pom. Belge 55, Pl. 1853. 2.
Pom. France 7: No. 11. 1871. 3. Mas Le Verger 6:113, fig.
1866-73. 4. Hogg Fruit Man. 732. 1884. 5. Mathieu Nom.
Pom. 431. 1889. 6. Cat. Cong. Pom. France 461. 1906.
Altesse Blanche 4, 5. D’Altesse Blanche 6. De Monsieur Jaune 3.
Gelbe Herrn Pflaume 5. Impératrice Jaune 3, ?5. Jaune de Monsieur
2. Jaune de Monsieur 5, 6. Monsieur à Fruits Jaune 4, 5. Monsieur à
Fruits Jaunes 3. Monsieur à Fruits Jaunes 5, 6. Monsieur Jaune 6.
Prune de Monsieur Jaune 5. Prune de Monsieur Jaune 1. Prune de
Monsieur, Varietè Jaune 5. Prune Monsieur Jaune 2. Prune
d’Altesse Blanche 2, 5. Virginale Blanche 4, ?5. Yellow Impératrice ?
3, 5.
M. Jacquin, nurseryman of Paris, France, obtained this plum from
seed of a cross between the Orleans and the Reine Claude planted
about 1820; brought to notice in 1845. Mas considered Hogg’s and
Downing’s Yellow Impératrice as different from the French variety.
Tree medium in vigor; fruit medium in size, usually roundish-oval;
suture broad; halves unequal; skin not adhering, golden-yellow,
dotted and streaked with carmine-red; flesh yellow, juicy, very sweet
and aromatic; freestone; mid-season.
Yellow Imperial. Domestica. 1. Prince Pom. Man. 2:59. 1832.
Imperial jaune 1. Impériale jaune 1.
Described by Prince as distinct from Yellow Egg which it much
resembles but differing in that it is somewhat smaller, about two
weeks earlier and slightly more acid.
Yellow Jack. Domestica. Mentioned in Lond. Hort. Soc. Cat. 154.
1831.
Yellow Jerusalem. Domestica. 1. Hogg Fruit Man. 732. 1884. 2.
Mathieu Nom. Pom. 436. 1889.
Jahns Gelbe Jerusalems Pflaume 2. Jahn’s Jerusalems Pflaume
2. Jerusalem Jaune 1, 2. Jahn’s Gelbe Jerusalems-pflaume 1.
Yellow Jerusalem 2.
Fruit of medium size, roundish-oval; suture a line; cavity deep;
deep yellow with crimson specks next the sun; flesh yellow, with
white veins, tender, juicy, brisk, sweet, very good; clingstone; mid-
season.
Yellow Magnum Bonum. Domestica. 1. Jour. Hort. N. S. 17:228.
1869.
According to the preceding reference this variety is distinct from
the Yellow Egg (White Magnum Bonum). Fruit medium in size, oval,
dull yellow sprinkled with red dots; rich; clingstone; young shoots
smooth.
Yellow Nagate. Triflora. 1. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt. 106. 1891. 2. Can.
Exp. Farm Bul. 2nd Ser. 3:57. 1900.
A little known Triflora very closely resembling if not identical with
some of the standard yellow Trifloras.
Yellow Oregon. Hortulana. 1. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:66. 1897. 2. Vt. Sta.
An. Rpt. 11:287. 1898.
Described by Waugh from specimens received by him from B. A.
Matthews, Iowa. Fruit small, nearly spherical; suture a faint line;
bright golden-yellow; dots many, whitish; skin thick and strong; flesh
yellow and not very firm; quality medium; stone large, smooth,
clinging; inferior in size and quality to Captain or Cumberland.
Yellow Panhandle. Angustifolia watsoni. 1. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:66.
1897. 2. Bailey Ev. Nat. Fruits 222, 223. 1898. 3. Waugh Plum
Cult. 234. 1901. 4. Ga. Sta. Bul. 67:285. 1904.
A variety from the Panhandle of Texas; introduced by F. T. Ramsey
of Austin, Texas. Tree forms a close symmetrical head; fruit small,
roundish-oblong, yellow overspread with clear bright red; dots few,
indistinct; skin tough; flesh yellow, hard; quality poor; stone medium,
oval, turgid, clinging.
Yellow Roman Bullace. Insititia. Mentioned in Lond. Hort. Soc. Cat.
144. 1831.
Yellow Sweet. Americana. 1. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:46. 1892. 2. Colo.
Sta. Bul. 50:47. 1898. 3. Waugh Plum Cult. 168. 1901.
Thought to have originated in Minnesota. Tree small; fruit large,
round inclining to oblong; suture distinct; stem short and stout; yellow
more or less mottled and shaded with red; bloom thin; flesh firm,
juicy, rich, sweet; good; stone round, flat, clinging.
Yellow Transparent. Angustifolia varians. 1. Am. Pom. Soc. Rpt.
162. 1881. 2. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 25. 1897. 3. Ohio Sta. Bul.
113:156. 1899. 4. Waugh Plum Cult. 200. 1901.
Transparent 4 incor. Transparent Yellow 2.
Selected from a seedling orchard of two thousand trees planted
near Denison, Texas, by J. L. Freeman. Tree vigorous, forming a
handsome top, productive; fruit medium in size, oblong, bright
yellow; skin thin and tough, reported to crack badly in some
localities; flesh soft and watery, sweet and good; clingstone; early.
Yellow Wildgoose. Munsoniana? 1. Van Lindley Cat. 42. 1899.
Said to have been introduced by R. Bates of Jackson, South
Carolina. Fruit large, equal in size to Wild Goose with better quality;
ripens at the same time.
Yellow Yosemite. Species? 1. Gard. Mon. 20:176. 1878. 2. Mich.
Sta. Bul. 118:52, 55. 1895.
Yosemite 1. Yosemite Yellow 2.
Yellow Yosemite came from the “Rocky Mountains” about 1870
with the Purple Yosemite; introduced by W. S. Carpenter, Rye, New
York. Fruit roundish; suture a line; skin thick, tough, yellow, with
reddish tinge; flesh yellow, sweet, tender; stone roundish-ovate,
clinging; mid-season.
Yohe. Domestica. 1. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 954. 1869.
Yohes Eagle 1.
Noticed by Downing who says it is an accidental seedling in the
garden of Caleb Yohe, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
York State Prune. Domestica. 1. Thomas Am. Fruit Cult. 504, 505.
1897. 2. Greene Cat. 1897. 3. Sweet Cat. 13. 1897. 4. W. N.
Y. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 44:92. 1899.
Large German Prune 3. York State Prune 3.
A seedling grown near Dansville, New York. As tested at this
Station and by many fruit-growers it is identical with Italian Prune.
Young. Domestica. 1. Downing Fr. Trees Am. 955. 1869.
Young’s Seedling 1.
From Pennsylvania. Tree vigorous; fruit medium in size, roundish-
oval, deep reddish-purple; flesh yellow, sweet; good; freestone; mid-
season.
Yukon. Nigra? 1. Can. Exp. Farms Rpt. 426. 1900.
A seedling grown at Indian Head Experimental Farm, Canada.
Fruit of medium size, red; skin thick; good; early.
Yuteca. Species? 1. Cir. S. Dak. Exp. Sta. 1910.

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