Accordion Conjuntos and the Commercialization of Panamanian Música Típica
Moving through the 1940s to the late 1960s, chapter 3 examines música típica’s sudden and wholehearted embrace by Panama’s popular classes. This boom was produced in significant part by massive internal migration of rural people both to the capital and other parts of the interior, the transformative effect of the arrival of cash-based economies in rural areas, the advent of commercial radio, and the creative interventions of pioneering musicians. All these changes, the author shows, stimulated the rapid commercialization of the genre, which further galvanized calls for cultural preservation even as performance opportunities for commercial música típica conjuntos grew dramatically. The chapter closes with an examination of how música típica’s broad acceptance by Panama’s popular classes and its continued connection with the country’s interior led to its development as a form of popular musical nationalism that, by the end of the 1960s, found favor among the leaders of Panama’s left-wing revolutionary government.