Records that frighten the literate elite: música de carrilera and rural modernity in Colombia during the mid-20th century.

Based on exhaustive archival work, this article contributes to the cultural history of the emergence of the so called música de carrilera or carrileruda in the Colombian public sphere during the 1950’s. The phenomenon is evident in two types of apprehensions that are simultaneously registered in journalistic sources. On the one hand, in conspicuous discussions about the danger of extinction of folkloric music: in particular, a constellation of musical genres associated with bambuco, traditional music of the Andean regions which represented the nation. On the other hand, in abundant concerns about noise, understood as unwanted sound, and as a technological, aesthetic and moral entity. The category includes the sound produced by high-volume speakers, radios, record players and jukeboxes, but also that of specific types of music published by local and international record companies, including música carrileruda. This type of music is characterized by its great commercial success but is considered of the lowest artistic value; it is composed of songs classified under different genres (pasillo, waltz, ranchera, corrido, tango, porro, merengue and parranda, among others); and its records are associated with rural and city bars, cafés and jukeboxes, and with vulgar audiences of rural origins. Our analysis is centered on the contrast between these two types of discourse.