African Diaspora and Colombian Popular Music in the Twentieth Century

Peter Wade

In this paper I argue that the concept of disapora is problematic insofar as it implies a process of traffic outwards from an origin point (usually seen as geographical, cultural and/or "racial"). This origin is often seen as being a key to the definition of diaspora—without it, the concept descends into generalized incoherence (Brubaker 2005). I want to argue for the continued usefulness of a concept of diaspora, in which the "origin" is understood as a space of imagination (which is not to say that it is imaginary, although it may also be that) and in which the connections between the "outlying" points of the diaspora are as important, or more so, than the connections between the outliers and the origin.