Highland Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba and Identity along the Black Pacific at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

This article addresses music and identity in the black Pacific through a discussion of the highland Afro-Ecuadorian bomba (genre of music and dance). Marginalized through much of the twentieth century, bomba is today recognized and celebrated throughout Ecuador as a prominent signifier of highland black ethnic, or afrochoteno, identity. Current manifestations of bomba, however, present competing interpretations and representations of bomba and afrochoteno identity: one static in its adherence to authenticity and tradition, and the other dynamic in its embrace of hybridity and modernity. Through a social history of bomba's recent development and examination of current stylistic trends in bomba performance, this article shows how bomba, in its diverse manifestations, indexes the shifting afrochoteno experience of blackness in Ecuador. This study updates the extant academic literature on Afro-Ecuadorian bomba as well as contributing to a growing body of literature documenting and theorizing black music and identity along the black Pacific.