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Among musicians and aficionados of salsa music in Cali, Colombia, the song "Las Calenas Son Como las Flores" (the women of Cali are like flowers) holds a special significance. The tune, which idealizes Calena women as beautiful flowers, recalls the oft-cited local adage that women from Cali are the prettiest in all Colombia (see Appendix 1). Las Calenas Son Como las Flores" was recorded by Colombian salsa pioneer Piper Pimienta in 1975, and was quickly adopted in Cali as a new local anthem. It is still popular today. While the song is important for its role in defining early Colombian salsa, "Las Calenas Son Como las Flores" is even more significant for its foreshadowing of developments in Cali's salsa scene nearly twenty years later.
Cali, a major urban center in southwest Colombia, was the site of an accelerated boom among local salsa bands in the 1980s and early 90s, growing from less than ten ensembles in 1980 to nearly seventy groups by the next decade. Between 1989 and 1995, however, an unprecedented number all-women salsa bands was also formed, comprising nearly one-fifth of the local scene. In an international scene dominated by male performers and producers, Cali's all-women salsa bands constituted a unique phenomenon. Referred to locally as orquestas femeninas, Cali's all-women salsa bands mirror important shifts for women in Colombian society during the late twentieth century. The image of Calena women as beautiful flowers, as depicted in "Las Calenas Son Como las Flores," presents a traditional patriarchal attitude in which women are objects of aesthetic and sensuous contemplation. Using new economic and social opportunities open to them, however, Galena musicians appropriated this gaze to their own benefit, successfully gaining access to the male-dominated sphere of salsa performance. Cali's orquestas femeninas, hence, upheld the image of Calena women as flowers, as they simultaneously transcended that stereotype.
In this article, I document and analyze the rise of Cali's all-women salsa bands, considering this development not only within the context of local popular culture and society, but also within the framework of gender roles in Latin popular music as a whole. My discussion begins with a brief explanation of how salsa, a non-Colombian style, became the predominant popular music in Cali. I then turn to an outline...