Alternative music scene gets new venue

We are told through the online arts grapevine (that is, by InfoArte, to which you can subscribe by sending an email request to cenvip@ancon.up.ac.pa) that that eclectic music scene that some call 'Bohemian' and others may call 'alternative' (but the latter in the Panamanian rather than the US sense of the word), which used to make its headquarters the old El Aleph Cafi, is now relocating to Benny's, the bar at the Restaurante Guantanamera on Calle 46E and Calle Venezuela in Bella Vista (phone number 225-4620).

InfoArte's source is one Luis Arteaga, whom you may have heard as a solo balladeer, or as part of a band doing salsa or Brazilian music, or as a member of the renowned Grupo Tuira. He's a worthy representative of a musical movement that draws on influences from around Latin America and from the West Indies, as well as from Panama's Interior, to create something distinctly and proudly Panamanian. The nationalistic bona fides of this music scene are rejected by President Moscoso, whose concept of 'Panamanian music' doesn't go much beyond traditional cumbia and tamborito tunes, but Arteaga and many of the other creative talents of the Bohemian scene celebrate their culture in the Grammy-winning Ruben Blades album 'La Rosa de los Vientos.'

While the geographical center of 'musica tipica' (cumbia, tamborito, decimo, etc.) is in Panama's central provinces, the alternative scene of which Arteaga is a worthy representative is strongly centered in Panama City. As they enjoy little or no political patronage or corporate sponsorship, Panama's Bohemian musicians need not stifle the social content of their lyrics or hew to racist or nationalist concepts of what 'Panamanian influences' are. And thus they have given Panama a cultural contribution worthy of the Crossroads of the World, but which has few venues in which it can be performed.