Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of Estados Unidos

Flores, Juan Creolité in the Hood: Diaspora as Source and Challenge Centro Journal, vol. XVI, núm. 2, fall, 2004, pp. 282-293 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos

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CENTRO Journal

Volume7 xv1 Number 2 fall 2004

Creolité in the ‘Hood: Diaspora as Source and Challenge*

JUAN FLORES

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the role of the Puerto Rican community in New York as the social base for the creation of Latin music of the 1960s and 1970s known as salsa, as well as its relation to the island. As implied in the subtitle, the argument is advanced that Caribbean diaspora communities need to be seen as sources of creative cultural innovation rather than as mere repositories or extensions of expressive traditions in the geographical homelands, and furthermore as a potential challenge to the assumptions of cultural authenticity typical of traditional conceptions of national culture. It is further contended that a transnational and pan- Caribbean framework is needed for a full understanding of these complex new conditions of musical migration and interaction. [Key words: salsa, transnationalism, authenticity, cultural innovation, New York music, musical migration]

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he flight attendant let out became the basis of a widely publicized other final stop of the commute, the New These abiding assumptions, I would an icy scream of terror when movie; and serves as the guiding York City environment and its cultural further suggest have been amply present she noticed a pair of hefty metaphor for two books about modern- life, mention is made of and El in the discussion of Caribbean music and jueyes, native Puerto Rican day , significantly titled The Barrio and other familiar scenes, but only may go to perpetuate an at times land crabs, strutting down Commuter Nation and Puerto Rican Nation as sites for the playing out and preser- misleading sense of the dynamic of the center aisle of the plane. on the Move.3 With its irresistible title vation of traditional island life-ways, Caribbean musical innovation and TIt was one of those infamous red-eye alone, la guagua aérea has assured its place not as a setting that is in fact home and change, and therefore of the place and flights from San Juan to New York, filled as perhaps the best-known work of the primary cultural base of half of those function of the music in contemporary to the last seat with Puerto Ricans from contemporary Puerto Rican literature. bi-national commuters. The rich liminal Caribbean communities. In some recent all walks of life, while the panicky flight Present-day migration, no longer space between home culture and diaspora writings there has been a beginning attendant is referred to as a stereotypical the momentous, once-in-a-lifetime becomes nothing but a zone of cultural discussion of what is called white-bred gringa, “angelical and trauma of earlier times, is now a commute, authentication, while the cultural and “transnationalism from below” and innocent, a frigid blond like Kim Novak an everyday kind of excursion, like jump- human salience of that “other” home is “social remittances,” which I have in her days as a frigid blond.” What is ing on a bus or subway and arriving at an reduced to the anxieties of an up-tight extended in referring to “cultural this, a prank or a hijacking? Who are equally familiar destination. In the story, gringa airline stewardess plagued by remittances.” Some of these lines of these terrorist jueyes? The hysteria the feeling aboard that hilariously nervous nightmares of King Kong atop the thinking might have interesting bearings spread to the crew, and to the passengers, flight is so matter-of-course that passengers Empire State Building. on our understanding of Caribbean though among the boricuas there is an comment how they lose track which way Thus the story begs a key question: music, historically and especially in our underlying but pervasive giggle, that they’re headed, and wonder whether what about the cultural baggage that own times. I invite you to join me, then, familiar jocularity laced with irony that they’ll be arriving in New York or San goes the other way, the experience and on the guagua aérea and head in the Puerto Ricans call jaibería, or el arte de Juan. The two end-points become expressions learned and forged in the other direction, from the diaspora to bregar, the art of dealing with the interchangeable, so much so that the diaspora that make their way back to the the islands, and thereby glimpse some situation.1 The stage for a dramatic jueyes caught and cleaned in Bayamón homeland, there to have their impact on of the history of Caribbean music from cultural collision is set. are sure to find their place in a stew-pot those rapidly changing traditions and life- a different aerial view than is more Students of contemporary Caribbean in the Bronx, no questions asked. ways? With all the vast and burgeoning commonly the case. culture may well recognize this No serious danger of losing the culture studies devoted to the cultural changes 5) memorable scene from the opening by being away from the island, either, brought by modern migrations, One of the most frequent passengers sentences of the fanciful creative essay by for the cultural practices and sensibilities transnational flows, and diaspora on the cultural airbus is Willie Colón. Puerto Rican author Luis Rafael Sánchez typical of the home culture are just as communities, and with the widespread His life and music commute back and entitled “La guagua aérea,” the “air bus.”2 much at home in New York, New Jersey, understanding that these movements are forth between his home turf in the Bronx This highly entertaining and suggestive Chicago, or Florida. How resilient, how most commonly circular and and his ancestral Puerto Rico, with more story set aboard the air shuttle known to immutable “el arte de bregar,” how multidirectional, it is indeed striking than casual stop-offs in other musical the majority of his countrymen has ineradicable that famous mancha de how little attention has gone to the zones of the Caribbean. His first albums, become nothing less than canonical since plátano! The fears of a national cultural experience and consequences produced in the later 1960s at the its publication in 1983, capturing as it schizophrenia, or cultural genocide, of the massive population of return threshold of the salsa era, attest to his does the existential feel of a people are assuaged by the comforting sense migrants and their children who grew up programmatically and defiantly eclectic caught up in a relentless process of of trans-local equilibrium. in the diaspora. For too long, and too stylistic agenda; while composed mainly circular migration, in which they carry Yet, when looked at more closely, la uncritically, I would suggest, it has been of Cuban-based sones and guaguancós, their indelible cultural trappings back guagua aérea in the well-known story assumed that the main cultural flow, the titles and cover images of El malo and forth between the beloved but only moves in one direction; the migra- and especially the main line of cultural (Bad Boy), The Hustler, Cosa Nuestra, troubled homeland and the cold and tory voyage, presented as a commute, resistance, has been from the colonial or and The Big Break/La gran fuga proudly inimical but somehow also very familiar is still basically one-way. That is, the post-colonial point of presumed “origin” present the persona of the Latin superfly, setting in the urban United States. cultural baggage aboard the flight is to the diaspora enclave in the metropolis, the borderline criminal street thug. The story struck such a chord among its entirely that of the island, the readily and that the flow in the other direction, The music, too, veers off from its Afro- public that it has been republished familiar, almost stereotypical trappings from the metropolis to the colony/post- Cuban base by references to and countless times in a range of languages; of the national traditions, emblematized colony, is strictly “from above,” samplings from styles from Puerto Rico, is required reading in many schools and by the shocking land crabs but omnipresent hegemonic, and reinforcing of the Colombia, Panama, and that “other” colleges on the island, in the U.S. and in in the gestures, humor, and gregarious, prevailing structure of cultural ancestral homeland, Africa, while also Latin America and the Caribbean; gossipy ways of the passengers. As for the imposition and domination. demonstrating the young Nuyorican’s

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native familiarity with jazz, soul, “Traigo la salsa” (I bring you salsa) and la guagua aérea “traigo la salsa”.4 Salsa is the Puerto Rico pavilion at the 1992 and rock. Along with his partner in “Esta Navidad” (This Christmas), are of the musical baggage, the stylistic remittance Columbus Quincentenary celebrations crime, vocalist Héctor Lavoe, Colón special interest to our discussion, since of the diaspora on its return to the island. in Seville was emblazoned with the slogan projects from the beginning of his both lyrically and musically they enact This ambivalence, or bi-directional “Puerto Rico Es Salsa,” and the inde- pioneering salsa career the new musical the diaspora addressing the island culture meaning, is conveyed in the musical pendent documentary of those same mixes resounding in his beloved Nueva in a complex, loving but at the same time texture of the song as well, and in the years, Cocolos y Roqueros, showed salsa fans York barrios, a singularly diasporic mildly challenging way. At one level, album as a whole. Yomo Toro’s , on the island justifying their preference “creolité in the ‘hood.” “Traigo la salsa” is about “bringing” Latin for example, with all its symbolic weight for salsa over the advertently foreign, But it is in Asalto navideño, his immensely music to the immediate New York or as an authentication of Puerto Rican imposed rock music with the claim that and enduringly popular Christmas album North American audience, and along culture, is deployed for both Christmas “salsa es de aquí” (salsa is from here). released in 1971, that Colón transports us with it holiday cheer from the warm airs of la música típica and, as is most The prevalent interpretation is actually a on the airbus and makes the relation tropics. Yet even here, it is not the usual obvious in the opening cut, pan-Latino or Latin Americanist version between diaspora and Caribbean home- salsa fare that is being offered; at one “Introducción,” for virtuoso riffs more of this nationalist appropriation, salsa land the central theme of his work. point the lyrics state, “Yo les traigo una resonant of jazz and rock than of the being commonly identified as “tropical An undisputed classic of the salsa canon, rareza,” “a rarity,” and the singer goes on familiar cadences of seis, décimas or music” or, in the most influential book this compilation puts the lie to the to explain that on this occasion he is aguinaldos. Another diaspora-based on the subject, El libro de la salsa, widespread notion that salsa is no more adding in the cuatro, an instrument departure from the traditional Caribbean as “música del Caribe urbano.”5 than an imitation of purely Cuban sources atypical of salsa, “por motivo de sources of the salsa instrumentation is In any case, the Christmas celebrated by mostly Puerto Rican exponents, and Navidad.” At this level, though, salsa plus of course Colón’s trombone, a stylistic in Asalto navideño is obviously not the that Puerto Rican music has little or no cuatro is clearly a sign of the island device introduced into the New York usual holiday occasion, but a very special presence. Rather, the educated listener cultures being “brought” to the New York Latin sound by Barry Rogers, José one somehow askew of the expected and recognizes immediately that the strongly scene as a delicious Christmas offering, Rodríguez, and other masters of Eddie accepted customs; it is, in short, one accented son, guaracha, and guaguancó or as an “asalto” on North American Palmieri’s pathbreaking “trombanga” which, rather than enforcing the comfort weave of the musical fabric is laced with culture much like the land crabs aboard band, La Perfecta, in the early 1960s. of a known and familiar identity, is instead vocal, instrumental, and rhythmic qualities the airbus. However, there is another It is the improvisational trombone lines riddled by contrasting, and to some degree typical of Puerto Rican seis, aguinaldo, dimension to this act of “bearing” or that are perhaps the sharpest marker of clashing and contending, identity claims. , and . Most notably, aside from “bringing” the music at play here, and it the urban diaspora in Afro-Caribbean It is, emphatically, “esta navidad,” (this the decidedly jíbaro quality of Lavoe’s refers to bringing New York salsa to the music, the herald of the friendly yet Christmas). This complex, contradictory vocals, Colón brings in the famed Yomo island. Indeed, the opening words and defiant musical “asalto” on territorially relation between diaspora and island Toro on the cuatro, the emblematic body of the lyrics, beginning with and nationally circumscribed tradition. cultures is addressed even more directly instrument of traditional Puerto Rican “Oígame señor, préstame atención...,” Let’s not forget that as late as 1978 salsa in the tune of the title, “Esta Navidad.” music. This popurrí navideño (Christmas would seem to be addressing the was still referred to by some on the island There the multiplicity of claims is medley), as one of the cuts is titled, is personified island itself, and to be saying as “an offensive, strident, stupefying, dramatized in the frequent and varied clearly intended as a dialogue with Puerto that the singer is bringing salsa for him intoxicating and frenetic music openly naming of the symbol of Puerto Rican Rican culture. Even the album title, (“para tí”). The closing lines of the stanza, associated with the effects of sex, alcohol identity, “el jíbaro.” Striking up a using the word asalto, makes reference which say “como allá en la isla” (like there and drugs.” As Otero Garabís notes, for contagious aguinaldo air at the beginning, to the age-old tradition of Christmas-tide on the island), make this geographical people of that mind-set, to uphold the the typical cuatro parts play in continual musical “invasions” of the houses of close differentiation evident. That is, in idea that salsa is “typical Puerto Rican counterpoint with the mischievously friends and neighbors for the sake addition to being a marker of Puerto music” is “to plant a bomb in the playful trombone line, as though setting of partying and sharing in the holiday Rican or Latino authenticity in the New foundation of the national culture.” up a counterpoint that will run through spirit, much in line with the primarily York setting, salsa is at the same time, in t should be mentioned in this regard the entire piece. The lyrics tell of the adoring, nostalgic tenor of that diaspora- Puerto Rico itself, a marker of diasporic that ironically, though fully consonant attitude of the jíbaros who arrive from island dialogue. But in light of the sequence Nuyorican authenticity, distinct from Iwith the logic of the music industry the United States only to look down on of previous album titles, there is a thinly and originating externally to island and a commoditized cultural nationalism, their island friends with “un aire de veiled double-entendre here, with the musical traditions. In other words, by the early 1990s salsa had been superioridad” (an air of superiority) and even more common meaning of “asalto” as Juan Otero Garabís has argued in a domesticated and comfortably re- of great wisdom. This is the theme of the as “attack” or “mugging” lurking paper which I have found extremely patriated to the island, to the point that song that is most remembered by the ominously close to the surface. helpful in preparing the present it came to be equated with Puerto Rican public, and is generally assumed to be its Tw o selections from that compilation, reflections, on the return trip aboard identity as such. As signs of this reversal, main message: that those from the

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diaspora have been corrupted by their Even prior to the official advent of salsa “Aesthetic styles, identifications and cultural baggage of the young people experience away from the homeland and by that name, and in even more dramatic affinities, dispositions and behaviours, who return or arrive on the Island. authentic home culture, and try to get over, ways, Nuyorican and Cuban musicians and musical genres, linguistic patterns, Being an integral part of the cultural life or fake it, as captured in the word guillar. music publics had fused son and mambo moralities, religious practices and other of the young [return] migrants, it therefore But then, in an interesting twist, the lyrics sounds with vernacular African-American cultural phenomena are more globalized, cannot be considered a mere foreign continue with the speaker identifying styles such as rhythm and blues and soul cosmopolitan and creolized or ‘hybrid’ import.”8 Even Vico C., the first rapper himself as one of those “jíbaros guillados,” music, as evidenced in the short-lived but than ever before. This is especially the to gain wider recognition, was born in a kind of bogus jíbaro, who is nonetheless, wildly popular experiments of Latin case among youth of transnational Brooklyn, and teamed up with his partner in a bold assertion, “pero un jíbaro de boogaloo. And more famously, in the 1940s Glenn from California to write his early communities, whose initial socialization verdad” (but a jíbaro for real). (“Hay jíbaros New York Latin music had witnessed the rhymes, which gave voice to life in the has taken place within the cross-currents que saben más/y aquí queda demonstrado/ momentous innovations of Cubop and working-class neighborhood of Puerta of more than one cultural field, and whose soy un jíbaro guillado/pero un jíbaro de Latin jazz, which along with the mambo de Tierra in San Juan where he grew up. ongoing forms of cultural expression and verdad”; roughly, “There are jíbaros that were more strongly rooted in the urban The style migrated from ‘hood in the U.S. know more/and here it’s clearly shown/I am diaspora than in the Caribbean, the original identity are often self-consciously selected, to ‘hood on the island, and even though it a would-be jíbaro/but a jíbaro for real.”) home of those traditions. syncretized and elaborated from more than was quickly commercialized and What entitles this returning diaspora But it is in times closer to our own, one cultural heritage.”6 domesticated in Puerto Rico by the mid- Puerto Rican to feel confident about his with the dramatic growth and increased 80s, the underground scene continued to knowledge and to claim “realness” after all? diversity of the Caribbean diaspora, Fortunately, a book like Raquel serve as a venue for the articulation of life Evidently it is the song itself, as suggested and with decades of ongoing interaction Rivera’s recent New York Ricans from the in the marginalized and impoverished calles in the phrase “aquí queda demonstrado” with Afro-American culture, that we Hip Hop Zone is guided by just such an and caseríos that had been out of bounds (here it is shown). Indeed, the song proceeds witness the full force of diaspora as source understanding, and helps identify the for all other forms of artistic expression. to the chorus, “Esta navidad, vamos a and challenge in Caribbean music history. role and importance of diaspora youth in While the introduction of rap in gozar,” and then ends in vocal and instru- In the post-salsa period, it is hip hop that forging new stylistic possibilities without Puerto Rico was first dismissed as a fad, mental improvisations very much in the has emerged as the most influential and abandoning or turning their back on their and then more ominously regarded as guaguancó-based salsa style, the tumbaito, innovative field of musical expression in inherited cultural background.7 still another instance of American which by the end explicitly replaces the most parts of the Caribbean. In this case While it remains important to cultural imperialism, history has it that trappings and cadences of típica, the lei- there can of course be no doubt as to the document and analyze the diasporic hip hop went on to take firm root in its lo-lai, with which it had begun. Or actually, music’s urban diasporic origins, though it origins and social roots of emerging new location and in fact articulated with in tune with that diasporic wisdom is still less than accepted knowledge that Caribbean music-making, close attention important shifts already afoot in the suggested in the lyrics, the lead voice Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Dominicans, also needs to be focused on the diffusion national imaginary. The diasporic content draws the traditional holiday music into and other Caribbean diaspora peoples and of new styles and themes in the Caribbean provoked new sensibilities on issues of the eclectic, inclusive jam of this special their musics played a formative role in its home countries and the challenges they sex, gender, and race, while rap’s social Christmas celebration, making sure to story since the beginning in the 1970s and bring to traditional assumptions about moorings among the urban poor raised add, “tambien invitaré a mi amigo, 80s. Purists and traditionalists from those national and regional musical traditions. uncomfortable problems of class and mi amigo Yomo Toro” (I’ll also invite background cultures are still bent on Before undertaking her pioneering work social inequality typically ignored by the my friend, my dear friend Yomo Toro). denying or minimizing the Caribbean-ness on Puerto Ricans in the New York hip hop cultured elite. Interestingly, there was 5) or Latinismo of hip hop in its many scene, Rivera was studying the arrival of also a notable reverse in the direction of The music known as salsa, then, which has manifestations, regarding it as strictly rap in her native Puerto Rico, and found social desire for the geographical other: become the prototypical marker of Spanish African American; at times, as in the call to herself confronting the avid resistance of while traditionally the translocal Puerto Caribbean expressive identity, is in its ban hip hop floats from the Puerto Rican cultural gatekeepers of all political stripes. Rican sensibility was characterized by inception the stylistic voice and practice Day Parade, this demarcation takes on In her Master’s thesis, “Para rapear en the emigrant longing for the beauties of the Puerto Rican diaspora concentrated blatantly racist overtones. But in all cases puertorriqueño: discurso y política of the long-lost island, in some rap texts in New York City. Rather than the direct it indicates a failure to understand the cultural,” she ascertained that it was return and among street youth it was the urban extension or imitation of Cuban or native dynamic of contemporary diasporic cultural Nuyoricans who initiated hip hop styles diaspora settings of the Bronx and El Puerto Rican styles, it is rather the source of realities, particularly among the kind of and practices on the Island in the late Barrio that became places of fascination a new, newly hybridized and creolized adap- diasporic youth who have taken part in the 1970s and early 80s. As she put it, and nostalgia. Nuyoricans, commonly tation of those styles in their interaction founding of hip hop; this dynamic is well “Rap, being a form of expression shared the object of public disdain and dis- and admixture with other forms of music- described in the following quote in Robin by Caribbeans and African Americans in crimination on the island, became sources making at play in the diasporic environment. Cohen’s book Global Diasporas: the mainland ghettos, forms part of the of admiration and solidarity among many

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Puerto Rican young people who had never “Social and racial discrimination as are catalyzing unimagined changes in Caribbean societies, cultures, and left the national territory. Such radical experienced by thousands of Dominicans in both lands of origin and places of arrival musics cannot be understood today in challenges to traditional cultural values the urban ghettos of New York made them and settlement. isolation from the diasporic pole of their and assumptions, largely associated with aware of their actual racial constitution, Paris, London, Toronto, Amsterdam, translocal realities, nor of course strictly the hip hop invasion, have retained their and taught them that they are not too New York, and a range of other far-flung from the vantage point of the diaspora alone. Rather, it is the relation between appeal in subsequent decades, such that different from the West Indian neighbors.... urban centers are now Caribbean islands, and among the poles of national and important young verbal artists like Tego Many returned to Santo Domingo and their of a sort, or actually new poles of interaction regional history and diasporic re- Calderón and José Raúl González and intersection among diverse Caribbean home towns transformed both outwardly creation—what has been referred to, (“Gallego”) continue to voice a fresh sense and non-Caribbean cultural experiences and and inwardly in their thoughts, their clothes, in a discussion of Haitian konpas, of what it means to be Puerto Rican in their feelings, their language, and their traditions. The magnitude and structural for example, as negotiation across the our changing times, in both cases with music.... Afro-Caribbean music and dance implications of these contemporary “insular-diasporic barrier”12—that positive reference to the example set by were incorporated into Dominican folk diasporic formations is well captured in provides the key to present-day analysis their counterparts in the diaspora. dances and songs, particularly in the these terms by Orlando Patterson: of Caribbean expressive possibilities. From being an isolated, subcultural national merengue, while music groups Thus the long march of Caribbean phenomenon on the Island’s cultural “In structural terms, the mass migration creolization proceeds apace in our time, expanded their repertoires…, showing, scene, rap has over the years established of peoples from the periphery in this new but under radically altered geographic not always consciously, how much Afro- its place as a ubiquitous component of context of cheap transportation and circumstances, with the diasporic American culture had pervaded Dominican everyday life, vibrantly present in town communication has produced a wholly settings located well outside of national popular culture. The discovery of festivals, religious events, and at different kind of social system.… What has and regional territories making for the Dominican négritude was not the result of activities on street corners, in school- emerged is, from the viewpoint of the most intense “points of entanglement,” an intellectual campaign as had been the to use Edouard Glissant’s felicitous yards and neighborhood parks. It has peripheral states, distinctive societies in phrase. It is this “creolité in the ‘hood,” also found its place in the country’s case in Haiti and Martinique, after Jean which there is no longer any meaningful the infinitely inventive mingling and musical soundscape, and has been Price-Mars and Aimé Césaire. The real identification of political and social discovery of the Dominican black roots was mixing of Caribbean experience and fused with more familiar styles such boundaries. Thus, more than half of the expressive ways in the urban centers of aresult of the behavior of the returning as salsa, bomba, and plena. Hip hop’s adult working populations of many of the the metropolis, that is most radically re- migrants.... Racial and cultural denial presence in Puerto Rico also has its smaller eastern Caribbean states now live fashioning what being Caribbean is Caribbean dimensions, its introduction worked for many years, but migration to outside of these societies, mainly in the about, and what Caribbean music sounds coinciding in significant ways with the the United States finally cracked down the immigrant enclaves of the United States. like, a process that becomes most clearly inroads of reggae and merengue, with ideological block of the traditional About 40 per cent of all Jamaicans, visible when we are attentive to the 10 meren-rap and reggaeton being but definition of Dominican national identity.” and perhaps half of all Puerto Ricans, impact of this new mix as it reaches the best known of the varied fusions live outside of the political boundaries back to the historical region itself. and crossovers present in the All over the Carribean, and in growing of these societies, mainly in America. Of course this kind of reverse flow, if you will, from the metropolis to the contemporary repertoire. numbers of countries in the postcolonial The interesting thing about these Nor is Puerto Rico unique, of course, era, “The diaspora strikes back!” colonial or postcolonial societies, is not communities is that their members feel in its importation of rap via its return 5) new in Caribbean cultural and musical as at home in the mainland segment as in diaspora aboard la guagua aérea. Throughout their history Caribbean history, nor should it be separated from the original politically bounded areas.... The influence of its huge diasporas in cultures have been traveling cultures, the ongoing and forceful movement in The former colonies now become the New York and San Juan has been of transformative departures and arrivals the other direction, which has wrought mother country; the imperial metropolis dramatic note in the Dominican to and from, between and among and en so much change, most of it unacknowl- becomes the frontier of infinite resources....” Republic, and again hip hop has been a route, and Caribbean musics are traveling edged, to the imperial societies crucial conduit. One Dominican cultural musics best understood in their full range And Patterson concludes by observing, themselves. Perhaps the key thing about critic has gone so far as to title his book and complexity from the privileged “Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, this cultural migration is that it is and El retorno de las yolas (The Return of the vantage of la guagua aérea. In our times and Barbadian societies are no longer has been circular, as the age-old back- Rafts),9 while Frank Moya Pons, a prominent of mass and multidirectional migrations principally defined by the political- and-forth between jazz and Cuban music, historian, has the following to say about of people, styles and practices, many new geographical units of Jamaica, Puerto Rico, or reggae and rhythm and blues, the full-scale transformation of Dominican islands have been added to the archipelago. the Dominican Republic and Barbados, or the zig-zag stories of merengue, national identity resulting from the urban New sites of creolization and trans- but by both the populations and cultures calypso, or konpas illustrate so well in diaspora experience, and makes direct culturation, unimagined in earlier periods of these units and their postnational the archive of Caribbean sounds and reference to the new musical sensibility: of cultural definition and self-definition, colonies in the cosmopolis.”11 rhythms.13 Throughout that history,

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creative innovations have resulted from nor can they be squared neatly with the NOTES the travels and sojourns of musicians musical and cultural dynamic at work in the * This was first presented as the keynote address at the “Caribbean Soundscapes” themselves, and for over a century societies from which they originally sprang. conference held in New Orleans on March 12-14, 2004. The opening pages of the essay recordings, radio broadcasts, movies and Much of this work of transnational build directly on ideas set forth by Juan Otero Garabís in his writings (see note 4 below) television, and the whole range of media diffusion, of course, is done by the and in personal conversations. have exposed musical practitioners and corporate media, and aligns directly with 1 See Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, El arte de bregar (San Juan: Ediciones Callejón, 2000). audiences to music-making from the taste-making and trend-setting On jaibería, see Puerto Rican Jam, eds. Frances Negrón Muntaner and Ramón Grosfoguel elsewhere, in great preponderance projects and hierarchies of imperial power. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 2 from the disproportionately endowed No doubt “transnationalism from above” Luis Rafael Sánchez, La guagua aérea (San Juan: Editorial Cultural, 1994). 3 metropolitan centers, and very often remains a prominent if not the pre- See Carlos Torres, et al., eds., The Commuter Nation: Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994) and Jorge as part of the imperial project. dominant driving power behind this Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States But today’s musical remittances are uprooting and re-routing of styles and (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). different; there has been a shift, as one practices and their re-introduction into the 4 See Juan Otero Garabís, “Terroristas culturales: en la ‘guagua aérea’ ‘traigo la salsa’,” study of the history of merengue in societies of origin in diluted and bastardized (Unpublished manuscript). See also, Juan Otero Garabís, Nación y ritmo: “” desde el New York puts it, “from transplant to form. But since it is prevailing regimes of Caribe (San Juan: Ediciones Callejón, 2000). 14 transnational circuit.” That is, accumulation and the coercive management 5 César Miguel Rondón, El libro de la salsa: crónica de la música del Caribe urbano (Caracas: these musical remittances are not just of flexible labor forces that impel patterns Merca Libros, 1980). See also, Ángel Quintero Rivera, Salsa, sabor y control: sociología de la contemporary instances of traveling musics of circulatory migration and manage the música tropical (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1998), and Félix Padilla, “ as a Cultural or of media-induced exoticist fascination, shifting locations of transnational Expression of Latino Consciousness and Unity,” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 2.1 whether that fascination is based on healthy communities, the formation and the re- (1989): 28–45. curiosity or on ideological or commercial location of diaspora musics and cultures 6 Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction ( Seattle: University of Washington persuasion. Rather, the return “home” of may also exemplify the process of what Press, 1997), 128. Caribbean music, which has been re-cycled is called “transnationalism from below,” 7 Raquel Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (New York: Palgrave, 2003). through the urban diaspora experience, that is, nonhegemonic and to some 8 Raquel Rivera, Para rapear en puertorriqueño: discurso y política cultural (Unpublished is a mass collective and historically degree counter-hegemonic transna- M.A. thesis, 1996). structured process corresponding directly tionalism, or, as one commentator 9 Silvio Torres-Saillant, El retorno de las yolas: ensayos sobre diáspora, democracia y to patterns of circular migration and the capsulized it, “labor’s analog to the dominicanidad (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Librería La Trinitaria, 1999). formation of transnational communities. multinational corporation.”15 10 Frank Moya Pons, “Dominican National Identity in Historical Perspective,” Punto 7 The musical baggage borne by return Despite and in the face of corporate and Review (1996): 23–5. diasporas, while rooted in the traditions state power, Caribbean music today, and its 11 Orlando Patterson, “Ecumenical America: Global Culture and the American and practices of the Caribbean cultures of movement to and from its massive Cosmos,” in Multiculturalism in the United States, eds. Peter Kivisto and Georganne origin, are forged in social locations having diasporas, remains popular music in the Rundblad (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000), 465–80. 12 their own historical trajectories and stylistic deepest and most persistent sense: whether See Gage Averill, “Moving the Big Apple: Tabou Combo’s Diasporic Dreams,” environments, and are thus simultaneously in the region or in its diasporic settings, in Island Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music and Identity in New York, internal and external to the presumed and in its migration back and forth between eds. Ray Allen and Lois Wilcken (Brooklyn: Institute for Studies in American parameters of national and regional musical them, it lives on as the vernacular expression Music, 1998), 152. 13 For helpful and informative discussions of some of these interactions, see Island cultures. It is this ambivalence that goes to of people and communities seeking, Sounds in the Global City, cited note 12 above. explain the mix of consternation and and finding, their own voice and rhythm. 14 Paul Austerlitz, “From Transplant to Transnational Circuit: Merengue in New York,” adulation with which members of the All of this, and more, are lessons to in Island Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music and Identity in New York, 44–60. diaspora are received on their entry, or re- be learned aboard the “guagua aérea,” 15 Alejandro Portes, “Global Villagers: The Rise of Transnational Communities,” entry, into the home societies: they cannot but only if we take the time and effort The American Prospect 2 (1998): 74–77. be repelled out of hand for being foreigners, to travel round-trip.

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