Flores, Juan. “Creolité in the 'Hood: Diaspora As Source and Challenge

Centro Journal City University of New York. Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños [email protected] ISSN: 1538-6279 LATINOAMERICANISTAS 2004 Juan Flores CREOLITÉ IN THE ‘HOOD: DIASPORA AS SOURCE AND CHALLENGE Centro Journal, fall, año/vol. XVI, número 002 City University of New York. Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños New York, Latinoamericanistas pp. 282-293 Flores(v12).qxd 3/1/05 7:55 AM Page 282 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] [ 283 ] Flores(v12).qxd 3/1/05 7:55 AM Page 284 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 the Bronx and El in the discussion of Caribbean music and jueyes, native Puerto Rican day Puerto Rico, 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 [ 284 ] [ 285 ] Flores(v12).qxd 3/1/05 7:55 AM Page 286 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.

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