Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of New York Estados Unidos Berrios-Miranda, Marisol Salsa Music as Expressive Liberation Centro Journal, vol. XVI, núm. 2, fall, 2004, pp. 158-173 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37716211 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Berrios(v7).qxd 3/1/05 7:33 AM Page 158 CENTRO Journal Volume7 xv1 Number 2 fall 2004 Salsa) Salsa Music as Expressive Liberation1 MARISOL BERRIOS-MIRANDA ABSTRACT In the span of a singe decade, the 1970s, young people in urban centers all over Latin America came to embrace salsa music as their preferred musical style and expression. Salsa’s unprecedented international popularity resulted from the confluence of several distinct social conditions and historical events: the Puerto Rican dilemma of colonial status, the civil rights and black pride movements in the U.S., the Cuban revolution’s promise of upliftment for the lower classes, urban migration, and the need for a Latino alter- native to the hegemony of Anglo rock. In this paper I will argue that salsa’s popularity needs to be understood in terms of a musical sound and a social style that responded effectively to these circumstances, captured beautifully in the film Our Latin Thing. I propose, furthermore, that the colonial dilemma of Puerto Ricans in the island and in New York motivated their creative contributions to salsa, which they experienced as a form expressive liberation and decolonization. [Key words: salsa, liberation, decolonization, musical style, power relations, 1960s, youth culture] Top, left to right: Photograph of a poster of the cover of the Fania All Stars Live at the Cheetah album; Photograph of a poster for Our Latin Thing; Poster of the back-cover of the Fanial All Stars Live at the Cheetah album. Second row, left to right: Salsa dancing in Seattle (February 2003); El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico at the Fiestas de la Bahía, San Juan, 9Salsa Puerto Rico (June 2003). Third row, left to right: Photograph of a picture of Cortijo and Ismael hanging at the Balcón de Zumbador in Barrio Obrero, Puerto Rico (July 2003); Dancing salsa at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Washington, DC (July 2004). Bottom, left to right: Salsa dancing in Seattle (February 2003); El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico playing at the Fiestas de la Bahía; Salsa dancing in Seattle (February 2003). All photographs courtesy of Marisol Berríos-Miranda. Reprinted, by permission, from Marisol Berríos-Miranda. [ 159 ] Berrios(v7).qxd 3/1/05 7:33 AM Page 160 Our latin thing The role of the ‘popular’ in popular culture is to fix the August 21 1971. The narrator’s voice from the film Our Latin Thing says: authenticity of popular forms, rooting them in the experiences of popular communities from which they draw their strength, “Hello, hello, okay: everybody happy? YEAH! allowing us to see them as expressive of a particular Everybody hot? YEAH! [the clave sounds three times: subordinate social life that resists its being constantly made pa..pa..pa…pa..pá, pa..pa..pa…pa..pá, pa..pa..pa…pa..pá] over as low and outside. (Hall 1992: 26) Can you hear the clave, what’s going on? Cheo Feliciano gives the signal, and Ricardo Rey sets his ten magic fingers As a barrio genre that became popular across a wide spectrum of social groups, twinkling on the keys, letting loose those volleys of sound salsa is a good example of the “resistance to constantly being made over as low and that strike into the deepest part of our beings. Our hair outside.” When, during the 1970s, the sales of salsa recordings broke even the expectations of the Fania recording company, which pioneered them, the success stands on end, hot and cold shivers run up and down our was sociocultural as well as financial. Musicians who had lived the wretchedness spines. The entire orchestra strikes up. The trumpets pierce that Calvo-Ospina describes, and who were the outcasts of the New York population, our ears with indescribable pleasure; we want to embrace gained center stage with the creation of their salsa music. These salsa pioneers were the whole world. We jump for joy, whistle, dance. Why are youths from Puerto Rico, the Bronx and other troubled neighborhoods in New York. you crying? I’ve no idea…, and couldn’t care less” Eddie Palmieri, Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano, Bobby Valentín, Richie Rey and Bobby Cruz, Joe Cuba, Nicky Marrero, Joe Santiago, among many (Calvo-Ospina: 1995: 64). others, were children of Puerto Ricans from the island and New York who drew upon their experience in both places, and “fixed the authenticity” of this experience The film Our Latin Thing/Nuestra Cosa Latina (1971), filmed at the Cheetah in their music. The music was embraced with passion in poor urban neighborhoods club in Manhattan,2 for the first time showed Latin Americans outside the throughout Latin America because it served as the voice and clamor of these United States the realities of life in New York. Our Latin Thing was the first marginalized people. As Venezuelan scholar Juan Carlos Báez once told me, documentary that portrayed salsa as an expression of Latin American urban “Salsa is mine because when Héctor Lavoe sings, it is his voice, but he’s singing social identity. There was the famous Barrio and its ancient tenements, my conscience, my own voice!” with people crammed onto every inch of the buildings, their patched clothing As a music that spoke for and offered hope to disenfranchised people, salsa provides hanging out to dry in the windows. It showed us all the wretchedness and an example of what Stuart Hall describes as a “cultural strategies that can make a isolation people had refused to believe could exist in the “capital of the world” difference… and shift the dispositions of power.” Salsa music provided musicians with a (Calvo-Ospina 1995: 53). living, built community, and gave Latinos access to new public forums, stages, and media The film also documented the emergence of something that Puerto Ricans all over the world, where they played their music and sang about the challenges in their had been searching for throughout the 1960s: a musical sound, similar to the lives. Salsa musicians communicated a positive image of their people not only harmonic and rhythmic patterns of the Cuban son, but which marked the throughout Latin America but also in places like Nigeria, Holland, and Japan, where beginning of a new style. This new style came to be called salsa, and in the salsa became popular. The creation of the Fania recording label and its spectacular record span of a single decade, the 1970s, people in urban centers all over the circum- sales established a profitable musical niche that gave musicians from struggling urban Carribbean and Latin America—New York, San Juan, Los Angeles, Caracas, communities the opportunity to establish themselves as respectable professionals. Maracaibo, Cali, Medellín, Lima, San Salvador, Panama City, Mexico City, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, although not a Fania group,3 is a prime example of how Managua—embraced salsa music as their preferred musical style and salsa musicians benefited greatly from this musical phenomenon; formed by poor black expression. Salsa’s unprecedented international popularity resulted from the musicians from Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1962, it is still performing today as one of the confluence of several distinct social conditions and historical events, including most venerated and successful bands in the world. Their boats were lifted along with the Puerto Rican dilemma of colonial status, the civil rights and black pride many others by the tide of salsa music’s international popularity. movements in the U.S., the Cuban revolution and its aftershocks, urban But what is salsa music, you might ask, and how does it differ from other Latin dance migration, and the need for a Latino alternative to the hegemony of Anglo genres that preceded it? Salsa is a new sound developed by Puerto Ricans in New York rock. In this essay I will argue that for Puerto Ricans in particular, but also in the 1960s, a dance music that borrows its forms, both musical and lyrical, from the Latinos in general, the music caught on the way it did because salsa represented Afro-Cuban son, rumba, guaracha, and cha cha cha and other Caribbean genres like the a kind of liberation from the cultural and political pressures they were Puerto Rican bomba and plena.4 It grew in the barrios of New York, played mainly by experiencing during this time. Puerto Rican musicians who rearranged and recombined Cuban and Puerto Rican My analysis of salsa as liberation is informed by Jamaican-British cultural theorist musical genres. The salsa ensemble was inspired by Latin dance orchestras such as Stuart Hall, who has the following to say about how popular culture responds to La Sonora Matancera, Tito Puente’s orquesta, Tito Rodríguez’s orquesta, Machito and problems of power relations: his Afro-Cubans, Orquesta Casino La Playa, Lito Peña y su Orquesta Panamericana, [ 160 ] [ 161 ] Berrios(v7).qxd 3/1/05 7:33 AM Page 162 and Billos Caracas Boys; salsa also followed the model of the Cuban conjunto, Seventeen of the 22 musicians were Puerto Ricans born in New York or Puerto Rico.6 typified by Arsenio Rodríguez; but salsa musicians also learned to be flexible, many of What was videotaped at the Cheetah, and subsequently distributed them playing in scaled down combos, like Joe Cuba’s six-man band, which were more internationally, was one of the most cherished activities for Latinos generally and financially viable in small clubs and community centers, and which incorporated R&B Puerto Ricans especially: dancing—in this case dancing to the hippest music in influences to entertain mixed African-American and Puerto Rican audiences in town, played and produced by Puerto Rican/Latinos compatriots and neighbors, New York.