Salsa World

In the series Studies in Latin American and Caribbean Music,

edited by Peter Manuel

Also in this series:

Ketty Wong, Whose National Music? Identity, Mestizaje, and Migration in Ecuador
Peter Manuel, ed., Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean
Cathy Ragland, Música Norteña: Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation between Nations
Alejandro L. Madrid, Sounds of the Modern Nation: Music, Culture, and Ideas
in Post-Revolutionary Mexico
Christopher Washburne, Sounding Salsa: Performing Popular Latin Dance Music
in New York City
David F. Garcia, Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music
Sergio Navarrete Pellicer, Maya Achi Marimba Music in Guatemala
Peter Manuel, East Indian Music in the West Indies: Tân-Singing, Chutney,
and the Making of Indo-Caribbean Culture
María Teresa Vélez, Drumming for the Gods: The Life and Times of Felipe García
Villamil, santero, palero, and abakuá
 Salsa World

A Global Dance in
Local Contexts

Edited by Sydney Hutchinson

temple university press

Philadelphia
Temple University Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
[Link]/tempress

Copyright © 2014 by Temple University

All rights reserved
Published 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Salsa world : a global dance in local contexts / edited by
Sydney Hutchinson Mengel.
   pages cm. — (Studies in Latin American and Caribbean music)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-1-4399-1006-1 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-4399-1008-5 (e-book) 1. Salsa (Dance) I. Mengel,
Sydney Hutchinson, 1975–
GV1796.S245S27 2013
793.3′3—dc23
2013013288

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992

Printed in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
For Maurice—my dance partner for life
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 Dancing in Place: An Introduction | Sydney Hutchinson 1

2 What’s in a Number? From Local Nostalgia to Global Marketability

in New York’s On-2 Salsa | Sydney Hutchinson 26

3 From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa: New Jersey’s

Eclectic Salsa Dance Revival | Katherine Borland 46

4 Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene

| Jonathan S. Marion 64

5 Small-Town Cosmopolitans: Salsa Dance in Rural America

| Joanna Bosse 80

6 Dancing Salsa in Cuba: Another Look

| Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez (Translated by Sydney Hutchinson) 98

7 The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor

(Puerto Rico) | Priscilla Renta 117

8 Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia)

| Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel (Translated by Sydney Hutchinson) 140
viii Contents

9 Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic:

A First Look | Rossy Díaz (Translated by Sydney Hutchinson) 157

Allons à la Fête—On Danse Salsa: New Routes for Salsa in France

10 
| Saúl Escalona (Translated by Sydney Hutchinson) 173

11 Salsa in Barcelona and Spain | Isabel Llano

(Translated by Sydney Hutchinson) 182

12 Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan

| Kengo Iwanaga 200

Contributors 213

Index 217
 Acknowledgments

D
uring the preparation of this book, I received support from the Alex-
ander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, and I was hosted by the
Department for Ethnomusicology (also known as the Berlin Phono-
gram Archive) of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. I am grateful to the foun-
dation and to my colleagues at the museum for their support; to my husband,
Maurice Mengel, for his; and to my dance teachers and partners, past, present,
and future. In this capacity, particular thanks go to Angel Rodríguez, Addie
Rodríguez, Ivan Rivera, Miguel Rosado, Jill Redondo, and Amanda Cardona.
—Sydney Hutchinson
1
Dancing in Place
An Introduction

Sydney Hutchinson

I
began dancing salsa as a teenager in Tucson, Arizona. My formal training
consisted of a single dance lesson in a nightclub, which was soon shut down
(perhaps my age—only sixteen at the time—had something to do with the
closure). More important for my early salsa learning was the simple practice of
spending many, many nights dancing with partners from all over the globe, not
only in Tucson but also wherever I traveled, and sometimes taking opportuni-
ties to learn in a more structured way from especially skilled friends or from
visiting professionals brought in by local aficionados of Cuban rueda dancing,
a kind of salsa in the round (see Chapter 6). Eventually, after years of practice,
I was regarded as a skilled dancer myself, and I taught classes in salsa and rueda
while studying at Indiana University, also leading a salsa band on piano.
At age twenty-five I moved to New York and had to learn to dance salsa all
over again. Nothing was the same there: not the steps, not the turns, not the
timing or count, and not the relation of dance to music. It did not even have the
same social qualities: in Tucson the diversity afforded by salsa clubs was one of
the dance’s principal attractions,1 but in New York the salsa scene, very much
dominated by New York–born Puerto Ricans, had a strong element of ethnic
pride.
Most surprising to me, however, was that my Puerto Rican housemates
told me I danced “Colombian.” It seemed that this evaluation rested on my fre-
quent use of a basic step in which I crossed behind with my foot on the first
count, rather than stepping straight backward or forward, and my tendency
to slightly kick on the rest count in preparation for that crossed step. Intrigu-
ingly, I had never been to Colombia or had much—if any—contact with Colom-
bian dancers. These were movements I had picked up through social dancing
2 Sydney Hutchinson

in Tucson—they were taught neither in my one nightclub dance class nor as

part of Cuban rueda.2 Thus, it seemed the explanation was the geography of my
learning experience: in Tucson as elsewhere in the Southwest, salsa is strongly
flavored by the long-standing popularity of cumbia music and dance, one of
many links between Mexican and Colombian popular cultures.3
Over the next year, I worked hard to retrain my body to dance New York
style. In exchange for teaching his beginner classes, I received private lessons
from lifelong New York salsero Ivan Rivera, during which I learned how to style
my arms, execute lifts and aerials, perform an entire syllabus of “shines,” or solo
footwork—something that did not yet exist in Arizona—and most importantly,
count and step to the more syncopated “on-2” timing. Eventually I joined and
performed with Razz M’Tazz, one of the foundational New York salsa-mambo
companies, and taught others how to dance New York style in classes and work-
shops. Even though I lost that Colombian touch through retraining, my former
style would continue to resurface on visits home, underscoring the intimate ties
between body and place as constructed through dance.

Studying Salsa Dance

I begin this chapter with a personal anecdote for two reasons. First, I wish to
illustrate how dance creates a sense of place that is felt in the dancer’s body,
learned and experienced through interactions with other dancers on and off
the dance floor. That Puerto Ricans in New York City could read the bodily
movements of a southwestern U.S. dancer as “Colombian,” a connection made
possible through long-term affinities between that South American country
and the northern Mexican border area, affinities so deep-seated that they af-
fected the bodily style, or habitus, of even an urban Anglo, is just one indica-
tion of the complexity of those interactions. That those same dancers could
recognize perhaps a half dozen such geographically denominated salsa styles,
often by minute bodily cues, demonstrates how popular social dances like salsa
become deeply localized. The anecdote also shows how my interest in the inter-
play between dance and place developed, an interest that led first to my work on
quebradita and other border dances4 and eventually to this book. Salsa World is
about a particular dance genre, but it is also a study of how and why some forms
of global popular culture become localized and, in particular, how dance and
place relate to one another through the body.
Salsa has a particular history and a particular discourse about that history,
one bound up with competing claims of ownership and ties to a different sort
of place, that of the nation-state. Although dance has played a central role in
Latin American nationalisms for over a century—who can imagine Argentina
without tango or Brazil without samba?—in recent years it has also come to
play a role in establishing pan-Latino identifications and in bringing Latino
popular culture to even broader audiences. Salsa, for instance, began as a sym-
bol of Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican) pride, later became an emblem of
Dancing in Place 3

pan-Latinism, and is today a globalized form of popular culture. At the same

time, because dance is a participatory activity that relies on face-to-face inter-
actions, or more precisely body-to-body ones, salsa (like other forms of popular
dance) has not become a homogenized, mass-mediated product but has instead
assumed intensely local forms in many communities. New Yorkers, Ange-
lenos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Colombians, Dominicans, and others all have
their own, unique ways of dancing salsa that distinguish them as much as their
spoken accents do. In fact, I suggest that those minute cues of bodily move-
ment, posture, and musical timing that allow dancers to identify those who
come from elsewhere be termed “dance accents.”5 As with speech, losing one’s
accent—in other words, adapting to the habitus of a location that is not one’s
home—is difficult.
In this book, I and the other authors examine how salsa dance is localized—
or how the body acquires an accent—and how concepts of geography, ethnic-
ity, and local and national identities interact with the globalized salsa industry.
While some of these topics have been treated in earlier works on salsa music
(e.g., Waxer 2002a; Quintero Rivera 1999), to date no book in English has dealt
specifically with salsa as a dance practice, despite the centrality of the body
and movement to the genre. This book collaboratively constructs a multisited
ethnography of salsa dance, by including multiple authors who write about the
places they know best, while attempting to answer a common body of ques-
tions: How and why do salsa dance practices vary? At what points does this
salsa scene connect with others? What disconnects still exist, and why? What
role does salsa play in local cultures, contexts, and identity constructions? What
do people in a location get out of dancing salsa? Our observations have wider
implications for understanding the localization of popular culture in general.
Elsewhere (Hutchinson 2009), I have discussed the sidelining of dance
in the social sciences, a situation that often continues in the present despite
the early importance of the topic to foundational figures such as Franz Boas.
Thus, another task of this book is to implicitly address the issue of reintegrat-
ing dance into the ethnographic fields by presenting studies of dance coming
out of a variety of disciplines. I argue that although recent currents of theory
have been successful at dismantling, or at least seriously questioning, many of
the long-standing dualisms of Western thinking, such as nature/culture and
mind/body, the division between music and dance has remained and even been
reinforced by entrenchment in the respective scholarly disciplines. However,
for many—perhaps even most—people, communities, and cultures, music and
dance are inseparable as cultural forms, so that drawing lines around them dis-
torts people’s actual experiences.6 It is therefore important to acknowledge the
interdependence of the two fields, to recognize the contributions that different
academic disciplines can make to their study, and to attend to the interactions
of dance practice and music.
Salsa World challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries not only by
combining these two areas but also by including Latin American scholars from
4 Sydney Hutchinson

very different traditions, ones less familiar to those of us in the northern acad-
emy. Because this book emerges primarily from the ethnographic disciplines,
particularly ethnomusicology and anthropology, it will perhaps be of most in-
terest to scholars in these fields. It may show them that focusing on dance can
reveal previously untold stories about issues of concern across the social sci-
ences such as nationalism, identity, ethnicity, and globalization and that it can
do so precisely because of the intensity with which place and community are
produced through bodily practices.
Anyone who has trained as both musician and dancer can attest to the
very different points of view each side holds over the other’s subject matter—
for instance, when reconciling musicians’ and dancers’ counts: each side has a
unique point of view that can lead to revealing observations about the other.
I therefore believe this book has something to say to dance scholars as well. In
the 1990s Jane Desmond noted that gaps within the dance literature included
the “commodification of movement styles, their migration, modification, quo-
tation, adoption, or rejection as part of the larger production of social identities
through physical enactment” (1997: 30). This book adds to the work done on
such issues in the intervening years through its focus on the migration and
modification of a particular popular social dance and its inclusion of perspec-
tives from outside the northern English-speaking academy. It shows dance to
be a significant part of the migration and flow of ideas, capital, and even people
around the world.

Salsa Music: History and Literature

The history of salsa music is well known and extensively documented in widely
available books; thus I present here only a brief outline, which contextualizes the
discussion of dance, our main topic, in the existing salsa literature. The music we
today know as salsa emerged in New York City in the 1960s. It was a combination
of Cuban musics like son, guaracha, and guajira with a little bit of flavor from
Puerto Rican plena and música jíbara and a touch of Latin jazz. It also depended
on the networks and tastes already set up by previous Latin music crazes in the
city, particularly the 1950s mambo. Fania Records was the driving commercial
force behind the music, popularizing the term “salsa” and making sure virtually
all the artists playing the style were a part of their Fania All Stars ensemble.7
Early salsa artists came from a variety of backgrounds, but New York–born
Puerto Ricans were the most numerous and among the most influential of this
new crop of Latin musicians. Stylistic innovations such as Eddie Palmieri’s ad-
dition of trombones to the Cuban charanga ensemble, Rafael Cortijo’s experi-
ments with bomba and plena, and Willie Colón’s use of jíbaro music produced
a distinct musical sound. Jorge Duany explains that salsa differs from its close
relative, the Cuban son, in its emphasis on brass instruments, the addition of
the timbales, more “violent” arrangements, and the influence of jazz harmo-
nies (Duany 1984: 198).
Dancing in Place 5

Debates over salsa’s Cuban or Puerto Rican origin are ongoing. Salsa’s in-
debtedness to Cuban styles is indubitable: even Tito Puente, considered a salsa
progenitor, frequently stated, “I play Cuban music, not salsa.” But as Johnny
Pacheco explained the Fania artistic process, “What we were doing was tak-
ing Cuban music and adding more progressive chords, emphasizing rhythms,
and highlighting certain aspects” (quoted in Washburne 2008: 20). The music
produced in this way sounds far different from both its Cuban predecessors
and current Cuban styles such as songo and timba. It thus became an important
symbol of Nuyorican identity and culture (see Berríos-Miranda 2002), although
Chris Washburne argues that it should more properly be viewed as “inter-
Latino” or “trans-Caribbean,” because it is consumed, performed, and produced
by many groups and has roots in other Caribbean musics as well (2008: 11).8 As
we will see, the debate over origins is also very much a part of the dance scene.
Fania’s phenomenal success led to the creation of numerous local salsa
scenes and labels in various parts of Latin America, decentralizing production
and, ironically, leading to Fania’s own demise (Washburne 2008: 22). The label
was eventually embroiled in lawsuits related to its brutal treatment of artists
and neglect of royalty payment, and it was sold off in 1997. Nonetheless, the
hard-driving, rootsy style and gritty lyrics of the early Fania artists endure; this
style, termed “salsa dura,” is the one preferred by most New York salsa dancers
today, many of whom vehemently reject newer styles.
The decline of Fania opened the door for other labels, promoters, and
styles. In New York, Ralph Mercado Management began promoting a new,
softer style with romantic or erotic lyrics, a focus on star singers, and a de-
emphasis on improvisation; this style is known as salsa romántica. While music
critics and scholars lambaste it for its depoliticized content, blatant commer-
cialism, and less adventurous, pop-driven sound, Washburne rightly notes that
salsa romántica succeeded in attracting listeners not previously involved in the
music—particularly women, who had been largely excluded from salsa dura’s
masculine ethos. This style dominated the market in the 1980s–1990s, gain-
ing extensive airplay just when some observers had been lamenting merengue’s
gain on salsa’s territory in New York (see Washburne 2008: 183).
Meanwhile, other histories of salsa were developing elsewhere. The ones
Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel (Chapter 8) and Rossy Díaz (Chapter 9) contrib-
ute to this volume give alternative perspectives on the typical salsa narratives,
which tend to position the music as a “new” style emerging in New York and
later spreading throughout Latin America. In fact, salsa was frequently expe-
rienced not as a break with but as a continuation of earlier dance practices in
these countries, as salsa culture grew out of son culture in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic, and out of the champú dances in Cali, Colombia.
Perhaps the most influential alternative was being developed in that dis-
tant neighbor Cuba. A distinctive circle dance called casino, rueda, or rueda de
casino developed in social clubs there in the 1950s and resurged in the 1980s,
partly a result of the influence of U.S. salsa, alongside a new musical form called
6 Sydney Hutchinson

timba (see Perna 2008: 12). With its technically demanding, ultrasyncopated
jazz- and funk-influenced arrangements and the combination of the violins
and flutes of the charanga ensemble with drum sets and multiple synthesizers,
timba sounded unlike any U.S., Caribbean, or South American salsa; it also
developed outside the world capitalist system, although today it participates in
that system.
On a musical level, salsa is fairly simple to define because of its rhythmic
structure; in New York, at least, both this structure and salsa performance prac-
tice have been relatively stable since the 1970s (Washburne 2008: 166–167). The
basic steps, counts, and bodily movements of salsa are also clearly recognizable,
despite their innumerable variations and permutations. Nonetheless, in the
discourse surrounding the music, salsa appears undefinable and unlocatable:
it is Nuyorican and pan-American; it is revolution and resistance, and it is con-
formity and commercialism; it is an exotic encounter with the Other, or it is our
own. This ambiguity has a purpose, because salsa must serve many different
affiliations, as Washburne argues, so that regional, national, and international
levels are mixed and constantly interact in salsa. Therefore, salsa continues
to be marked today, as it has always been, by the tension between commercial
interests and lived experience, between Anglo-American and Latin American
cultures, between U.S. imperialism and Latin American resistance.

Salsa Dance Panorama

Just as salsa music functions on many different levels to serve different affilia-
tions, so does salsa dance. Throughout the developments just described, salsa
dancing continued to grow and change in New York (see Chapter 2). The result
was a split between those who danced for fun and to socialize, often termed “so-
cial dancers” or “street dancers,” and those who also had the goals of perform-
ing and competing, often termed “studio dancers.” (In Spanish, the respective
terms are “bailador” and “bailarín”; see Chapter 8.) Street dancers may or may
not feel connected to a global community of salsa dancers, but studio dancers
certainly do. They are connected to one another virtually, through dance web-
sites, discussion groups, and online social networking, and also in person at
various times throughout the year. The discursive separation of the two groups
parallels the debates over politicized and commercialized salsas, like salsa dura
and salsa romántica. Studio dancers are the primary focus of this book: their
practices most clearly reveal the tensions, arising through bodily movement,
between the global and the local.
Washburne sees a decline in interest in salsa music in the twenty-first cen-
tury that has resulted in the closing of many clubs and declining opportunities
of gigs for musicians. It might, then, seem paradoxical to note salsa dancing’s
growth in the same period, except that competitive salsa dancers generally pre-
fer to dance to recorded music. In New York, at least, the venues such dancers
gather at are “socials,” informal parties for serious dancers inspired by ballroom
Dancing in Place 7

studio practices, and “congresses,” large conventions often featuring both the-
atrical performances and competitive events. The first are local in scope, the
second transnational.
The number of congresses has increased drastically in the past decade. In
2003 I noted events occurring on the West and East Coasts of the United States,
in Canada, in Puerto Rico, and in Italy, among other locations. At the Ber-
lin Salsa Congress in 2008, the information table had flyers for congresses in
Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich, as well as Athens, Amsterdam,
Istanbul, Marrakech, Slovenia, Monaco, Estonia, Switzerland, and Poland, each
brought by dancers representing those locations. The instructors at the same
event had African American, Latino, East Indian, Polish, Moroccan, and even
Iraqi British backgrounds. Meanwhile, the 2009 World Salsa Championships
in Fort Lauderdale advertised participation by dancers of thirty nationalities.
Congress advertising tends to announce dancers’ country of origin as a nod to
diversity but eliminates any discussion of politics or difference. Yet even as this
kind of salsa was increasing its globalizing tendencies, other, more local kinds
of salsa were emerging. Just as local salsa music industries have sprung up in
diverse locations, so have local varieties of salsa dance, even more varied than
the musical styles available.
Salsa dance today is clearly a commodity, being sold though dance lessons,
videos, recordings, and attire. But movement is a slippery sort of commodity,
not easy to pin down or package. As Juliet McMains writes of ballroom dance,
it is limited in its reproducibility because of its dependence on one-to-one in-
teraction (2006: 56). One might add that touch, a necessary component of that
interaction, still cannot be transmitted through any standard mass communi-
cation technologies, limiting the ability of marketers to commodify dance. So
while music is easily transportable through recordings, meaning that people
anywhere can reproduce it with exactitude and hear exactly the same song in
any place and time, the dance experience is less replicable. Even though one can
learn dance steps from videos, a practice made even easier now by the advent
of YouTube and similar sites, most people still learn to dance through face-
to-face, body-to-body transmission, and in a partner dance like salsa, direct
contact with others is a prerequisite for dancing. In addition, while today music
listening is often conducted in private, dance is a social activity.
For these reasons, dance, unless subjected to standardizing regimens (as in
competitive ballroom dance), is supremely susceptible to localizing processes.
When one learns any dance, prior bodily dispositions enter into a performance
of that dance, intentionally or not. This reliance on muscle memory means that
when a new community adopts a dance, the prior movement experiences of
the members of that community may enter and become part of that dance. As
Ángel Quintero Rivera explains, dance is not just virtuosity; it is “corporeal
intercommunication of emotions and knowledges” (2009: 29).
What all this means for salsa is that, although a commercialized, mass-
mediated, and transnational product, it is also something that many people in
8 Sydney Hutchinson

disparate locations experience as their own (cases in which dancers take up

salsa as an exotic Other are discussed below). This is the case for street as well
as studio dancers. Some believe this ownership to be natural: for instance, some
Puerto Ricans and Cubans feel the dance originated with them. Others, like
Colombians, acknowledge that it came from elsewhere but still internalize it.
They turn it into part of their local culture, transforming the dance and their
relationship to it through repeated social interactions (at parties, nightclubs,
concerts, or classes) and the effects their bodily experience (dance training, so-
cial dancing, or socially acceptable postures and ways of walking) bring to bear
on it. These prior movement experiences may vary widely (I may have train-
ing in ballet, while my partner is into hip-hop), but some shared experiences
may also predominate (cumbia is popular in Colombia and the United States–
Mexico border area; U.S. dancers are likely to be familiar with movie musical
conventions; most Dominicans can dance some merengue). Dancers’ attitudes
and understandings of these experiences may likewise vary from place to place,
causing them to accept or reject practices.
Concurrent with the commercialization and spread of salsa music, as I
have mentioned, salsa dance became commercialized and professionalized,
processes detailed in several chapters in this book. The dance was also stan-
dardized, so that a few basic steps are taught in a couple of different but easily
recognizable forms around the world. Beyond the basics, teachers may develop
a syllabus of steps particular to their school. This practice is not unique to salsa
and indeed was adapted from ballroom dance, but it is particularly extensive in
this genre. So while Karen Backstein found that New York teachers of Brazilian
and Afro-Caribbean dance were just beginning to develop teaching method-
ologies around 2000 and they were not yet standardized (2001: 469), among
New York salseros this process has been under way since the 1980s.
While New York (on-2) and L.A. (on-1) styles have dominated the trans-
national salsa scene for some years, particularly at congresses, the so-called
Cuban style is also danced in many locations and presents an important al-
ternative. This style, with more focus on bodily movements and isolations
and with rounded turn patterns in place of the slot form that characterizes
North American salsa,9 derives from Cuban casino or rueda, a round dance
in which multiple couples exchange partners and perform coordinated moves
according to a leader’s calls. It is appearing increasingly often alongside the
other two styles at congresses, and it even seems poised to overtake the afore-
mentioned styles in some areas. Meanwhile, in Cuba itself despelote, a kind
of autoerotic display by women dancing solo, may be more common, some-
times interspersed with newly created rueda moves (see Chapter 6). Rueda
has become known internationally as Cuban salsa, and while this is clearly a
misnomer, since it existed before New York salsa and came from an entirely
different socio­economic system, the term is now used to lend weight to the
Cuban-origin argument.10
Dancing in Place 9

Looking at the styles named in salsa congresses shows that studio salsa danc-
ers around the world categorize salsa styles in two principal ways: by nationality
or region (e.g., Cuban, U.S. West Coast, or Colombian style) or by musical rela-
tionships (generally, on-1 or on-2, referring to the count on which the dancers
break, or change direction). As with many classifications, this one simplifies,
obscuring (a) historical connections between locations, (b) the very recent emer-
gence of emic theories of dance counts, and (c) local meanings of music and
dance styles. This book provides important correctives to all three errors.
First, Ulloa and Jonathan Marion concur that United States–based on-1
dancing depended on Colombian-style salsa, which emphasizes the downbeat
and provides a counternarrative to the Puerto Rican focus on Cuban clave and
its off beats. Ulloa adds to this his own hypothesis, which is that Colombian
dancers gained their predilection for dancing on-1 from Mexican films of the
1940s–1950s and the guaracha and mambo dance styles they featured. In this
description, we see a dialectical relationship between Colombian and Mexican
dance practices, often via outposts like Los Angeles and including input from
Cuban and other Caribbean sources. Such a hypothesis surely complicates any
simple view of salsa as evolving in linear fashion through the unidirectional
movement of Caribbean Latinos to New York, for example. As Cindy Garcia
(2008) and Joanna Bosse (Chapter 5) point out, however, these transnational
interactions occur within a framework of power relations in which Mexican
dance styles may not be as highly valued as Caribbean ones.
Second, Sydney Hutchinson and Ulloa demonstrate that on-2 and on-1
counting systems are recent phenomena dating back no further than the 1980s,
much as Washburne’s recent (2008) work has shown that salsa musicians’ dog-
matic adherence to the clave rhythm is a 1960s Nuyorican preoccupation pos-
sessing few Cuban precedents. Meanwhile, Díaz and Priscilla Renta show how
little the count matters to the many Caribbean dancers who value freedom and
spontaneity over a close fit with clave.11 Codification of steps and standardiza-
tion of counts is thus a matter for professionals hoping to sell dance to students
and audiences. That such an elaborate theorization of music and dance inter-
relationships has arisen in this community before scholarly intervention (the
first scholarly publications to discuss on-2 dancing were Hutchinson 2004 and
Renta 2004) is striking and demands attention.
Third, although all the chapters in this volume describe dance scenes that
participate to some degree in a transnational dance community, they also dem-
onstrate the vastly different meanings dance practices acquire locally. Salsa can
mean upward mobility for working-class Latinos in New Jersey (Chapter 3), a
cosmopolitan connection to others for middle-class midwesterners (Chapter 5),
Puerto Rican pride to New Yorkers (Chapter 2), a competitive challenge for An-
gelenos (Chapter 4), an alternative, nonviolent imaginary to Caleños (Chapter 8),
a tropical vacation for Parisians (Chapter 10), national differentiation in Barce-
lona (Chapter 11), or even socialist resistance to capitalism in Cuba (Chapter 6).
10 Sydney Hutchinson

Globalized Salsa
The choice of the cities we examine in this volume—Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona,
Havana, Santo Domingo, San Juan, Los Angeles, and New York—by and large
reflects the fact that salsa culture is an urban culture that has been transna-
tional since its inception.12 While drawing its style and its means of legitimiza-
tion from earlier, rural styles like Cuban son, guajira, and guaracha and Puerto
Rican música jíbara, salsa’s typical origin stories, when unraveled, reveal con-
nections not only between Cubans and Puerto Ricans but also among African
Americans, Italian Americans, Anglo-Americans, Mexicans, Colombians, Do-
minicans, West Africans, and many others. Just before the emergence of salsa,
Latin American popular music was being disseminated throughout the Ameri-
cas through Cuban recordings and Mexican films, often making its way from
there to West Africa, where it contributed to or directly spawned a vast array
of local popular musics, including Congolese rumba, Nigerian highlife, Ango-
lan kizomba, and Guinean maringa (see, e.g., Charry 2000: 263). These styles
themselves rest on an earlier layer of African-Caribbean genres like gumbe (or
goombay), once found in Jamaica, Louisiana, Cuba, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and
beyond (see Bilby 2011).
Transnational connections and interchange are thus nothing new in Carib-
bean music and dance. Such processes have been described variously as cre-
olization, créolité, mestizaje, hybridity, and transculturation by analysts. Each
term has a different history and connotation. For instance, numerous schol-
ars have rejected “hybrid,” “mestizo,” and “creolized” for their racial impli-
cations, but others have recently found emancipatory potential in reclaiming
such terms. For instance, Quintero Rivera suggests that “mulatto” music and
dance styles like salsa demonstrate the value of hybridity to a “world obsessed
with the idea of only one governing, centralizing principle” (2009: 65), and his
analysis of such styles is thus a kind of decolonization project. Yet among the
several options, the term “transculturation” may be particularly apt for the case
of salsa. It is proposed by Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz to describe the uneven
“process of transition from one culture to another” that involves both loss and
new creation (Ortiz [1947] 1995: 102–103). He sees transculturation as being
particularly typical of the Caribbean because of the diversity of cultures in-
volved, the prolonged intensity of their interactions, and the speed and thor-
oughness with which it occurred, all of which made the region distinct from
Europe (99). Today, however, such intensive interactions of multiple cultures
have spread to many—if not most—urban areas around the world. Transcul-
turation, like salsa, is thus a part of globalization, but it is a part that is rooted,
theoretically at least, in a Caribbean past.
Mixture is thus old news in the Caribbean, which means that our use of the
term “globalized salsa” requires further explanation. Terms like “globalization”
and “transnationalism” express the common feeling that life today is qualita-
tively different from life in centuries past, despite prior mixtures, fusions, and
Dancing in Place 11

travels. What is new, John Tomlinson tells us, is not movement and dialogue
but rather the degree of complexity in the social connectivity many take for
granted today (1999: 1–3), the transformation of our experience of space and
time through mass mediation and the ease of travel (3–10), the widespread
use of communication technologies in all aspects of daily life, and the chang-
ing relationship between place and culture resulting from deterritorialization
(106–149).
“Globalized salsa” thus means complex connections between different and
distant groups of dancers facilitated by technologies like the Internet; a sense of
proximity to dancers half a world away, perhaps one that is greater than what
the dancer feels toward his or her own, non-salsa-dancing neighbors; and a
clear sense of locality through local dance styles that are nonetheless infused
with “the ghostly presence of distant influences” (Tomlinson 1999: 58). Salse-
ros themselves actively imagine the global in their discourse, promoting the
dance as “a new common element of communication around the world” and as
a global unifier (Delgado 2003; my translation).
It also means increasing links to global institutions through the global
capitalist system, or rather the music and dance industries that form a part of
it. It is no secret that salsa music has been a commercial enterprise from the
beginning, as described above. Salsa dance classes spread as a commodity on a
similar trajectory. In places without a prior tradition of son or mambo dancing,
introductory classes given at nightclubs before salsa band performances and
included in the admission price played an important role in spreading the style.
Student interest in acquiring dance competence allowed specialists to emerge
and impelled them to complicate the style with a plethora of new steps and turn
patterns. The more complicated style in turn helped establish a dedicated com-
munity of salsa dancers willing to invest time and money in lessons, videos,
shoes, and clothing. Promoters created congresses, which made money while
also enlarging and intensifying dancers’ networks. Commodified salsa danc-
ing, reified as a set of specific steps (“a dance”) rather than a social practice
(“dancing”), then spread even to those locations where a strong tradition of
social salsa dancing already existed.
Globalizing processes in salsa today can perhaps be found even more often
in dancers’ outlooks and complex practices of connectivity than in the salsa
music recording industry—especially since studio dancers tend to use older
music rather than supporting new artists. But mass media continue to play
important roles in the development, spread, and popularization of salsa mu-
sic and dance by establishing connectivity between dancers and disseminating
dance practices. All the chapters mention these issues, but they are particularly
highlighted in the Colombian (Chapter 8) and Japanese (Chapter 12) contribu-
tions. While these two places are culturally and geographically far different,
they share the practice of relating to salsa primarily through media, record-
ings and films being decisive in the Colombian case, Internet and print media
in the Japanese one. In Spain, radio is the principal means through which a
12 Sydney Hutchinson

salsa community is built. In the Dominican Republic, salsa’s role in tourism

and local cultural industries is another way the dance establishes connections
between people and places.
Salsa is different, then, from earlier transcultural Caribbean dances in the
degree of its commercialization—as long as the genre label has existed, it was
always made to be marketed—and in that it was never a rural music or a purely
oral tradition. In addition, it inhabits a special position as a dance that exists
in both a professional, globally marketed, performance-oriented form, that of
studio salsa, and an amateur, local, social form, that of street salsa. In certain
places, the two forms are in constant and intense contact, even though they
may serve different social groups, demonstrating that this is not a simple di-
chotomy but rather a scale in shades of gray. The linkages between salsa and
mass communication technologies are also an important factor in establishing
salsa as a globalized form of popular culture. The Internet, in particular, facili-
tates not only the spread of steps and styles but also dialogue between distant
dancers, and it has even contributed to spreading the ways of classifying and
debating salsa styles I have already mentioned.
Finally, and related to this last point, salsa is also different because of the
wide audiences it reaches, which now include all classes; because of its deter-
ritorialization and hence relatively greater distance from national discourses
(even in Puerto Rico, salsa is not the national music); and because of the geo-
graphic spread of its influence, affecting every inhabited continent. Thus, in
this book we look at salsa as a “globalized dance,” even though it is obvious that
not everyone around the globe participates in salsa dancing.
When we look particularly at studio salsa, we find that in most countries
it is the practice of that select group that might be termed “cosmopolitan” (for
useful discussions of the term, see Turino 2000: 7–9; Tomlinson 1999: 198–
199). Salsa scenes are frequently cosmopolitan ones in several senses. In most
places salsa dancing is not firmly tied to a concept of nation, with the possible
exception of Puerto Rico (see Chapter 7), so that most salseros do not choose
the dance for nationalist reasons. In general, salsa cosmopolitanism instead re-
lates to a generalized concept of latinidad, or a sense of Latino identity (tropi-
calized into a stereotypical “Latin heat” for some non-Latinos) and to specific
notions of locality, local pride, and localized conceptions of Latino identities.
In most cases, again with the possible exceptions of Puerto Rico and New York,
salsa is also not tied directly to colonial experiences, since it is not primarily
spread by a colonizing power but rather by dance aficionados in conjunction
with the transnational music industry. Most importantly, many salsa dancers
feel connected to other salseros in disparate locations throughout the world
through their dance practice. Particularly in places far from cultural centers,
people may get involved in salsa precisely because it offers them a way of mak-
ing a connection with cultural Others (see Bosse 2008 and Chapter 5). Yet the
possibility of making those connections is limited to those with the means of
doing so, for instance, by accessing the Internet or traveling to congresses. This
Dancing in Place 13

means that while congresses may create an ethnically inclusive community, it

is one with little class diversity—and in fact, critics of cosmopolitanism often
note the tendencies of cosmopolitans to gloss over class divisions and inequali-
ties in their imagining of the idealized coexistence of cultures.
Salsa dancers are not always cosmopolitans, however. In fact, social, or
street, dancers may not necessarily feel themselves to be participating in a
global popular culture, and so local salsas are still not particularly globalized
or even known outside their home places, as Díaz (Chapter 9) and Bárbara
Balbuena Gutiérrez (Chapter 6) show in this volume. This became especially
clear to me when I was dancing with Santo Domingo salseros: although step-
ping forward on the left foot and back on the right is a basic tenet of interna-
tional studio salsa, one that enables even those with divergent movement styles
to dance together without colliding, these dancers all did the reverse—that is,
they stepped forward on the right (and were surprised at my surprise). Many
toes were stepped on as a result of this intensely local practice.
The division present in salsa between local social dancers and cosmopoli-
tan, semiprofessional studio dancers is often one of class and access to cultural,
economic, and kinetic capital. Nonetheless, frequent border crossings between
the two realms blur the dividing line. As Katherine Borland, Díaz, and Ulloa
note, becoming a studio dancer can be a strategy of upward mobility; similarly,
the adoption of movements coded as “street” can be a legitimization strategy
for studio dancers. Nonetheless, mobility through dance practice is often im-
possible for those with insurmountably low social status, like the Mexican mi-
grant dancers Bosse describes. In addition, dance movements and bodily habits
themselves change by moving across categories, as Ulloa suggests.
Thomas Turino finds that cosmopolitans are considered elite and sophisti-
cated because they themselves define these terms (2000: 10–11). Similarly, stu-
dio salsa now functions as cultural capital because its originators had already
transformed social salsa practices to fit middle-class, cosmopolitan aesthetic
principles (see Bosse 2008). Its degree of complexity has been raised through
the creation of numerous complicated steps and turn patterns, improvisation
has been de-emphasized in favor of learned sequences (see Chapter 7), and ev-
ery aspect has been codified and standardized. Now too difficult to learn at
home or on the street, studio salsa is a commodity to be bought and sold. And
its professionalization may be accompanied by an unwarranted devaluation of
local social dancing that can reduce the dance’s power to create community
cohesion (see Chapters 2 and 7). Like the move from salsa dura to salsa román-
tica, the increasing predominance of global (studio) over local (street) salsa car-
ries the risk of depoliticization and exclusion, even as it brings new populations
into the dance.
In sum, if salsa was once thought of as a local music, this situation changed
long ago. It would indeed be difficult to conceive of the “Salsa Bollywood” style
created by Bangalore, India, dancers Ree and Prithvi and taught at the 2008
Berlin Salsa Congress as a local one. And the commonly told history of salsa’s
14 Sydney Hutchinson

origins, which focuses on the genre’s emergence in New York, itself leaves out
the dance’s shifting and multiple prehistories. Salsa dance epitomizes many of
the features that have been associated with globalization: hybridity, deterritori-
alization, commodification, and cosmopolitanism. It has been spread through
migration, mass media, new technologies, and tourism. But the spread of salsa
is not a top-down affair in which mass-mediated popular culture is imposed on
hapless locals; it is a dialogue in which the locals also impose their own tastes
and priorities, changing the nature of the very commodity they are meant to
consume.

Localized Salsa
While deterritorialization is key for understanding global, mass-marketed
studio salsa dance, reterritorialization is a process at least as important. This
book therefore focuses less on how salsa has become separated from its origins,
which, as we have seen, are themselves contested, and more on how it is contin-
ually relinked with place and community through dance practices. By calling
salsa “globalized,” we point out that salsa has spread to many continents, coun-
tries, localities, and communities, many of which have little in common except
for their interest in salsa. By emphasizing that the dance is simultaneously “lo-
calized,” we distance what is global from what is normative and underscore the
roles of local actors in producing the global. Globalization occurs differently in
different places, so that Japanese, Spanish, and Colombian experiences of salsa
are very different, even though they deal with the same product. Even codifica-
tion, stylization, and professionalization take place at the local level. Far from
producing a single, homogenous movement style, then, salsa has developed dif-
ferently in different locations; it has also taken on different gendered and ra-
cialized meanings as it has become embedded in local racial hierarchies, ethnic
identities, and histories of gender relations.13
Just as non-Western modernities arise pluralistically from different histo-
ries (Featherstone 1990: 8; Tomlinson 1999: 65–66), so does globalization occur
multidirectionally and in plural, as much for “the rest” as for “the West” (Hall
1996). Ana Maria Ochoa explains that major transnational labels dominate an
increasing share of the music market at the same time that they spawn local
branches that function as independents within the larger conglomerate. The
“world music” some of these labels sell constructs authenticity based on ideas
about nature, “true emotions and genuine sentiments,” and time without his-
tory, thereby erasing differences (Ochoa 1999: 257–258). Salsa dancers do the
same when they consider “authentic” dancers, those with a Latin American
background, to be “naturals,” while everyone else has to learn it. In both salsa
and world music, authenticity as a commodity is tied to race and ethnicity, lo-
cated in the bodies of performers and then marketed in tropicalized form as
“hot” and “fiery” (see Backstein 2001: 458; Ochoa 1999; Aparicio and Chavez-
Silverman 1997: 8).14 Salsa becomes a “hot commodity” because the passion it is
Dancing in Place 15

thought to encapsulate has itself long been mined from Latin America and sold
in Europe and North America (see Savigliano 1995).
Localized salsas have complex and highly variable relations to notions of
authenticity. Borland in Chapter 3 shows how outsiders with their exoticizing
gaze are not the only ones engaged in tropicalization; New Jersey Latinos also
tropicalize themselves. Marion in Chapter 4 explains that Mexican dancers
in Los Angeles are sometimes grouped with other Latinos as authentic and at
other times deemed inauthentic because they are not Caribbean. A similar dy-
namic occurs in Illinois, Bosse demonstrates in Chapter 5, where salsa is tied
to often racist evaluations of kinetic capital; there, Cuban and New York styles
are viewed as the most authentic ones. Kengo Iwanaga in Chapter 12 shows how
Japanese dancers make very selective and strategic transnational connections:
those who dance Cuban style are interested in authenticating their dance by
acquiring and expressing knowledge about the music and dance’s history, but
they are in a minority; a majority dance L.A. style and have little interest in
such matters. This tendency seems to be reproduced in many other local salsa
scenes. But because local interpretations are, I argue, just as important as local
performances, it is imperative to examine not only the product but also the pro-
cesses that produce it and the discourse that surrounds it. The version of salsa
taught in ballroom studios and tied to dancesport, formally regulated competi-
tive ballroom dance, seems to be divorced from race- and place-based notions
of authenticity; instead, it focuses on a technical competency completely sepa-
rate from cultural knowledge. This new type of globalized salsa requires fur-
ther research.15
Borland suggests that “while all scenes are local, not all locales produce the
conditions for the development of a place-specific style,” a statement that merits
further analysis. How do place-specific styles like those described in this book
actually arise? Elsewhere (Hutchinson 2012), I have proposed the term “ki-
netopia” as a way of examining the interactions of dance with place. Its literal
meaning is “place of movement,” and the relationship functions in two ways:
some dances are kinetopias,16 in that their relationship to place defines them,
and some places are kinetopic, in that they are in part defined by their par-
ticular patterns of movement. A kinetopia is often constructed through dance,
although styles of walking, driving, gesturing, and other motion-based behav-
iors can also play important roles, as do more large-scale types of movement,
from crowds moving through streets during carnival to travel patterns or the
displacements of labor migration. In other words, kinetopias are both places
and dances: I am speaking of a dialectical relationship between localities and
movement practices that is mediated through the body.17 The kinetopia concept
can help us understand how people dance in place and why place-specific styles
develop.
Foucault’s ([1967] 2002) “heterotopias”—sites of juxtaposition, difference,
conflict, and conversation—construct our understanding of the world through
inversion: mental hospitals, for instance, tell us what normal behavior is;
16 Sydney Hutchinson

cemeteries tell us what it is to be alive; and through their separation, festivals tell
us about ordinary time and museums tell us about ordinary space. Likewise,
kinetopias produce local understandings of the world through bodily move-
ment. Unlike utopias, they actually exist, but like them, kinetopias may also be
aimed at producing a more perfected version of the outside society, as salseros
speak of achieving global unity through dance. Kinetopias are both conceptual
and physical spaces. They may be a region, a city, or a more specific location
like a disco, a street festival, or a high school dance. People define kinetopias
through contact and comparison—we move in this way, and they do not—and
thus they are also sites for identity building. “Dance accents” are kinetopic in
that they define social groups as related to place through their members’ move-
ment practices. Place-specific, kinetopic salsa styles tend to emerge in locations
that already have a distinctive local or regional culture with a strong heritage of
partner dance, a cultural connection to the dance either through geography or
migration, a network of sites for dancing, media outlets that support the genre,
and a large number of local salsa aficionados. Only such places seem to have
the numbers, momentum, and dance vocabulary needed to create and sustain
a kinetopia of salsa.
Salsa dancing might seem a curious kind of kinetopia. While the music was
once strongly associated with a particular place—New York’s Latino barrios—
that connection has been gradually dissolved as the dance and music have be-
come globalized. But salsa is a product of cultural mixture, and as Tomlinson
notes, there is a “tendency of culture mixtures to re-embed themselves, how-
ever briefly, into ‘stable’ identity positions” (1999: 148). The chapters in this
book evidence the process in which salsa dancing is reterritorialized in a wide
variety of locations, giving rise to numerous kinetopias. As Josh Kun writes
of “audiotopias,” the local salsas we describe bring together “sites normally
deemed incompatible”—like developing and developed nations, or First and
Third Worlds—and may also be “spaces of effective utopian longings,” as in the
hope, frequently articulated at salsa congresses, that salsa dancing can bring
the world together (2005: 23).
We might think of kinetopias as being the (re)territorialized aspects of
the global “choreoscape.” Arjun Appadurai (1990) describes the deterritorial-
ized, or globalized, world as being constituted by the interaction of a variety
of “scapes,” or fields of action, from the “financescape” of global capitalism to
the “ethnoscape” of human relations. The choreoscape, the vast array of dances
circulating around the globe, is another part of these interactions and a part
that frequently becomes re-embedded in localities. As commodified popular
culture, and as a part of the migration and flow of ideas, capital, and even peo-
ple around the world, salsa dance forms part of the choreoscape that produces
embodied concepts of community, ethnicity, and gender, among others.
In attending to the role of the choreoscape in globalizing and localizing
processes, this book argues for the restoration of dance to the central place
it occupied in the early histories of the fields of folklore, anthropology, and
Dancing in Place 17

ethnomusicology. But because salsa dancing has simply not been researched
everywhere and every way it is performed, numerous places and topics are left
out. For instance, salsa enjoys great popularity in many West African nations
with a long history of not only consuming but also producing Latin American
music. The continuing popularity of the mostly Senegalese salsa group Afri-
cando among New York salseros—their song “Yay Boy” has entered the on-2
canon, and dancers sing along to it even though its Wolof-language lyrics are
unintelligible to them—is just one example of the transnational, transcultural
connections occurring in African salsa (see Montes Pizarro 2008). And in In-
dia, the style seems to be growing concurrently with the new middle class (see
“Salsa Mubarak,” n.d.; I thank Naresh Fernandes for the tip). Yet I was unable
to find any researcher working on salsa dancing in either Africa or India. Fu-
ture researchers, I hope, will continue where we have left off, thus helping cre-
ate a fuller picture of how popular culture in general, and salsa in particular, is
localized through embodied practices.

Common Threads
This book brings together contributors from seven countries (United States,
Japan, France, Spain, Colombia, Cuba, and Dominican Republic) and at least
as many fields and disciplines (ethnomusicology, anthropology, communi-
cation studies, sociology, dance, humanities, Latin American studies, and
performance studies). The contributions therefore reflect a wide variety of per-
spectives born from not only individual interests but also differences in the
discourses of the authors’ respective national traditions and academic fields.
I believe the diversity of the authors and their styles to be a strength of this
book, since it reflects the current state of salsa as a multisited practice. In ad-
dition, nearly all of these authors are or have been deeply involved in the local
salsa scene in which they write, and two of them, Bárbara Balbuena Gutiér-
rez and Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel, are likely the best-known authorities on
salsa in their own countries. Including these chapters is as important for the
decolonization of our disciplines as it is for reminding those of us working in
First World academies that not everyone has accepted our intellectual propos-
als. That some of these essays do not fit comfortably into current discourses in
English-language social sciences reminds us that we need to hear other voices
from other academies, as well as from outside the academy entirely, and that we
need to work harder to forge international dialogues.
The book is organized into geographic sections, each of which shows
a different facet of salsa today. All of them, however, have certain themes in
common, so that issues of class, race, and ethnicity continually resurface. Its
structure follows the trajectory of commercialized salsa’s spread from New
York to Latin America to points beyond. The first section thus consists of
works on salsa in the United States, which illustrate salsa’s social ascent and the
changes it has experienced by transforming from a working-class, local, and
18 Sydney Hutchinson

strongly Latino genre into a middle-class, globalized, and multiethnic one. In

the process, tensions have arisen between those identified as street and studio
dancers, between Latinos and non-Latinos, and between the drive to commer-
cialize and the need to socialize.
In New York, on-2 dancing arose as a unique local style tied to a sense
of pride in Puerto Rican or Nuyorican heritage and in the local tradition of
mambo dance. Today, it has evolved into a globally salable commodity, ne-
cessitating a de-emphasis of ethnicity as a factor in its performance. Instead,
nostalgia, a clave-centered mythos, and a utopian idea of bridging differences
through dance are factors in many modern-day aficionados’ understanding of
salsa. In Chapter 2, I detail the history of on-2 dancing, with special attention
to its class and ethnic dimensions and street-studio tensions.
Katherine Borland writes of another salsa periphery, one located right
next to the dance’s perceived center. In New Jersey, salseros see themselves as
­outward-reaching cosmopolitans, but here salsa is both part of an inclusive lati-
nidad and a way out of limiting socioeconomic spheres. Perhaps in reaction to
nearby New York’s emphasis on Puerto Rican roots, New Jerseyites celebrate
diverse backgrounds while avoiding any talk that might increase divisions
within the scene, particularly talk about class.
Jonathan Marion looks at the other big U.S. salsa center, showing how the
L.A. salsa scene developed primarily through competition, reflecting the city’s
reputation for hustling. Savvy marketing has succeeded in gaining L.A.-style
salsa recognition as the alternative to New York salsa, even though the dance
marketed is not representative of diverse local dance practices. In contrast to
the theatrical style of globalized L.A. salsa, local social dance often drew in-
stead from the cumbia dancing popular in the border area. Marion’s chapter
therefore serves as an example of the transformations dance may undergo in
passing from global to local levels, and vice versa.
In looking at a salsa scene in an area far removed from those usually as-
sociated with the dance, Joanna Bosse gives a valuable new perspective on
racialization in salsa. In the historically homogenous but currently diversify-
ing small-town Midwest, those considered to be salsa insiders and outsiders
may differ markedly from the emics and etics of other places: here, Mexicans
are considered natives to salsa because of their Latin American origins, even
though they are also viewed with suspicion. While salsa provides midwestern
“small-town cosmopolitans” with a way to connect to global popular culture
and to meet others of different backgrounds, it also camouflages a particular
form of racism, manifested in their scorn for Mexican dance styles. In this case,
everyone is not equally cosmopolitan, and one’s degree of cultural capital may
be evaluated through bodily practices or dance accents. Perhaps we might in-
troduce the term “kinetic capital” to describe the phenomenon.
Globalized salsa is now often considered a middle-class activity, since, as
noted, it caters to those who can afford lessons, costumes, and visits to clubs and
congresses. Yet the Latin American chapters in the second part of this volume
Dancing in Place 19

demonstrate that salsa is not exclusive to that class. While Latin Americans are
clearly aware of and engaged in the globalized salsa industry, in many countries
salsa is still danced also or even primarily by lower and working classes. And
salsa’s ascent in foreign lands is no guarantee of a similar rise in status in those
countries with which it has historically been associated.
Bárbara Balbuena provides an insider’s look at salsa in Cuba, the island
many outside observers associate most closely with the dance but a place that
in reality has a conflicted relationship with the genre. In showing how unique
local forms like rueda de casino have developed in this socialist country, she
provides an important counterpoint to the other chapters in this book, which
look at local salsas in the global capitalist system.
Next, Priscilla Renta analyzes the concept of sabor (flavor) from a personal,
native-ethnographic perspective, placing her own experience in dialogue with
developments in the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress since its beginnings as the
World Salsa Congress in 1997. She demonstrates how the congress has contrib-
uted to the professionalization of salsa as well as to the Latinization of transna-
tional popular culture. This example of transculturation shows the interplay of
various commercial interests in globalized salsa as well as salsa’s potential as a
decolonization maneuver.
In Cali, Colombia, Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel similarly demonstrates how
salsa helps create an alternative imaginary for the inhabitants of this city, long
torn by violence and the drug trade. Dance can be a positive, creative outlet for
Caleños, and when they bring their local style to international congresses, it
can also improve outsiders’ impressions of the city and of Colombia as a whole.
Discourse on race in Colombia, as elsewhere in Latin America, can be quite dif-
ferent from that in North American and European scholarship; this difference
is seen in Ulloa’s chapter, which nonetheless seeks to explain how Caleño dance
fits into the city’s history of racial discrimination. Finally, he demonstrates how
salsa and other Caribbean dances in Cali grew as a result of interactions with
mass products like recordings, often mediated by local businesswomen.
In her chapter on the city of Santo Domingo, Rossy Díaz explains salsa
dance as a class-delimited activity particularly associated with Dominican re-
turn migrants. It is also a practice through which some barrio dwellers con-
struct an identity alternative to the official Dominican one, which is closely tied
to merengue. In this Caribbean city, salsa is a local cultural industry character-
ized by ties to the growing tourist industry and, simultaneously, to the older,
traditional son-dancing culture. Its economic growth is all the more notewor-
thy considering how it has occurred almost exclusively through dancers’ own
initiative in the vacuum left by the absence of any official cultural policy that
might encourage the development of small-scale industries.
The third and final section of this book encompasses salsa scenes far re-
moved from locations typically associated with the dance. While the general
movement vocabulary was imported to these scenes from afar, it was incorpo-
rated in particular ways that depended on local social and cultural dynamics.
20 Sydney Hutchinson

Dance practices and their ascribed meanings vary widely between locations
with large and long-standing Latino communities, such as Barcelona, and
those with no sizable Latin American immigrant communities to speak of, like
Tokyo. In all these places, the media and transmitted stereotypes about Latinos
play central roles in the localization of salsa.
Echoing Paul Gilroy’s (1993) and James Clifford’s (1997) concept of the
intertwining of roots and routes, Saúl Escalona conceives of salsa in Paris as
a “route” embodied in the dance’s movements. Although Parisian Latinos do
dance salsa, Escalona focuses instead on the reception and reproduction of
salsa among non-Latino Parisians, for whom the dance is a set of movements
devoid of any cultural meaning except that of a stereotypical “tropical heat.”
French dancers classify salsa styles geographically, codify movements as a list
of steps to be performed, and seek to acquire kinetic capital by mastering the
steps. In Escalona’s analysis, these practices are more related to French ideas
about individuality and competence than to Latin American ones about com-
munity and enjoyment.
Isabel Llano shows how the growth of salsa in Barcelona has been in-
timately tied to the growth of Latin American mass media in that city. Like
Bosse, Llano shows that insiderness and outsiderness are judged differently in
different locations: in Barcelona some of the earliest salsa teachers were from
South America’s Southern Cone, a region distant from salsa’s usual centers.
(The same teachers would likely be deemed inauthentic in places with large
Caribbean populations, like New York.) The heightened popularity of Latino
music in Barcelona has not produced an integrated dance scene: instead, each
nationality has its own dance spaces, while Spaniards attend still others, and
each group manifests distinct consumption practices. Nonetheless, Llano be-
lieves that the embodied nature of dance practice may be helping change Span-
ish cultural identities and attitudes toward immigrants.
In Japan, salsa is not connected to any large Latino immigrant commu-
nity. Kengo Iwanaga shows how salsa has been assimilated into a culture where
partner dance was historically not accepted, but where a progression of Latin
dances from tango to salsa has nevertheless helped change attitudes. There, two
types of dancers practice two different styles of salsa, with the minority Cuban-
style dancers exhibiting an interest in learning about culture and the majority
L.A.-style dancers interested in only performance. This focus is related to the
business orientation of the salsa scene in Japan, which has grown through the
efforts of businessmen promoters and the appearance of magazines and web-
sites devoted to the style. The Japanese example underscores the importance of
mass media, particularly the Internet, in the globalization of the dance.
In all, these chapters provide different takes on how dance produces place
and vice versa. In cases like the Puerto Rican, Colombian, Cuban, Dominican,
New York, and Angeleno ones, local salsa practices create a kinetopia in which
the dance can come to stand for the place. Local dancers acquire obvious dance
accents, detected either visually by an observer or tactilely by a dance partner.
Dancing in Place 21

In other cases, like the Japanese or French ones, there is a conscious attempt
to re-create a dance from elsewhere rather than produce a unique kinetopia,
and there is no definable localized dance accent. Even so, dance practices must
change through their interactions with local beliefs, values, and bodily habits.
The reverse is also true, as Iwanaga shows: the practice of partner dancing in
Japan has itself given rise to a new habitus that represents a notable departure
from prior ones, in which casual body-to-body contact had been avoided.

Conclusion
Eighty years after Curt Sachs (1933) attempted to create a generalized global
geography of dance practices, one can today construct a quite specific, global
geography of salsa by examining the distribution or diffusion of on-1, on-2,
Cuban, or other styles. Dancers distinguish between styles defined by but di-
vorced from locality, while the dance styles and their meanings are changed
when they are recontextualized. To cite one example, as New York salsa be-
comes global salsa, dancing on-2 has gained prestige but, some might find, lost
meaning. At the same time, the creation of a global salsa community may be
seen as a positive development, since it creates common ground for people of
diverse backgrounds who might never otherwise have the opportunity to in-
teract. In itself, globalization is neither positive nor negative. As salseros them-
selves might acknowledge, it is not what you do but how you do it: dance can be
performed differently in different places and times. The same is true of cultural
globalization: however it takes place, it varies from place to place.
The related concepts of dance accents and kinetopias can help us under-
stand this phenomenon. Our bodily habits are profoundly influenced by the
contexts in which we live, their histories and politics, and these traces are man-
ifested most clearly when we engage in aestheticized movement practices like
dance. Even talk about dance—how we judge it, what we value in it—reveals
the meanings dance acquires in local communities, the ways dance and place
interact, and the many differences that exist between local dance scenes, even
when they all participate in a form of globalized popular culture. This book
demonstrates how very differently salsa is understood and practiced in differ-
ent places, even though many or most salseros also feel they are participating
in a global cultural practice and even though cosmopolitan salseros particu-
larly value the globe-spanning connectivity the dance provides. We must there-
fore ask not only how globalization varies from place to place but also how the
global is produced in place, through dancing in place. The chapters in this book
suggest some answers to these questions.

Notes
Acknowledgments: I thank Carol Babiracki, Birgitta Johnson, and Maurice Mengel for their
comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
22 Sydney Hutchinson

1. See Kapchan 2006 for a related description of interethnic salsa dancing in Texas.
2. Interestingly enough, I would later find nearly the same step pattern being taught as
the “salsa step” on the Razz M’Tazz syllabus, although generally minus the small kick, or
release, on count 4 (described in Chapter 2 herein).
3. See Garcia 2008 on cumbia-style salsa in Los Angeles; Ramos-Kitrell 2012 on
Colombian cumbia in Monterrey, Mexico; and Chapter 8 on Mexican popular culture in
Colombia.
4. Hutchinson 2007a, 2012.
5. Bosse has proposed the related term “movement dialect” to describe “dance styles
as simultaneous expressions of individuality and markers of cultural affinity and differ-
ence” (2008: 48), but this is slightly different. Bosse’s dialects are akin to the local styles
(e.g., New York and Los Angeles) described here, which are shared by geographically and
often ethnically delineated groups, while accents are the traces those dialects leave on the
individual’s body.
6. Dance scholar Randy Martin has also recognized the problems attendant on the
institutionalization of academic disciplines in university departments, noting a tendency
to obscure the interdisciplinary contexts of these disciplines’ emergence as well as the ties
between knowledge and power (1998: 191).
7. For further information on Fania Records’ salsa productions and salsa in Venezuela,
see Rondón 1980 and 2008; on gender and listening, see Aparicio 1998; on Colombian salsa
and salsa fandom, see Waxer 2002a; on salsa music’s transnational movements and local-
izations, see Waxer 2002b; on the local dance scene in Montreal, see Pietrobruno 2006; on
the local dance scene in London, see Urquia 2004 and 2005; and on precursors to salsa in
New York’s Latin music scene, see Roberts 1999 and Glasser 1995.
8. Washburne further argues that the increasing distance between salsa and Cuban
music was caused by not only the U.S. embargo, which curtailed Cuban immigration and
ties between New York and Cuba-based musicians, but also the need the embargo created
for Fania to distance its product from Cuban styles. This need even created the practice of
adding “D.R.” (derechos reservados, or “all rights reserved”) to well-known Cuban songs
on record jackets rather than the author’s name (2008: 18); this practice continues today
in Dominican merengue típico and other Caribbean musics, apparently as a way to avoid
royalty payments to known authors.
9. In Chapter 11 Isabel Llano groups both on-1 and on-2 styles under salsa en línea, or
slot-form salsa. Some L.A. and New York dancers might be irked to find themselves in the
same category, but it makes perfect sense from an outside perspective.
10. I once attended an Afro-beat dance class in Berlin, Germany, that included West
African and African diaspora dances like funaná, kizomba, and zouk. Noticing that salsa
and bachata were also part of the studio’s offerings, I got into a conversation with the Ger-
man instructor about these styles. In the United States the salsa-origin debates generally
center on the relative importance of Cuban or Puerto Rican influences; I was surprised to
find that this teacher not only completely denied early salsa’s ties to New York but also went
so far as to discount any possibility of Puerto Rican involvement in the music’s emergence.
I explained that Puerto Ricans both on the island and in New York City feel very strongly
that salsa is their music and added that the label “salsa” was applied to Cuban music only
much later in the style’s history and in the United States, but to no avail. His coinstructor
walked in at that point and said, “La salsa es cubana, y punto” (Salsa is Cuban, period), thus
closing off further discussion. I interpret their opinion as arising from a combination of
factors, including the historical ties between East Berlin and Cuba, the absence of a Puerto
Rican community in Berlin, and the increasing authenticity value attached to Cuba in
globalized salsa in general. The last factor may in turn be because of (a) the international
Dancing in Place 23

success of Cuban nostalgia products like Buena Vista Social Club, (b) the heightened
value given to African diaspora musics in the world music market in general (see Pacini
Hernández 1998), and (c) the leftist chic attached to supporting Cuban narratives over
North American ones.
11. Quintero Rivera (2009: 27) similarly explains that some Puerto Ricans start on 1,
others on 2, and still others on 3, or in contratiempo (syncopation), although Tato Conrad,
“the most historically oriented Puerto Rican professional dancer,” insists on starting “salsa
cocola,” or working-class salsa, on 1.
12. Bosse’s focus on small-town salsa does not disprove this fact, since the dancers she
describes participate in salsa precisely because of its cosmopolitan connotations.
13. I have written elsewhere about gender relations in salsa dance (Hutchinson 2007b,
2013).
14. While essentializing, such practices of authentification can have positive economic
and symbolic effects on occasion. Backstein notes, for instance, that the increased profes-
sionalization of “ethnic” dances can lead to respect for dancers of color and redress of the
misperception that such dances have “no technique” (2001: 459).
15. Salsa is not part of the official set of competitive ballroom dances, but it is fre-
quently taught in dancesport-oriented studios.
16. While “heterotopos” and “kinetopos” might seem the more correct singular forms
and “heterotopia” and “kinetopia” already to be plurals, I here use the plurals “heteroto-
pias” and “kinetopias” to match both Foucault’s term “hétérotopies” and the related and
more familiar terms “utopia” and “utopias.”
17. After I drafted my chapter on the topic of kinetopias in 2009 (Hutchinson 2012),
Jonathan McIntosh proposed the similar term “dance heterotopias” to describe Balinese
teenagers’ disco dancing practices and their appropriation and resignification of foreign
dances (2010: 12–13). This is different from a kinetopia in several ways. First, kinetopias
relate to all types of bodily movement, not only dance, although here I am foregrounding
dance. Second, kinetopias refer to not only dance performance but also the locations them-
selves; the term thus emphasizes how dances are localized as well as how dances themselves
contribute to the making of place.

References
Aparicio, Frances R., and Susana Chavez-Silverman. 1997. Tropicalizations: Transcultural
Representations of Latinidad. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.”
Public Culture 2 (2): 1–23.
Backstein, Karen. 2001. “Taking ‘Class’ into Account: The Dance Studio and Latino
Culture.” In Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, ed. Agustin Laó-Montes
and Arlene Dávila, 449–472. New York: Columbia University Press.
Berríos-Miranda, Marisol. 2002. “Is Salsa a Musical Genre?” In Situating Salsa: Global
Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 23–50. New York:
Routledge.
Bilby, Kenneth. 2011. “Africa’s Creole Drum: The Gumbe as Vector and Signifier of Trans-
African Creolization.” In Creolization as Cultural Creativity, ed. Robert Baron and
Ana C. Cara, 137–177. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Bosse, Joanna. 2008. “Salsa Dance and the Transformation of Style: An Ethnographic
Study of Movement and Meaning in a Cross Cultural Context.” Dance Research
Journal 40 (1): 45–64.
24 Sydney Hutchinson

Charry, Eric. 2000. Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and
Mandinka of Western Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Delgado, Luis A., ed. 2003. “Nuestras raices/Our roots.” In Salsa Today. 3rd ed. San Juan,
Puerto Rico: Congreso Mundial de la Salsa.
Desmond, Jane C. 1997. “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies.”
In Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane C. Desmond, 29–54.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Duany, Jorge. 1984. “Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa.”
Latin American Music Review 5 (2): 186–215.
Featherstone, Mike. 1990. “Global Culture: An Introduction.” In Global Culture:
Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, ed. Mike Featherstone, 1–14. London: Sage.
Foucault, Michel. (1967) 2002. “Of Other Spaces.” In The Visual Culture Reader, ed.
Nicholas Mirzoeff, 229–242. 2nd. ed. New York: Routledge.
García, Cindy. 2008. “Don’t Leave Me, Celia!’ Salsera Homosociality and Pan-Latina
Corporealities.” Women and Performance 18 (3): 199–213.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.
Glasser, Ruth. 1995. My Music Is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York
Communities, 1917–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1996. “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power.” In Modernity: An
Introduction to Modern Societies, ed. Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, 184–227. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.
Hutchinson, Sydney. 2004. “Mambo On 2: The Birth of a New Form of Dance in New York
City.” Centro Journal 16 (2): 109–137.
———. 2007a. From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth
Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
———. 2007b. “When Women Lead: Changing Gender Roles in New York Salsa.” Paper
presented at the Joint Conference of the Society of the Dance History Scholars and the
Congress on Research in Dance, Paris, June 21–24.
———. 2009. “Introduction.” In “Latin American Dance in Transnational Contexts,” ed.
Sydney Hutchinson. Special issue, Journal of American Folklore 122 (486): 378–390.
———. 2012. “Breaking Borders/Quebrando Fronteras: Dancing in the Borderscape.” In
Transnational Encounters: Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border, ed.
Alejandro Madrid, 41–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2013. “Followers Strike Back! Backleading, Hijacking, and Role Reversal in Con­
temporary Partner Dance.” Unpublished manuscript.
Kapchan, Deborah. 2006. “Talking Trash: Performing Home and Anti-home in Austin’s
Salsa Culture.” American Ethnologist 33 (3): 361–377.
Kun, Josh. 2005. Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Martin, Randy. 1998. Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
McIntosh, Jonathan. 2010. “Dancing to a Disco Beat? Children, Teenagers, and the
Localizing of Popular Music in Bali.” Asian Music 41 (1): 1–35.
McMains, Juliet. 2006. Glamour Addiction: Inside the American Ballroom Dance Industry.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Montes Pizarro, Errol. 2008 “Influencias del son y la salsa en el Congo y en Senegal.” In
El son y la salsa en la identidad del Caribe: Memorias del II Congreso Internacional
Música, Identidad y Cultura en el Caribe, ed. Darío Tejeda and Rafael Yunén, 269–280.
Santo Domingo: Instituto de Estudios Caribeños and Centro León. Available at http://
Dancing in Place 25

[Link]/iii/sites/[Link]/files/u3/Errol_El_Son_y
_la_Salsa-Montes-P__gina_III.pdf.
Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. 1999. “El desplazamiento de los espacios de la autenticidad:
Una mirada desde la música.” In Cultura y globalización, ed. Jesús Martín Barbero
and Fabio de López LaRoche, 249–265. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia,
Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Centro de Estudios Sociales.
Ortiz, Fernando. (1947) 1995. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de
Onís. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Pacini Hernández, Deborah. 1998. “Dancing with the Enemy: Cuban Popular Music, Race,
Authenticity, and the World-Music Landscape.” Latin American Perspectives 25 (3):
110–125.
Perna, Vicenzo. 2008. Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. 2006. Salsa and Its Transnational Moves. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books.
Quintero Rivera, Ángel G. 1999. ¡Salsa, sabor y control! Sociología de la música “tropical.”
2nd ed. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.
———. 2009. Cuerpo y cultura: Las músicas mulatas y la subversión del baile. Madrid:
Iberoamericana and Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert.
Ramos-Kitrell, Jesús. 2012. “Transnational Cultural Constructions: Cumbia Music and
the Making of Locality in Monterrey.” In Transnational Encounters: Music and
Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border, ed. Alejandro Madrid, 191–206. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Renta, Priscilla. 2004. “Salsa Dance: Latino/a History in Motion.” Centro: Journal of the
Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16 (2): 138–157.
Roberts, John Storm. 1999. The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the
United States. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rondón, César Miguel. 1980. El libro de la salsa: Crónica de la música del caribe urbano.
Caracas, Venezuela: Editorial Arte.
———. 2008. The Book of Salsa: A Chronicle of Urban Music from the Caribbean to New
York City, trans. Frances R. Aparicio and Jackie White. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
Sachs, Curt. 1933. Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer and Ernst
Vohsen.
“Salsa Mubarak.” n.d. Time Out Mumbai. Previously available at [Link]
[Link]/dance/dance_preview_details.asp?code=28 (accessed October 11, 2010).
Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Tomlinson, John. 1999. Globalization and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Turino, Thomas. 2000. Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Urquia, Norman. 2004. “‘Doin’ It Right’: Contested Authenticity in London’s Salsa Scene.”
In Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual, ed. Andy Bennet and Richard A.
Peterson, 96–113. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
———. 2005. “The Re-branding of Salsa in London’s Dance Clubs: How an Ethnicised
Form of Cultural Capital was Institutionalised.” Leisure Studies 24 (4): 385–397.
Washburne, Chris. 2008. Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York City.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Waxer, Lise. 2002a. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular
Culture in Cali, Colombia. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
———, ed. 2002b. Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular
Music. New York: Routledge.
2
What’s in a Number?
From Local Nostalgia to Global Marketability
in New York’s On-2 Salsa

Sydney Hutchinson

T
he development of salsa music in New York has been intimately tied to
dance practice from the very beginning. “Without a dance the music
cannot be popular,” Tito Puente asserted of mambo, salsa’s precursor
(Feuerstein, n.d.). Yet this dance is not singular but multiple. Alongside informal
social dancing in nightclubs and family settings, New York dancers have devel-
oped a performance-oriented salsa with ties to ballroom dance, jazz, Broadway,
and twentieth-century social dances. Many of these dancers prefer to call their
dance mambo rather than salsa, in accordance with Puente’s oft-repeated state-
ment, “Salsa is a condiment of food. You eat salsa. You don’t listen to it” (quoted
in Loza 1999: 41). They further delineate the genre as on-2 mambo, referring to
the musical beat emphasized in their basic step, in which they break, or change
direction, on the second count of a four-beat measure.
While stepping on count 1, 2, or 3 may seem to outsiders an unimpor­tant
detail, to New York dancers it makes a world of difference. On-2 dancers believe
that their rhythmic approach enables greater adherence to the clave, the rhyth-
mic “key” of salsa music,1 and thus a superior style and technique, which some
describe as “relaxed” and “elastic looking” (Lewis, n.d., “What’s Up”).2 Thus the
2 is to New York dancers what the clave is to Puerto Rican and Nuyorican musi-
cians, a “dynamic and socially charged concept” discussed frequently and heat-
edly, giving rise to a kind of internally generated music theory (see Washburne
2008: 188). In fact, many on-2 dancers either cannot or will not dance with

This chapter is based on Sydney Hutchinson, “Mambo On 2: The Birth of a New Form of
Dance in New York City,” Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16, no. 2
(2004): 109–137.
What’s in a Number? 27

those who dance on a different count (Navarro 2000). Dancers’ discussions of

their “conversions” and “initiations” to the on-2 style reach near-religious levels
(see Bello, n.d., “How Mike”; and Siverio 2002); many see their introduction to
the style as a life-changing experience.
Developed and promoted primarily by New York Puerto Ricans, on-2
mambo or salsa was for many years understood as a distinctively Nuyorican
dance genre. (I use “Nuyorican” in the sense of diasporic Puerto Ricans born
and raised in New York City as opposed to those who have grown up on the is-
land.) It was qualitatively different both from its Caribbean and ballroom dance
predecessors and from other styles of salsa dance. For instance, several genera-
tions of New York dancers emphasize intricate footwork composed of named
steps known as “shines.”3 They prefer a theatrical look featuring dramatic, stop-
time poses with long lines, extended arms, and even occasional “jazz hands”
over subtler body motion and the polyrhythmic articulation of different body
parts that characterize many Afro-Caribbean dances. They also exhibit a dis-
tinctive musical feeling, stepping slightly behind the beat rather than right on it
even when dancing to up-tempo music.4 Finally, the emphasis on counting and
rhythm gives New York on-2 dancers a unique relationship to their music. They
often favor salsa dura (“hard,” or old-school, salsa produced in New York during
the 1960s and 1970s), which features a tightly locked rhythm section and clearly
audible, repetitive percussion patterns (see Berríos-Miranda 2002).
Beyond these technical matters, since the 1980s on-2 dancers have created
a subculture, or “scene,” whose members consider themselves artists, “serious
dancers” who “have worked very hard to learn this complicated dance” (Shaw
2013). Membership entails investing significant time and money for dance
lessons, costumes, shoes, club and contest entrance fees, and travel to dance
events. Yet it also entails a social commitment to the on-2 community, which
maintains its bonds through websites promoting the style, online discussion
groups, monthly events called socials, and yearly gatherings called congresses.
Specialist DJs5 cater to on-2 dancers, while nightclub owners make special con-
cessions in terms of music, flooring, and lighting to attract them (see Navarro
2000; Lewis, n.d., “Club Owners”; Figure 2.1).
When I first began writing about New York salsa dancing in 2003, I was my-
self an on-2 dancer performing and teaching with Razz M’Tazz Mambo Company
and before that with New York salsero Ivan Rivera. Although no longer active in
this scene, I attend the occasional congress and have watched on-2 salsa spread
throughout the world, as enterprising instructors cater to students eager to learn
ever-more-complicated steps. In the course of such occasional visits to my for-
mer life, I have noted changes in the ethnic makeup of the scene. These changes
prompted me to update my earlier article (Hutchinson 2004) and reevaluate my
view of the role of place in salsa practice, one of the motivations for this book.
In this chapter, I give a brief history of on-2 mambo in New York through
three generations of dancers. As sources, I use personal conversations and
experiences together with dancers’ websites. This methodology allows me to
28 Sydney Hutchinson

Figure 2.1. Dancers at the LQ (Latin Quarters) nightclub in Manhattan, 2005. (Photograph
by Christopher Washburne, New York, 2005.)

track key changes in dance practice. While on-2 mambo was once particular
to the Nuyorican community, commercialization has de-emphasized ethnicity.
While on-2 was once a local expression, directly and intimately related to its
New York City surroundings, it has now moved far beyond its point of mythic
origin to incorporate a transnational community of dancers. Thus, today New
York salsa or mambo is defined less by its location and more by an attitude
toward music and dance that emphasizes technical proficiency, precision,
and commitment to a lifestyle, evidenced through adherence to a particular
count. In this case “2” is much more than a number—more even than a couple,
dancing—it is a way of life. At the same time, in the global salsa marketplace,
New York salsa competes with numerous other styles, each of which claims
to be the most “original,” “authentic,” or prestigious. New York–style salsa
dancers—who frequently are not themselves New Yorkers nowadays—are
­
dissolving some group boundaries while reinforcing others, transforming the
terrain on which they dance.

Mambo Beginnings
New York salseros most often tie their dance’s origins to the mambo, a type
of music and dance from the 1930s–1950s that derived from the Cuban dan-
zón and son.6 Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans had already been
What’s in a Number? 29

collaborating musically in New York since World War I, and “Latin” dances
had been popular at both black clubs like the Park Palace (Boggs 1992: 254)
and white ones like the Palace Theater and the Waldorf-Astoria (Roberts 1999:
76–86). The mambo emerged as not only a pan-American dance craze but also
the enabler of what, in current discourse, appears to be a kind of multiethnic
utopia where, to paraphrase Rodney King, we can all get along.
Earlier Caribbean and South American dance crazes like tango, samba,
“rhumba,” and conga had paved the way for the introduction of mambo danc-
ing in the North in the 1950s. Mambo arrived in New York through tours by
musician Dámaso Pérez Prado (see Roberts 1999: 129–130) and others. Las Mu­
latas del Fuego, a Cuban dance company that “salsa queen” Celia Cruz toured
with, introduced basic steps to a Manhattan audience in 19497 (Leymarie
2002: 161; Quintero Rivera 2009: 169). Well-known dancer Katherine Dunham
later hosted Prado at her Manhattan dance school and choreographed and per-
formed in the 1954 film Mambo. Mambo became more popular in New York
than it had ever been in Cuba (Leymarie 2002: 161), prompting Downbeat mag-
azine to announce, “Dance schools find these days that a mambo class is as
essential as a credit payment plan” (October 6, 1954).
Early mambo styles are described in a Dance Magazine article:

The term Mambo is today used to designate two forms of Rumba

which are quite dissimilar in appearance. As a foundation for either the
smooth or the hectic style, however, the same or similar basic rhythm
and step variations are taught. The outward differences come later, de-
pending on the skill attained, the predominance of smooth or jazzed up
band music, conservative or Jitterbug temperaments and a predilection
for closed dancing or for opened up fancy steps. (Butler 1953: 52)

An Arthur Murray–style footprint chart showing the basic step on the counts
of 234-678 accompanies this article. This, together with the “opened up fancy
steps” of the “hectic” style, seems to describe an early version of on-2 dancing.
Already, the dance was quite unlike the Cuban mambo that, rather than a back-
and-forth or a side-to-side partner dance, was and is a solo step-tap step, simple
but for the quick pelvic tilts that accompany it.8 The basic North American
mambo step was derived instead from the ballroom-style rumba popular since
the 1930s.9 In fact, ballroom mambo dancers of the 1950s wrote that the 234
count was also proper for rumba; however, “it [took] the jazzed-up version of
the Cuban ‘Son’ and a new name to arouse the dance public to an acceptance of
a different rhythmic counting” (Butler 1953: 52).

The Palladium Years

Dancers today trace salsa’s beginnings to a ballroom rather than to the street,
which would become the music’s dominant topos in the 1960s and 1970s
30 Sydney Hutchinson

(Washburne 2008: 18). As archetypal places, the two are near opposites: the
first associated with the middle and upper classes, comprising diverse ethnici-
ties but tending toward whiteness, and midtown Manhattan, the second associ-
ated with the lower classes, Puerto Rican and African Americans, and El Barrio
(Spanish Harlem). More specifically, New York salsa dancers remember the
Palladium Ballroom at Broadway and Fifty-Third Street in Manhattan, which
billed itself as the “Home of the Mambo” after changing to an all-mambo for-
mat in 1952.
The Palladium house bands led by Nuyoricans Tito Puente and Tito Ro-
dríguez reinvented the mambo by introducing jazz-influenced harmonies and
arrangements, making it sound “more modern than Cuba,” in Puente’s words
(quoted in Stephens and Randles 2000). Moreover, their music spoke to their
urban setting, cosmopolitan audiences, and the multiethnic interactions par-
ticular to the New York environment. It was also informed by interaction with
the dancers in attendance, as Puente noted:

It was “in” to learn to dance the Mambo no matter what part of soci-
ety you came from. And so here was a place, the Palladium, where ev-
erybody could come to dance or learn the Mambo. Dance studios sent
their students to the Palladium, where they could learn and see great
dancers—ballet stars, Broadway stars, expert Mambo dancers—all in
one place. And I geared my music to these dancers. (Quoted in Feuer-
stein, n.d.)

These music-dance interactions increased the dynamism of both, for instance,

when the quick tempo and impressive solos performed by instrumentalists
like Puente spurred dancers to improvise complicated steps that used differ-
ent body parts in polyrhythmic fashion. This characteristic also ties New York
mambo to other Afro-Caribbean dances that, Ángel Quintero Rivera states,
“break the sharp division between producers and ‘consumers’” through impro-
visatory musician-dancer interactions that depend on the element of surprise
(2009: 101).
A diverse array of dancers and movement styles converged in the Palladium.
Today it is remembered as a kind of multiracial utopia because its integrated
social scene was so unusual for the time. Dancer Eddie Torres recalls, “Tito
Puente always used to say, ‘We didn’t know anything about ethnic groups!’
There wasn’t such a word as ‘ethnic’ [then]” (Torres 2003). Angel Rodríguez
further explains:

The most important thing about the Palladium was that’s where all
the Jewish and the Puerto Ricans and the Blacks got together without
issues—because of this wonderful music that’s a mix of everything that
we’ve ever done! . . . That’s where [the mambo] actually all got together
and fused in the New York way. (Rodríguez 2003)
What’s in a Number? 31

This nondiscriminatory atmosphere, dancers assert, allowed for the interchange

of ideas and movements across cultural boundaries. For example, today’s danc-
ers are indebted to the cabaret dance team of Augie and Margo Rodríguez10 for
their blending of ballet and mambo (Craddock and Aguilar 2003), flamenco
styling (Rita, n.d., “Eddie Torres”), and ballroom-derived acrobatic lifts (“Ernie
Ensley,” n.d.). Jazz dancer Jo-Jo Smith created a unique style of mambo jazz
that influenced Eddie Torres, one of today’s most prominent instructors (Tor-
res 2003), and Puerto Rico–born Luis “Máquina” Flores borrowed moves from
Cuban rumba, which he later taught to George Vascones, one of the progenitors
of the Latin hustle (Rodríguez 2003). Italian American “Killer” Joe Piro drew
on his extensive experience as a Savoy Lindy and jitterbug champion when he
taught mambo at the Palladium (Stearns [1968] 1994: 361).11
Possibly the best-known Palladium dancers were the late Pedro Aguilar,
better known as Cuban Pete but actually a Puerto Rican from El Barrio, and
his partner Millie Donay, an Italian American from the Lower East Side. Cu-
ban Pete12 combined “more traditional rumba and freestyle” (Rodríguez 2003)
with tap, jazz, acrobatics, “and even rock-and-roll dances” (Aguilar, quoted in
Stearns [1968] 1994: 360). Donay learned to dance from her sisters and from
movie musicals, winning local Lindy Hop contests as a child and a Palladium
mambo contest at age fifteen (Feuerstein 1992). Life magazine profiled the pair
as exemplars of the new dance craze (December 1954).13
The first mambo dance companies also date to the 1950s, evolving from
the stage shows and contests held at the Palladium and the more informal pre-
sentations dancers developed and performed to the side of the stage (see Boggs
1992: 148). For instance, Augie Rodríguez and Cuban Pete teamed up to form
the Mambo Devils (Feuerstein 1992), while Aníbal Vásquez, Joe Centenno, and
later, Mike Ramos performed as the Mambo Aces for ten years. Ramos later
performed with Andrew Jarrick and Freddie Ríos as the Cha-Cha Aces (Boggs
1992: 147; Leymarie 2002: 165), a group that combined tap dance and cha-cha
with smatterings of Afro-Cuban body movement and ballet technique (Stearns
[1964] 1994: 360).
Palladium mambo dancers thus drew from numerous antecedent forms
and close personal interactions with musicians; they also interacted creatively
with the space around them. For example, since a railing and columns en-
closed the Palladium dance floor, “one of the indelible hallmarks was for a
male to dance a few steps and to ‘fall’ against one of these structures with an
outstretched arm and [right] himself . . . all the while in time with the music.
The smooth execution of this movement was one clear sign that one had mas-
tered the dance” (Stearns [1968] 1994: 360). In addition, the club’s location near
Broadway and the competitive environment created by so many talented—and
often famous—dancers seems to have fed into the style.
Nonetheless, David García has found that the Palladium, despite its uto-
pian function in memory, was also marked by divisions. Luis “Máquina” Flores
remembers Palladium dancers grouping themselves socially and spatially, with
32 Sydney Hutchinson

the “trendsetters,” principally those with a cultural connection to the dance, on

the right of the dance floor and the “professionals,” those interested in codify-
ing, standardizing, and discovering “correct” steps, on the left. Those from the
right engaged in an “embodied experience” of music, as today’s street dancers
likewise claim to do. Those on the left effected a quantifying, intellectualized
bodily performance, a practice for which today’s studio dancers are criticized
(D. García 2009: 171–172). This division created an uncomfortable situation for
some Latino dancers. Cuban Pete, for instance, once described the Palladium
as “strange territory” compared to the Bronx and east Harlem dance halls. Gar-
cía suggests this “strangeness” may have been related to mambo dancers’ am-
bivalence about the gaze of the “professional dance teachers and critics who
flocked to the Palladium” to learn the dance and to criticize it (168).
The Palladium closed its doors in 1966, but it remains in dancers’ mem-
ories as the mythic point of origin for on-2 dancing. Angel Rodríguez com-
ments, “[The Palladium] is important because it was the root of New York salsa.
And it’s more important because that’s where our masters were born. . . . Salsa
is a Puerto Rican art in the United States. It was Cuban Pete, it was Augie, all
the Puerto Ricans. And Cuban Pete says it, ‘Mambo on-2 is as Puerto Rican as
you can get’” (2003). In other words, on-2 mambo would not exist were it not
for the utopian Palladium, the New York Puerto Ricans who danced there, and
the mixing of people and art forms the place allowed. Yet this ideal view is only
a partial truth: as noted, social divisions were not entirely erased, and many
observers viewed the mambo through a racialized lens, simultaneously extol-
ling its “primitive” qualities and worrying it would take over the Great White
Way (D. García 2009: 175). Palladium dancers’ combination of ballroom dance,
ballet, flamenco, tap, Lindy Hop, and rumba laid the foundations for today’s
eclectic on-2 style, even as the spatial and racial divisions at the Palladium an-
ticipated the later street-studio divide.

The Salsa-Hustle Years

After the Palladium closed in 1966, the dance developed in new directions,
from boogaloo to hustle and finally to salsa. During this period, the place of
salsa music shifted dramatically, going from the ballroom to the street. Chris
Washburne believes that the emphasis on street was a strategy for distancing
the new salsa from older Cuban music (2008: 18). Today, he notes, both mu-
sicians and scholars still see the street—specifically the streets of El Barrio—
as an “essential quality” of salsa (110). The dance occupies a more ambiguous
place, somewhere between the two poles of street and studio (the latter some-
times also associated with the related topos of the ballroom, though salseros of
any type see their practice as far different from ballroom dance). Yet in narrat-
ing a history of salsa beginning in the Palladium, dancers accomplish the same
task as did salsa music marketers: they assert the specificity of their practice, its
local basis, and its separation from related Cuban styles.14
What’s in a Number? 33

Just as during the Palladium era, Nuyoricans, like Willie Colón, Ray Barretto,
Eddie and Charlie Palmieri, Ritchie Ray, and Bobby Cruz, were the most numer-
ous and among the most influential of the new crop of Latin musicians. Stylistic
innovations like Eddie Palmieri’s addition of trombones to the traditional cha-
ranga ensemble, Rafael Cortijo’s experiments with bomba and plena, and Willie
Colón’s use of jíbaro music produced a distinct musical genre, which became an
important symbol of Nuyorican identity and culture (see Berríos-Miranda 2002).
Early salseros and salseras danced a basic on-1 step with a limited reper-
toire of simple turns (Rodríguez 2003), but many talented young dancers in the
1970s were drawn to the more demanding Latin hustle, a dance that grew out of
swing and featured a slot format, fast spins, lifts, and distinctive turn patterns.
Angel Rodríguez recalls:

The hustle came out of a bunch of Puerto Ricans that didn’t want to do
salsa. They wanted to [dance] to English music. And they watched TV
and saw Gene Kelly and stuff. The basic step came from the black hus-
tle, which was a three-step dance, and all that influence combined with
all the ballroom movies coming out at the time. That created the hustle.
It was a definite Bronx street style. Some people actually say George
Vascones started it. (2003)

The hustle quickly eclipsed Palladium mambo in popularity, though some

dance companies, like the Latin Symbolics, tried combining the two (Rodrí-
guez 2003). Turn combinations similar to those employed in the hustle remain
a defining characteristic of New York salsa-mambo today.
By the 1980s competition from merengue, house, and hip-hop had sent
salsa music into decline (Washburne 2002: 102). Nonetheless, a handful of New
York dancers kept mambo dancing alive. Hustle progenitor George Vascones
taught mambo—both on-1 and on-2—to many dancers at the Hunts Point Pal-
ace in the Bronx (Ortiz 2001b). Eddie Torres, who would eventually create the
best-known on-2 teaching method, began dancing at this time.
Greatly influenced by Tito Puente, Torres was disappointed that the only
mambo dance classes available derived from a ballroom sensibility quite dif-
ferent from that of the older New York mambo dancers he hoped to emulate
(Ortiz 2001a). Instead, he learned from watching other dancers. After eight
years of practice, Torres and his wife, Maria, approached Puente with two cho-
reographed pieces. Impressed, Puente hired the couple in 1980 to perform with
his orchestra as the Tito Puente Dancers. Having been a dancer himself, Puente
understood mambo music and dance as a symbiotic pair. Torres teamed up
with ballroom instructor June LaBerta, who encouraged him to put counts to
his dancing, to name his steps, and to create a syllabus, an endeavor he com-
pares to “science and poetry coming together” (Torres 2003). Around 1983 the
Copacabana nightclub began hosting Tuesday salsa nights and hired Torres as
their dance instructor (Rodríguez 2003).
34 Sydney Hutchinson

Torres traces the mambo’s revival to one historic event in 1987. Puente had
hired him to choreograph numbers for an Apollo Theater tribute to legendary
Afro-Cuban musician Machito that would be televised. Torres handpicked sixty
of the best nightclub dancers and put them through four months of training. The
show succeeded so well that Torres subsequently formed a permanent dance com-
pany of six couples, the Eddie Torres Dancers, and others were inspired to follow
suit (Torres 2003). A get-together of the Mambo Society began around 1988 in
what is now the East Village on Fourth Street at Second Avenue. Among others,
Angel Rodríguez and his wife, Addie, taught there for about two years (Rodríguez
2003). Mike Bello, a popular on-2 instructor now located in California, recalls
that the original shine list from that time contained only about twenty-five steps
(Rita, n.d., “Mike Bello”) in contrast to the hundreds of steps on today’s syllabi.
Dancers in the 1970s and 1980s systematized the dance in an attempt to
create a legitimate art form and facilitate its teaching; in the process, they al-
tered its relationship with the clave. Eddie Torres spearheaded this movement
and developed the on-2 style that is most prevalent today. Meanwhile, as Tor­res
worked with ballroom instructor LaBerta to codify his style, Angel Rodrí­­guez
danced and taught at Paul Pellicoro’s15 Manhattan ballroom studio, Dance-
Sport, where he devised an alternative school of on-2 practice that would be-
come the Razz M’Tazz (RMT) system.16
Instead of simply dancing on clave, dancers now focus on counts. Tor-
res uses a 123-567 count, with the break, or direction change, occurring on
counts 2 and 6. This step is markedly different from the mambo of the 1950s
(see Butler 1953), but Torres describes it as the street version of mambo (Ortiz
2001b), signaling both his attempt to replicate the style he remembers from his
neighborhood and his desire to legitimize his version among dancers who dis-
dain the artificiality of ballroom, or studio, style. Meanwhile, Rodríguez’s basic
step falls on counts 234-678, like Cuban son or the mambo of the 1950s; how-
ever, some RMT shines employ a 123-567 count, which Angel calls the “jazz
counts” (Rodríguez 2003). Besides the different timing, RMT style, unlike Tor-
res’s, is strongly influenced by the Latin hustle.
On-2 dancers hotly debate the comparative merits of the Torres and the
RMT counts. The controversy centers on which count best adheres to the clave
and which is the true mambo, defined as the style most closely tied to historical
dance practices located in New York, particularly in the Palladium or in that
mythical street.17 The two versions are not so very different, since, in practice,
Torres dancers actually step well ahead of counts 1 and 5, pushing their count
nearly a half beat closer to RMT’s 234 (see Table 2.1).
Torres’s timing may be tied to Puerto Rican bomba, since Quintero Rivera
finds that beginning “in contratiempo [syncopation], a little before the first beat,
[simulates] or [evokes] the dancer’s anticipation of the lead drum’s fill in bomba
dancing” (2009: 27). Yet each version has its own pedagogical merit. Torres’s is
easier to learn since most students find it easier to step on the downbeat than to
pause on it, while it simultaneously forces them to find the 2 because they must
What’s in a Number? 35

Table 2.1 Timing of Eddie Torres Basic Step

Musical count & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8
Dancers’ count (1) 2 3 (5) 6 7

break on it (see Figure 2.2). The learning curve is steeper with the RMT count
(Figure 2.3), but Rodríguez believes his students will be stronger, more versatile
dancers because they understand the music (Rodríguez 2003). Both instruc-
tors teach their students to listen for the clave and the conga’s slap to find the
2 count, but opinions differ on whether starting the step on count 1 (Torres) or
on count 2 (RMT) best fits the clave rhythm.18 In any case, Torres and Rodrí-
guez set the stage for the current proliferation of on-2 dance schools and com-
panies; both also identified and inhabited a space between street and studio.

The On-2 Era

During the 1990s, on-2 dancing became a codified, commercial product sold
through lessons and congresses. From just a handful of on-2 troupes at the
beginning of the 1990s, about thirty on-2 teaching and performance compa-
nies became established in the New York metropolitan area by 2003 (see Shaw
2013).19 Moreover, by the mid-1990s, New York instructors began exporting
on-2 dancing through aggressive self-promotion via websites and instructional
videos and through the invitations of competitive dancers in other locales seek-
ing new challenges. They were successful in creating a niche for the dance as
far away as Europe and Asia. For instance, Angel Rodríguez moved to Milan,
Italy, in 2003 and has since led RMT Italia from there. Meanwhile, dancers
from elsewhere visit New York regularly to learn the style and keep up with
its changes (Brown 2003; Pietrobruno 2006: 89). The circular travels of on-2
instructors like Miguel Rodríguez and Stacey López have strengthened ties
between New York and Puerto Rico dance scenes as well (Renta 2008). On-2
discourse frequently emphasizes its globalizing power, as in the program for
the opening day of the 2003 World Salsa Congress in San Juan, which states,
“Despite differences of language, salsa dance has become a new common ele-
ment of communication around the world. . . . Salsa unites the world, and the
best proof is the World Salsa Congress” (Delgado 2003; my translation).
The debate over the right way to dance has become more important with
commercialization, since a teacher’s or performer’s livelihood may depend on
the public’s answer to that question. Angel Rodríguez says, “[People talk about]
how ‘if you don’t do it this way, it’s not the right way’ [and] ‘no one in New York
knows how to teach it right,’ which are great business lines if you’re Latino, say-
ing, ‘This is the only way’” (2003). These statements imply that many claims of
authenticity are made for economic reasons. Today, each dance company pro-
duces its own syllabus of steps, turns, and shines, in which sincere commitment
and commercialism are similarly intertwined. Syllabi are important for their
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 3

5 7

Note: 3 is sometimes placed slightly farther back than 1, and 7 further forward than 5.
The steps marked on counts 1 and 5 actually occur a half beat ahead of time.

Figure 2.2. The Eddie Torres New York salsa counting system. This is the most widely known
on-2 basic step system outside New York. (Created by Sydney Hutchinson.)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

4 7

3 8

Figure 2.3. The Razz M’Tazz counting system of New York salsa. This system is also known
as the Palladium 2. (Created by Sydney Hutchinson.)

KEY:

• Black footprints indicate the inactive foot (no motion).

• Gray footprints indicate the active foot. The number inside indicates on which musical count
the motion occurs.
• White footprints indicate the previous position of the active foot.
What’s in a Number? 37

economic value, since they ensure that students will keep coming back to learn
more but also because they document important moments and figures in salsa
history. Eddie Torres’s syllabus includes a step called Millie Donay, which is
one of that dancer’s characteristic moves. Most, if not all, companies include
Pachanga Taps and Pachanga Strut, recalling that 1960s dance craze. Both Tor-
res and RMT syllabi contain tap-like shuffle steps, and Torres’s Michael Jack-
son and RMT’s Janet Jackson demonstrate the influence of pop culture as well.
Named steps also encode more intimate company histories. For example, the
RMT syllabus includes Konig’s Grapevine, named for former instructor Car-
los Konig, and Addie’s Tradition, named for former company director Addie
Rodríguez.
Though people of various classes do mix in a few New York clubs, on-2
salsa-mambo is primarily (and somewhat controversially) directed at the urban
middle class and the upwardly mobile. Some even argue that mambo origi-
nated as a dance of the middle class, since Palladium-era mambo and Latin
jazz were popular mainly with the urban, hip crowd, and clubs such as the Club
Caborrojeño catered to Puerto Ricans of rural origins by programming jíbaro
music instead (A. García, n.d.). Today, this class division is reflected in the rhe-
torical divide between street and studio.
On-2 salsa is clearly a studio-based practice, and as such it is clearly dis-
tinct from salsa as practiced in a home setting. Its devotees nonetheless both
draw on and distance themselves from the street, complicating any simple divi-
sion between the two realms. They pride themselves on their street style and
simultaneously set themselves apart by refusing to dance with non-2 dancers in
an authenticating strategy similar to that employed by salsa musicians (Wash-
burne 2008: 42). Setting up street and studio as mutually exclusive categories
thus produces a limited view of current dance practice in New York. Many on-2
dancers come from salsa’s home place and from families that dance salsa at
home. Many dancers adapt movements they learned from friends and relatives
to the stage, an exchange hard to imagine for other studio dances like waltz
or foxtrot. New York salsa thus allows for and even encourages a dialectical
relationship between the street and the studio even while it enforces a social
separation between the two: only studio dancers are able to teach and thus earn
money from their practice.

The Magic Number: History, Ethnicity, and Dance Technique

Contemporary discourse around topics like the music-dance relationship,
clave, timing, and history constitutes a community-based dance theory that
justifies favored modes of bodily expression within the New York context and
constructs historical continuity around a sense of place. Today’s on-2 com-
munity is thus rooted in a common interest and shared beliefs. The ongoing
importance of these beliefs is suggested in the many continuities between the
Palladium mambo era, the salsa-hustle years, and today’s on-2 dancing, from
38 Sydney Hutchinson

the preference for classic 1970s salsa dura and even 1950s mambo music20 to
the maintenance of particular steps, movements, and most particularly timing.
Some dancers have a near-religious devotion to salsa music or dance and
especially to the clave that ties the two together. Clave, like the Palladium, is a
subject elevated to magical status by such dancers. For instance, in describing
his introduction to on-2 mambo, instructor Mike Bello writes:

I have to say that almost from the moment I was first made really aware
of its existence, something rang true and i got it—the truth of the
clave as the life force that drives the music and dance. I accepted the
truth about clave kind of like one might accept religion, even without
“proof” at the time, because deep down it feels right, and like a re-
ligion, I embraced the “word” of the clave. (Bello, n.d., “How Mike”;
emphasis in original)

Such talk allows New York mambo dancers to sustain and strengthen their com-
munities at the same time that they justify their own dance practices—specifi-
cally, breaking on 2—with appeals to emotion, spirituality, and bodily sensation.
Washburne observes that for salsa musicians clave is a “dynamic and so-
cially charged concept . . . [that] encapsulates a continuum of ideas, beliefs,
meanings, understandings, and interpretations” that go “far beyond the music
structure” (2008: 188). In fact, he identifies strict adherence to an unchanging
clave as a recent innovation. Earlier Cuban musicians understood the concept
much more loosely, even frequently changing from 3-2 to 2-3 clave midsong
in mambo (188); even today, some musicians find that the clave’s direction
does not always matter (Berríos-Miranda 2002: 37). Many Nuyorican musi-
cians, however, understood clave as “bigger than any one of us,” in the words
of arranger Ricky González, as traceable to an African heritage and even as a
musical universal (quoted in Berríos-Miranda 2002: 193–194). Paradoxically,
Nuyorican and Puerto Rican salsa musicians’ allegiance to Cuban forms led
them to transform “originally more fluid practices into stricter forms dictated
by austere guidelines” (189–190). For them, clave became a part of identity poli-
tics used to show belonging and mark themselves as different from other ethnic
groups, including other Latin Americans.
Few dancers have musical training, but the relationship between music and
dance is nonetheless fundamental to on-2 practice. And while New York salsa
musicians transformed Cuban musics in part through their systematization of
clave, New York salsa dancers have systematized dance practices, both through
the standardization of steps and through the enforcement of a particular un-
derstanding of salsa music and clave. On-2 instructors teach their students to
listen to specific rhythms, and dancers frequently discuss particular songs and
rhythms at length and in great detail on websites devoted to the subject.21 In
fact, dance classes train students to listen to the music in a Puerto Rican way:
the conga drum slap on beat two is nearly always present in Puerto Rican salsa,
What’s in a Number? 39

while in other styles, like Cuban salsa, improvisation may eliminate it (see
­Berríos-Miranda 2002). Former RMT dancer Ney Melo notes that while Cuban
music may be better danced on the 1, “with the old-school mambo music—any
Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez music, [Eddie or Charlie] Palmieri music—I think
it should be danced on the 2. That’s just the way—the music just sounds, it leads
you to the 2, so there’s no way you can get away from that” (Melo 2002).
Ironically, while music is understood as central to on-2 dancing, musicians
are not. Salsa New York webmaster Steve Shaw explains that live bands often
play songs that are too long, too fast, or too loud for on-2 dancing or else their
repertoire is simply not as good as that available on recordings. He continues:

If the music fits our way of dancing . . . we’re happy. Whether that music
comes from a DJ or a live band is irrelevant to how we dance and how
much we enjoy the event. When we are dancing, we are looking at our
partners, not the DJ or band. And after one good song, we want another
one right away. . . . So who needs a band? (Shaw 2012)

This sentiment is far different from the Palladium mambo ideal of constant
interaction between music and dance; it departs from Caribbean practices in
general, which are often characterized by the “creative dialogue between the
dancer and the player . . . between space and time” and which set up an inter-
action in which “the collective leads and the individual elaborates” (Quintero
Rivera 2009: 42). The recent devaluation of the musician appears to be related
to two factors. In dance, the focus on globally disseminated steps and syllabi
makes dancers dependent more on their memories than on their hearing. In
music, salsa musicians have grown to depend on recording technologies that
limit the usual interaction between performers and make impossible the repro-
duction of the sound in live performance (Washburne 2008: 185). One result of
both factors is the increased use of recordings at dance events and the gradual
disappearance of venues for live salsa music.
The emphatic character of much on-2 discourse suggests that this dance
community can at times be exclusive. I have noted here that mambo dancing,
as well as early salsa music, included the participation of many different groups.
Since the 1970s, however, salsa increasingly became “our Latin thing” (the name
of an early Fania documentary film), likely in reaction to experiences of racism.
Thus, while many New York residents learned salsa, non-Latinos were some-
times subtly discouraged from performing or teaching it. Similarly, non-Latino
musicians must continually “prove themselves” in ways not demanded of La-
tinos (Washburne 2008: 35). Dancers constantly engage in racial nicknaming,
and both white and black non-Latino members of my dance troupe reported
that they had felt excluded from the dance community at times.22 Encouraging
diversity among students while enforcing racial and ethnic boundaries at the
professional level seems designed to protect salsa as a Latino, particularly Nu­
yorican, economic resource.23 Outside the city, however, things are changing. At
40 Sydney Hutchinson

the Berlin Salsa Congress in 2008, I spoke with on-2 instructors of East Indian,
African American, Iraqi-British, and Moroccan-French backgrounds.
As ethnicity becomes less important, new boundaries are constructed
around the magic number 2. The Salsa New York website written and main-
tained by Steve Shaw and Manny Siverio has continually been the most vocal
proponent of New York on-2 dancing and its difference from other styles, as
can be observed in their description of the page as “a pure On 2 dancers’ web
site” (my emphasis). Shaw writes, “Our belief is that the only way to really un-
derstand and excel in dancing On 2 is to dance this way only. Because of that,
we don’t believe in teaching multiple timings” (2000; emphasis in original).
Shaw explains further that this style “is often called ‘New York,’ ‘club,’ ‘street,’
‘Latino’ or ‘Eddie Torres’ style salsa. . . . This method is technically different
from other ways of dancing to salsa music, . . . such as ballroom, international,
Razz M’Tazz, Cuban son montuno, as well as . . . others” (Shaw, n.d.).
The labels attached to the different styles are telling: if the Eddie Torres
style is “New York” and “Latino,” the others are presumably not or are not au-
thentically so, despite their place of origin or the ethnicity of their originators.
Even Cubans appear not to be Latino.
For many dancers, then, 2 is much more than just a number. It is a particu-
lar relationship to a particular style of music, one that marks these dancers with
the prestige of connoisseurship. It is a demanding dance technique that earns
them the additional cachet of expertise. It is membership in a worldwide com-
munity but one anchored historically and rhetorically in New York. Thus, New
York on-2 dancers also gain the prestige of place-based authenticity. Never­
theless, many of those dancers most invested in establishing on-2 as a high-
status style—a move that coincides with the de-emphasis of the dance’s ethnic
identity—are not themselves Nuyorican or Latino. The nostalgia surrounding
the multiethnic Palladium dance floor as well as the simultaneous weakening
of ethnic boundaries and strengthening of ones based on more abstract ideas
like musical timing and dance technique must therefore be examined critically.
In addition, the increased drive toward standardization in the studio—a drive
that started with ballroom teachers of the 1950s who thought mambo needed
to be “disciplined” to “make it acceptable” (Don Byrnes and Alice Swanson
quoted in D. García 2009: 171)—is accompanied by decreased attention to
street practices like musician-dancer interaction, improvisation, and use of the
full body, changes that some argue signal the removal of Afro-Caribbean and
working-class experience from the dance (e.g., Tato Conrad in Renta 2008: 161).
Street and studio are therefore spheres charged with ethnic, racial, and classed
meanings and unequal power relations.

Conclusion: From Local Past to Global Future

Judith Hamera (2007) sees dance technique as an archive that stores informa-
tion about the past for those who can read its language. In this chapter, I have
What’s in a Number? 41

shown how salsa dance technique encodes a history of Caribbean dance in

New York, a history that those with the requisite cultural literacy can access by
watching and doing but that remains a closed book to those who learn salsa as
simply a set of steps to be executed. Yet Hamera also emphasizes that dance is
an everyday practice that brings people of diverse backgrounds together to cre-
ate new kinds of urban communities. I have shown here that, although not free
of divisions, on-2 dancing has at times accomplished this bridging of difference
in New York City.
On-2 dance exists at the intersection of the global and the local. For some
Nuyoricans who identify with salsa music, on-2 salsa-mambo is an important
marker of ethnic identity. Yet it is also a local art form based on the ethnic di-
versity, interactions, and, indeed, inequalities that characterize the New York
City environment. As on-2 dancing becomes globalized, an increased focus on
technique, timing, and the codification of steps leads some dancers to iden-
tify it as a new art form. Yet as Priscilla Renta has pointed out (2008: 155), the
professionalization of dance is a transculturating process, and transculturation
always implies a loss. What is being lost in studio salsa today? Numerous long-
standing salsa dance clubs in New York have recently closed, an occurrence
that has further restricted the dance’s practice to semiprofessional studio danc-
ers and their students.24 DJ Henry Knowles observes, “The people who came up
in the streets and know about the music aren’t dancing” (Bloom 2007); Puerto
Rican dance instructor Stacey López similarly sees the “beautifying” of the
dance as a counterproductive move, having observed instances where his own
performances discouraged Puerto Rican aficionados from dancing themselves
(Renta 2008: 163). These observations might suggest some disturbing answers.
Yet the dedication of many New York dancers is a sign of hope in the midst
of this ambivalence. Whether initially motivated by nostalgia, ethnic pride, or
economic gain, many on-2 aficionados are driven to dance by their love for
music, movement, and cultural diversity. Dance communities may be utopian,
because they provide a site in which people of diverse backgrounds can interact
on more or less equal footing. At the same time, salsa is or was a dance tied to
ethnic pride, an antidote to discrimination and urban poverty, and the unequal
power relations from which it arose should not be ignored. Is there a way, then,
to have the best of both worlds: to bridge the street and studio, to build a diverse
community that simultaneously recognizes and works to counteract power im-
balances and injustice?

Notes
Acknowledgments: I thank the members and founders of Razz M’Tazz Dance Company,
Barbara Craddock and the late Cuban Pete, Eddie and Maria Torres, the organizers of the
Berlin Salsa Congress, and finally the editors of Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto
Rican Studies for allowing me to republish here much of the material that previously ap-
peared in Sydney Hutchinson, “Mambo On 2: The Birth of a New Form of Dance in New
York City,” Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16, no. 2 (2004): 109–137.
42 Sydney Hutchinson

I also thank Katherine Borland and anonymous reviewers for their comments on this
chapter.

1. “Clave” is the rhythmic pattern or timeline around which salsa and some Afro-
Cuban musics like son montuno are structured. See Manuel 2006: 49–51 for further ex-
planation; see also Carlo 2001 and Bello, n.d., “Salsa/Mambo Training” for dancers’ views
on clave.
2. New York dancers believe breaking on 2 fits with the clave because 2-3 clave “be-
gins” on count 2. Yet 3-2 clave “begins” on count 1, as does the 3 side of 2-3 clave, so from
a musician’s perspective one could argue the opposite just as easily. I hypothesize that the
emphasis on the 2, and thus on 2-3 clave, through the on-2 dance practice developed since
the 1980s may be related to the increasing prevalence of salsa songs in 2-3 clave since the
1970s; in earlier Cuban music, Marisol Berríos-Miranda states, 3-2 clave had predominated
(2002: 47n34)—as indeed it predominates in Cuban music today.
3. “Shines” are named dance steps performed solo rather than with a partner and
composed of difficult, often syncopated footwork. The term is said to have come from
boys who shined shoes in the street and who would perform tap dancing for a tip (Rodrí-
guez 2003).
4. I base this statement on my personal experience of feeling late when I danced with
local salsa or mambo dancers when I first arrived in New York. I soon realized I had been
used to stepping on top of the beat, while my partners stepped behind it. See Monson 1996:
56 for a description of this phenomenon in jazz music.
5. A listing is available from Shaw 2012.
6. Cuban composer Orestes López titled one of his danzones “Mambo” in 1938, and
in 1944 Antonio Arcaño’s “Arriba la invasión” was the first tune to be named a mambo
(Leymarie 2002: 111–115). The dance craze did not take effect until the 1950s, however.
7. Clearly, they could not have been partner dance steps, however.
8. Cuba’s Conjunto Folklórico Nacional and Instituto Superior de Arte teach the step-
tap step (called “pachanga taps” on the Razz M’Tazz syllabus and others) and a waltz-like
balancé step as basic movements for mambo; Cuban social dancers also perform the step-
tap when dancing to mambo music. More like on-2 mambo is the Cuban son, which is
taught with the first step on count 4 and a pause on 1, effectively producing the 234 count
of New York mambo (from my experience at a Conjunto Folklórico Nacional summer
course in 2000 and at an intensive workshop with Instituto Superior de Arte instructors
in Berlin in 2010).
9. Despite its name, ballroom rumba is actually derived from the Cuban son.
10. Cuban Pete (Pedro Aguilar) was Augie’s first teacher and was responsible for intro-
ducing him to Margo (Craddock and Aguilar 2003).
11. Piro later became the “king of twist” and demonstrated popular dances on the NBC
show That Was the Week That Was (1963–1965) (Sagolla 1999).
12. Cuban Pete later studied with Dunham (Feuerstein 1992)
13. Cuban Pete was hired as a consultant for the 1992 film “Mambo Kings,” and Millie
and Pete can be seen dancing in the film (Feuerstein 1992).
14. In Europe, in particular, most dancers insist that salsa is a Cuban dance (despite the
fact that the term “salsa” and associated dance and music styles arrived in Cuba only re-
cently; see Chapter 6). As noted in Chapter 1, one salsa instructor I spoke with in Germany
was so vehement about salsa’s Cuban origin that he refused to acknowledge any New York
basis at all for either the dance or music. Eventually he made peace by asserting that “salsa
is the trunk of a tree that has many roots.” I wondered if this version of salsa history was
an attempt to purify it by erasing its (obvious) capitalist ties, but perhaps acknowledging
What’s in a Number? 43

many salsas, as we do in this book, rather than insisting on a single salsa trunk, could help
resolve this difference.
15. Incidentally, Pellicoro notes that his dance background includes training in mod-
ern, ballet, and ballroom dance, and his “inspiration came in the 1970’s as a New York
Hustle street dancer” (“Paul Pellicoro” 2013), further illustrating that the line between
street and studio is always a blurry one in New York City.
16. The New York branch of Razz M’Tazz is inactive as of the time of this writing,
since director Angel is now living and teaching in Milan, Italy, with plans to expand into
Germany. The method, however, is still used in other studios in New York and beyond
and deserves to be discussed as a historical and current alternative to the Torres method,
and one that shares a history, even as it draws from different dance styles, from Palladium
mambo to hustle.
17. The invocation of both the Palladium, a ballroom, and the street in discourse
aimed at authenticating on-2 salsa points to the dance’s complicated relationship with New
York City and Latinos’ histories within it, as well as ambivalence about class, race, upward
mobility, and what the latter means for the politics of salsa.
18. For more on how to find the clave, and how New York dancers tend to do it, see
Hutchinson 2009.
19. Interestingly, Shaw (2013) purposefully excludes companies dancing the RMT
count-2 method from the listing and count.
20. New York dance companies continue to use Tito Puente mambos for choreography
with great frequency.
21. Articles appear on [Link], [Link], [Link]
[Link], and other sites.
22. I also spent a brief time as a salsa musician in New York, playing piano with two
short-lived bands there, but in that context I did not experience racial or ethnic divisions.
This was probably because (1) since most of my bandmates were immigrants (largely Co-
lombian) and monolingual Spanish speakers, my Spanish skills conferred enough insider
status to override other differences and (2) my gender made me stand out from the rest far
more than my ethnicity did.
23. The boundaries are not hard and fast, however: a few non-Latino instructors have
had success in the city. Winsome Lee, originally from Hong Kong, has had a strong New
York following for years.
24. There may be less sinister reasons for club closings, however. Many Latinos from
core salsa areas in the Bronx, for instance, have been moving out of the city to Long Island,
Connecticut, or other locations in recent decades (Ferris 2001). In addition, the Latino
population of New York is now much more diverse than in the past, including an estimated
half-million Dominicans, who often prefer merengue, and many Central Americans and
Mexicans with still other regional music preferences. This has led to a proliferation of Latin
American clubs around the city, although few play salsa exclusively.

References
Bello, Mike. n.d. “How Mike Bello Became the Mambo Fello.” Available at [Link]
.[Link]/articles/[Link] (accessed January 2, 2013).
———. n.d. “Salsa/Mambo Training: The Music.” Available at [Link]
.com/[Link] (accessed June 26, 2013).
Berríos-Miranda, Marisol. 2002. “Is Salsa a Musical Genre?” In Situating Salsa: Global
Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 23–50. New York:
Routledge.
44 Sydney Hutchinson

Bloom, Julie. 2007. “Salsa Spins Beyond Its Roots.” New York Times, July 29. Available at
[Link]
Boggs, Vernon. 1992. Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York
City. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Brown, Shaka. 2003. Interview by Sydney Hutchinson. July 30.
Butler, Albert and Josephine. 1953. “The Ballroom Panorama: Mambo—Today.” Dance
Magazine 27 (12): 52–53.
Carlo, Ismael. 2001. “Space.” Planet Salsa. Previously available at [Link]
.com/quepasa/[Link].
Craddock, Barbara, and Pedro Aguilar. 2003. Personal communications with Sydney
Hutchinson.
Delgado, Luis A., ed. 2003. “Nuestras raices/Our roots.” In Salsa Today. 3rd ed. San Juan,
Puerto Rico: Congreso Mundial de la Salsa.
“Ernie Ensley: Palladium Legend.” n.d. [Link]. Available at [Link]
.com/salsaroots/[Link] (accessed January 2, 2013).
Ferris, Marc. 2001. “For Latin Dancing, Follow the Beat and the Crowd.” New York Times,
November 11. Available at [Link]
-[Link].
Feuerstein, Alan. 1992. “Mambo Legends Cuban Pete and Millie: Architects of Excitement.”
Justsalsa. Available at [Link]
alanfeuerstein/mambolegendscubanpeteandmille/.
———. n.d. “Tito Puente: Much More than a Legend.” Planet Salsa. Available at http://
[Link]/web/20060208091733/[Link]
(accessed July 4, 2013).
García, Aristides Raul. n.d. “Dancing on the ‘2’: The Western Fluke of History.”
DanceFreak. Available at [Link]
(accessed July 4, 2013).
García, David. 2009. “Embodying Music/Disciplining Dance: The Mambo Body in Havana
and New York City.” In Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular
Dance Reader, ed. Julie Malnig, 165–181. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Hamera, Judith. 2007. Dancing Communities: Performance, Difference, and Connection in
the Global City. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hutchinson, Sydney. 2004. “Mambo On 2: The Birth of a New Form of Dance in New York
City.” Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16 (2): 109–137.
———. 2009. “Listening to Salsa—for Dancers.” [Link], November 3. Available at
[Link]
Lewis, Edie. n.d. “Club Owners and Promoters: What Dancers Look for in a Club.” Edie
the Salsa Freak. Previously available at [Link]
.htm (accessed March 17, 2003).
———. n.d. “What’s Up with the New York ‘Two’?” Edie the Salsa Freak. Previously
available at [Link] (accessed
March 17, 2003).
Leymarie, Isabelle. 2002. Cuban Fire: The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz. New York:
Continuum.
Loza, Steven. 1999. Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
Manuel, Peter. 2006. Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Melo, Ney. 2002. Interview by Sydney Hutchinson. July 2.
What’s in a Number? 45

Navarro, Mireya. 2000. “Battle of the Mambo Is Bruising Some Toes.” New York Times,
September 3.
Ortiz, Angel. 2001a. “Freddie Ríos—Palladium Mambo Legend.” Rhythms and Soul,
October 13. Available at [Link]
———. 2001b. “Interview: Eddie Torres, ‘the Mambo King.’” [Link], October 21.
Available at [Link]
[Link].
“Paul Pellicoro.” 2013. Paul Pellicoro’s DanceSport. Available at [Link]
.com/paulpellicoro.
Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. 2006. Salsa and Its Transnational Moves. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books.
Quintero Rivera, Ángel G. 2009. Cuerpo y cultura: Las músicas mulatas y la subversión del
baile. Madrid: Iberoamericana and Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert.
Renta, Priscilla. 2008. “Migración de retorno y decisiones estéticas: Bailando salsa entre
Nueva York y Puerto Rico.” In El son y la salsa en la identidad del Caribe, ed. Darío
Tejeda and Rafael Emilio Yunén, 155–165. Santiago: Centro León and INEC.
Rita. n.d. “Eddie Torres: Modern Day Mambo Legend.” [Link]. Available at http://
[Link]/salsaroots/[Link] (accessed January 2, 2013).
———. n.d. “Mike Bello: L.A.’s Mambo Fello.” [Link]. Available at [Link]
.[Link]/salsaroots/mike_bello.htm (accessed January 2, 2013).
Roberts, John Storm. 1999. The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the
United States. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rodríguez, Angel. 2003. Interview by Sydney Hutchinson. January 5.
Sagolla, Lisa Jo. 1999. “Frank ‘Killer Joe’ Piro.” In American National Biography. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Shaw, Steve. 2000. “About Salsa-Dancing—The Story of This Web Site—Acknowledgements.”
Salsa New York. Available at [Link]
———. 2012. “Good Salsa Dance Songs and Guidelines for DJ’s.” Salsa New York. Available
at [Link]
———. 2013. “Directory of ‘On 2’ Mambo Performing Groups.” Salsa New York. Available
at [Link]
———. n.d. “Web Site Description.” Salsa New York. Available at [Link]
.com/guide/description_newsletter.htm (accessed June 5, 2013).
Siverio, Manny. 2002. “Cyber-Interview of the Month: Rodney Lopez.” Salsa New
York. Available at [Link]
_lopez.htm.
Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. (1968) 1994. Jazz Dance: The Story of American
Vernacular Dance. New York: Da Capo.
Stephens, Dave, and Susan Randles. 2000. “Talking with Tito Puente.” [Link],
January 29. Available at [Link] rtist-
interviews/item/12883.
Torres, Eddie. 2003. Interview by Sydney Hutchinson. August 27.
Washburne, Chris. 2002. “Salsa Romántica: An Analysis of Style.” In Situating Salsa:
Global Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 101–132.
New York: Routledge.
———. 2008. Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York City. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
3
From Hip-Hop and Hustle
to Mambo and Salsa
New Jersey’s Eclectic Salsa Dance Revival

Katherine Borland

I think one of the things that makes us really unique is that connection
that we have to New York. . . . And you know, we’ve been able to draw on
that influence and really . . . make a name for what [New] Jersey is doing
in the salsa map. (Alex Díaz)

I say the trick is to recognize New York’s influence without getting en-
gulfed in it. (Johann Pichardo)

We all have to be realistic and understand that New Jersey will always
be in the shadow of New York . . . but there’s no reason why New Jersey
can’t compete, at least as second place to New York. (Mario B.)

I don’t think we’re trying to compete with New York. I think we’re try-
ing to be Jersey, stand on our own. (Griselle Ponce)

On July 18, 2006, thirteen accomplished New Jersey salseros attended a focus
group designed to document their local dance scene.1 Participant Jossué Torres
called the meeting a historic occasion, because it was the first time this group of
instructor-performers had sat down together to discuss the scene. Nevertheless,
as demonstrated by some of the comments quoted above, these dancers strug-
gled to define themselves as a distinct stylistic community, a consequence of
their proximity to New York as well as their own internal divisions. Their story
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 47

provides a useful counterpoint to narratives of localization, particularly those

emanating from New York City. It reminds us that while all scenes are local, not
all locales produce the conditions for the development of a place-specific style.
Over the past decade scholars have attended closely to the ways that the in-
ternationally disseminated music and dance complex called salsa, which devel-
oped from a New York–Cuban–Puerto Rican axis, has adapted to diverse areas
throughout the world and created distinctive regional styles (Arias Satizábal
2002; Waxer 2002a, 2002b; Rondón 2008; Román-Velásquez 1999, 2002; Hoso-
kawa 2002). Moreover, with the rise of new consumers and producers, the mu-
sic has accreted new and sometimes contradictory meanings (Waxer 2002b).
Whereas it remains a potent symbol of national and ethnic identity among
Puerto Ricans residing in New York and Puerto Rico (Berríos-Miranda 2002;
Flores 2004; see also Aparicio 1998), it expresses a deterritorialized identity for
Spanish-speaking migrants to English-dominated social spaces (Quintero Ri-
vera 1999). In South America the music accrued a cosmopolitan value associ-
ated with the metropolitan centers from which it emanated, and connoisseur
communities of listeners developed (Waxer 2002a).2 In the hands of Orquesta
de la Luz, a Japanese salsa band that received considerable international atten-
tion in the 1990s, the music returned to its roots in the salsa dura (heavy salsa)
of the 1970s. Yet Orquesta de la Luz’s concern for retaining the purity of a for-
eign form through hypersimulation betrays a thoroughly Japanese aesthetic
sensibility (Hosokawa 2002).3
With regard to the dance, Priscilla Renta (2004) and Sydney Hutchinson
(2004) have documented the rise and spread of the New York mambo, or on-2,
style, which on the one hand borrows heavily from tap, theatrical, hustle, and
ballroom traditions and on the other represents a specifically Nuyorican4 proj-
ect for cultural recovery and artistic expression. New Jersey salseros both ben-
efit and suffer from their proximity to salsa’s creative center. A steady stream
of talented dancers from New Jersey enriches the burgeoning New York and
transnational scenes. Yet local clubs and venues change from year to year, of-
fering no fixed locales to rival either Jimmy Anton’s famed salsa social or the
Corso, Copacabana, and Palladium nightclubs of earlier eras in New York.5 The
New Jersey Salsa Congress of 2003, in fact, survived for only one year before
being relocated to New York and rebranded as the New York/New Jersey Salsa
Festival. Since 2004 Johann Pichardo’s website [Link] has attempted to
establish an identity for New Jersey. It provides a weekly listing of local classes
and clubs and a photo and video gallery of events, but it remains unelaborated
compared to websites serving the New York on-2 community.
Nevertheless, the dance scene in New Jersey provides a useful contrast
to New York–origin narratives. In contrast to the strong ethnic specificity of
on-2 histories, New Jersey salseros articulate a message of cultural inclusive-
ness, which embraces the ethnic diversity of the salsa dance community under
the rubric of latinidad, an ethnic specificity founded on notions of hybrid-
ity. Latino/a and non-Latino/a participants in this scene articulate a desire to
48 Katherine Borland

transcend limiting social milieus and identity categories even as they use the
dance to develop a deeper understanding of Latino/a culture (Borland 2009).
While these cosmopolitan attitudes may also exist among dancers in New York
and other regional centers, narratives of localization work to ascribe owner-
ship and agency in ways that erect lines of ethnic and place-based difference. In
the absence of a strong localizing narrative, New Jersey dancers emphasize the
cosmo­politan dimensions of their scene.
The term “cosmopolitan” has been used in a variety of ways in the social sci-
ences and cultural studies to describe extralocal group formations (characteris-
tic of but not limited to contemporary societies) that create an imaginary bond
among people who do not necessarily share a territorial or cultural identity
(Nowicka and Rovisco 2009). Cosmopolitan formations register the increas-
ingly hybrid nature of local cultures and the important transnational compo-
nent of group identities as a consequence of migration and mobility (Gupta and
Ferguson 1997). Emphasizing the voluntary nature of cosmopolitan affinities,
White suggests that “unlike ‘globalization’ or ‘modernity,’ cosmopolitanism is
not something that happens to people, it is something that people do” (2002:
681).6 Thus, Magdalena Nowicka and Maria Rovisco suggest, we should be ask-
ing, “How are ordinary individuals and groups making sense of their identi-
ties and social encounters in ways that can be said to be cosmopolitan?” (2009:
1). Bearing in mind that continuing social and legal inequalities result in very
different senses of entitlement to shared cultural space, we might character-
ize cosmopolitanism as an attitude or disposition of individuals and groups to
not only tolerate but also engage with people and forms they view as culturally
different from themselves (Nowicka and Rovisco 2009; Donald, Kofman, and
Kevin 2009).
These open and inclusive cultural attitudes are not necessarily restricted to
members of privileged groups. Instead, the boundaries of a cosmopolitan cul-
tural scene remain porous to outside influences even as a central set of values
and tastes provide a stable core across dispersed locales. Thomas Turino (2003),
for instance, identifies Zimbabwean popular music as a project of middle-class
cosmopolitans who first imitated, then internalized, and ultimately reshaped
internationally circulating cultural forms. When this popular music was
transnationally circulated, it encountered audiences who recognized both its
similarity to a shared model and a valued “otherness” characteristic of cosmo-
politan tastes. I add that since the “otherness” of cosmopolitanism often draws
on traditional cultural forms, it can provide a sense of heritage for culturally
uprooted individuals who identify with the donor tradition. Moreover, the de-
gree of cosmopolitanism in any given cultural scene may intensify or diminish
according to the experiences of its members and the social work the scene per-
forms vis-à-vis other associated or competing scenes.
From the mid-1990s, for instance, New Jersey dancers simultaneously em-
braced and reformulated the New York salsa revival. In Jersey City Ismael Otero
disseminated his own hip-hop-inflected version of dancing on-2 through his
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 49

company Caribbean Soul. In contrast, Juan Calderón understood the salient

feature of the New York style to be its elaborate turn patterns borrowed from
the Latin hustle of the 1970s.7 He identifies his primary teaching-performing
style as nightclub, or on-1, salsa.8 This stylistic division makes describing the
New Jersey dance scene in a unified way impossible; however, the July 2006
focus group participants concurred that Otero and Calderón were early, influ-
ential promoters of salsa dancing in New Jersey.
Moreover, the development of these and other New Jersey dance companies
foregrounds the importance of in-migrating Latin Americans to the local dis-
semination of salsa dancing from the 1990s to the present. Afro-Peruvian Luis
Zegarra, Dominican Smiling David, and Puerto Rican–born Juan Calderón,
Griselle Ponce, and Jossué Torres have provided a cultural bridge to second-
generation Latino youth who initially rejected the music and dance of their
parents in favor of a commercially disseminated, English-language youth cul-
ture. This peculiarity of New Jersey studio instruction accentuates its cosmo-
politan character.
The development, decline, recovery, and repopularization of the New York
mambo has been well documented by Sydney Hutchinson (2004 and Chapter 2
herein) and Priscilla Renta (2004). But the on-2 revival also constituted part of
a broader revival of salsa dancing across the United States that gained momen-
tum in the early 1990s, sparked by a return of Latin rhythms and Latino artists
to the commercial airwaves (Cepeda 2000). What made this broader revival
distinctive was the predominantly Latino clientele at dance studios. Instruc-
tors comment that studio instruction had historically been a way for cultural
outsiders to learn Latin dances. Now, Latinos were also attending classes to
learn technically elaborated styles of partner dancing. In 1997 the first Puerto
Rico Salsa Congress brought dancers from the East and West Coasts together
to teach, perform, and dance on the island. In the beginning, New Jersey danc-
ers volunteered at the congresses in exchange for plane fare, hotel accommoda-
tions, and the excitement of participating in the revival.
Salsa congresses (along with cruises and dance festivals) quickly developed
as a niche tourist market and proliferated: by 2006 one could find a salsa con-
gress somewhere in the world on any given weekend. These events offer dance
enthusiasts the opportunity to stay at a nice hotel, take classes from well-known
instructors, and attend performances and social dances. While dancers gener-
ally bemoan the resulting commercialization of the salsa scene, the congresses
have provided professional opportunities for New Jersey salseros—Griselle
Ponce, Ismael Otero, and Candy Mena, for instance—who quit their day jobs to
work full time on the international circuit.

Caribbean Soul
Whereas the development and revival of on-2 salsa in New York is strongly as-
sociated with Puerto Rican musicians and dancers, in New Jersey, in-migrating
50 Katherine Borland

Latin Americans played an important role in revaluing salsa music and dance
and transmitting it to second-generation Latino youth. Second-generation La-
tinos I interviewed commonly narrated a personal journey from ignorance,
indifference, or hostility with respect to Spanish-language music and dance
during their youth to a newfound appreciation of the pleasures of partner danc-
ing as young adults.9 The dynamics of this cultural realignment is well illus-
trated in the story of Caribbean Soul.
Afro-Peruvian Luis Zegarra is credited with having brought the on-2 style
of dancing to New Jersey in 1994. Now a promoter engaged in organizing salsa
congresses, he arrived in Jersey City in 1986. Zegarra remembers that salsa
music and dance constituted an important element in Lima’s popular culture
during his youth. All the radio stations played salsa, salsa concerts and doc-
umentaries frequently aired on television, and international salsa bands pro-
vided the biggest draw at the annual Lima fair. He explains, “The people there
in South America educate themselves more in the music, the bands, the artists,
than the people here” (Zegarra 2007). As a consequence of salsa’s continuing
popularity and of the development of connoisseur groups, Peruvian youth had
a kind of cultural knowledge Zegarra found lacking in his English-speaking,
Puerto Rican peers. He therefore struck up a friendship with an older Jersey
City neighbor named Iris, who was an avid salsera. Her children, Ismael and
Irene Otero and Yesenia Peralta, were all accomplished hip-hop dancers, unin-
terested in the music and dance of their mother’s era. Despite being underage,
Zegarra had set out for New York City to dance at the Corso and Copacabana.
In 1989 he won a dance contest at the Palace in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but en-
countered dismissive attitudes when he entered a contest at Sidestreet, an on-2
club in the Bronx. He reports:

The people were very closed-minded. If it was on-2, it was on-2, and
nobody else could dance! But I came in third. . . . That was the point
at which I said, “Well, we’re going to look for someone to train us.” . . .
So I found a woman to do this. . . . She said, “I’m going to do an
on-1 choreo­graphy, because that’s what you dance. But if you win, I
want you to come to my classes. . . . Because you’re a good dancer, but I
think if you dance on-2, you’re going to be better.” (Zegarra 2007)

Locally, on-2 was the prestige style for serious dancers, so Luis learned the
new timing.10 Subsequently, he competed in and won numerous local contests.
By 1993 he was teaching on-2 classes at DanceSport in Manhattan. Then the
owner of Foxes, a Jersey City club, invited him to teach. Luis recalls that people
initially came because of the novelty, but interest spread quickly, leading him
to open schools in North Bergen, Jersey City, and Elizabeth and to put together
performance groups for area festivals. Dancing on-2 was not only the hot, new
thing; it also had heritage status and was showcased at displays of Latino cul-
ture, such as the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade.
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 51

By 1994 Zegarra had formed his own performance group with five female
dancers called Fuerza Latina. In 1995 he was dancing for Jerry Rivera, a popu-
lar salsa romántica singer, and in April of that year he returned for the first
time to Peru as a dancer with Rivera’s international tour. Of his younger neigh-
bor, Ismael Otero, Zegarra recalls, “Iris always asked me to take Ismael . . . and
he didn’t want to take classes. He didn’t like salsa. . . . He had the hip-hop style”
(Zegarra 2007). For his part, Otero recalls living in a neighborhood where his
second-generation group shared the same social space with in-migrating Lati-
nos but exhibited a distinctive cultural style:

We would wear clothes and look like thugs, and they would be all
dresses with shirts and ties and things. . . . Every time you’d go to a
Latin party they would play English and Spanish, and every time they
would play something English, I would get up and dance all night. But
whenever the Spanish music [came on], I would sit down, and another
guy would come up and start dancing. . . . And one day, I realized . . .
I’m dancing against guys; he’s dancing with women. I’m in the wrong
kind of dance here! (Otero 2007)

Even after this revelation, Otero was embarrassed to admit an interest in salsa,
because it conflicted with his image as a tough, streetwise Latino. He finally
succumbed to Zegarra’s pressure to attend classes by accompanying a girl who
said she wanted to learn. Soon he was teaching Zegarra’s beginners and by
1998, he had formed his own dance team, Caribbean Soul, a group that in-
cluded, among others, his older sister Irene, Griselle Ponce, and Candy Mena.
Otero describes the late 1990s as a period of intense creativity and experi-
mentation. He recalls New York luminary Eddie Torres telling him he most
admired originality in dancers, which inspired Ismael to try out his own new
moves with his sisters and then at Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan, where
they attracted attention. Edie “the Salsa Freak” Lewis, creator of the bicoastal
Salsa Web website, christened him the “Million Moves Man” after dancing with
him there. Otero remarks, “Right there I have a title, so now I have to live up to
it. My style shot up through the stratosphere. Now people have expectations”
(Otero 2007). Otero thus distinguishes his own creative approach to learning
salsa from the uniformity of New York on-2 dancers, while acknowledging his
New York elders for stimulating his creativity.
Otero correspondingly encouraged those who studied and performed with
him to develop a personal style. For instance, Griselle Ponce, who had grown
up in a small town near Ponce, Puerto Rico, dancing Puerto Rican–style salsa,
bomba, and plena, excelled at body movement. Candy Mena, a Dominican
American whose high school passion had been cheerleading, practiced and
became known for her distinctive hand styling. Jesse Yip, a Peruvian Ameri-
can who studied with Otero sometime later, concentrated on developing elab-
orate turn patterns. Ismael explains, “I tell all my students that I don’t teach
52 Katherine Borland

[style]. I bring it out. And in the beginning it’s okay to mimic somebody, but
once you start getting into your own body, your own natural style comes out”
(Otero 2007).11 Initially, Caribbean Soul dancers were short on technique and
long on creativity, according to Otero. They borrowed from hip-hop and re-
lied on “shaking your body and whipping your hair” to present a look that de-
parted from the New York on-2 emphasis on elegance.12 Moreover, they opted
for sleeveless shirts as opposed to the suit and tie costuming of the more es-
tablished salsa performers. As Otero sought to update the New York style by
inserting a hip-hop sensibility, his neighbor Juan Calderón was engaged in a
different kind of imaginative refashioning.

Cultural Explosion
Puerto Rico–born Juan Calderón first learned to dance at home; at age seven he
won second place in a dance contest on a ferry to the Dominican Republic. He
moved to New Jersey as a teenager and attended Seton Hall University in New-
ark, majoring in business. At that time, he recalls, Latino students were trying
to get in touch with their cultural roots, and he began informally teaching salsa
dancing to his friends. For a brief time Calderón also worked as an instructor at
a nearby ballroom studio. However, he resisted the studio’s exploitative wages
as well as its gradualist approach to teaching, which he viewed as exploiting the
clients. Nevertheless, Calderón recognized a potential market and set himself
the task of learning several different styles of salsa dancing: nightclub, or on-1;
on-2; and the rueda de casino style from Miami. Offering classes five nights a
week at different clubs, bars, and ethnic halls in and around the Elizabeth area,
Calderón quickly developed a student following. In 2001 he produced the New
York Salsa series of instructional videos with his then partner Diana Diappa, in
which he demonstrated turn patterns using both the on-1 and on-2 counting
systems.13 Rather than referring to a specific timing, Calderón explained, the
New York label accentuated the smoothness in the turn patterns in compari-
son to Los Angeles style. The DVDs aimed to evoke “the Copacabana, old-style
grandfather dancing, who dances his own style that he learned at home to no
structure, no timing, but his turn patterns are influenced by another era, usu-
ally the seventies or eighties and the strong hustle influence that was at that
time” (Calderón 2007).
Calderón’s understanding of earlier dance styles in New York diverges from
the on-2 history of the dance, which locates the important creative moment at
the Palladium Ballroom of the 1950s rather than the Copacabana of the 1970s.
His “grandfather” is of a different generation from the “grandfather” of Eddie
Torres. One consequence of this alternative reading of New York (and therefore
New Jersey) style is a social and stylistic separation of Calderón’s dancers from
those studying at on-2 studios. Calderón asserts that the concept of timing is
divisive, so his school encourages “being bilingual, knowing different styles”
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 53

through teaching both and prioritizing neither. This perspective defends the
equal artistic worth of all styles against on-2 instructors’ assertions that theirs
is the more elegant, more adept, and more musically perceptive prestige style
(Hutchinson 2004).
Whereas Otero earns a living primarily as an instructor-performer on the
international circuit, Calderón has succeeded in building an impressive local
following through an instructional model that links formal classes with op-
portunities for students to dance socially and participate in amateur salsa stage
shows. Most of Calderón’s classes are held in bars and clubs, rather than in
studios, so students can immediately practice the dance. In contrast to on-2
instructional venues, where a marked emphasis on the mastery of timing re-
sults in repeated drilling of the basic steps,14 Calderón’s school has the goal of
getting people dancing as quickly as possible. The first half of a two-hour class
is dedicated to basic footwork or shines, the second half to partner work. Be-
ginning students are required to master eight turn patterns15 to move to the
next level of instruction. In the intermediate class, Calderón walks students
through a seemingly limitless set of turn pattern combinations. This approach
to dance instruction provokes critiques by on-2 instructors that he is teaching
steps, not dancing. However, aficionados appreciate the faster pace and novelty
of the classes, as well as Calderón’s students’ ability to dance with any partner.
Calderón and his dance partner Christina Piedra point out that everyone
comes to classes for different reasons: some to socialize, some for romance,
some to get in shape, some for cultural exploration. Therefore, to insist on
perfect technique from everyone would be a mistake. At the same time, Pie-
dra notes, people who begin with only a casual interest in the dance often get
hooked:

I think by the third lesson a student can . . . say, “I would like to be ad-
vanced,” but they can see that what the advanced people are doing took
them two or three years [to learn]. I think that’s what tends to happen.
It takes over people’s lives. (Piedra 2007)

Even at a school that works to avoid overtechnical instruction and preserve a

home-style flavor, many students develop serious aspirations to dance.
Many other instructors active in the scene have trained with Calderón or
Otero. Nevertheless, each studio and each dance company has its own way of
understanding the tradition, its own particular style. If the New York style is
marked by conformity to a particular model (a preference for a specific tim-
ing, footwork, music, and dress) and ethnically inflected, stylistically based
exclusionary practices, New Jersey dancers, perhaps as a consequence of their
permanently peripheral location, have emphasized the drive toward innovation
and a culturally open attitude that has arguably also long been part of salsa’s
tradition as a musically and socially hybrid form.
54 Katherine Borland

Diversity and Latinidad

By 2006 salsa studios in New Jersey had changed from almost entirely Latino to
about 60 percent Latino; the rest were blacks, whites, East Asians, South Asians,
Filipinos, and members of other immigrant groups. An almost entirely Latino
group of instructors recognize they benefit from their students’ desires to learn
salsa from authentic Latinos; nevertheless, they are unanimous in challenging
essentialist notions, arguing that with practice and perseverance, anyone can
learn to dance. These arguments serve the commercial interests of dance in-
structors to cultivate paying students. Yet instructors also draw on their own
experiences as in-migrating Latinos who had to learn the local on-2 style (or,
as in the case of Calderón, have been marginalized because they have not pre-
ferred that style) or as second-generation Latinos who had to study salsa to re-
acquaint themselves with their heritage. Latino and non-Latino dancers in the
studio setting, then, share an experience in which mastery of the form is not
a cultural given, something soaked up in the home environment, but rather a
bodily accomplishment based on training.
In this setting, stories of dancing ability based on cultural immersion are
interlaced with stories of the difficulty of perfecting fundamentals to develop
cultural competence and, eventually, a personal style.16 For instance, Puerto
­R ican–born Wil Cuba remembers a traumatic first experience in 1996 when his
partner left him on the dance floor because he repeatedly stepped on her foot.
Three years later he started training in the on-2 style and progressed rapidly.
Nevertheless, he discovered that he was arrhythmic. So Cuba enrolled in sev-
eral basic music classes at the local community college in addition to training
with Javier and Sweety’s salsa company. He says, “I had lots of trouble. It took
me two years to finally learn and to hear the beat” (Cuba 2007). Cuba claims
improvisational ability based on his Puerto Rican home life, where everyone
danced freestyle salsa; at the same time, lessons and study taught him to dance
to the rhythm of the music. This narrative displaces the centrality of rhythm in
arguments about a natural or authentic connection to Caribbean culture based
on heritage.
Moreover, non-Latino dancers who participate in the salsa scene find that
training in other kinds of dance assists them in learning salsa, and they use
their dancing competence to resist ethnic stereotyping. For instance, African
American Ivan Taylor studied ballet, modern dance, jazz, and capoeira before
he started salsa. He asserts, “I believe I have the ability to adapt to any cul-
ture. I don’t want to just be limited to, you know, black culture” (Taylor 2007).
Dancer Alexis Madill, who is white, came to salsa from competitive ballroom
dancing. In salsa studios and clubs, she finds that her dancing ability renders
her ethnicity ambiguous so that she is often taken for a light Cuban despite
her Irish, English, and Cherokee heritage. She reports, “I’ve never felt discrimi-
nated [against]. If anything, it just gave people hope. They’re like, ‘Wow! All
right, we can’t use this as an excuse why we can’t dance.’ You gotta go out there.
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 55

It doesn’t matter what background you come from” (Madill 2007). Madill’s nar-
rative simultaneously exposes and challenges racial stereotypes operating in
the studio salsa scene. In fact, she believes that other dancers appreciate her
commitment to the dance precisely because she came from another culture.
Marciarie Rodríguez, a Nuyorican dancer with Pzazz in Newark, supports Ma-
dill’s claim to inclusion, stating that even though she considers salsa part of her
Nuyorican heritage, its popularity among a diverse group of dancers is a source
of cultural pride for her.
Of course, even in settings that consciously embrace diversity, lines of
difference continue to be drawn. In London, Patria Román-Velázquez (2002)
found that the apparent diversity of musicians in salsa bands belied patterns of
ethnic (and gender) distinction by instrument that conformed to common ste-
reotypes identifying rhythm as the African and melody as the European con-
tribution to contemporary music. Hutchinson (Chapter 2) identifies Nuyorican
dancers as holding a virtual monopoly on instruction in New York; in New Jer-
sey, other Latino instructors predominate. Moreover, among the highly trained
dancers in New York performance companies, Hutchinson notes a continuing
insistence on the phenotypical specificity of dancers—describing some as “va-
nilla” and some as “chocolate”—that reasserts the primacy of ethnic/­racial cat-
egories (2007).
Hence, it would be unwise to proclaim the studio salsa scene an idyllic ha-
ven for individuals seeking to transcend fixed identity categories. More realisti-
cally, the scene represents a Latino-dominated space that, at least at the entry
level, welcomes non-Latinos. This openness provides an opportunity for highly
competent non-Latino dancers to challenge existing stereotypes, and because
latinidad itself is a hybrid category, many non-Latinos pass as Latino to varying
degrees. For instance, Filipina Geraldine Pagaoa of Pzazz asserts that when she
dances socially, people rarely realize she is Asian. Nevertheless, she sometimes
confronts a linguistic barrier in her dance company: “I missed things sometimes.
Even in practice, they laugh at me. . . . They make jokes, and I don’t understand,
or they make jokes about the songs, and I just don’t get it” (Pagaoa 2007). Several
scholars have emphasized the importance that Spanish-language lyrics came to
have in salsa music despite early experiments in English and the emergence of
salsa bands in non-Spanish-speaking areas (Rondón 2008; Román-Velázquez
2002; Hosokawa 2002). In the social environment of the studios, as well, Spanish
can be important, even though classes are conducted in English.
Japanese Tsuyoshi Miyajima, a long-time student at Cultural Explosion, had
no previous dance training. He enjoyed dancing salsa, even though he felt he
would never be able to move his body in a Latino way (Miyajima 2007). Chinese
Bin Bin Zhang felt Asians progressed more slowly in the classes because they
are shy and have difficulty asking people to partner with them (Zhang 2007).
Both were initially drawn to other Asians in the scene because they felt they
confronted a shared set of obstacles. Over time, as their skill and confidence
grew, they began to dance and socialize with Latinos and other non-Asian
56 Katherine Borland

dancers. Zhang emphasizes that salsa allows ordinary Asians an opportunity

to express themselves through dance, something that traditional Asian dance
forms, which require intensive body training, do not. On the whole, student
attitudes echo those of their instructors, who claim that with enough practice
and commitment, anyone can learn to dance.

Cosmopolitanism and Social Class

The critical literature privileges a perspective on salsa as a means to maintain
a defiant alterity rather than reaching for the artistic respectability associated
with a middle-class status (Delgado and Muñoz 1997; Berríos-Miranda 2004;
but see Renta 2004). This scholarly preference derives from the emphasis in cul-
tural and anthropological studies on subaltern forms of resistance, an emphasis
that sometimes runs the risk of romanticizing poverty. Moreover, by locating
authenticity as a quality of the streets, this perspective ignores the dynamic
give and take of stylistic influences from home, the media, and club and studio
environments and from one ethnic group to another (Desmond 1997; Chap-
ter 2 herein; López 1997). Additionally, it obscures women’s contributions to
stylistic innovation (Borland 2009). In his work on Zimbabwean popular mu-
sic, Turino (2003) implies that cosmopolitanism itself represents a middle-class
set of values and concerns that contrasts with the traditional Shona music and
culture rooted in the countryside. In First World contexts, however, commer-
cial and popular influences penetrate all classes. Moreover, successive waves
of migration combined with shifting class affiliations between first- and sec-
ond-generation migrants add considerable complexity to the relation between a
cosmo­politan outlook and a particular class standing.
The New York dance scene has been characterized by some as a middle-
class professional environment (see Hutchinson 2004: 129), yet New Jersey
dance instructors emphasize their students’ varied class backgrounds. Particu-
larly in the smaller studios, the idea that the dance studio provides a haven for
community members sometimes interferes with the reality of the studio as a
business. Griselle Ponce and Jossué Torres, for example, have organized several
children’s performance teams over the years. They complain that struggling
parents often neglect to pay for the children’s training, trusting (correctly) in
the instructors’ motivation to pass on their tradition to a new generation of
dancers. Indeed, several New Jersey studios represent enterprises that are in
many ways labors of love. Torres, Mario B, Smiling David, Alex Díaz, Jesse
Yip and Joanna Sánchez, and Javier Almeida all hold full-time jobs and prac-
tice salsa in the evenings or on weekends. They depend on long-time students
and company members to help organize socials, performances, and rehears-
als. Thus, studios often feel more like clubhouses than commercial enterprises.
They perform a social as well as an artistic function.
Moreover, salsa remains an important element of heritage, particularly for
Puerto Ricans but also for Latinos in general. Griselle Ponce and Mario B noted
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 57

they prepared salsa dance routines for quinceañeras, the elaborate birthday par-
ties that mark a young girl’s coming of age in Latino families. Ponce identified
the quinceañera as an ideal vehicle for introducing salsa to a sometimes resistant
younger generation, because parents will not allow routines based on reggaetón,
the dance music currently popular with the Latino youth. In this frame, and
despite its sexy image, studio salsa represents a positive, uplifting, safe cultural
activity that offers an alternative to crass, commercial youth culture.
It also provides safety from sometimes violent street life. Ivette Ramírez,
for instance, credits Smiling David’s Broadway Dance Studio in Newark with
providing an alternative to hanging out in the streets during her adolescence.
Ivette had initially contacted Smiling David to teach on-2 salsa to a high school
dance team she had organized as a way to explore her Puerto Rican heritage.
When I met her eight years later, she was working full time as a secretary but
remained a permanent member of Smiling David’s Pzazz dancers and taught
salsa classes with him four or more evenings a week. She was proud to have suc-
cessfully guided several other girls through adolescence by means of her dance
performance groups (Ramírez 2007).
Yesenia Peralta’s salsa story depicts the current salsa revival as a route to
self-determination through social mobility. In high school, Peralta was im-
mersed in gang culture in a neighborhood she describes as permeated by drugs
and violence. The consequences of this lifestyle for Peralta were early preg-
nancy and motherhood followed by social isolation: a jealous boyfriend con-
fined her to home and child care, preventing her from visiting her family and
friends. She explains, “You usually think your destiny is written: you’re sixteen
years old, you’ve dropped out of high school, you have no education, no work
experience, you’re gonna have to go on welfare, he’s gonna leave you, you’re
gonna have to move back in with your parents, and you ain’t gonna amount to
much” (Peralta 2007). Determined that her story would be different, Peralta left
her boyfriend when she was twenty-one and moved in with her older brother,
Ismael, and sister, Irene. It was 1999, and Otero was having trouble meeting
the demand for his salsa classes, so he drafted his two sisters to teach. Both
had been break dancing for many years, but neither knew how to dance salsa.
Within a few months, however, they were not only teaching but also touring
with Caribbean Soul. Peralta continues:

And then salsa came along. It was meeting new people and being creative
and traveling to Washington, and I would never have thought that would
have been my life when I was in high school. I mean, I liked to dance; we
all liked to dance, but to actually make a career out of it? How am I going
to do that with no money—no credit—I’m living paycheck to paycheck?
What are the possibilities of me opening up a dance school? (Peralta 2007)

For Peralta, salsa provided a space for self-definition and professionalization af-
ter a prolonged period of confinement and passivity. Distancing herself from a
58 Katherine Borland

world of restricted choices and violence, Peralta embraced the broader horizons
and new social opportunities that an increasingly diverse and internationally
connected salsa scene offered. This new orientation does not mean that Peralta
no longer identifies with hip-hop style. Both she and her brother feel they bring
a valuable street flavor to an increasingly technical dance scene. However, they
do not feel limited to dancing and performing an underclass identity.
Otero understands the salsa studio as a place where social class no longer
divides people:

Most people come to my class because I look like a street person, so peo-
ple come to my class thinking they can look cool and dance salsa. . . . You
dance with someone; you suddenly realize you’re dancing with a doctor
or a poet. When you dance, you’re just another dancer. They don’t see
you as a street person, just another dancer. An equal. (Otero 2007)

For Otero, salsa scenes are inhabited by a diverse group whose easy interchange
offers the possibility of redemption for those who have lost their way in eco-
nomic hard times. Others who have entered the scene from more secure eco-
nomic conditions narrate escapes from the boredom and passivity of desk jobs
or the solitude of long evenings in front of the television.
Juan Calderón identifies salsa congresses as attracting a certain quality
of person who is “cultured,” “worldly,” and interested in dancing with others,
rather than sticking to his or her own group:

It’s really a way to come together with different people, which we don’t
have an opportunity to do in everyday life—to socialize with people
from other countries, you know, people from different cultures that
have nothing in common other than, in this case, the love for music and
dance. (Calderón 2007)

Taken together, these descriptions construct serious salseros as a subset of peo-

ple crosscutting class and ethnic categories who are interested in people differ-
ent from themselves.
Calderón’s emphasis on being “bilingual,” on being able to dance both on-1
and on-2, conforms to his understanding of salsa’s social space as an open and in-
clusive one rather than a private club to which one must gain entry through stylis-
tic discernment. He adopts the language of tourism to market this inviting space:

So it’s a way to explore an exotic, tropical place while being in cold New
Jersey. So tonight, Monday night, salsa night at Terminal One, although
it’s cold outside, inside we have a tropical environment of not only mu-
sic but people. So the people are very warm and friendly, and when we
say hello to each other, we give each other a kiss on the cheek, some-
thing that outside of Terminal One might be looked upon as weird.
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 59

When we’re here in the salsa community, it’s almost like we’re another
country inside the country. And that country is welcoming of all coun-
tries and cultures of people. (Calderón 2007)

The social space Calderón constructs is an imaginary world—a country within

a country, which is both a nostalgic invocation and a utopian vision, set apart
from a cold, uncaring world populated by alienated individuals. He and other
New Jersey instructors offer their students a nightlife fantasy that blends exoti-
cism with heritage in a safe and welcoming environment that is also charged
with sensuality and energy. In this sense the actual location of the club, studio,
or ethnic hall becomes irrelevant as dancers nightly repeat their escape to geo-
graphically, socially, and affectively warmer climes. One might argue that the
tourism at home offered by the New Jersey salsa studio replicates the situation
one might find on Caribbean islands, where Latino “locals” cater to the de-
sires of culturally “other” paying guests.17 And yet as long-time guests become
members of companies and teach classes alongside their mentors, and a steady
stream of Latino and non-Latino newcomers line up to pay for beginning dance
lessons, these lines of difference are blurred.
Transcending limiting identity categories through dance remains attrac-
tive to Latino and non-Latino, affluent and not-so-affluent dancers. Yet one
might argue the resulting scene provides an intimacy without depth. Sixty-
year-old white dance student Joanne Reynolds enjoys the generational, racial,
and cultural diversity of the scene but adds:

What surprises me is that there is very little talk about what people do
for a living. There are some people I know there whom I see every week
since last March, and I haven’t a clue what they do for a living because
nobody talks about the things you think people would talk about in the
more traditional type settings. (Reynolds 2007)

The New Jersey salsa scene thus accomplishes its projection of an idealized
cosmopolitan space by avoiding talk that might lead to social differentiation.
While social alliances are built across ethnic, class, and age differences, the
promise of community is largely sustained and contained by participants’
shared passion for the dance.
As New York salseros developed an ethnically and regionally specific style
during the salsa dance revival of the 1990s, New Jersey instructors emphasized
the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of their clubs and studios, embracing dif-
ference under the sign of latinidad. Actual places became irrelevant in this con-
struction of studio-based salsa, because the tropical illusion could be replicated
in any space. Studio instructors who have worked over the past fifteen years to
construct a local scene embrace cosmopolitanism partly as a defensive response
to the exclusivity of on-2 New York dancers. The scene has also been shaped
by in-migrating Latin Americans who understood salsa music and dance as a
60 Katherine Borland

cultural practice broadly shared across the Spanish-speaking world. This al-
ternative perspective does not challenge New York’s centrality in inventing a
regionally specific style of salsa and nurturing its more recent revival. Never-
theless, New Jersey’s stylistic eclecticism and broad embrace provide a useful
counterpoint to the connoisseur tendencies evident in the New York scene.

Notes
Note: This chapter expands one of a number of arguments I developed in “Embracing
Difference: Salsa Fever in New Jersey,” Journal of American Folklore 122, no. 486 (2009):
466–492. Both essays draw from five months of field research conducted in the summer
of 2006 and the winter of 2007, supported by a Faculty Assembly Research Grant from the
Ohio State University, Newark, and a travel grant from the Ohio State University Center
for Latin American Studies.

1. My research concentrated on dancers in northern New Jersey, in Essex, Hudson, and

Union Counties. However, a vibrant scene also exists in southern New Jersey and is strongly
connected in particular with Cultural Explosion Dance Company in the northern part of
the state. Attending the focus group meeting were Ismael Otero of Caribbean Soul; Juan
Calderón of Cultural Explosion; Griselle Ponce; Smiling David of Pzazz Dancers; Mario
B (Mario González), owner of Salsa Fever On2 Dance Academy; Jossué Torres, owner of
J. Bonilla Dance Studio; Sweety Vélez of Javier and Sweety; Jesse Yip and Joanna Sánchez
of Tumimambo; and Alex Díaz. Also participating were Ray Colón, salsa DJ; Johann Pi­
chardo, webmaster for [Link]; Winsome Lee of Tormenta Oriental in New York;
and Susan Tel, former salsa promoter and aficionada. I also conducted private interviews
with several who could not attend (promoter Luis Zegarra, Irene Otero, Yesenia Peralta, and
Candy Mena, all formerly of Caribbean Soul; Christina Piedra of Cultural Explosion; Javier
Almeida of Javier and Sweety; and Amanda Estilo). All of them agreed that they were the
established leaders in the local dance scene in 2006. However, some individuals who were
either new to the dance scene or less connected to this core group of dancers were missed.
2. In the Congo, Cuban-derived music became popular in much the same way, produc-
ing an alternative to European cosmopolitanisms (see White 2002).
3. Salsa dura style has also been revived in New York and New Jersey, but in contrast
to Orquesta de la Luz’s depoliticized sound, Jimmy Bosch and others attempt to recapture
the connection between salsa, cultural liberation, and community uplift.
4. People of Puerto Rican descent residing in New York.
5. For a list of New Jersey salsa clubs popular with dancers in the 1990s, see Washburne
2008: 210.
6. James Clifford (1998) prefers the term “cosmopolitan” to “multicultural,” because,
as an imaginary association, it avoids the latter’s essentialism.
7. I spell the last name Calderón with an accent mark for consistency; however, on the
web and in promotional materials, he and other dancers typically drop the accent marks
from their names.
8. Calderón’s Cultural Explosion Dance Company is located farther south in the Eliza-
beth area. His social and professional networks are oriented away from New York toward
the on-1 Philadelphia and Chicago salsa scenes.
9. Mario B, Johann Pichardo, Candy Mena, Alex Díaz, Christina Piedra, Jesse Yip,
Joanna Sánchez, Ismael Otero, Irene Otero, Yesenia Peralta, Ray Colón, and many students
at salsa studios employed this trope in their interviews.
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 61

10. Smiling David of Newark reports a similar experience when he first arrived from
the Dominican Republic. Although he was a talented dancer, his friends refused to take
him clubbing because he did not know the on-2 style. David was eventually enticed to study
on-2 style formally with his friend and fellow Dominican Victor Mayovanex.
11. Otero’s emphasis on improvisation and play contributed to the development of a
humorous tradition at salsa congresses. Together with Los Angeles dancer Al Espinosa, he
formed a salsa comedy duo called Electric Beat on Two and a Half, which clowned around
on stage at congresses (Otero 2007).
12. Chris Washburne (2008) identifies this blending of salsa with hip-hop style and
sensibilities in salsa singer La India’s professional trajectory and stage self-presentation,
indicating that the trend was musical as well as dance-related.
13. New York Salsa 2002.
14. For instance, Mario B at his Salsa Fever On-2 studio in Jersey City provides stu-
dents with timing CDs for learning the on-2 count and requires students to attend music
appreciation classes.
15. The required sequence is as follows: cross-body lead, break back right turn, right
turn (three stylings), inside turn (three stylings), shoulder turn behind the back, body roll,
out of the way, and frisbee (revolving doors). For an explanation of these elementary steps,
see his instructional DVD.
16. See Fraleigh 1994 for a succinct discussion of the relation between freedom and
control and between improvisation and training in dance.
17. Deborah Kapchan (2006) identifies a comparable dynamic in Austin, Texas, salsa
clubs, where non-Latina women professionals connected with Latino working-class men to
construct both a space of difference and a sense of home. In New Jersey studios, however,
lines of difference are less clearly drawn.

References
Aparicio, Frances. 1998. Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican
Cultures. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Arias Satizábal, Medardo. 2002. “Se Prohíbe Escuchar ‘Salsa y Control’: When Salsa
Arrived in Buenaventura, Colombia,” trans. Lise Waxer. In Situating Salsa: Global
Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 247–258. New
York: Routledge.
Berríos-Miranda, Marisol. 2002. “Is Salsa a Musical Genre?” In Situating Salsa: Global Markets
and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 23–50. New York: Routledge.
———. 2004. “Salsa Music as Expressive Liberation.” Centro: Journal of the Center for
Puerto Rican Studies 16 (2): 159–173.
Borland, Katherine. 2009. “Embracing Difference: Salsa Fever in New Jersey.” Journal of
American Folklore 122 (486): 466–492.
Calderón, Juan. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. March 12.
Cepeda, Maria Elena. 2000. “Mucho Loco for Ricky Martin; or the Politics of Chronology,
Crossover, and Language within the Latin(o) Music ‘Boom.’” Popular Music and
Society 24 (3): 55–71.
Clifford, James. 1998. “Mixed Feelings.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the
Nation, ed. P. Cheah and B. Robbins, 362–370. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Cuba, Wil. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. February 10.
Delgado, Celeste Frasier, and José Esteban Muñoz, eds. 1997. Everynight Life: Culture and
Dance in Latin/o America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
62 Katherine Borland

Desmond, Jane C. 1997. “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies.”
In Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane C. Desmond, 29–54.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, Eleonore Kofman, and Catherine Kevin. 2009.
“Introduction: Processes of Cosmopolitanism and Parochialism.” In Branding Cities:
Cosmopolitanism, Parochialism, and Social Change, ed. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald,
Eleonore Kofman, and Catherine Kevin, 1–13. New York: Routledge.
Flores, Juan. 2004. “Creolité in the ’Hood: Diaspora as Source and Challenge.” Centro:
Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16 (2): 283–293.
Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. 1994. “Good Intentions and Dancing Moments: Agency, Free­
dom, and Self-Knowledge in Dance.” In The Perceived Self: Ecologica and Interper­sonal
Sources of Self-knowledge, ed. Ulric Neisser, 102–111. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1997. “Beyond ‘Culture:’ Space, Identity, and the
Politics of Difference.” In Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era, ed.
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 33–52. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hosokawa, Shuhei. 2002. “Salsa No Tiene Fronteras: Orquesta de la Luz and the
Globalization of Popular Music.” In Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local
Meanings in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 289–312. New York: Routledge.
Hutchinson, Sydney. 2004. “Mambo On 2: The Birth of a New Form of Dance in New York
City.” Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16 (2): 109–137.
———. 2007. Personal communication.
Kapchan, Deborah. 2006. “Talking Trash: Performing Home and Anti-home in Austin’s
Salsa Culture.” American Ethnologist 33 (3): 361–377.
López, Ana M. 1997. “Of Rhythms and Borders.” In Everynight Life: Culture and Dance
in Latin/o America, ed. Celeste Fraser Delgado and José Esteban Muñoz, 310–344.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Madill, Alexis. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. February 2.
Miyajima, Tsuyoshi. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. February 8.
New York Salsa. 2002. DVD. Directed by Media Plus Entertainment.
Nowicka, Magdalena, and Maria Rovisco. 2009. “Introduction: Making Sense of
Cosmopolitanism.” In Cosmopolitanism in Practice, ed. Magdalena Nowicka and
Maria Rovisco, 1–14. London: Ashgate.
Otero, Ismael. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. February 9.
Pagaoa, Geraldine. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. January 28.
Peralta, Yesenia. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. January 27.
Piedra, Christina. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. January 25.
Quintero Rivera, Ángel G. 1999. ¡Salsa, sabor y control! Sociología de la música “tropical.”
2nd ed. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.
Ramírez, Ivette. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. January 28.
Renta, Priscilla. 2004. “Salsa Dance: Latino/a History in Motion.” Centro: Journal of the
Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16 (2): 138–157.
Reynolds, Joanne. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. February 3.
Román-Velázquez, Patria. 2002. “The Making of a Salsa Music Scene in London.” In
Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise
Waxer, 259–288. New York: Routledge.
Rondón, César Miguel. 2008. The Book of Salsa: A Chronicle of Urban Music from the
Caribbean to New York City, trans. Frances R. Aparicio and Jackie White. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
Taylor, Ivan. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. January 31.
From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 63

Turino, Thomas. 2003. “Are We Global Yet? Globalist Discourse, Cultural Formations and
the Study of Zimbabwean Popular Music.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 12 (2):
51–79.
Washburne, Chris. 2008. Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York City.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Waxer, Lise. 2002a. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular
Culture in Cali, Colombia. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
———, ed. 2002b. Situating salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular
Music. New York: Routledge.
White, Bob W. 2002. “Congolese Rumba and Other Cosmopolitanisms.” Cahiers d’Études
Africaines 168 (42): 663–686.
Zegarra, Luis. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. February 8.
Zhang, Bin Bin. 2007. Interview by Katherine Borland. February 8.
4
Contextualizing Content and Conduct
in the L.A. Salsa Scene
Jonathan S. Marion

Background

A
lthough it is largely in jest that I occasionally refer to salsa as “my other
religion,” Robert Redfield’s (1956) distinction between a religion’s
“Great Tradition” versus its “Little Tradition”—the official version of a
major world religion versus its local iteration—provides a useful lens for view-
ing salsa. Just as a religion’s shared underlying belief system and structure allow
for broad participation, so too with salsa’s relatively common underlying struc-
ture of music and movement. But as a religion’s canonical beliefs and practices
are enacted only in particular ways in specific places, so too for salsa. If the un-
derlying patterns of movement and partnering allow shared participation, still,
the vast majority of salsa takes form according to local shapes, circumstances,
and nuances.
I first saw salsa dancing in Toronto in 1998, started lessons in San Diego
soon thereafter, and attended my first congress in Los Angeles in 2000.1 During
my first few workshops at the congress, I danced with women from five conti-
nents. Since then I have visited and danced at salsa venues in California, around
the United States, and outside the United States (including Denmark, Mexico,
and Canada). It is no accident that the thousands of dancers attending numerous
salsa congresses and festivals around the world can all dance with each other:
the shared codes of bodily conduct and practice serve as the foundation of a
translocal activity-based culture and community (see Marion 2006, 2008, 2012).
Much of my previous work has focused on the translocality of dance cul-
tures. Yet the globalization of salsa dancing—including its embodied customs
and practices—is only part of the picture. Indeed, despite an ever-expanding
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 65

calendar of local, national, and international salsa festivals, the vast majority
of salsa dancing takes place within the local contexts of specific opportunities,
situations, settings, and venues. Salsa’s status as a global product, process, and
commodity does not negate its local iterations, nuances, and practices.
While it is certainly true that salsa can be fully understood or appreciated—
historically, musically, or culturally—only in relation to its “roots in the Cu-
ban and Puerto Rican cultural diaspora of New York City” (Waxer 2002b: 3),2
it is equally true that, as a now worldwide phenomenon, “salsa no longer points
to just New York, Cuba, and Puerto Rico” (Waxer 2002a: 18). Every salsa scene
represents its own intersection of local and global dynamics, and the L.A. salsa
scene is no exception. With this in view and drawing on (a) formal and infor-
mal interviews with both regulars and visitors to the L.A. salsa scene, (b) my
experience dancing at salsa venues in Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside,
San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose, and (c) archival research in print and
online, I examine in this chapter the “Little Tradition” of the Los Angeles–
based West Coast salsa scene from three interrelated perspectives:

1. The confluence of sociocultural factors and dynamics—especially

those pertaining to population size, performance teams, and compe-
titions—shaping the L.A. salsa scene
2. How it is seen and experienced by salsa dancers
3. The role of L.A.-style salsa in the globalization of salsa dancing, es-
pecially in relation to salsa festivals, videos, and the Internet

What, however, is L.A. salsa? To answer this central question, I begin by noting
some of the problems with defining L.A. salsa and provide some key musical
history.

Multiple Realities: Some Problems with Defining “L.A. Salsa”

It is important to realize that there is not an “L.A. salsa” scene. U.S. Census
Bureau statistics for 2010 put the population of Los Angeles County in the vi-
cinity of ten million, Orange County and San Diego Counties at over three
million apiece, and Riverside and San Bernardino Counties each at over two
million (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). This large population makes it nonsensical
to think of L.A. salsa in the singular. In reality, a tremendous range of overlap-
ping scenes falls under the umbrella of “L.A. salsa.” To understand how sig-
nificant this dynamic is, consider the listings of salsa dance venues that were
posted at VidaSalsera.com3 for the greater L.A. vicinity throughout the week of
July 16, 2009. On Monday, seven venues held salsa events; on Tuesday, twelve;
on Wednesday, seventeen; on Thursday, thirteen; on Friday, twenty-three; on
Saturday, sixteen; and on Sunday, thirteen. Separate from any studio-based so-
cial dance parties, then, as of July 16, 2009, there were 101 different salsa nights
that a dancer could attend in a single week in the larger L.A. area. Even if a
66 Jonathan S. Marion

dancer attended two different clubs each night for a full week, this would still
be only fourteen club nights, or roughly one-eighth of the possibilities in Los
Angeles. Factor in all the different permutations of clubs a dancer might go to
on any given night, let alone personal preferences and geographic distances,
and it should be clear how absurd it is to think of the L.A. salsa scene.
It is equally important to recognize that culture and community are never
static but continuously changing because of the wide array of people and prac-
tices involved in L.A. salsa. Additionally, each person’s experiences are inher-
ently subjective, and two hours in a salsa club does not—indeed cannot—mean
the same thing to the first-time club attendee as it does to the experienced
dancer, the person who grew up learning to dance at family gatherings in the
backyard, or the studio-trained dancer, or mean the same thing to the native
Spanish speaker as it does to the person who does not understand most salsa
lyrics. It is not that there is no such thing as “L.A. salsa” but rather that this
label means many things.4

Common Understandings of “L.A. Salsa”

Although some salsa scholars have recognized the inextricable links between
salsa music and dance (e.g., Wade 2000; Waxer 2002a), the vast majority of
salsa scholarship concerns the origins and development of salsa music begin-
ning in 1960s New York. Certainly, there would be no salsa dancing without
salsa music, but while particular musicians and musical styles are at the heart
of other salsa scenes, “L.A.-style salsa” is almost universally used to refer to
a particular style of dancing. Indeed, as the popularity of salsa music and
dancing spread—especially among West Coast populations less familiar with
Afro-Cuban rhythms—the dancing (like much of the music) changed, with the
footwork and timing patterns developing in several different directions.
What is now most commonly known as L.A. style retained the original Pal-
ladium footwork (see Chapter 2), with the difference that dancers were break-
ing (changing direction) on the first and fifth beats and stepping on counts
1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 of an eight-beat measure.5 Similarly—and in no small part
because of the dearth of Puerto Rican and Cuban émigrés (compared to New
York and Miami)—early versions of Los Angeles–style salsa were more heavily
influenced by West Coast swing and Latin ballroom dancing, and they evolved
through crossing these influences with cumbia, the musical and dance tradi-
tion of the area’s Mexican-, Central American–, and Colombian-origin popu-
lations. Indeed, the Colombian and Mexican6 (and to a lesser extent Cuban)
musical influence led to the on-1 timing of L.A. salsa dancing, one of the key
features said to differentiate L.A. style from New York’s on-2 dancing, derived
from the Latin jazz influences in New York.
Originally danced more like cumbia’s side-to-side motion as described by
Laura Canellias (Torres et al. 2010), since the first world salsa congress in 1997,
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 67

L.A.-style salsa has been conceptualized as a flashy cross-body style7 (based on

linear forward and backward breaks) that breaks on the count of 1 and priori-
tizes fast speeds and tricks instead of intricate footwork (shines). Josie Neglia,
world-renowned instructor and performer, describes the Los Angeles–salsa
style danced at the Puerto Rico congress:

Los Angeles—mostly partnering, danced to every song, many turns,

dips and drops. Very flashy and accenting all the hits in the music with
a large movement with their partner. Little or no shines and little or no
torso undulations. Danced on 1. (Neglia 2002)

While critics and detractors described L.A. salsa as “flash and trash,” propo-
nents and fans raved about the style’s impressive speed, power, and tricks. In-
deed, as noted by Francisco Vázquez, even while criticized for using “tricks,
tricks, tricks,” he has also “flown around the world because of” the popular-
ity of the style (Torres et al. 2010). Before exploring the multiple realities of
L.A. salsa, however, it is important to understand how the various musical and
dance traditions involved came to be recognized as “L.A.-style” salsa.

Becoming “L.A. Style” Salsa

In the same way that “salsa music” was originally a marketing label, the same
can be said of “salsa dancing.” When the studio Let’s Dance L.A. opened in
1992, its instructors were still teaching on-2 ballroom mambo. But the early
1990s also saw Albert Torres—today the most prominent salsa promoter in the
world—take charge of the salsa events at the Sportsmen’s Lodge on Ventura
Boulevard in Studio City. Torres brought live salsa music to Los Angeles, hir-
ing numerous bands from New York and Puerto Rico, and had Joe Cassini,
Laura Canellias, and William Ochoa give dance lessons. After Cassini orga-
nized a performance for his own birthday, participants Enio Cordoba and Ter-
ryl Jones were inspired to put together a show at the Country Western World
Championships, which received rave reviews. The dancers involved included
those with ballroom training—such as Cordoba and Jones, Melissa Dexter,
and Steve Vasco—as well as up-and-coming salsa dancers, including Luis and
Francisco Vázquez, Joby Martínez, Monica González, Edie Lewis, Tony Welch,
and Thomas Montero.8 Some of these dancers in turn formed the original and
best-known salsa teams in Los Angeles: Salsa Brava (founded in 1994 by Luis
Vázquez, Joby Martínez, and Janette Valenzuela) and Los Rumberos (founded
in 1996 by Francisco Vázquez, Johnny Vázquez, and Monica González). Learn-
ing tricks and flips for shows, many of the young performers were (as one of
the earlier L.A. instructors worded it) “like kids with a new toy,” taking these
moves to clubs like Sportsmen’s Lodge, the Conga Room, the Mayan, Century
Club, Mama Juana’s, and Steven’s Steakhouse.
68 Jonathan S. Marion

L.A. Style Goes Global

Teaching larger and larger international workshops, Luis Vázquez, Francisco
Vázquez, Martínez, González, and others were internationally promoted and
marketed as teaching L.A. salsa, and their version of it—including neck drops,
dips, and flips—thus started to be recognized as definitive. In much the same
vein and adding to this process was the first World Salsa Congress in Puerto
Rico, organized by Elí Irizarry in 1997, where this emerging generation of salsa
dancers represented L.A. style on the international stage. Indeed, these danc-
ers traveled widely to places that could not afford more established instructors,
thus exposing ever-broader populations to Los Angeles–based dancers. Ulti-
mately, such exposure proved instrumental in establishing the careers of many
of these early proponents of L.A. salsa, spreading the style, and cementing the
definition of L.A.-style salsa. The marketing of salsa videotapes, the Internet,
population dynamics and musical predispositions in Europe, and the start of
the West Coast Salsa Congress also aided in these processes. In this way, what
had been considered simply choreography up until that point came to be rec-
ognized as the particular and distinctive variant of salsa dancing labeled “L.A.-
style salsa.”
As Salsa Brava, Neglia, and others started teaching more widely and mar-
keting videos,9 another element came into play: precursors to the salsa scenes
in Europe mostly came by way of Cuba. Whereas only small pockets of Puerto
Ricans were in Europe, many Cubans went there, since most could not legally
come to the United States. This demographic variable played out in important
ways, since Cuban-style salsa dance timing, although very different, predis-
posed Europeans to the on-1 timing of L.A. salsa.
The West Coast Salsa Congresses Albert Torres has run since 1999 were
also significant in L.A. salsa’s globalization. In many ways modeled after the
nine Mambo Manias10 (workshops during the day, competitions and perfor-
mances at night, with an array of teachers and a band), Torres’s congresses,
in contrast to the first Puerto Rican congresses, showcased dancers instead
of bands. The best performers were thus recruited to do shows, compete, and
teach, and through Torres’s active promotion, more and more dancers were ex-
posed firsthand to L.A. salsa performers. Performances by the top L.A. dancers
on videos and the Internet also drew attention and interest, since these dancers’
power, speed, and tricks did not require specialized, technical knowledge to be
appreciated.

Represented As versus Representative Of

Amid the discussion of how L.A.-style salsa went global, it is important not
to confuse “representation” with “representativeness.” Just as “salsa” was orig-
inally a marketing label, so was “L.A. style” for the performers and instruc-
tors involved in promoting themselves and their style. If the dancing being
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 69

marketed—and consumed—was represented as L.A. salsa, this does not make it

representative of the L.A. salsa scene. Although the two are tightly intertwined,
the reputations arising from “represented as” are always oversimplifications.
Thus, while the performances by L.A. salsa teams like Salsa Brava and Los
Rumberos represented L.A. salsa as being danced with on-1 timing, this was
not representative of Los Angeles–based instructors (such as Josie Neglia) and
dancers who danced both timings—or even exclusively on-2. Conversely, many
erroneously believe that San Diego is primarily an on-2 town even though the
vast majority of salsa dancing in San Diego is on-1 style.

The Impact of Salsa Teams

Teams played a large role in the early development of the current salsa scenes
in Los Angeles and San Diego. First, teams presented salsa as not just a social
dance in Los Angeles but something to be performed. Endeavoring to estab-
lish themselves, their reputations, and their financial stake in the rapidly ex-
panding commercial pie, early teams on the L.A. scene, like Salsa Brava, Los
Rumberos, Sabor y Caché, and Royalty Salsa, were continually trying to one-
up each other’s performances.11 Trying to attract students and attention, and
also just having fun with what they could do, the team members brought their
­performance-based moves into the clubs.
On the positive side, this fueled a period of innovation and dedication,
albeit one where the Colombian12 roots of L.A. salsa all but disappeared. On
the downside, however, many club dancers started trying to emulate, without
proper training or practice, every trick they saw, producing a heyday of flash-
and-trash salsa in Los Angeles over roughly three years in the late 1990s. One
example is the neck drop, first executed in the United States by dancers Miriam
(Larici) and Sandor of Forever Tango (a company born in San Francisco in
1994), where the woman drops backward toward the ground, the man catch-
ing and supporting her by the back of her neck. As executed by Miriam, the
neck drop produces an elegant line based on core strength and balance. Yet less
skilled dancers attempted to copy this move without the requisite training; Ter-
ryl Jones explains:

For several years wannabes have been doing this drop on two legs,
thighs wide open, crotch to the audience. Ladies get a clue!! Do we re-
ally need to be in these gynecological positions? Not only is this a lower
skill level[;] it is just low class. (Jones, n.d.)

In an online discussion at [Link], L.A. salsera “Brownskin818”

further describes how teams affected the character of L.A. salsa:

L.A. is majorly different from NY in that the schools/studios are mostly

separate from teams. The studios never seem to put together reputable
70 Jonathan S. Marion

teams, and the “reputable” teams never seem to offer classes. It seems
that in NY, reputable teams are a product of the schools’ classes.
(“Brownskin818” 2009)

As she went on to note, this atmosphere engendered (a) a general separation

between the teams and the salsa schools and studios, (b) little long-term loyalty
to a particular instructor, and (c) a relative dearth of advanced classes because
of the lack of long-term students.
Given the sheer number of dancers in the L.A. area, only a small fraction
ever ended up dancing on a team. In contrast, the introduction of teams into
smaller salsa scenes often profoundly altered the social dynamics of the local
scene. For example, the current shape of salsa in San Diego cannot be under-
stood save in reference to the impact of the team Salsa y Fuego, the first dance
company in San Diego and the first on-2 team in California. From a marketing
perspective, the on-2 emphasis set Salsa y Fuego apart from all the other salsa
instructors in San Diego at the time. The team’s 2001 Red and White routine,
performed at the third annual West Coast Salsa Congress, was structured as
a showdown between on-1 “salsa” and on-2 “mambo,” showcasing both tim-
ings.13 As noted by former team member Raquel Gómez, this routine “put San
Diego on the map” (2011). Salsa y Fuego’s legacy includes (1) the style of salsa
danced in San Diego, (2) the lineages of San Diego salsa, (3) San Diego’s salsa
reputation, and (4) a shift in the social dynamics between local dancers.
The most immediate and obvious impact of Salsa y Fuego was the intro-
duction of Eddie Torres–style on-2 dancing to San Diego, including bringing
in guest instructors like Seaon Stylist. Its offspring, Majesty in Motion, has
since proved a training ground for many of San Diego’s top dancers, including
Deseo Dance Company founder Serena Cuevas and Alma Latina dance com-
pany cofounder Sergio Jasso. Thus, many of the most visible San Diego danc-
ers trained in and performed on-2 style, leading to San Diego’s reputation as
an on-2 town—even though, as noted, the majority of salsa in San Diego has
always been on-1 style.
Perhaps most significant of all, however, was the tectonic shift in the social
landscape. The introduction of teams to San Diego introduced “class” differ-
ences between local dancers; now there were those who had made it onto teams
and everybody else. Teams continued to expand, split, and inspire others, and
they made a larger impact in San Diego, with its relatively small participation
base, than in Los Angeles.14 Nonetheless, the competition scene in Los Angeles
amplified the performance-driven mentality of L.A. salsa many times over.

Competitions
The major impact of teams in Los Angeles involved shifting salsa from being a
social activity to being performance oriented, and this tendency found its cul-
mination in salsa competitions. Competitions ultimately drove the salsa scene
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 71

in Los Angeles in a way that seems to have occurred nowhere else in the world,
not simply because of their presence but because of their scale and scope. While
other locations may draw more contestants and spectators—such as the one
thousand contestants and fifteen thousand spectators reported at the world
qualifying event in Cali in 2007 (Pratt 2007)—the prize money available in Los
Angeles means that this city regularly draws more top competitors than any
other. Prizes range from the $5,000 offered by the Mayan World Salsa Com-
petition to the $10,000 awarded by Steven’s Steakhouse and the Granada in
each of their competitions.15 Inspiring competitiveness and greater technical
proficiency through their financial incentives, these competitions also draw in
many spectators—and generate large online followings of interested dancers
from around the world, who eagerly await video clips and then discuss and
debate them in online forums such as [Link].
The first Mayan competition, in 1996, demonstrates the impact of such
events. The winners, Steve Vasco and Natalie Mavor, were relative outsiders
to the salsa scene but had ballroom training, as did the second-place couple.
That these two couples placed ahead of L.A. salsa teachers cast the perceived
cleanliness of ballroom-trained technique16 as the pinnacle of competitive suc-
cess. This increasing awareness of image (lauded by many) led on the one hand
to more defined technique and more precise performances but on the other to
what many see as a more sterile performance, ever more removed from salsa’s
Afro-Caribbean roots.
What is viewed as “clean” and “professional” by some is regarded as overly
“produced” and “affected” by others. Increased standardization means most L.A.
dancers have come to dance in the regimented slot pattern, and while the increas-
ingly complex wraps and patterns adapted from hustle and West Coast swing
are applauded by some, they are lamented by those who feel today’s dancers rush
through steps with little, if any, rhythmic body action. Salsa Brava cofounder
Janette Valenzuela, for instance, offered the following critique after judging the
2009 Granada amateur semifinals and the 2009 Mayan Amateur Finals:

Who ever [sic] got the message that if you are in the amateur category
you should be doing nothing but spins, poses, and tricks and to try to
do them like the professionals? . . .
After the contest, the other judges and I were deliberating the re-
sults. Joe Casini (one of the judges) said it best and I do quote him.
“Where did these kids think they were supposed to do tricks in an
amateur contest? None of them danced salsa. They were dancing ada-
gio. What they did was adagio to salsa music. The professional moves
they were attempting takes [sic] years of training and years to perfect.”
(Valenzuela 2009)

The problem is that the professional divisions serve as the model of the best
salsa dancing for amateur competitors.17 Most telling, however, is the implicit
72 Jonathan S. Marion

acceptance of salsa dancing as appropriate for competition. The Mayan compe-

tition thus had long-lasting significance for salsa in Los Angeles.

Continuing Consequences
Competitions have established certain stylistic expectations and norms be-
cause the most extreme performances—those with the fastest, sharpest, biggest
dips, tricks, and risks—received the greatest accolades from audiences and, of-
ten, the highest judges’ marks. Impetus for excellence and inspiration for some,
this same climate has proven intimidating and alienating for others. Because
of the performance-based tradition set by the early teams and competitions,
combined with the influence of nearby Hollywood and the possibility that each
person entering the club might be a promoter or producer, dancers started try-
ing to stand out. As Edie “the Salsa Freak” Lewis noted at the 2010 L.A. Salsa
Congress, Los Angeles has always been one of the few places where someone
could ultimately make anywhere from $100 to $100,000 by doing one flip at a
club (Torres et al. 2010).
At its best, this practice translated into the performances that made L.A.
style a hot commodity at salsa congresses around the world. At its worst, it
translated into a view of “salsa as spectacle,” in which being seen emerged as an
implicit cornerstone of going out to clubs, and many club-goers gave little or no
thought to those around them on the dance floor. Indeed, the first thing I saw
upon walking into the social dancing in the main room at the 2009 L.A. Salsa
Congress was a local salsera suspended in a “fish lift,” wherein her partner held
her inverted, with her head at other dancers’ knee level and her high-heeled
shoes at other dancers’ face level. Like even riskier aerial lifts, flips, and tricks,
such moves were designed for staged performances and are hazardous when
executed on the social dance floor. While some salsa observers (e.g., García
2007) have decried this prevalence of dips and tricks in L.A. salsa as struc-
turally misogynistic, I find this a problematic oversimplification18 given both
the complex backstory from which such performance-rooted materials arose
and the prohibition of lifts, dips, and tricks by popular L.A. venues such as
the Granada—regularly attracting well over 500–650 people every Friday and
Saturday night.

Appearance, Clothing, Gender, and Ethnicity

L.A. salsa is further characterized by interrelated issues of appearance, dress,
gender, and ethnicity, especially as these arise amid the highly body- and
­image-conscious aesthetics of Southern California, Hollywood, and perfor-
mance-driven L.A. salsa. Since “dress is both an indicator and a producer
of gender” (Barnes and Eicher [1992] 1997: 7), attire on the L.A. salsa scene
not only reflects cultural norms informed by “Hollywoodized” versions of
overtly gendered and explicitly sexualized identities and appearances but also
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 73

constructs them, as dancers concomitantly meet and model local standards.

“Young, thin, tan, and in” is a description of how one should look in Southern
California that has carried across into salsa (especially for women, paralleling
larger social dichotomies), and this standard is deeply and insidiously pervasive
at all levels. Grooming and clothing are then layered over these bodily stan-
dards, and taking them together, appearance plays a tremendous role in setting
the social salsa stage—at least until one’s salsa skills have had the chance to
“speak” for themselves.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that all such dynamics are subject to
the multifarious nature of the salsa scene in Los Angeles. One version of L.A.-
style salsa, for instance, involves exaggerated flips, dips, and tricks and uses as
the uniform of choice what I have heard many dancers refer to as ghetto-style
clothing.19 Yet while this style is popular among some L.A. dancers, it would
be erroneous to say that this style is representative of either L.A. dancing or
grooming since neither are even allowed at the Granada, one of the busiest
salsa clubs in Los Angeles since it was first opened in 2003.20 Opinions on the
Granada’s policies vary, but their very existence makes sense in the context of
such practices at other local venues and further illustrates the scale and scope
of participation and practices that make it impossible to paint the L.A. salsa
scene with a single brush.
As with gender, the topics of race and ethnicity must also be contextualized
within the larger Los Angeles–Hollywood scenes framing L.A. salsa standards
and practices. Here too the complex nature of L.A. salsa is significant: different
socioeconomic and ethnic groups typically live in different areas and frequent
different clubs, thus experiencing very different versions of L.A. salsa. Cindy
García, for instance, offers the following critique: “To be considered desirable
pan-Latina dance partners . . . salseras must dislocate their dance techniques
from Mexico . . . or be accused of ‘dancing like a Mexican,’” and she goes on to
suggest that “many salseras attempt to disguise bodily features that could locate
them as unskilled, Mexican immigrant labor” (García 2008: 201). Certainly, the
highly racially charged atmosphere and larger social tensions regarding immi-
gration in Los Angeles cannot be entirely divorced from attitudes and experi-
ences in the salsa scene, but other factors are also at play.
First, the majority of Latino/a dancers in Los Angeles are not from Mexico,
and the implicit assertion of Mexican salsa as “the authentic salsa” belies the his-
toricity of salsa’s Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean roots, its unique (re)configu-
ration everywhere it is danced, and the multiplicity of salsa styles that “undercut
any kind of simplistic Latin/non-Latin dichotomy” (Bosse 2008: 48). Likewise,
while the accusation of “dancing like a Mexican” may be made from a racist per-
spective, “Mexican” may also be used as a gloss for a type of family-socialized
(versus instructor-trained) dancing style. What is being critiqued, then, is not
ethnicity itself but rather a “movement dialect” (Bosse 2008: 48) that may signal
cultural affiliation but not dance-specific dedication and that may not be com-
patible with the trained-style characteristic of the current L.A. scene.21
74 Jonathan S. Marion

It follows that what seems most accurate is that authenticity often serves
as “a form of symbolic capital, to be used in asserting power” (Lindholm 2008:
91),22 gets deployed in considerations of salsa’s origins and the legitimacy of
different salsa dance styles, and always unfolds across multiple levels.23 It is for
exactly this reason that one Latino/a dancer can be dismissed as “Mexican” (per
García’s critique), while in another case the same ethnicity may be considered
essential for true competence. Many, for instance, cast being Latino/a as “hav-
ing [salsa] in your blood,” and Bosse describes this very sentiment when she
writes that, for members of a salsa dance team in central Illinois, “it was gener-
ally understood that lack of Latin American heritage was an essential barrier
to gaining complete fluency in the dance” (2008: 40). Just as Judith Hamera as-
serts for concert and amateur dance practices in Los Angeles, salsa too (in all of
its locations and forms) is perhaps best understood as a laboratory “for examin-
ing and revisioning the complex interrelationships between gender, sexuality,
race, class, and culture in urban life” (2007: 1), allowing many dancers to “try
on new identities . . . explore and push boundaries of the self” (Bosse 2008: 58).

Conclusion
Dancing, as Marta Savigliano notes, “starts out way before the actual danc-
ing” (1998: 105). Thus, this chapter has examined the context and history un-
dergirding L.A. salsa today, including its distinctive (and often distinguishing)
norms and values. More than just a historical trajectory, however, this chapter
describes the complex social and cultural contexts within which dancers cocre-
ated L.A. salsa. Equally important is that salsa—like all dance forms—repre-
sents a deeply embodied system of practices, performances, techniques, and
appraisals. The inherently physical nature of dance, as well as its participatory
nature, has ramifications that are crucial for understanding L.A. salsa as it is
experienced by the dancers in question.24
At the most basic level, leaders and followers depend on each other to learn
and enact their respective parts, regularly cocreating the meanings and experi-
ences of each dance anew. Perhaps even more important is the simple fact that
salsa, like many participatory practices, involves interpersonal interaction. If
larger dance-based codes construct something of a translocal “salsa world,”25
this does not change the fact that most people’s participation in this world
is mostly local. One of the ways this plays out is in the forging of communal
identity and identification, as in William McNeill’s theory of muscular bond-
ing (1995). Whether intended as such or not, the performative facet of dance is
often about enhancement of the collective (Spencer 1985: 30; see, e.g., Turner
1987; Washabaugh 1998) and is always linked to social and ethical standards
(Schechner 1987).
While the size and complexity of the salsa scene in Los Angeles make it
impossible to suggest any definitive answers about L.A. salsa, this chapter has
provided some explanations for how it has developed into its current form. First
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 75

is a confluence of historical factors and unique dynamics. Second are the cir-
cumstances whereby L.A. salsa arrived on the world stage and the role it has
played in the globalization of salsa dancing ever since. Embedded within and
particularizing these larger frameworks, dancers’ experiences demonstrate the
always personal nature of the larger dynamics in question.
I opened this chapter using Redfield’s concept of great and little religious
traditions as a metaphor for salsa relative to its local L.A. iteration. In line
with this religion-based metaphor, I then considered what might be called the
“salsa syncretism” in Los Angeles (and California more generally), including
the reconciliation between incoming music and dance trends with more local
tendencies and dance practices. The materials presented here well demonstrate
sociologist Roland Robertson’s (1995) “glocalization,” whereby global forces
take shape in and through local forms. If the regionalization of larger prac-
tices in Los Angeles represents an important point of analysis, the other side of
this coin is equally significant: the globalization of salsa—particularly through
congresses and the Internet—built on the performance- and competition-based
style and mentality of Los Angeles. A final and closely connected issue con-
cerns how “people often do not experience their aesthetic beliefs as merely ar-
bitrary and conventional; they feel that they are natural, proper and moral”
(Becker (1974) 2001: 75). This point is an important one, as it helps explain the
vehemence with which conflicting aesthetic standards often clash, such as be-
tween proponents and opponents of what is commonly recognized as L.A.-style
salsa.26 Like any other culture and community, the salsa scene in Los Angeles is
constantly changing, and if its past cannot predict its future, whatever emerges
will still be inexplicable save for what has come before.

Notes
Acknowledgments: I owe special thanks to Enio Cordoba, Liz Lira, and Steve Vasco for their
time, insights, and perspectives on L.A. salsa. Thanks too to those who went for “break-
fast” from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning after the 2009 L.A. Salsa Congress. Much of
my own thinking started to crystallize around the discussions at the table, including the
different perspectives of the L.A. regulars versus the out-of-town congress attendees. I am
also indebted to Enio Cordoba for generously offering his time and assistance with the
historical materials in the section “Becoming ‘L.A. Style’ Salsa”; to nine-time World Salsa
Champion Liz Lira for her insights regarding the role and significance of the competitive
circuit to the overall salsa scene in Los Angeles; and to Steve Vasco, winner of the first Salsa
Championships at the Mayan with Natalie Mavor, for sharing his insights into the charac-
ter of dancing and competition in Los Angeles over the past thirteen years.

1. This was the Second Annual West Coast Salsa Congress, at the time promoted by
Albert Torres and Bacardi as part of the Congreso Mundial de la Salsa (World Salsa Con-
gress) tour. Since 2001 Albert Torres has been the sole promoter for the annual Los Angeles
Salsa Congress.
2. See Salazar 2002 for more on the early music, musicians, and venues in New York;
also see Rondón 2008 and Chapter 2 herein.
76 Jonathan S. Marion

3. See [Link] for current postings.

4. Exemplifying how labels and distinctions are not used in the same way everywhere
salsa is danced is the term “New York style.” Although it is commonly defined by breaking
(changing direction) on count 2 in the United States, while in Denmark in 2003 I found
that “New York style” was being used as a gloss for cross-body (versus circular) dancing.
5. This is in contrast with the original Palladium Mambo, ballroom mambo, and Ed-
die Torres’s mambo (see Chapter 2).
6. For more on the popularity of cumbia dancing in Mexico, along the border area, and
among Mexican Americans, see Hutchinson 2007.
7. Cross-body styles are in contrast to the circular Cuban, or casino, style, which also
tends to be more physical and momentum based in its lead and follow connections and
for many also tends to be associated with more machismo, especially in how the woman’s
wrists (versus hands) may be grasped (Lewis, n.d.; Chapter 6 herein).
8. I spell Vázquez, Martínez, and González with accent marks for consistency; how-
ever, on the web and in promotional materials, these dancers typically drop the accent
marks from their names.
9. The first L.A. dancer to sell videotapes, Neglia was also the first vendor to advertise
on the then newly established [Link] (Rose Knows 2002) and as of 2010 had sold
over one million videos (Torres et al. 2010).
10. First held in 1989, Mambo Manias ran through 1998 (officially becoming an an-
nual event in 1992) with seven of the nine held in Los Angeles, one in Miami, and one in
San Francisco.
11. Importantly, and despite such one-upping, Edie Lewis—who has been to sixty-five
countries—notes that Los Angeles is the “only city on earth [where] we [instructors] all get
along” and that the early L.A. dancers never criticized each other’s dancing, a practice that
only “changed when [it] became a ‘business’” (Torres et al. 2010).
12. Contrary to what one might expect on the basis of geographic proximity, most
informants cited Colombian influence, not Mexican.
13. The theme and the slick performance of this routine were particularly noteworthy
amid the rampant and often contentious debates between adherents of the on-1 and on-2
styles typical of the time.
14. The emerging L.A. and San Diego salsa scenes had surprisingly little overlap, al-
though certainly some San Diego dancers regularly went to dance in Los Angeles, and a
few San Diego instructors brought in top L.A. talent (such as the late Michael Snyder, who,
before his untimely death on February 27, 2001, brought both Solomon Rivera and Josie
Neglia to teach at his studio). The relative lack of overlap is best understood as the result
of the large population in Los Angeles and its geographic proximity to San Diego. The
population of Los Angeles sufficed to support all the city’s instructors, whereas San Diego
salsa teachers generally were not steering their own students to instructors based only a
couple of hours away. Similarly, the initial trend of San Diego teams to dance on-2 style
can largely be understood as a means of differentiating themselves from the well-known
L.A. on-1 teams.
15. The largest prize money ($20,000) actually comes from World Salsa Champion-
ships, produced by the Salsa Seven for ESPN International, but it has yet to have a fixed
annual location.
16. The argument I make here parallels that made by Juliet McMains: “Because, until
recently, there was little precedent in Latin America for teaching social dance in formal
classes, salsa professionals have relied heavily on models created by the ballroom dance
industry for counting their rhythms, breaking down actions, and naming their steps”
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 77

(2009: 311). Likewise, the lack of precedent in salsa for formal competition and judging
put ballroom’s European-based criteria and standards (see Marion 2008: 39–52), such as
“clean” dancing, at the fore.
17. The category of amateur salsa competitors itself is problematic, with many com-
petitions defining professionals as those making a living in the dance industry and ama-
teurs as all others. Some competitions offer a semipro division, for those whose primary
occupation is not dance related but who earn some income through dance. Nonetheless,
many dancers who train and perform on professional teams (even internationally) end up
competing as amateurs.
18. This is not to say that stereotyped gender roles do not exist in L.A. salsa, which
they certainly do, or to claim that sexist standards and practices are not part of the salsa
scene, which they are.
19. While often overlapping, ghetto-style clothing and more acrobatic-style dancing
are not coterminous elements in the L.A. salsa scene.
20. The Granada’s dress code for “tastefully casual upscale evening wear” (Salsa Cen-
tral, n.d.) reads:
No T-shirts
No sleeveless vests or tank tops for men
No ripped or oversize jeans
No baseball caps
No wallet chains or ghetto gear
Jeans, collarless shirts, hats and tennis shoes at our discretion. Typically if you
are wearing any two of these discretionary items you will not be allowed
in. (i.e., Jeans and Tennis Shoes = No) This dress code applies at all times.
21. Alma Latina dance company’s Tijuana-based teams and dancers (which predate its
San Diego– and Los Angeles–based teams), for instance, are never described as “dancing
like Mexicans.”
22. See Lindholm 2008: 88–97 for further discussions of dance authenticity and
national identity.
23. Norman Urquía (2004) makes a parallel point in describing and differentiating ideas
about ownership between non-Latin dancers and salsa teachers in London’s salsa scene.
24. The people discussed in this chapter are the dancers who define the community
through their ongoing patronage of clubs, studios, instructors, DJs, and bands—not the
many people who only occasionally frequent salsa clubs or take a few lessons.
25. Following sociologist Howard Becker’s (1984) notion of “art worlds,” one might
conceive of a “salsa world” given ever-expanding
Line-ups of salsa congresses and festivals around the world
Dissemination of salsa content online
Traffic to and participation in salsa-related discussion forums (such as www
.[Link]—where I am the primary site administrator—which
has active site moderators in Germany, Sweden, Tokyo, and the United
States and former moderators from Australia, Romania, and the United
Kingdom)
26. This same dynamic also helps explain recurrent arguments regarding on-2
style being better than on-1, or cross-body-style salsa as better than circular-style salsa.
One fortunate effect of salsa’s globalization seems to be a growing familiarity with, and
hence greater acceptance of, multiple salsa styles.
78 Jonathan S. Marion

References
Barnes, Ruth, and Joanne B. Eicher, eds. (1992) 1997. Dress and Gender: Making and
Meaning. Oxford: Berg.
Becker, H. S. (1974) 2001. “Art as Collective Action.” In Popular Culture: Production and
Consumption, ed. C. Lee Harington and Denise D. Bielby, 67–79. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 1984. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bosse, Joanna. 2008. “Salsa Dance and the Transformation of Style: An Ethnographic
Study of Movement and Meaning in a Cross-Cultural Context.” Dance Research
Journal 40 (1): 45–64.
“Brownskin818.” 2009. Post in “True to Your School” discussion. SalsaForums, July 10.
Available at [Link]
García, Cindy. 2007. “Un/Sequined Corporealities and the Politics of Immigration in Salsa
Clubs.” Paper presented at the Congress on Research in Dance 40th Anniversary
Conference, New York City, November 10.
———. 2008. “‘Don’t Leave Me, Celia!’ Salsera Homosociality and Pan-Latina Corpo­
realities.” Women and Performance 18 (3): 199–213.
Gómez, Raquel. 2011. Personal communication. May 29.
Hamera, Judith. 2007. Dancing Communities: Performance, Difference, and Connection in
the Global City. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hutchinson, Sydney. 2007. From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American
Youth Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Jones, Terryl. n.d. “Controversial Moves, Controversial Contests.” Dance Forums. Available
at [Link]
contests.463.
Lewis, Edie. n.d. “What Is the Difference between Puerto Rican Style, Cuban Style, L.A.
Style, Israeli Style, Colombian Style, and the New York Style?” Edie the Salsa Freak.
Previously available at [Link] (accessed
March 17, 2003).
Lindholm, Charles. 2008. Culture and Authenticity. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Marion, Jonathan S. 2006. “Beyond Ballroom: Activity as Performance, Embodiment, and
Identity.” Human Mosaic 36 (2): 7–16.
———. 2008. Ballroom: Culture and Costume in Competitive Dance. Oxford: Berg.
———. 2012. “Circulation as Destination: Considerations from the Translocal Culture
of Competitive Ballroom Dance.” Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human
Movement 17 (2).
McMains, Juliet. 2009. “Dancing Latin/Latin Dancing.” In Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham,
Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, ed. Julie Malnig, 302–322. Champaign:
University of Illinois Press.
McNeill, William H. 1995. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Neglia, Josie. 2002. “The Different Styles of Salsa and Mambo.” [Link],
June 14. Available at [Link]
.htm#Different%20Styles%20of%20Salsa%20and%20Mambo.
Pratt, Timothy. 2007. “Dancing for Gold.” Hispanic, March, p. 46.
Redfield, Robert. 1956. Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Robertson, Roland. 1995. “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity.” In
Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, 25–44.
London: Sage.
Contextualizing Content and Conduct in the L.A. Salsa Scene 79

Rondón, César Miguel. 2008. The Book of Salsa: A Chronicle of Urban Music from the
Caribbean to New York City, trans. Frances R. Aparicio and Jackie White. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
Rose Knows. 2002. “Up Close and Personal with . . . Josie Neglia, the Princess of Salsa.”
[Link], January. Available at [Link]
[Link]/forum/interviews/interview020118roseknows_josieneglia.html.
Salazar, Max. 2002. Mambo Kingdom: Latin Music in New York. New York: Schirmer.
Salsa Central. n.d. “Salsa Central Dress Code.” Previously available at [Link]
[Link]/salsacentral/ (accessed February 25, 2011).
Savigliano, Marta. 1998. “From Wallflowers to Femmes Fatales: Tango and the Perfor­
mance of Passionate Femininity.” In The Passion of Music and Dance, ed. William
Washabaugh, 103–110. Oxford: Berg.
Schechner, Richard. 1987. “Victor Turner’s Last Adventure.” In The Anthropology of Per­
formance, by Victor Turner, 7–20. New York: PAJ.
Spencer, Paul. 1985. Society and the Dance: The Social Anthropology of Process and Per­
formance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Torres, Albert, Francisco Vázquez, Rogelio Moreno, Laura Canellias, Josie Neglia, Janette
Valenzuela, and Edie Lewis. 2010. “History of Los Angeles Salsa Scene.” Lecture given
at Los Angeles Salsa Congress, May 28, Los Angeles, California.
Turner, Victor W. 1987. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ.
Urquia, Norman. 2004. “‘Doin’ It Right’: Contested Authenticity in London’s Salsa Scene.”
In Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual, ed. Andy Bennet and Richard A.
Peterson, 96–113. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2010. “2010 Demographic Profile.” 2010 Population Finder. Available
at [Link]
Valenzuela, Janette. 2009. “Competitions in the Eyes of a Judge.” Available at [Link]
.[Link]/threads/judging-at-mayan-and-competitions.10834/.
Wade, Peter. 2000. Music, Race and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Washabaugh, William. 1998. The Passion of Music and Dance: Body, Gender and Sexuality.
New York: Berg.
Waxer, Lise. 2002a. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular
Culture in Cali, Colombia. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
———, ed. 2002b. Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular
Music. New York: Routledge.
5
Small-Town Cosmopolitans
Salsa Dance in Rural America

Joanna Bosse

Rick
It’s close to 4:00 a.m., and we’re halfway home from a night of salsa dancing at
Inta’s in Chicago, riding along southbound I-57. Everyone is sacked out in the
back, except Rick,1 who keeps me company while I drive. My willingness to serve
as designated driver is one of the ways I have ingratiated myself with this group
of dancers. Rick is talking of his family, his Cuban father and white American
mother, growing up in a well-to-do northern Chicago suburb, and his newfound
love of salsa. He says, “My father and his brothers, when they get together they tap
out rhythms on the table, they dance with the women, and speak a little Spanish.
And all growing up, I didn’t want to have anything to do with that. It seemed old-
fashioned. I was playing baseball and hanging out with my friends.” It was only
in graduate school, after being introduced to salsa by his Surinamese girlfriend
Maria (who learned about it the year before from her Colombian friend Angel),
that he became interested in anything “Latin.” He then began dancing and col-
lecting salsa recordings, learning Spanish, and taking conga lessons. In two years’
time, he became one of the most popular salsa deejays in town and started a
salsa band, Adelante, with two non-Latino ethnomusicology doctoral students.
His aunt told me that his family is surprised at the transformation, and so is Rick
to some degree. “I barely even noticed that I was Latin before, but now it means
something to me, and I’m . . . well, protective of it. I’m wary of outsiders trying to
figure it out,” he says pointedly to me, an outsider trying to figure it out. We talk
on about “Latinness” and outsiders, and I ask him about his favorite musicians
and dancers. “Take, for example, Enrique,” he continued. Enrique had just won
yet another local dance competition earlier in the week, and he was also trying to
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 81

break into the dance deejay business. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Enrique and I
think he is a good dancer,” he says. “But he’s not really dancing salsa. It’s cumbia.
But no one around here knows that.”

Enrique
Enrique eyes me on the periphery of the dance floor, sidles up beside me, slips his
hand into mine, and we head to the dance floor for a popular song by Marc An-
thony. A twenty-something Mexican immigrant, Enrique wears dress slacks and
a dress shirt, unbuttoned enough to show the edge of an indecipherable tattoo
and three large gold chains. Both ears shine with multiple piercings, and he wears
several rings and bracelets. His short sleeves reveal several other tattoos; one, a
small firefly, is for his father, an electrician in Mexico City.
It is clear that he misses his home and his family, a feeling magnified by the
salsa music pumping through the sound system here in a club in rural Illinois. “I
love salsa. It is my life, my heritage, you know? From the time I was this tall [he
gestures to his waist], there was salsa in my house and we danced.” For Enrique,
dancing salsa was a way to connect to his homeland and his family far away. He
was aware of salsa’s Cuban roots, but this in no way hindered the music’s ability
to signify his own heritage, his homeland, and his family. He is one of the best
salsa dancers in town, and we light into what will be the best salsa of my night.
Enrique works as a kitchen manager at a local T.G.I. Fridays, alongside two
of his brothers. In a few years he will earn his American citizenship and request a
transfer to an Indianapolis restaurant in the hopes of achieving his goal of promo-
tion to house manager. “They don’t usually want to put us [Mexicans] up in the
front of the house,” explains Enrique, “but I’m working on my English and my . . .
you know, my presentation [with the word, he taps his chest with his hands and
stands up taller, broadening his shoulders]. I think I can do it.” Several years after
this conversation I visited Enrique on my way through Indianapolis to visit fam-
ily, and though he was still working as a kitchen manager in a new T.G.I. Fridays,
he remained hopeful that a promotion would soon follow.

Overview
Implicit in the preceding case studies is the conflict that arose in the local salsa
scene of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in the late 1990s. There, as in just about
every local salsa context, competing notions of ownership and authenticity
permeated the scene, but in Champaign-Urbana they took on a cast specific
to the locale. This chapter explores the particularities of this local salsa scene,
mooring it less to the discourse of ethnic identity and more to the context of
class and commerce. While the ownership of cultural practices is commonly
understood in the academy as an issue of identity politics, true here as well, it
is also the case that ownership involves the tangible and material concerns of
cash and access. This chapter considers salsa performance, and the discourse of
82 Joanna Bosse

authenticity that often surrounds it, in light of economic realities specific to the
local entertainment industries in small-town America.
A great deal of literature on salsa music and dance highlights its poten-
tial in the expression of pan-Latino solidarity and, more recently, as a global
phenomenon found across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.2 Many of these
studies of local and translocal salsa scenes focus on urban, usually coastal,
contexts. This chapter “situate[s] salsa” performance (Waxer 2002b) in a dif-
ferent setting, focusing on the salsa scene in the small, midwestern university
town of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. I thus want to shift the discussion from
an understanding of salsa performance as a site for the articulation of ethnic
identity (whether regional or pan-Latino in nature) to an examination of how
the particular configuration of economic and social conditions in central Il-
linois led to a different type of local salsa scene and an emerging cosmopolitan
formation.
As Patria Román-Velázquez notes, despite salsa’s stylistic variation and
“semi-nomadic” character, “academic writers and commentators have sought
to categorise salsa as primarily Puerto Rican, Cuban, Latin-Caribbean or more
broadly ‘Latin’. Trying to label salsa in such a way can be viewed as an attempt
to claim it for a singular identity, to fix its rather fluid character and to limit its
capability to be transformed as it travels” (2002: 212). This case study presents
one way salsa can be transformed by its travels into the heartland of the Ameri-
can Midwest. Competing social factions within the social space of Champaign-
Urbana deployed different discursive strategies that linked salsa performance
variably to regionally specific Latino identities, pan-Latino identity, and a
universal (nonethnic) cosmopolitan identity at different times in a struggle to
compete in the local entertainment marketplace. In other words, this case
study highlights how identity politics were deployed strategically by certain in-
dividuals for specific economic goals. The particular cosmopolitan social alli-
ances that were forged through participation in salsa dancing were engineered
by a particular set of economic interests: building and maintaining a market—
a consumer demographic—for salsa, which, in the end, worked to minimize
salsa’s well-documented potential to articulate pan-Latino identity.3
In this case, shared class-based cosmopolitan interests bound middle- and
upper-class salsa dancers, regardless of their racial identity, and placed them in
opposition to the Mexican laborers who served as the initial economic engine
that fueled salsa performance. Thus, this chapter demonstrates how class and
cosmopolitanism trumped ethnic affiliation and salsa’s role as a generator of
pan-Latino solidarity and that this set of social alignments was the result of the
structural configuration of the Champaign-Urbana entertainment industry.
Within this particular salsa scene, cosmopolitan values and aesthetic disposi-
tions were articulated and valorized through discourses surrounding musical
taste, dance style, and physiosocial comportment. After first introducing the
region and the particulars of the local entertainment industry, I then discuss
the conventions of salsa performance within this context and how salsa served
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 83

to signify and constitute a different set of strategic affiliations that bolstered

and preserved cosmopolitan sensibilities.
This work is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the dance clubs of central
Illinois that took place in the middle to late 1990s with a follow-up trip in 2005.
Champaign-Urbana served as the central hub for my research, with spokes ra-
diating out to Indianapolis, Saint Louis, and Chicago.
Seated in the heart of the midwestern agricultural beltway, the twin-city re-
gion of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, is the most densely populated area in the
county, with a combined population of 100,000 (county population 176,094).4
Graduate or professional degrees are held by 19.4 percent of the population,
which is more than double the U.S. average of 8.9 percent. The region is pre-
dominantly white (78.8 percent) with an estimated 4 percent Latino population
(2.9 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). The region witnessed a rapid
increase in the Latino population between 1990 and 2000, with the 2000 U.S. cen-
sus reporting a 79 percent increase for the period. These figures do not document
the migrant agricultural workers who have traveled to the region every summer
for decades to help with harvest. Among resident Latinos are two distinct groups
of concern for this argument: (1) working-class Latinos, most of whom are from
Mexico, constituting 57 percent of local Latino population, and (2) students as-
sociated with the University of Illinois, both domestic and international, who
identify as Latin American (very few that I worked with identified as Mexican).
A triangulation of interests here merits attention: (1) a highly educated,
upper-class population, predominantly white but comprising a significant mi-
nority of internationals, (2) a working-class resident Mexican population, and
(3) a substantive group of college students who identified as Latin American.
All of these groups were living and working—and dancing, deejaying, and
performing salsa—in an otherwise white, rural, agricultural region. Studies of
cosmopolitans and cosmopolitanism have provided a helpful rubric for under-
standing how a shared set of class-based values joined two of these groups, the
local resident elites (predominantly white but with international membership)
and the Latin American college students, in opposition to the local working-
class Mexicans who (it was believed) were poised to dominate local salsa per-
formance.5 For the remainder of the chapter, I call members of this new alliance
“local cosmopolitans” or “salsero cosmopolitans.”
In contemporary contexts, most cosmopolitans hail from the economic or
educated elite of their society and affirm translocal ideologies and practices
that have been cultivated in and distributed from urban centers, such as “the
political validity of the nation-state, the use of money, and industrial produc-
tion” (Turino 2000: 10). In terms of the arts, I add to this general list a pref-
erence for complexity, virtuosity, and restraint within linear, goal-oriented
forms, as well as aesthetic distance, control, and discipline, all couched in the
discourse of sophistication. Genres that make their way into particular cosmo-
politan formations are generally predisposed to this set of stylistic features or
are soon modified to be consistent with them.
84 Joanna Bosse

It might be best to consider cosmopolitan formations on a type of contin-

uum. Most of the dancers I worked with in Illinois were cosmopolitan, and they
were aligned aesthetically and socially in this regard. The major exception to
this was the community of working-class Mexican dancers, who varied in terms
of the degree to which they subscribed to cosmopolitan values. A minority of
Mexican dancers, like Enrique, were interested in and ultimately able to assim-
ilate to a limited degree with local cosmopolitan elites through strategic and
purposeful relationship building. Most Mexicans dancers, however, embraced
multiple signifiers of their lower-class status, displayed no outward interest
in assimilating with local elites, and did not even suggest an awareness of the
campaign being waged against them. Generally, the Mexicans I worked with in
central Illinois, whether aspiring or not, were actively excluded from leadership
positions in local cosmopolitan formations, as this case study documents.
The translocal and syncretic nature of salsa lent itself to absorption into a
particular cosmopolitan formation, one that speaks to the lay usage of the term
“cosmopolitan” as worldly and well traveled and serves as a positive musical
signifier of this cosmopolitan formation. So while it continued to connote La-
tino identity and shifting notions of home, especially for local Latinos, it also
became a powerful signifier of a particular type of hip cosmopolitanism for a
core group of ethnically diverse local elites. To this latter constituency, fluency
in salsa music and dance communicated a fluency in foreign lands and urban
centers—substantial currency among cosmopolitans living in a quiet, bucolic
college town in central Illinois.6

Salsa in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

Salsa performance emerged in the area in the mid-1990s. Its rise to popularity
was commonly credited to Maria, a Surinamese (of mixed European descent)
graduate student in business who was said to have single-handedly started
the local salsa craze. It was while living in Illinois that she was introduced
to the genre by her boyfriend at the time, Angel, a Colombian graduate student.
The two generated a significant amount of tax-free revenue (hundreds of dol-
lars per week) by teaching salsa classes and persuading local clubs to include a
salsa night, or “salsa-teca,” in their weekly rotation of events. Maria was charm-
ing, gregarious, and generous. She was also savvy when it came to negotiating
with club owners, and she convinced them of the marketability of salsa-tecas by
putting it in terms they could understand.
Through teaching dance classes and networking, she was also instru-
mental in bringing newcomers from the local university population, Latinos
and non-Latinos, into the dance scene. The small cadre of salsa aficionados
that Maria represented could best be described as cosmopolitan. They were
racially and culturally diverse—Latinos from throughout the Americas; U.S.
whites and minorities; and internationals from Asia, Eastern Europe, the Mid-
dle East, and elsewhere. All were middle or upper class, holding or working
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 85

toward advanced college degrees, and all subscribed, in varying degrees, to a

particular educated, liberal, elite cosmopolitan sensibility in terms of social
values and artistic practice.
Given the small Latino population, the region could not sustain a Little Ha-
vana or any kind of business district that catered specifically to Latinos or Latin
American music and dance. Thus, this group lobbied various venues: some of
the popular clubs, the local ballroom dance venue, and restaurants across town,
including a Chinese restaurant in downtown Urbana (see Figure 5.1).
The local scene relied almost exclusively on recorded music (see Waxer
2002a; Aparicio 1998; Román-Velázquez 2002). One popular, semiprofessional
salsa band, Adelante, eventually emerged from the local scene, although it was
short lived. The group comprised graduate students (including salsa scholar Lise
Waxer) who were busy with coursework, assistantships, and dissertation writ-
ing, and its membership rotated as individuals graduated and relocated to other
parts of the world. Other dancers talked of starting their own bands, but few
ever got off the ground and none rivaled the success, albeit limited and brief,
that Adelante enjoyed. Maria and other dancers lobbied bar owners to book live

Figure 5.1. A 1990s flyer showing

the week’s events at the Blind
Pig, a popular dance club in
downtown Champaign, Illinois.
(Photograph by Joanna Bosse.)
86 Joanna Bosse

salsa bands from Chicago, but this was an expensive proposition and one most
entrepreneurs were reluctant to undertake. When they did so, the bands played
to sellout crowds and the dance floors were packed beyond danceability.
Other than in major urban areas, live music performance, especially by
large professional groups of the sort salsa requires, is economically unfeasible
for small-business owners. There are some exceptions, but by and large, deejays
or jukeboxes are the most common form of music performance in bars and
clubs in central Illinois. For every night of live salsa performance there were at
least twenty (and often upward of fifty) deejayed events.
As is the case with other local salsa scenes, salsa performance centered on
live dance rather than live music performance. That this salsa scene is largely
a dance context employing recorded music is not unusual (see Aparicio 1998;
Hosokawa 2002; Román-Velázquez 2002; Waxer 2002b). The international
popularity of salsa music (recorded and live) is largely attributable to its inti-
mate ties to the dance style, which has attracted fans from around the world
(see Román-Velázquez 2002: 219). Given the diversity of participants in this
midwestern case study, dance classes became fundamental to the project of
salsa performance in the region (see also Aparicio 1998; Waxer 2002b).
Very few knew how to dance salsa before they arrived in central Illinois,
and so dance instructors essentially created this music and dance scene by of-
fering a dance class before the deejay started the music. These quickie classes
held at the clubs functioned as a sampler for the more in-depth classes offered
elsewhere, usually on university grounds. Through this process, and the regu-
lar blanketing of public spaces with advertisements, amateur dance instructors
built studios that were a lucrative supplement to their graduate assistantships
(see Figure 5.2).
The popular bars and live music and dance venues in Champaign-Urbana
were generally locally owned and operated. The industry was small, competi-
tive, and somewhat unstable. Almost all the establishments I visited opened,
closed, changed hands, or changed operational formats during my research.
Furthermore, clubs dedicated to one particular genre were seldom successful
(unlike the salsa clubs in Chicago that dancers traveled to when times were
lean nearby). Even the most stable of clubs had to diversify their offerings on
a day-to-day basis to widen their audience base. For example, one local club,
Bradleys (which closed and reopened under different management by the end
of my fieldwork), hosted country dancing on Wednesday; rhythm and blues on
Thursday; hip-hop on Friday; a live band on Saturday, although the genre or
format of these live performances changed radically from week to week; and
sometimes country and other times an open mic or an entirely different pro-
gram on Sunday. At a whim, this schedule was changed to accommodate trav-
eling musical acts, deejays who were ill or out of town, and so forth. This was
common practice. No one constituency proved to be profitable for a dance club
every night of the week, so management worked to attract all of them through-
out the week.7
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 87

Figure 5.2. Salsa class in Champaign, Illinois, 2005. (Photograph by Joanna Bosse.)

Club owners generally measured success in terms of liquor sales.8 Salsa dee-
jays and live bands generally received the take at the door. Bar owners thus
placed the burden of advertising and drawing large numbers on the deejays
and live bands, who were then also placed in competition with one another and
with other styles. In lobbying for salsa performance, Maria and her successors
had to essentially promise bar owners that they would make more money (in
alcohol sales) with salsa than they would with any other format. Owners of
restaurants and the local ballroom were easier to persuade because they hosted
salsa events after hours, times when they would otherwise be closed or taking
in little anyway. So they were more likely to increase their profits with salsa
than not. Because of these circumstances, salsa-tecas at these establishments
were more successful in some ways than those at more customary dance clubs.
Given that the salsa crowd at this point was small (dozens of people), salsa
promoters needed to broaden their base to succeed. They targeted an audience
they believed would increase sales revenue from alcohol purchases: working-
class Mexicans (predominantly male). And the influx of working-class Mexi-
can men generally did boost the alcohol sales enough to keep bar owners happy,
allowing the dances to continue for another week. A secondary benefit was that
most of these men were accomplished dancers; they told me they grew up danc-
ing salsa in Mexico. For the disproportionate number of female cosmopolitans
hoping to learn salsa, having a large group of accomplished male dancers to
88 Joanna Bosse

partner with helped improve the quality of their dance experiences. This ar-
rangement resulted in two conditions: first, that salsa performance depended
on the coordinated and cooperative participation of local cosmopolitan elites
and working-class Mexicans, and second, that both salsa and the working-class
Mexicans gained entry into public spaces they might otherwise never have en-
tered, permeating the community and increasing their exposure and direct
contact with local dominant culture.
Herein lies the crux of what became termed “the Mexican problem” by in-
dividuals in this community. Salsa performance within this small-town enter-
tainment industry mandated cooperation between subgroups, each with their
own set of values and cultural practices, connected to salsa in different ways
and for different reasons: for one group, salsa served as an expression of their
educated, liberal, elite cosmopolitanism; for Mexican laborers, the genre served
as an index of their home and cultural heritage in a very specific and local-
ized way. Furthermore, the two prevailing ways that salsa came to signify were
somewhat mutually exclusive. Mexicans connected to salsa as an index of their
specific hometowns in Mexico and of family celebrations. Cosmopolitans were
invested in salsa’s universality, repeatedly connecting it to and generally un-
derstanding it to be stylistically tied to a general type of sophisticated urbanity.
By sheer numbers and their dance skills, Mexicans came to dominate lo-
cal performance, even while they remained marginalized from leadership roles
in the salsa community and the local entertainment venues: they were denied
deejay jobs and were unable to arrange salsa dances themselves. Local cosmo-
politan salseros became resentful of their influence in both social and stylistic
terms, a sentiment Rick expressed in the comments that open this chapter.
Eventually, salsa-tecas became so popular, attracting a wide range of stu-
dents and local cosmopolitans, that the Mexican presence became unnecessary
to secure their success. In fact, in light of such widespread popularity, a con-
cern that the Mexican presence might jeopardize the now vibrant salsa scene
emerged. When I asked cosmopolitan salsa dancers and club owners to explain
this response, they suggested that Mexicans drink too much, which might lead
to fighting. I attended well over a hundred such events and never once saw a
physical altercation break out. The worry over violence and property damage
was often extended to one of diminishing returns. Local cosmopolitans feared
that the number of Mexican men (and the supposed threat of violence they
presented) would scare away the middle- and upper-class newcomers who were
finding their way to the genre—cosmopolitans with expendable income and in
need of lessons.
One club owner expressed frustration for having to call the police to stop a
scuffle that broke out late into one salsa event, saying, “I will not have my place
broken up. I don’t need this, and I’ll just shut it down.” He attributed the fight
to Mexicans and used this event as justification for promoting practices di-
rected toward reducing the number of Mexican men who came out. Placing the
burden for self-policing on the local cosmopolitans who petitioned him to host
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 89

salsa events, he threatened to shut down his regular (and very popular) salsa
dance events if they did not eliminate the potential for violence and property
damage—code for keeping the Mexicans in check.
Local cosmopolitans, Latinos and non-Latinos alike, began a dialogue
about how best to address the “Mexican problem.” The goal was not to elimi-
nate all Mexicans, just those who did not acquiesce to the cultural capital of the
educated cosmopolitan elite: those who did not speak English, who dressed in
“gangsta” clothing, who drank too much, who were not educated, and who did
not aspire to a higher class status.
Attempts to disenfranchise Mexican dancers took several forms. One club
agreed to institute a dress code for salsa nights in the hopes of diminishing the
working-class Mexicans by targeting their clothing style. Their announcements
read, “[We have] a non-smoking environment and a strict dress code: No hats,
No jeans or baggie pants, No boots or tennis shoes. Shirts tucked in please.”
Salsero cosmopolitans warned club owners that Mexican deejays played a dif-
ferent kind of salsa that would not appeal to the “respectable” audiences they
desired. They also tried to contain the ability of Mexican dancers to win local
salsa dance competitions and complained bitterly when Mexicans did win in an
effort to educate the outsiders as to what was “good” and “bad” salsa dancing.
This conflict explains Rick’s comment to me about Enrique dancing cumbia,
made shortly after Enrique won a local dance competition.

Style, Commerce, and Control

Local cosmopolitans couched their marginalization of Mexicans in terms of
aesthetics—the music, dance, and social style of Mexicans were not good or
authentic—obscuring the class-based politics that were foundational to the en-
terprise. While it is true that Mexicans were not dancing in a Cuban, Puerto Ri-
can, or even Nuyorican style, few people were. In this region, no singular style
of salsa prevailed, unless it would be that of white, middle-class newcomers (see
Bosse 2004, 2008). The sparse representation of any particular geographic re-
gion and the fact that most of the local dancers learned to dance as adults while
living in central Illinois—for example, the Chilean who learned from a Korean-
Australian who learned from a white American who learned from her Suri-
namese friend who learned from her Colombian boyfriend—make any claims
to stylistic authenticity on the grounds of salsa’s Caribbean or New York City
origins logistically problematic. This cross-pollination was influenced by not
only a variety of regional salsa styles but also entirely different genres popular
in the region, including ballroom, swing, and the hustle.9
The Cuban style was lauded as the most authentic and ideal style of salsa
and was the benchmark for every performance. However, very few local danc-
ers performed this style.10 Second to Cuban salsa style was New York, which
most people assumed was Cuban style’s closest relative.11 Thus, the defining
style of local performance was identified as existing outside local purview.
90 Joanna Bosse

Local elites—situating themselves as being more traveled, more pedigreed,

more worldly, or more discerning—became the representatives and arbiters of
this style and critiqued local performances accordingly.
This community produced a variety of salsa styles that were largely iden-
tified by region. My informants recognized Cuban, Colombian, and Mexican
styles as well as those of New York, Miami, and Chicago. Such knowledge was
largely derived from the influence of relatively few representatives. For exam-
ple, Rick, the dancer and deejay whose comments open this chapter, is of Cu-
ban descent. He learned to dance salsa from his Surinamese girlfriend, though
he had certainly absorbed some stylistic influence from having watched his el-
ders dance during his childhood. He was the only regular dancer in attendance
to dance in what was locally presumed to be “Cuban style.” Compact and in-
ternal, Rick held his arms close to his body, with elbows always tucked in tight
and his hands on his chest when not holding his partner. He took very small
steps and performed very slight, almost imperceptible accents by shimmying
or twitching forward one or another shoulder. He performed very little hip ac-
tion, keeping his torso locked and active, and led his partner in very few turns
or spins. While his style was admired for being “Cuban,” he was not necessar-
ily considered a good dancer; nor was he coveted as a dance partner by local
female dancers.
Conversely to Rick, other dancers were considered very good dancers while
being derided for performing a style that was considered compromised because
it was not Cuban in origin. For example, the style of one Colombian dancer,
Angel, became the representative for a general type of salsa style presumed to
have originated in Colombia. His style included rapid, improvisatory footwork;
arms high and out to the side; and an active waist, causing a lateral ripple effect
from the hips to the shoulders with each step. Holding his partner’s hand in his
own, well above his head with his left elbow almost parallel to his ear, he pulled
his partner so close that she too performed the lateral wave rising from hips to
shoulders as if the two were one body. It was well known that Angel was also
a fan of merengue. He played more merengues during a night of salsa dancing
than any other local deejay and danced with great zeal to every merengue song
played in a set. Angel’s enthusiasm led to a commonly held belief that merengue
was a Colombian genre. Early in my fieldwork in the mid-1990s, there were no
Dominicans (or other Colombians) present to refute the claim. Local dancers
celebrated Angel’s virtuosity while claiming that his salsa style was too influ-
enced by merengue to be authentic salsa.
Enrique, the Mexican dancer described in the opening paragraphs, was
also recognized as a good dancer, one of the best in the region. His style, which
was larger and took up more floor space than the styles of some other dancers,
included side-to-side basic steps of longer than six inches; large, flowing arm
circles; and plentiful displays of virtuosity, including spins, wraps, and sections
of solo improvisatory footwork. Enrique threaded one spin into another of a
different type so organically and with such innovation that it led to him and his
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 91

partner traveling around the floor more than most others. Enrique was a popu-
lar dancer and in demand by partners representing all corners of the globe.
Most salsero cosmopolitans willingly confessed that Enrique was a fabu-
lous dancer, but they were usually quick to add, as Rick does at the beginning
of the chapter, that Enrique was just not dancing salsa. I heard this rhetorical
strategy employed time and again as a means for qualifying the styles of salsa
dancers, especially male dancers. In this case, denying the authenticity of vari-
ous styles of salsa denied the very actuality of salsa performance for many of
the dancers implicated by this powerful rhetorical stance.
Although not the only group affected, Mexicans (mostly males) were the
most consistently maligned group in this regard, and they responded in myriad
ways. The largest group of men remained on the periphery, saying little when
sent away for violating the dress code and returning the next week with appro-
priate attire. They sat together in remote corners of the dance floor and often
went entire nights without dancing because they had no inroad to the social
network of female dancers.
Other dancers, like Enrique, worked toward the goal of inclusion with lo-
cal cosmopolitan elites, and Enrique eventually served as a kind of local power
broker for the other male Mexicans who were laborers. As mentioned, he was
interested in upward mobility and had begun to work on the behavior neces-
sary for promotion at work. Learning the English language and styles of self-
presentation consistent with white American middle-class practice—including
wardrobe, posture, pronunciation, and eventually American citizenship—were
changes he was incorporating to fully assimilate with a particular American
middle class. He invested a great deal of time building relationships with local
cosmopolitans, including not only salsa dancers but other dance instructors
as well. Enrique approached David Lin, the owner and operator of the most
successful ballroom dance studio and the most reputable dance instructor in
the region, about the possibility of taking lessons. Privy to the conversation,
I followed up with Enrique later that evening, asking what he hoped he could
learn. “I just want to, you know, add some class to my style, make it more so-
phisticated.” Enrique was not the only Latin American salsa dancer to consider
ballroom dance lessons as a way to “class up” his or her individual style.
Enrique’s campaign for acceptance gained ground and he eventually found
himself dancing among the local cosmopolitan elite, attending private dance
parties, and joining them on road trips to Chicago. He used his position, be-
twixt and between local Mexican laborers and local elites, as a way to create
new social networks. For instance, once his position was established, he incor-
porated a new technique: about halfway through a song, he would send me, or
another of his partners, into a free spin. When I came out of the spin, I would
find myself in the arms of one of his friends, someone I did not know and had
never danced with before. Eventually, I was sent into a second free spin and
Enrique returned. He used this strategy quite often to introduce new friends to
local female salsa dancers.
92 Joanna Bosse

Another technique employed by Mexican laborers attempting to operate

within a context of marginalization was one of attracting outsiders. These
dancers stood close to the door (which was also near the bar), looking awk-
ward and unsure, and watched for newcomers—in particular, non-Latinas who
were attending their first salsa dance or did not know how to dance. Unfamiliar
with local conventions and anxious to try their hand at dancing, they often
happily accepted the invitations to dance by the Mexican laborers who were
rejected by salsero cosmopolitan elites. These women were often criticized by
more established dancers because, by virtue of their whiteness or class status,
they lent credibility to lower-class Mexican dancers and encouraged their style
of performance.
It was only after it became clear that the local salsa scene could thrive on
the revenue generated by a constituency of mainly non-Latino university stu-
dents and community members that attempts were made to marginalize or di-
vest Mexican laborers of their claim to space on the dance floor. The attempts
to do so were not entirely successful in that salsa dances continued to attract
dozens of Mexican men, but they remained largely on the periphery of perfor-
mance, drinking more than dancing and feeling frustrated that they seldom
got to dance. In a sense, the “Mexican problem” was never solved, but it con-
tinued to exist as a boundary in need of attention and maintenance to prevent
incursion.12

Conclusion
That salsa has always been translocal, that it has cut across national and ethnic
lines, is central to its success overall and is also one reason for its easy entrance
into the global entertainment industry. While salsa’s roots in a Latin Ameri-
can urban experience have been a key part of its global appeal, the genre also
gained momentum in the global marketplace as an expression of a universal
urbanity—an urban hipness that is presumed to translate across geography. As
Shuhei Hosokawa notes, even in Japan, a region far removed from salsa’s home-
land, “what matters for Japanese salsa musicians and audiences is the ‘hipness,’
the groove, or the feeling of ‘globality’: that is, the experience of listening or
dancing to a faraway cultural product” (2002: 294). The same is true for the
salsero cosmopolitans featured in this study. Regardless of whether they iden-
tified as Latin American, they chose to dance and listen to salsa because they
thought it was cooler than other kinds of traditions available to them. Salsero
cosmopolitans connected salsa to a universal sophistication that emerged in
part because it was born of racial strife and class struggle but also because the
quality and complexity of the music is understood to have transcended this
particular sociopolitical situation.
While the performance of salsa among Mexicans is yet another expression
of both its pan-Latin and global appeal, the dance style of these working-class
Mexicans also testified that their understanding of salsa is rooted in a Mexican
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 93

context, influenced by cumbia and other regionally popular styles. In one his-
torical moment salsero cosmopolitans defended the rights of Mexicans to per-
form salsa to bar and club owners, and in another, they worked to dissuade
participation on the part of those very same individuals to maintain the suc-
cessful scene they had created.
To better understand the shifting notions of affinity and difference in this
particular dance scene, I followed the lead of Felix Padilla, who suggests:

The manifestation of Latino ethnic-conscious identity is operative

within specific situational contexts and not all of the time. The situ-
ational dimension of Latino identity implies that particular contexts
determine whether the individual national/cultural identity of Puerto
Ricans, Mexican Americans, Cubans, and Central and South Ameri-
cans or the all-embracing Latino identification is most appropriate or
salient for social action at a point in time. (1986: 154–155)

The particular economic realities of this small-town entertainment industry

help us understand the strategies, rhetorical and otherwise, that were employed
by salsero cosmopolitans to craft a sustainable salsa dance scene in this rural
context. These strategies required drawing on pan-latinidad at some times and
not at other times.
Presenting salsa as a small-town phenomenon in the midwestern United
States rather than the more urban and coastal phenomenon we typically un-
derstand it to be, I suggest that salsa also exists within a slightly different
structural configuration characteristic of smaller, localized entertainment in-
dustries and that its performance often requires different social practices that
build on but also extend from salsa’s original role as an expression of Latino
identities and urban realities. In this case, salsa served as a nexus for shift-
ing affinities that moved within and between ethnic and racial lines, cutting
across those of socioeconomic class. Situating salsa within the sphere of com-
merce rather than identity politics leads to a different understanding of how
the genre serves other kinds of identity formations and different or larger so-
cial goals.
Of course, it is not a rare occurrence for class tensions to masquerade as
ethnic or racial conflict, especially in the United States. We might be tempted
to think that salsa is immune to such mutability—that one of the most powerful
expressions of the Latino immigrant experience and generators of pan-Latino
solidarity might be precluded from the kind of semantic layering that would
transform it into a vehicle for discriminating against working-class Latino im-
migrants. Or perhaps it is because of this power that it became the object of
cosmopolitan aspirations in the first place. When couched entirely within the
discourse of identity it is hard to say. However, when framed by a desire to bet-
ter understand the commercial industries that mediate music and dance, dif-
ferent issues are brought into focus. While most, if not all, commercial spaces
94 Joanna Bosse

foster cooperation, coordination, and occasionally competition between dispa-

rate constituencies, in small-town entertainment venues it appears that this is a
necessity for survival.
Employing pan-Latino rhetoric, salsero cosmopolitans first looked to coor-
dinate efforts with Mexican laborers, bringing several different groups together
to create a local salsa dance scene. As Padilla explains, “Latino ethnic-conscious
behavior . . . represents a multi-group-generated behavior that transcends the
boundaries of the individual national and cultural identities of the different
Spanish-speaking populations and emerges as a distinct group identification
and affiliation” (1986: 155). Cosmopolitans became concerned that this alliance
presented a liability to the continued economic success of local salsa perfor-
mance, and they enacted several strategies to reduce the effect of Mexicans on
the overall scene.
While I have suggested that small-town entertainment industries present
different kinds of challenges to local performance than those of their metropol-
itan counterparts, I must confess that a nagging but crucial question remains
unanswered for me: To what degree is this kind of social and economic struc-
tural configuration unique and substantially different from urban settings? It
is difficult to know. Much of the literature on salsa is somewhat silent on how
much the economic infrastructure of local, urban entertainment industries
promotes or obfuscates particular discourses of class and ethnic based social
identity.13 And as scholars, it is also sometimes difficult to know how our col-
lective investment in music and dance as “authentic” expressions and genera-
tors of cultural affinity has caused us to overlook its reliance on the mundane
and seemingly small details of cover charges, dance class admission, and the
cost of a beer. Clearly, there is much work to do. What I do know is that as it
travels, from the inner-city barrios to the upscale ballrooms, across the United
States and around the world, salsa continually reveals to us the remarkable
power of dance to communicate deeply held and sometimes conflicting notions
of cultural identity while accruing new meanings along the way.

Notes
1. All names have been changed.
2. See Aparicio 1998; Delgado and Muñoz 1997; Derno and Washburne 2002; Duany
1984; Hosokawa 2002; Loza 1993; Manuel 1991a, 1991b, 1994; Padilla 1990; Román-­
Velázquez 2002; Singer 1983; Steward 1989; Urquía 2005; Washburne 2008; and Waxer
1994, 2000, 2002a, 2002b.
3. Locating salsa performance in this specific and unlikely locale also documents how
Latino ethnic consciousness and perceptions of pan-Latino solidarity can shift depending
on the specific situational frame. In one instance, someone from Latin America might
recognize affinity with another from a different Latin American country, at another she
may distance herself on the grounds of regional or class-based differences, depending on,
among other things, the perception of the availability of resources (Padilla 1986).
4. Population data taken from Executive Summary of the Latino Project of Champaign
County (2003) and the U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000.
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 95

5. While several scholars have developed this concept, I draw most heavily from the
writing of ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino, who in turn built on that of writers such as
Pierre Bourdieu (1984), Timothy Brennan (1997), James Clifford (1992), Jean Comaroff and
John Comaroff (1993), and Bruce Robbins (1992). Turino describes cosmopolitanism as “a
specific type of cultural formation and constitution of habitus that is translocal in pur-
view” (2000: 7). Cosmopolitan formations are “like other cultural complexes in that they
comprise aggregates of tendencies and resources for living and conceptualizing the world
which are used variably by people engaged with that formation” (7). They are different from
other kinds of social formations, say diasporas, in that they are generally unmoored from
any particular geographic region or site of origin. For this reason, cosmopolitan formations
are often described as “global” in common parlance. Nevertheless, they have to be “realized
in specific locations and in the lives of actual people. . . . Cosmopolitan cultural forma-
tions are therefore always simultaneously local and translocal” (7). Multiple cosmopolitan
formations exist at any one time. The dominant one these days is modernist-­capitalism, but
others such as modernist-socialist or fundamentalist-Islamic are also prevalent.
6. During the first decades of the twentieth century, cabaret clubs and open-admission
dances replaced private parties as the dominant context for socializing. These new contexts
afforded an opportunity for interaction among and between a greater diversity of partici-
pants than invitation-only events. As Lewis Erenberg (1986) and Linda Tomko (1999) both
note, the diversity was generally restricted to groups within a particular economic class.
Thus, like the contemporary case I provide in this chapter, clubs simultaneously encourage
diversity in one dimension while reinforcing hegemonies according to others, most often
that of economic class. Salsa dancing in central Illinois attracted a wide range of racial,
ethnic, and regional affiliations that tacitly reinforced the class-based valuation of salsa
music and dance.
7. Two establishments provide a challenge to this statement, and their exception
proves the rule. The first was C-Street, a gay bar in downtown Champaign. The second
was the Rose Bowl, a working-class country bar that hosted a house band, the Western
Wheels, two nights a week in Urbana. In both of these, the venues appealed to a particular
clientele, were purposely built to suit their clientele every night of the week, and had no
rivals competing for their business. The respective, predominant clienteles—gay men and
white, middle-age, working-class men—had enough numbers and finances to sustain their
chosen venues.
8. See Tomko 1999: 21 for more on the historical precedents for the ongoing relation-
ship between alcohol sales, public dance halls, and the commerce of dance.
9. Elsewhere (Bosse 2008) I have explored in detail the stylistic development of a
regional salsa style by ballroom dancers for a salsa “formation team.” This study also in-
cludes some discussion of local regional styles, as does my dissertation (Bosse 2004).
10. The dominance of Cuban-style salsa in the rhetoric surrounding salsa performance
is an interesting phenomenon and deserving of scholarly attention. In every salsa context
I have encountered—on the small-town midwestern scene, in Chicago clubs, in Tokyo, at
ballroom and salsa congresses, and at mass-mediated and online forums—the Cuban style
is considered the most prestigious. While in Tokyo conducting preliminary research on
the local salsa scene in the Rippongi district, I encountered a Colombian who advertised
his dance classes as in “authentic Cuban style” because he knew that would attract a larger
clientele (of Japanese and white ex-pats from North America, Europe, and Australia). As
one of the only Latinos working in this area, he enjoyed a great deal of latitude in how he
presented salsa to this audience.
11. The common debate over ownership between Cubans and Puerto Ricans was not at
all common in this region where there were so few Cubans and Puerto Ricans.
96 Joanna Bosse

12. Paradoxically, it was this exclusion from full participation and equity that led to
greater alcohol consumption and the potential for violence, and thus it could be said that
salsa organizers created the very problem they supposedly wanted to correct.
13. A notable exception is Chris Washburne (2008), who provides a detailed ethno-
graphic study of the salsa music business and the local New York City entertainment in-
dustry from the inside. Other than this important work, there has been very little attention
paid to the commerce of local salsa dance contexts. Some attention has been paid to the
commerce of the salsa recording industry, including Boggs 1992.

References
Aparicio, Frances. 1998. Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican
Cultures. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Boggs, Vernon. 1992. Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York
City. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Bosse, Joanna. 2004. “Exotica, Ethnicity, and Embodiment: An Ethnography of Latin Dance
in US Popular Culture.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
———. 2008. “Salsa Dance and the Transformation of Style: An Ethnographic Study of
Movement and Meaning in a Cross-Cultural Context.” Dance Research Journal 40 (1):
45–64.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans.
Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brennan, Timothy. 1997. At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Clifford, James. 1992. “Traveling Cultures.” In Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg,
Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, 96–116. New York: Routledge.
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff, eds. 1993. Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and
Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Delgado, Celeste Frasier, and José Esteban Muñoz, eds. 1997. Everynight Life: Culture and
Dance in Latin/o America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Derno, Maiken, and Christopher Washburne. 2002. “Masquerading Machismo: La India
and the Staging of Chusmería on the Salsa Scene.” Women and Performance: A Journal
of Feminist Theory 12 (24): 140–156.
Duany, Jorge. 1984. “Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa.”
Latin American Music Review 5 (2): 186–215.
Erenberg, Lewis A. 1986. “From New York to Middletown: Repeal and the Legitimization
of Nightlife in the Great Depression.” American Quarterly 38 (5): 761–778.
Hosokawa, Shuhei. 2002. “Salsa No Tiene Fronteras: Orquesta de la Luz and the
Globalization of Popular Music.” In Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local
Meanings in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 289–312. New York: Routledge.
Loza, Steven. 1993. Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Manuel, Peter. 1991a. “Latin Music in the United States: Salsa and the Mass Media.” Journal
of Communication 41 (1): 104–116.
———. 1991b. “Salsa and the Music Industry: Corporate Control or Grassroots Expression?”
Essays on Cuban Music: North American and Cuban Perspectives, ed. Peter Manuel,
27–47. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
———. 1994. “Puerto Rican Music and Cultural Identity: Creative Appropriation of Cuban
Sources from Danza to Salsa.” Ethnomusicology 38 (2): 249–280.
Small-Town Cosmopolitans 97

Padilla, Felix. 1986. “Latino Ethnicity in the City of Chicago.” In Competitive Ethnic
Relations, ed. S. Olzak and J. Nagel, 153–172. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
———. 1990. “Salsa: Puerto Rican and Latino Music.” Journal of Popular Culture 24 (1):
87–104.
Robbins, Bruce. 1992. “Comparative Cosmopolitanism.” Social Text 31 (2): 169–186.
Román-Velázquez, Patria. 2002. “Locating Salsa.” In Popular Music Studies, ed.
D. Hesmondhalgh and K. Negus, 210–222. London: Oxford University Press.
Singer, Roberta. 1983. “Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Latin Popular Music in
New York City.” Latin American Music Review 4 (2): 183–202.
Steward, Sue. 1989. “Cuba and the Roots of Salsa.” In Rhythms of the World, ed. F. Hanley
and T. May, 24–37. London: BBC Books.
Tomko, Linda. 1999. Dancing Class: Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Divides in American
Dance, 1890–1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Turino, Thomas. 2000. Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Urquia, Norman. 2005. “The Re-branding of Salsa in London’s Dance Clubs: How an
Ethnicised Form of Cultural Capital was Institutionalised.” Leisure Studies 24 (4):
385–397.
Washburne, Chris. 2008. Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York City.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Waxer, Lise. 1994. “Of Mambo Kings and Songs of Love: Dance Music in Havana and New
York from the 1930s to the 1950s.” Latin American Music Review 15 (2): 139–176.
———. 2000. “En Conga, Bongó y Campana: The Rise of Colombian Salsa.” Latin American
Music Review 21 (2): 118–168.
———. 2002a. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in
Cali, Colombia. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
———, ed. 2002b. Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular
Music. New York: Routledge.
6
Dancing Salsa in Cuba
Another Look

Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

(Translated by Sydney Hutchinson)

C
asino, known internationally as the Cuban style of salsa, is a popular, tra­
ditional social or ballroom dance. It emerged in the late 1950s through the
evolution and integration of Cuban and other nationalities’ music-dance
genres. I describe it as popular not only because it was created by the people
for their own enjoyment but also because it has maintained its popularity over
four generations of dancers. Because durability of cultural manifestations is one
of the principal traits defining tradition, casino may be categorized as tradi­
tional, but we must not forget the peculiar dynamic of this dance’s development
through a continual process of assimilation, negation, renovation, and progres­
sive change toward new creations as it is passed from one generation to the next.

International and Cuban Ballroom Dance

It is essential to explain my understandings of the concepts of social or ball-
room dance, since, on the one hand, the Cuban dance universe is broad and
diverse, and on the other hand, two types of ballroom dance are currently in­
ternationally recognized: the social and the sport, or competition. Although
both come from the same historical roots, there are palpable differences from
the technical, stylistic, motivational, or contextual points of view. In Europe
and elsewhere, competition ballroom dance is considered an athletic endeavor
with artistic results for which the dancers submit themselves to rigorous, long-
term training. It was recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Com­
mittee in 1997. In turn, two subcategories exist under sport dance: standard,
or international, dances (such as the Viennese or English waltz, the foxtrot,
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 99

quickstep, and tango) and the Latin dances (which include chachachá [Angli­
cized as cha-cha], rumba-bolero, samba, jive, pasodoble, and salsa). Choreogra­
phies correspond to patterns preestablished by an expert jury that evaluates the
performances, taking the program for the couple’s level into account.
I believe these parameters diminish the spontaneity, freedom of expression,
and creativity afforded by the improvisation of social dance or traditional ball­
room dance. The stylization and standardization of the Latin genres make some
practically unrecognizable when compared with their original homologues,
and in others the transformations are so profound that they have provoked the
disappearance of their cultural identity or essence. Competitive dance has in­
fluenced how most salsa styles are danced socially around the world today: as
styles introduced fundamentally through teaching.
In Cuba, ballroom dance (baile de salón) refers to dances held in social cen­
ters in urban locations, such as recreation societies, social circles, clubs, caba­
rets, ballrooms in private homes, and public plazas. Ballroom dance is inti­
mately linked to social events where dance is the main attraction, although
other collateral activities take place. The popular verbenas, carnivals, parran-
das, charangas (all words for kinds of parties with music and dance), and all
types of public or private parties provide the proper circumstances for couple
dancing, which permits not only the free, sensual union of couples but also col­
lective solidarity with no distinctions between social class, age, sex, or race.

Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Precursors

Casino’s predecessor is the contradanza, introduced to Cuba via Spain in the
eighteenth century, which was transformed into a creole contradance at the
turn of the nineteenth century. The contradance contributed its four-beat,
forward-and-back basic step to Cuban ballroom dance. This basic form was
maintained in danza, danzón, son, and casino, although it changed in terms of
bodily and rhythmic accents and the execution of new figures.
The principal figures of the contradance include promenade, chain, hold,
sieve, placing the dance, whiplash, lasso, allemande, throne, wings, turns,
rounds, mills, and bridge.1 Its spatial designs include two rows of couples, cir­
cles, quartets, trios, and duos. Traces of contradance figures appear in the turns
and spatial patterns of casino, both in the circle, or rueda, and in independent
couple dancing. However, the contradanza was executed in the open social
dance position.
When the danza emerged in the early nineteenth century, it had a musi­
cal form similar to that of the contradance but modified its choreographic as­
pects. Its basic step was essentially the same as the contradance’s, and it was
performed by free couples in an embrace. This disposition of the pairs resulted
from the worldwide influence of the waltz and was used in danzón, danzo-
nete, chachachá, son, and finally casino. The continual turns of the embracing
100 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

couple, characteristic of this genre, became part of the danza and, later, with
certain adaptations, the danzón, danzonete, son, chachachá, and casino. An­
other danza figure that survives today is the paseo, or promenade, similar to
the rueda figure vamos arriba, vamos abajo (we go up, we go down).
At the end of the nineteenth century, the danzón emerges with slower,
graceful movements and greater creative freedom. A whole series of musical
and danced configurations alluding to distinctive traits of our national cul­
ture converge in the danzón, so that today it is still considered the Cuban na­
tional dance. A novel characteristic for the time was the alternation of danced
parts called cedazos with resting parts, making the musical form of a rondo
(ABACAD).2 The fundamental figures of danzón include promenade, the man’s
mark, the box, and the screw turn,3 all of which can be in the casino dance.
The chachachá and the son also had a direct relationship to the birth of the
casino in the 1950s. Throughout the island, different varieties of son music de­
veloped. However, from the choreographic point of view, there are two funda­
mental styles: the son montuno, or mountain son, and the son urbano, or urban
son. The son montuno is characterized by accentuated movement of the torso
from side to side, deep bending of the legs that provokes a constant up-and-
down motion in the body, and frequent up-and-down movement of the arms,
identified by dance specialists as “taking water from the well” (sacar agua del
pozo). The son urbano is characterized by movements that are slower, smoother,
and more elegant; a more upright social dance position; a less-pronounced
bending of the legs; and omission of the arm movements. This latter son had
the greater influence on the emergence of casino.
The urban son’s basic step was performed either to the clave beat, with the
melody, or in opposition (contratiempo, or offbeat) to the clave. Many special­
ists consider the latter mode of execution the most authentic form. The in­
separable link between rhythmic pattern, melody, and the timing of the step
transferred to casino.
The basic son step is similar to that of casino in its musical timing and
bodily and spatial form. Both styles are executed in four beats, the first three
corresponding to steps and the fourth a pause, and in a closed social dance
position. Some turns, arm combinations, and the opening and closing of the
dancers are also shared.
Chachachá emerged as a result of the need to create something different
from the danzón, and it was popularized in 1951. Chachachá contributed its
figures to casino, not its basic step. This dance is performed both in a closed
social dance position and by separated dancers. This characteristic of executing
the steps and variations freely, face to face and without holding one another,
later acquired great importance in the development of casino. Several figures in
chachachá coincide with those of casino, including the opening and closing of
the couple (also found in son), known among dancers as pa’ tí, pa’ mí (for you,
for me), turn combinations, and above all, the execution of the rueda (wheel or
circle form).
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 101

The Emergence of Rueda de Casino

In the late 1950s, the rueda emerged as a new variety of chachachá. It was called
rueda (wheel), because it consisted of couples executing the figures while form­
ing a circle that moved clockwise or counterclockwise. It was directed by a
man with demonstrated dancing ability who signaled to the dancers changes
of partners, turn combinations, and other figures. However, the son was also
performed in rueda form before the 1950s, and in the montuno simple figures
and exchanges of partners were frequently executed.
Urban son and chachachá were thus the principal pillars in the creation of
casino as a new style of Cuban ballroom dance. In the 1950s the former reached
a great height and the latter emerged with considerable success. In this stage,
important factors converged, including the proliferation of recreational soci­
eties, the popularity of certain Cuban musical groups, and the beginnings of
television. In addition, U.S. cultural influence grew.
In approximately 1956 the chachachá’s circle of independent couples began
to be reproduced with the urban son’s basic step to the musical accompaniment
of sones or other popular music. This was called rueda de casino. It occurred
at first exclusively in the Club Casino Deportivo, a white social club, today
the Cristino Naranjo Workers’ Social Circle (see Figure 6.1), but it caught on
among young people and was imitated by dancers in other nautical beachside
clubs and, later, in the capital city. People would say, “Let’s do rueda like in the
casino,” and “Let’s do the rueda de casino”; through reduction these phrases
became “Let’s do the casino.”
In the 1950s, various foreign genres of music and dance, principally North
American ones, were also popular. They became known in the early 1930s
through the mass media and the foreign tours of Cuban artists, which notice­
ably influenced our dance-music culture and were one of the causes of the de­
cline of genres like the danzón.
In the 1950s, Cuban youth very much enjoyed dancing to North American
rock and roll; however, to counter its foreign influence and maintain their cul­
tural values they often alternated it with chachachá. Rock also left its trace in
casino in its spectacular style with acrobatic elements and couple turns. Other
similar aspects include the figure pa’ tí, pa’ mí, the continuous turns with en­
laced arms, and the beats on which the step is marked. North American influ­
ence is easily seen in figures in the final coda of the first chachachá, like the
cojito (limp) and the suiza (Swiss). These figures did not last. In early casino, a
small jump and a circular movement of the clasped arms (woman’s right and
man’s left) were performed that no doubt came from rock and roll.
In its early days, casino was danced in an organized circle made up of
friends, relatives, or impromptu members who rehearsed together; later it began
to be performed as a dance of independent couples; and last it was performed in
a double line, with the head couple inventing the figure or step. The necessity of
employing choreographies for spectators caused new spatial designs to appear,
102 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

Figure 6.1. The building housing

today’s Círculo Social Obrero Cristino
Naranjo (Cristino Naranjo Workers’
Social Circle), which formerly housed
the Club Casino Deportivo (Casino
Sports Club), the birthplace of casino, or
rueda. (Photograph by Bárbara Balbuena
Gutiérrez.)

among them the double line (inherited from the contradance), quartets, duos,
trios, and above all, circles, as in the chachachá. To understand the guide’s
commands and execute them in unison, it became essential to name each of the
figures, turn combinations, gestures, and directions. This dance style spread
throughout the capital and later the entire island.
The mass media, principally television, were important for the spread of
Cuban popular music and dance. The most prestigious singers, musical groups,
dancers, and artists of the era appeared on television, which was introduced
and commercialized in Cuba in 1950. In addition, this medium made the con­
junction of all kinds of artistic resources possible, such as costuming, gesture,
oral expression, and above all, choreographic elements. The audience that did
not attend ballrooms, clubs, or associations learned dance genres through the
mediation of television.
Casino emerged, then, in an environment integrating genres of high pres­
tige among the people, such as danzón, guaracha, son, and chachachá. In ap­
proximately 1956, “the casino style—a kind of dance—[was] introduced among
youth” (Linares 1974: 200), although informants do not remember exactly when
this dance was performed independently from the others already analyzed.
No specific musical genre is attached to casino, unlike the ballroom dances
that preceded it. Through all its years of popularity, it has been performed to all
the musical genres that were in style that, because of their rhythmic scheme or
musical beat, allowed the basic step to be realized.
The people themselves designated the new dance phenomenon as “casino
style” from the very first. A description of how the rueda might have emerged
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 103

and of the basic casino step appears in the novel Las iniciales de la tierra
(The Beginnings of the Earth), by Jesús Díaz, which takes place in the Casino
Deportivo in 1956–1957. Díaz’s precision of detail suggests that he took part in
this important event:

The Rueda was a brotherhood, a sect, a kind of danced religion. . . .

Sunday after Sunday, a brotherhood of founders would gather that
imitated, when dancing and walking, certain lascivious, elegant,
and rhythmic gestures of the black Habaneros. Little by little they
came up with a style that was . . . a bit spectacular, choreographic,
coordinated, and in its own way beautiful, sensual, and flavorful like
the son.
When the four hours for tea were too little for them, they began
to make appointments around the Victrola that was behind the pool
hall. . . . They began a double step, maintaining the structure of the
three beats of the danza but marking each one twice. . . . They pro­
duced a new central step, the square, which had comings and goings
and allowed the couple to open to the ballroom, pursuing one another
through the counterpoint of rhythm and harmony, like cats in heat.
When someone asked what kind of dance this was, they would in­
variably answer: casino style. Sundays they had an audience; the first
applause incited emulation and several groups of couples began to com­
bine forces to produce figures. One night twelve got together and began
to improvise; that night Benny [Moré, the great sonero] was singing. . . .
That night the rueda was born. (Díaz 1987: 96–97)

During this first phase, casino borrowed practices from son and chachachá,
such as the figure names for-you-for-me (pa’ tí, pa’ mí, also known as abre
y cierra, or open-and-close) and shoulder turn (vuelta al hombro). But most
figures were performed by imitation over the years without a specific name. In
prior music-dance genres these figures had usually been danced by free, inde­
pendent couples; however, in casino they were performed in the rueda, inter­
spersed with other, newly created ones that made movement in a circle, and
above all changes of partner, possible.
The basic step was essentially the same as in the Havana, or urban, son. The
body was slightly leaning forward but straight. Hip movements were smooth
and pronounced, those of the torso light and lateral, the two executed in op­
position. This swaying of the hips and the torso gave sensuality to the dance,
particularly to the woman. The man was the one who led: he decided which
figures to execute, decided what musical timing to follow, and had the greatest
possibility for improvising, playing with the basic step and the rhythm of the
music. The turns or figures, those executed by independent couples and those
performed in rueda, definitively identified the casino as a new ballroom dance
and distinguished it from its precursors.
104 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

Ruedas during Revolutionary Times

With the Cuban revolution in 1959, sociocultural changes influenced the devel­
opment and diffusion of Cuban popular music and dance. New projects for the
recreation of youth and the general public emerged.
Law 890 of October 13, 1960, nationalized dance clubs, societies, and ball­
rooms. Some were abandoned by their owners, who left the country for politi­
cal and economic reasons. Most clubs were turned over to workers’ unions, and
in 1961 workers’ social circles were inaugurated. These became the principal
recreation centers for youth throughout the country, holding matinee dances,
or tea dances, serving no alcoholic beverages, only soft drinks or water. On Sat­
urdays and Sundays, people danced, had fun, and made new friends from two
in the afternoon until late.
Many young people got together in the workers’ social circles in the out­
skirts of the old municipality of Marianao, in the capital, since most of the
scholarship plans set up by the revolution were situated there. Thousands of
students attended these social circles, which constituted a social phenom­
enon with a special connotation unique in Cuban cultural history. In these
recreational centers a new generation of casineros, dancers of casino, was
born. Couples came together, whether preexisting or meeting in that mo­
ment: “Dance in the 1970s was impelled by the human relationships and in­
terests among the dancers; the bonds of friendship played an important role”
(Aguilera 1998).
In the early years of the 1960s, casino reached great heights. Ruedas made
up of acquaintances and friends developed and spread to barrios, schools, or
workers’ social circles. Some ruedas became famous thanks to dancers whose
skill and rhythmic sense offered true spectacles. They were known by the name
or alias of their director or the location in which they danced, as, for exam­
ple, the Rueda de los Jimaguas de Regla (a Havana neighborhood), the Rueda
del Patricio (the rueda of the Patrice Lumumba workers’ social circle), or the
Rueda del Oso (the bear’s rueda, after the nickname of dancer Joaquín “El Oso”
Roche).
The Rueda del Patricio was very famous and had a hundred couples (Sainz-
Baranda 1998). To join, one had to demonstrate skill in the dance after being
presented as the friend of another member. Errors would lead to expulsion. The
rueda was led by Rosendo Eugenio González Doncel, who stood out for his vir­
tuosity and the skill and creativity he showed in combining figures and guiding
the rueda.
The Rueda del Oso emerged after the Patricio and had thirty-two couples:
“It began with a group, mainly white, in Havana’s park. Later they began to fre­
quent the Patricio and added to their numbers, as well as incorporating blacks
and mulattos, anyone, without regard to skin color” (Gómez 1992: 40). They
were famous for rarely making a mistake, and when one did occur they ex­
pelled the one who committed the error, after making fun of him or her.
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 105

The peak of casino resulted from the unlimited access people had to cul­
ture and to recreation as a new means of development. On January 4, 1961, the
National Cultural Council was founded. Its principal objectives were to recover
our traditions, reform artistic education, and dignify artistic and literary work.
It created organizations, institutions, and cultural groups such as the National
School of Art, the Training Schools for Art Instructors, National Dance of
Cuba (Danza Nacional de Cuba), and the National Folkloric Ensemble (Con­
junto Folklórico Nacional).
The artistic groups recovered musical and danced expressions of a national
character, including the Cuban ballroom dances. For example, the National
Folkloric Ensemble included a cycle of popular dances in its repertoire, and
National Dance of Cuba included a panorama of Cuban music and dance. In
addition, study of modern and folkloric dance in the National School of Art
incorporated Cuban ballroom dances, among them casino, into its program.
But the fans of Cuban popular music themselves, rather than these institutions,
were perhaps most responsible for its knowledge, performance, and diffusion
because this movement enfolded workers, peasants, students, and the general
public into artistic groups en masse.

Dance Music in Cuba

In the early 1960s, music declined following the socioeconomic changes in the
country resulting from the 1959 revolution, which led to the birth of new cul­
tural institutions and the transformation of the musical infrastructure. This
infrastructure included performance sites, media outlets and their program­
ming, and nightlife in general, as clubs shed their formerly elitist characters.
Some musical groups and artists of great quality emigrated, and others died.
Nonetheless, noteworthy singers, musicians, and composers stayed on the is­
land, creating new music and dance styles such as the mozambique, created
by Pedro Izquierdo (known as Pello el Afrocán); the pilón, from the composer
Enrique Bonne; the pacá of Juanito Márquez; the dengue, created by Dámaso
Pérez Prado; and the guapaché, chiqui-chaca, mozan-chá, and guaguá. These
did not last, in part because music could not easily spread inside or outside the
country. Outside, few people knew about or had access to the new develop­
ments in Cuban music, and so people heard only the music of the 1950s. Inside,
the media did not disseminate Cuban rhythms sufficiently, and foreign mu­
sic, such as the bossa nova, twist, beat, beyé, go-go, and rock, took their place.
Cuban dance music was in crisis, while rock, for example, was so strong that
young people, the principal dancing public, began to prefer foreign music.
These new foreign genres and Cuban ones influenced casino. The dancers
added complexity to turns and figures, incorporating movements from other
dance forms. In the late 1970s, a musical renewal began within the charanga-
type orquestas (ensembles)4 such as Elio Revé’s group, founded in 1956, which
featured innovative and hugely popular arrangements by composer and bass
106 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

player Juan Formell, one of its members (Valdés 1988: 5). Formell also intro­
duced new instruments that revolutionized the charanga, including electric
bass and guitar and amplified cello and violins. Formell founded his own group
in December 1969, Los Van Van, with which he created songo, a new type of son
(Loyola 1997: 197). During this period, casino was danced to different types
of music, including the changüí-shake, changüí 68, songo, ranchera-son, conga-
son, palo-son, guaracha, and son. Among the most famous groups were Neno
González, Chapotín, Rumba Habana, and Aragón, which, though founded in
1939, was still the queen of charangas in the 1970s.
In these years, ballrooms and other dance areas were scarce. The work­
ers’ social circles, contrary to their original objectives, were invaded by alcohol,
knives, and fights, and the public began to avoid their dance parties, matinees,
and other activities.
In the 1970s, as a consequence of the National Cultural Council’s work to
revitalize and recover popular dance music, new musical groups were formed,
new albums recorded, compositions and choreographies created, and films
made that spread Cuban music and dance. In addition, talks and roundtables
were given at festivals of son, danzón, chachachá, and other styles.
In 1979, since “young people were only dancing to foreign music” (Rodrí­
guez Riverón 1998), a television program, Para Bailar, for promoting Cuban
popular dances was created. The idea for dancing couples to compete on air
came from Cáceres “Cachito” Manso, a cameraman and later the program’s
director, and was supported by Cristi Domínguez, Félix Erbiti, and Caruca
and Rosendo (Caridad “Caruca” Rodríguez Riverón and Rosendo Eugenio
González Doncel), all dancers with the Cuban Television Ballet, where Ca­
ruca still teaches. For four years (1980–1983) Caruca and Rosendo won the
Girasol de Opina, a prize given out by the eponymous magazine on the basis
of popularity, demonstrating the people’s respect and admiration for these
dancers. Rosendo’s role was particularly important, since he served as dance
advisor to the program and chose the jury that selected the winning couples.
The program aired until 1985. Rosendo died in 1986, a great loss for Cuban
culture.
In the 1970s salsa music’s effects were also felt. Promoted principally by
Puerto Ricans residing in New York, Miami, and other U.S. cities, as well as
Cubans who had emigrated in the late 1950s, salsa reflects a complex Carib­
bean cultural interaction that comes from the rich musical tradition of these
peoples. However, a general conviction currently exists that Cuban dance mu­
sic, principally son, is its fundamental trunk. Ángel Quintero Rivera defines
salsa as “a heterogenous integration that manifests common and differentiable
elements in each composition and in every territory in which it is produced. . . .
It must be understood, above all, as a practice: ‘a way of making music’” (1999:
119). In the 1970s, salsa was a huge business outside Cuba. In Cuba this genre
was vehemently challenged, not only by musicians but also by specialists and
the entire musical dissemination apparatus. Yet the works of Rubén Blades and
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 107

Willie Colón, founders of “political salsa” or “conscious salsa,” were widely

played and very much accepted by the public, above all by the casineros.
Casino dancing in this time, its age of splendor, was characterized by the
quality, virtuosity, and style of the dancers. The fundamental parameters de­
fining a virtuosic dancer included the following:

1. Dancing on the offbeats, or in syncopation (contratiempo), in rela­

tion to the clave. This was a symbol of elegance; done wrong it was
considered “crossed” (atravesao) or “dancing like whites,” without
style or grace.5 “The complexity of dancing in contratiempo pro­
duced pleasure; it was like a challenge” (Aguilera 1998).6
2. Executing rapid changes in timing; performing a continual fast turn
and stopping momentarily on the exact musical count
3. Performing very fast turns as an embracing couple, on their axis,
without losing the step and keeping a face-to-face position
4. Executing different turns, as many as possible, continually and
without error. “The more turns you knew, the better you danced.
Just doing the step was not dancing” (Aguilera 1998).
5. Knowing how to dibujar (literally, “to draw”). This term, much used
in those years, referred to the improvisation performed mainly by
the man, who played with the rhythm and combined the basic step
with other leg movements, such as kicking in the air, standing on the
toes, and making quick figures with the legs.
6. Covering a large space in the ballroom without losing track of the
music or one’s partner
7. Not erring in the rueda. Casino couples who could achieve this were
virtuosos. Just belonging to a famous rueda showed that one pos­
sessed quality, ability, and skill.
8. “Singing” (cantar) the rueda. The task of directing and saying the
figures was carried out by a noteworthy dancer.

Despite casino’s widespread popularity, there were restrictions; the average

dancer could not dance in some ballrooms and groups, and all dancers gener­
ally had to dress elegantly.
The man played a central role, since he determined the turns and figures.
The woman demonstrated her ability by letting herself be led without losing the
rhythm or the step, aspects important for allowing the man to improvise. Most
of the time, casino was danced with the couples in an embrace; they rarely let
go. When they did, it was guarachar or dibujar (to improvise), and they quickly
reassumed the original position.
The term “pasillo” was widely used to designate the turn or figure combina­
tions. To invent a new pasillo was a creative act, and dancers constantly sought
new ones: casino was competitive. The style of dance depended on the social
environment; the casino of Playa was not the same as that of Regla.
108 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

Some marginal people used dance to express their personality. The men
were called reparteros, the women reparteras, and they incorporated gestures
and manners of their milieu, not always accepted by others, into their choreog­
raphy. They were called ambientosos or guaposos.7 Some characteristics of this
style were exaggerated movements, sticking out and biting the tongue, raising
pant legs, and making pelvis movements. Their dress—for example, very baggy
pants and shirts—also distinguished them. Nevertheless, many of their ges­
tures were accepted and reproduced by the casineros, since in more than a few
cases they corresponded to the movements of rumba. Their creations are dis­
cussed further below.
Casino reached its height of stylistic and choreographic development be­
tween 1960 and 1980. The rueda continued to have the same basic form as in
its beginnings, but new figures emerged, others disappeared, and some names
were changed. The rueda became more complicated as figures were combined
in different orders—for example, in al medio con dos y biquini (to the center
with two and bikini), the prima y biquinea (cousin and bikini), and bótala y
dame (toss her out and give me one). My informants have forgotten how some
classic figures were performed, although they do remember their names, such
as the aguja (needle).
In the early 1980s, most instrumentalists in popular dance music groups
were graduates of national and local schools of music, the conservatories, and
the Higher Institute of Art (Instituto Superior de Arte; see Figure 6.2). This
trend produced surprising developments in casino, resulting in the interna­
tional phenomenon of salsa. At the same time, salsa in the United States expe­
rienced a profound crisis, in part because of excessive commercialization and
abandonment of experimentation.
In 1983 salsero Oscar D’León traveled from Venezuela to visit Cuba. He
was already known in our country from television broadcasts of his music
and for his reception of Cuban musical groups that had toured in his country,
such as Aragón, Son 14, and Barbarito Díez. His visit caused “certain canons
to break down and a series of stagnant patterns to be submitted to revision”
(García 1997: 7).
D’León’s performance at the Varadero Festival resonated with the Cuban
public, although he was also criticized for vulgar or tasteless elements in his
performance. However, apart from his abilities as a musician, he was an agile
dancer, playing bass at the same time. Casineros quickly copied his movements
and gestures. Many still recall a choreographic phrase of D’León and his singers
that consisted of marking the basic casino step with certain turns while mov­
ing to the side and, later, in coordination with rhythmic accents, adding several
kicks. This phrase caught on among dancers so strongly that it today forms part
of one of the casino figures, executed both by independent, face-to-face couples
and in the rueda, now synthesized and combined with other elements.
After D’León’s visit, a rejuvenation of Cuban musical life began. In 1988
NG La Banda was born under the direction of José Luis “El Tosco” Cortés,
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 109

Figure 6.2. Students at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA [Institute for Higher
Education in the Arts]) performing in the Villena Hall of the Unión Nacional de Escritores y
Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC [National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba]). (Photograph by
Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez.)

one of the first generation of students of the National School of Art, who had
belonged to groups like Los Van Van and Irakere. La Banda “opened the way
for the boom of salsa” in Cuba (Lam 1997: 9) and created important experi­
mental works like “Siglo 1” (García 1997: 7). After NG’s founding, new dance
music groups exploded onto the scene, including Issac Delgado, Dan Den, La
Charanga Habanera, Manolín, and Paulito FG y Su Élite. Most of these new
groups are characterized by a theatricality that includes attention-getting cho­
reographic movements performed by the singers and sometimes by the direc­
tor. The bodily and spatial designs oscillate between the basic casino step, with
changing rhythmic accents of the clave, and its combination with steps from
other Cuban dance genres like mambo, rumba, and conga.
Song lyrics relate the music to the dance. Almost all the successful groups’
songs have meaningful lyrics. Composers use the genuine expressions of the
people—their sayings, mottos, sentences, and praises, blended with double en­
tendres; Cubans’ ironic views; or analysis of the Cuban situation—as a humor­
ous reflection of our conflicts and deficiencies. These expressions are mostly
used in the refrain (estribillo), and their choice determines the tune’s success.
The meanings in the lyrics are also expressed through social, emotional,
functional, and ritual gestures, manifested in different body parts. Many of
these movements and gestures are created by the musicians who, on occasion,
are excellent dancers. The public imitates them or simply invents other pasillos.
110 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

If casino had earlier been characterized by the couple’s maintaining their em­
brace as long as possible, now it is danced in free couples, ruedas, or lines of
couples, one man with several women, individuals, and so forth. The main ob­
jective is plain fun, breaking down all types of social barriers as a demonstra­
tion of the spiritual satisfaction that many Cubans find in dance.
International tourism and musical groups’ new openness toward the out­
side world sent the Cuban music explosion into other parts of the Americas,
Europe, and Asia, contributing to the international rebirth of salsa and Afro-
Cuban music.
Ballrooms are an extremely important connection between musicians and
dancers. Since approximately 1985, several in Cuba have reopened, “recovering
dance as one of the Cuban’s favorite occupations in his free moments, empow­
ering Cuban traditional and new music through live performances by groups
from all parts of the country” (Bello 1992: 36). For example, the Salón Rosado at
La Tropical is today the most important such venue in the capital, and visiting
it is a must for both musicians and tourists.

Casino and Cuban Salsa Today

With the international rebirth of salsa, and especially of Cuban son-salsa, the
dance began to be identified with the name of the musical style, and thus ca­
sino started to be called salsa dance.
At the same time, casino has incorporated movements, figures, and steps
from other Cuban popular or folkloric genres. The basic casino step is today
performed to different musical accents, whether in time with the clave or in
opposition to it. The tempos are usually faster than in its earlier days, and the
percussion has extensive polyrhythm, which allows addition of foot movements
as ornaments without altering the traditional form. Graciela Chao Carbonero
notes that the basic step may accent any beat of a measure: in Havana, the dif­
ferent accents may all be seen even during the same party, but young casino
dancers tend to accentuate the third beat. While scholars endlessly debate
which count is the more traditional one, Chao believes, “Reality imposes the
analysis, so that there is no single way of marking the step in relation to the
music” (1996: 8). Today, casino is danced by couples in the closed social dance
position, in free pairs, in lines of couples, or in the rueda.
Unlike in earlier forms of casino, the couples separate to have greater free­
dom of movement and, above all, to improvise. Improvisation can come at any
time but most often when the music’s climax arrives: when there is great poly­
rhythm in the percussion, the tempo becomes faster, the singer improvises, and
there is call-and-response singing. Cuban musicians call this part bomba or
timba.
“Timba” has many meanings in Cuba, but it acquired a special musical con­
notation during the 1990s; musicians use it to identify not only the climactic
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 111

moment of music but also their most recent artistic work. As occurred with
salsa in the 1980s, critics, researchers, and musicologists now debate timba,
trying to define this complex musical phenomenon. Among the most recent
specialist views are those of Neris González Bello and Liliana Casanella. In
a shrewd essay, they posit several musical meanings, one for all 1990s Cu­
ban dance music, one for a particular style of it, and one used for marketing
purposes to distinguish Cuban son-salsa productions from others. Early ap­
proaches to timba emphasized specific approaches to orchestration and musi­
cal style, while more recently Danilo Orozco has defined it as an “intergenre”
(González and Casanella 2002: 3–4).
People dance casino to enjoy timba and Cuban salsa, confirming that this
ballroom dance has no specific musical equivalent. The climax in the son-salsa
compositions that Cuban musicians call bomba or timba has, in the dance,
been baptized despelote,8 which is performed by free couples in any position.
For the new generation of casineros, despelote is a “hot” moment in the music,
meaning to dance in a frenzy, to move the body without hindrance. This is also
the moment in which the singer gestures and moves or sings the chorus.
Another term related to dance that has recently appeared in this context
is “tembleque,” a vibratory movement of the whole body beginning with the
pelvis. To do the tembleque requires total independence of each body part, but
mainly the pelvis, giving the move an apparent sexual undercurrent. The tem­
bleque is not a new dance or choreography, as some have stated, but another
creative movement that forms part of the despelote.
Performers do other steps derived from Afro-Cuban expressions, such as
Santería dances (those of Elegguá, Ogún, Ochosi, and other orishas), rumba fig­
ures (principally from columbia and guaguancó), and movements or steps from
makuta, yuca, and other Afro-Cuban dances. Other movements correspond to
steps from ballroom or other dances that preceded casino, including the mambo,
chachachá, or conga. The integration of these dances began, first, with the open­
ing up and new popularity of Cuban syncretic popular religious practices in the
past two decades and, second, with the diffusion of the African-origin cultural
expressions that constitute one of the principal sources of our folklore. To the
dance are added ritual gestures, such as crossing oneself, the ritual greeting of
santeros, or followers of Santería. The introduction of batá drums or other per­
cussion instruments from these expressions into the musical groups provides
further enrichment and merits a separate musicological analysis.
The rueda is today the preferred form of dancing casino. In the past two
decades, it has developed on a large scale, principally because of the quantity
of turns, figures, choreographic phrases, and step variations the people have
invented by taking traditional ones as their starting point, imitating the sing­
ers and leaders of musical groups, combining aspects of the heterogenous Cu­
ban dance culture, or incorporating mannerisms and expressions of characters
from movies or telenovelas (television soap operas).
112 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

To achieve greater complexity, in the 1980s dancers began to execute dou­

ble ruedas in two concentric circles that advanced in different directions, ei­
ther with independent guides or with just one for both. This practice resulted
in true dance mastery and creativity. At parties, improvised ruedas still form
among friends or acquaintances; those made up of family members can have
unique designs and characteristics.
The family has influenced the development of Cuban ballroom dance in all
its eras and, above all, in the people’s preference for this diversion. Parents, sib­
lings, and cousins teach children and relatives to dance. Radamés Villegas Jau­
requizar told me, “In my family, if you did not dance casino, the other members
discriminated against you; you were a ‘pasmao’ [party pooper]. One practiced
marking steps against the wall and doing turns with a broom, because you can’t
mistreat the women” (Villegas 1998).
The excellence of male casineros has reached the point that just one dances
with two women at once, one on each hand, realizing a series of turns. But
the man’s role in the casino dance is not as dominant as it was in the 1970s or
1980s, because the woman is important in either the despelote or improvisa­
tion. Similarly, women have learned to lead turns as the men do, and when men
are scarce at parties, they dance among themselves. Nonetheless, it is still the
men who direct the rueda and, almost always, the lines of couples and guide the
women when dancing in couples.
In casino today, the dance style called reparto (literally “cast,” as for a role
in a movie or play) is much criticized but also frequently emulated. The so-
called reparteros and reparteras—they are also called elementos (marginal
people)—have become outstanding dancers. They come from marginal barrios,
or poor areas, in Havana, and, as noted previously, their style is characterized
by their vulgar or obscene movements, gestures, and steps. When they arrive
at any place, they make way by pushing people and stepping on others’ feet on
purpose, and they start alcohol-fueled fights and disturbances. However, these
men and women are recognized as excellent and creative dancers who compete
to invent ever-more-complicated steps. Many of their bodily designs have been
imitated, mainly in the despelote; the figures have caught on among casineros
and are now some of the most performed. Among these are “making the train”
(hacer trencito), the santeros’ ritual greeting of crossing themselves, and wave­
like movements of the body beginning from the pelvis.
The basic casino step is today performed in the same way as in earlier pe­
riods, but the younger dancers perform it only by stepping, or crossing, back.
Yet it is impossible to follow the untiring and plentiful creativity of the dancers
who create a new turn every day. Most of the current well-known figures per­
formed among independent couples are also performed in the rueda. Some are
already traditional, others have a changed name, still others have become more
complicated, and many are new. Writing all the casino figures down would be
an interminable task. Some of the most mentioned are “Coppelia” (a popular ice
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 113

cream parlor in Havana), “curly,” “two with two,” “three with three,” “croquette,”
“eighty-eight,” “modern style,” “the three graces,” “the dark prince,” “like the
Charanga [Habanera],” “like the doctor” (Manolín, known as el médico de la
salsa), “the line,” “give her to me by [any body part],” “fly,” “Echeverría” (whose
etymology is unknown), “mambea” (“dance as in the mambo”), “vaccinate her”
(a rumba reference), and “tumba francesa” (a traditional dance of eastern Cuba).9
In the rueda, some of the figures just mentioned are combined with others,
but the so-called enchufle (plug-in) is almost always the one used for changing
partner. When several figures are put in a continuous order, this is commonly
called “making a chain” (hacer una cadena). If the guide says, “Lie!” (¡Men-
tira!), after having “sung” a figure, it is a counterorder, and the action should be
undone. Many dancers get lost in the rueda when “¡Mentira!” is called, and it is
an occasion for fun and disorder.
Casino’s principal characteristics that differentiate it from other styles of
salsa include the following:

1. It is fundamentally a dance of embracing couples whose figures are

performed in a constant rotating motion, whether in place or mov­
ing freely through space, in contrast to the linear form that prevails
in other styles, such as that of New York.
2. The basic step is generally executed while stepping on the whole foot
in a natural way, not in relevé, or on the metatarsals, as women do in
other styles.
3. Despite the man leading and deciding the figures, the couple is bal­
anced in the turns, so that both dancers turn alternately. The woman
does not turn on her own axis multiple times, as if she were a top, as
in other salsa dance styles.
4. To execute the figures without losing the step in relation to the musi­
cal rhythm is a principal and valued ability in casino. The man never
holds his step for several counts to turn the woman, later reconnect­
ing depending on the rhythmic or turning ability of his partner.
Neither does the woman.
5. Traditional, popular casino does not contain stereotyped, fixed ges­
tures such as sharp movements of the head to the sides or the back or
movements of the arms or hands touching the hair, clothing, or any
body part.
6. Casino is not acrobatic. There is little in the way of lifts, sliding on
the floor, spinning in the air, or poses at the conclusion of the dance,
as is common in other salsa styles.
7. The couples improvise, using diverse steps or movements from folk
dances or other ballroom dances, but these are not choreographed
or practiced beforehand to be realized in unison. This occurs only in
the genre’s theatrical or artistic contexts.
114 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

Conclusion
Casino today strongly reflects the character of the Cuban people because it is a
synthesis of all the components of our country. Its popularity here has endured
for four decades, so that it now forms a part of our cultural patrimony.
Casino is the latest ballroom dance created by the Cuban people. In it, di­
verse elements contributed by their ancestors converge in an organic and evolv­
ing process. It emerged as an anonymous expression of urban people, and it
does not correspond to any particular musical genre or style. It is a dance for
individual and collective diversion, whose contemporary dynamic is reflected
in the great creativity and liberty of its bodily and spatial movements.
Casino is the most popular and relevant ballroom dance in Cuba today; it
is a sociocultural event that has directly influenced the development, creativity,
and diversity of dance music in our country from the late 1950s to the pres­
ent. This give and take between popular music and ballroom dance has been
indispensable for satisfying the Cuban taste for dancing well and, above all,
for maintaining popular music and ballroom dance as the preferred means of
recreation and social relation between different social strata for several genera­
tions. Casino dance is performed with greater or lesser skill by children, teen­
agers, and adults and in the most diverse venues, big or small.
Most people who attend dance schools or academies at the international
level do so for two reasons: (1) to dissipate the tensions of daily life and work
and (2) to encourage and develop social relations. Others learn dance to open
their own academies and teach professionally, for it is no secret that dance
academies are a lucrative business.
In Cuba, unlike most of the world, no dance academies teach ballroom
dance, and hence casino, to the population. Parents teach their children, or one
learns among siblings, cousins, or friends. The same occurs between lovers,
colleagues, and even people who meet that same day during parties or dance
events. This popular style is taught in a professional way only as part of the cur­
riculum in folkloric dance in art schools and in the Higher Institute of Art, as
one way to preserve this cultural legacy.
The most important factor to have affected the rise of casino in Cuba and
abroad is the dimension salsa music has taken in the international sphere. Iden­
tified as Cuban salsa dance, casino has become the vehicle for enjoying salsa as
a way of making music, something not at all paradoxical when one recalls that
both styles have the Cuban son as an origin.
Casino is disseminated internationally in diverse ways and forms, includ­
ing the artistic shows offered to tourists, international courses in Cuban ball­
room dances, international tours by professional or amateur folkloric groups,
courses given by Cuban teachers through collaboration agreements with other
countries, regular instruction by Cubans living in other parts of the world or by
foreigners, and salsa festivals. This dissemination spreads the values of our na­
tional culture and Latin American culture in general. But unscrupulous people,
Dancing Salsa in Cuba 115

“predators” of traditional popular culture and art hoping to make money, pre­
sent “methodologies,” “steps,” or “figures” that have nothing to do with the re­
ality of casino and other Cuban ballroom dances.
Drawing from my own experience giving international courses or workshops
on Cuban social or ballroom dances, as well as my observation of world salsa
events, I have noticed an incipient tendency toward learning, understanding,
and interiorizing the movements, rhythm, steps, and figures of the Cuban style
in some teachers and aficionados. This trend is now one of the principal gener­
ating sources of the diverse tendencies of salsa style around the world. Young
people and adults from many parts of the world have demonstrated interest in
learning to dance casino “just as the Cubans do,” which is really the difficult
part, since how Cubans dance is fundamentally a condition of our own gestures,
attitudes, feelings, thoughts, and soul. I therefore believe that casino will con­
tinue to develop in its native social dynamic, in the inexhaustible wisdom of its
country of origin, its traditions, and its ways of making human contact.

Notes
1. Spanish names for the steps are paseo, cadena, sostenido, cedazo, poner danza, lati-
gazo, lazo, alemanda, trono, alas, vueltas, roderos, molinos, and puente.
2. This modified rondo form lacks the final A of the classical rondo.
3. The Spanish translations are paseo, marque del hombre, cajón, and vuelta tornillo.
4. First called charanga francesas (French ensembles), these groups emerged in Cuba
in the early years of the last century, deriving from the former orquesta típica. The original
instrumental format consisted of “flute, violin, piano, contrabass, timbal or paila criolla,
and a güiro; later the tumbadora [conga drum], two more violins and three singers [were
added]” (Orovio 1981: 114). They first played danzones and later chachachá.
5. Even today, in Cuba the phrase “dancing like whites” means to be out of time, to be
uncoordinated, or to dance without sabor (flavor), in an inorganic way that lacks richness
in bodily movements. Although casino dancing was created by whites in a whites-only club
that excluded blacks until 1959, casino was later enriched with moves and styles from Afro-
Cuban music-dance genres like rumba, abakuá, and santería. In Cuban popular speech,
it is said that blacks dance better than whites. Of course, there are whites who dance well,
and they are told, “You dance like a black person,” or “You were possessed by a congo
[black spirit].” Generally, this is not a pejorative phrase but praise. In its negative aspect, it
can mean to dance in a vulgar, exaggerated, or show-off way. Blacks who dance poorly or
who do not have a musical ear are told, “The only thing black about you is your skin color,
because you dance just like the whites.”
6. In Cuba today, dancing in contratiempo refers to dancing on-2 by initiating the step
on count 4 and pausing on count 1.
7. [Impossible to render exactly in English, these terms translate roughly as “live wires”
and “pretty boys,” respectively.—Trans.]
8. [Despelote is difficult to render in English but roughly means something disorderly
or chaotic and, perhaps, a little risqué.—Trans.]
9. The Spanish translations are coppelia, rizado, dos con dos, tres con tres, croqueta,
ochenta y ocho, a lo moderno, las tres gracias, príncipe negro, como la charanga, como el
médico, línea, dámela por [any part of the body], fly, Echeverría, mambea, vacúnala, tumba
francesa.
116 Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez

References
Aguilera, Jorge Luis. 1998. Interview by Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez. May 4.
Bello, Roberto. 1992. “Música viva: Salón Rosado de La Tropical; El imperio de la salsa.”
Musicalia Dos (Havana) 1 (1): 36–38.
Chao Carbonero, Graciela. 1996. “De la contradanza al casino.” Toda la Danza—La Danza
Toda, no. 2: 8.
Díaz, Jesús. 1987. Las iniciales de la tierra [The beginnings of the earth]. Havana: Editorial
Letras Cubanas.
García, Emir. 1997. “Música popular cubana: 1963–1990 ¿Qué tiene que sigue ahí?”
Musicalia Dos (Havana) 1 (1): 7.
Gómez, María Elena. 1992. “El casino.” Unpublished thesis. Instituto Superior de Arte,
Havana.
González, Neris, and Liliana Casanella. 2002. “La timba cubana: Un intergénero contem­
poráneo.” Clave 4 (1): 2–9.
Lam, Rafael. 1997. “NG, la banda que manda.” Musicalia Dos (Havana) 1 (1): 9–21.
Linares, María Teresa. 1974. La música y el pueblo. Havana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación.
Loyola, José. 1997. En ritmo de bolero en la música bailable cubana. Havana: Ediciones
Unión.
Orovio, Helio. 1981. Diccionario de la música cubana. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas.
Quintero Rivera, Ángel G. 1999. ¡Salsa, sabor y control! Sociología de la música “tropical.”
2nd ed. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.
Rodríguez Riverón, Caridad. 1998. Interview by Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez. January 20.
Sainz-Baranda, Hilda Vila. 1998. Interview by Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez. February 26.
Valdés, Alicia. 1988. Formell en tres tiempos (1965–1988). Havana: CIDMUC.
Villegas, Radamés. 1998. Interview by Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez. September 16. Havana,
Cuba.
7
The Global Commercialization
of Salsa Dancing and Sabor
(Puerto Rico)
Priscilla Renta

W
estern ideals of beauty, elegance, and grace influence competitive
salsa dancing and ballroom dancing and have had significant im-
pact on the globalization of salsa dancing and sabor, flavor, and the
related concept of sentimiento, feeling. World salsa dance competition rules and
regulations, for instance, often mirror globalization’s centralization of power1
and tendency toward homogenization, thus suppressing sabor, cultural creativ-
ity, improvisation, and individual expression.
Three world salsa championships serve as regulating bodies for competitive
salsa dancing, performance, and instruction at the moment: (1) the World Salsa
Federation (WSF) Championship, or Campeonato Mundial, in Miami, Florida,
(2) El Congreso Mundial de la Salsa (World Salsa Congress; now known as the
Puerto Rico Salsa Congress) and its World Salsa Open Championship in Puerto
Rico, and (3) the World Salsa Championships in Las Vegas, Nevada, renamed
the World Latin Dance Cup. The global commercialization of salsa dancing and
sabor has a symbiotic relationship with these organizations and events, gen-
erating diverse global, transnational, and national perspectives among Latin
American and Caribbean observers.
This chapter discusses the globalization of salsa dancing and its effects on
the concept of sabor, beginning with my own localized experience. This project
is native-ethnographic, given that I am both Puerto Rican and a salsa dancer.
Thus, an aspect of my analysis is testimonial, particularly with regard to sabor
as a spiritual principle. The first half of this chapter deals with the cultural
capital of sabor on the basis of several phases of my own experience. It describes
the Caribbean cosmology underpinning salsa music making, which centers on
dancing with sabor and sentimiento. It also includes my performance experi-
ence with the Eddie Torres Dancers at the RMM (Ralph Mercado Management)
118 Priscilla Renta

Twenty-Third Annual Salsa Music Festival at Madison Square Garden, which

inspired my scholarship on salsa dancing. Thus, the first half chronicles the
transformation of salsa dancing from a form of Caribbean everyday life experi-
ence to staged choreography, emphasizing its role in Puerto Rican cultural life.
The second half of the chapter examines competitive salsa dancing, the global
commercialization of salsa, and sabor in three different scenarios. First, the WSF
has created an instructional video called Latin Body Rhythms, which influences
global concepts of and access to sabor by focusing on its corporeal aspects. Sec-
ond is a YouTube clip of dancers from Spain performing the routine that won
them the 2009 title at the Congreso Mundial de la Salsa. This performance gener-
ated a transnational Latin American and Caribbean online discussion regarding
what constitutes salsa dancing, sabor, and the sentimiento it engenders and how
competitive salsa dancing, influenced by Western concepts of grace and elegance,
destabilizes national identification with salsa. Finally, I turn to my archival and
ethnographic research on the Congreso Mundial de la Salsa.
My work demonstrates that dancing salsa with sabor serves as a symbolic
form of cultural nationalism, which Jorge Duany describes as the “spiritual au-
tonomy of a people” (2002: 5; see also Duany 2001: 15, on the Puerto Rican
“nation” as a spiritual principle). Sabor is the heart and soul of salsa dancing,
an aesthetic tradition involving improvisation, creativity, and a corporeal re-
sponse to the polyrhythmic quality of salsa music that stems from its African
heritage. While some Puerto Ricans believe salsa loses sabor as it moves away
from its history as a street dance with working-class roots and into the con-
text of the Congreso Mundial, which focuses on staged, choreographed salsa
dance performance and competitive dancing, global legitimacy has nonetheless
caused the island’s middle and upper classes to embrace salsa dancing.2
This chapter voices the concerns of Puerto Ricans, particularly those on the
island, about salsa and sabor and considers the impact of the global commer-
cialization of salsa dancing on Puerto Rican nationhood. I draw from online
discussions; formal and informal interviews I conducted in Puerto Rico (2006)
and New York (2002–2003); and my attendance at the first Congreso Mundial
in Puerto Rico in 1997, the third in 1999, and the 2006 tenth-anniversary cel-
ebration. I focus primarily on global commercialization and the reception of
competitive salsa dancing while remaining conscious that the production side
is equally significant and requires additional space and research.

What Is Sabor? Sabor in Salsa Music

(the Meaning Is in the Feeling)
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. —Duke Ellington

Salsa music’s globalization and industrialization beginning in the sixties set

the stage for the global commercialization of salsa dancing and sabor at the
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 119

turn of the new millennium. The concept of sabor has been circulating for as
long as the word “salsa,” or sauce, has been used as a commercial term. Vary-
ing in degrees of complexity and geographically determined ingredients, sauce
provides flavor to cuisines around the world. Izzy Sanabria, the man respon-
sible for commercializing and using “salsa” as a marketing term during the
seventies, writes that “salsa is what gives Latin food its flavor” (Sanabria, n.d.).
There are, nonetheless, variations in how sauce and flavor are created in Latin-
Caribbean cooking. In Puerto Rico, the foundation of the creole sauce added
to seafood and rice dishes, beans, and soups is called sofrito. Sofrito, a creole
method of cooking, combines cilantro, recao (culantro), sweet ajíes (red pep-
pers), onions, and garlic, all sautéed in either olive oil or pork fat, and is the key
to Puerto Rican culinary flavor. Cocinando (cooking), eating, and dancing are
all sensual experiences that are often metaphorically intertwined in Caribbean
music. Sanabria says that in Latin music, as in North American jazz, “when a
band was really swinging, people would say, ‘They’re cooking’ . . . in Spanish—
‘¡Cocinando!’ And when all the ingredients were cookin’ just right . . . Latinos
would say, ‘It had Salsa y Sabor’ (sauce and taste). So what [salsa] really denotes
is music with flavor and spice” (Sanabria, n.d.).
Resonating with this claim is a recent album by El Gran Combo de Puerto
Rico called Arroz con habichuela (Rice and Beans), on which the band sings,
“Cuatro décadas Gran Combo en la cocina, cocinando salsa para la gente la-
tina” (Four decades [with] Gran Combo in the kitchen, cooking salsa for the
Latin people). The lyrics are an example of how salsa continues to be conceptu-
ally connected with the sensual experience of cooking. Gran Combo’s refer-
ence to a broad Latin American audience also reflects their transnational reach,
which helped give rise to their fame in the late fifties and early sixties.
Winning a Latin Grammy award for Best Tropical Album in 2006, Arroz
con habichuela comments on the globalization and Americanization of salsa in
a characteristically playful, tongue-in-cheek manner. Promoting a discourse of
salsa and sabor that involves the senses, Latin food, music and dance, the lyrics
affirm that the music is neither a “light salad” nor rock ’n’ roll; it “takes some
years to be played as it should.” The lyrics enumerate the ingredients of their
creole “recipe”: Cuban son, New York swing, rumba, plena, Spanish poetry, and
African drumming with a hint of melao (molasses or sweetness). “Arroz con
habichuela” thus delivers its critique by juxtaposing the substance of Puerto
Rican food with light American fare. Rice, beans, and root vegetables are a sub-
stantial meal that provides sustenance and nourishment, a culinary metaphor
for the substance and complexity of Latin music. “Arroz con habichuela” warns
the novice to stand back, watch, listen, and learn. “Don’t dare jump in,” the
band advises, because the clave will knock down an outsider with a flippant
attitude. A light, presumably North American, salad has neither the flavor nor
the substance necessary for learning salsa.
The song’s lyrics continue by defining salsa in a variety of ways, includ-
ing through the concepts of cadencia (cadence) and elegancia (elegance),
120 Priscilla Renta

referencing the Cuban son that preceded and influenced the development of
salsa dancing as well as the New York way of playing salsa with swing. Both
swing and cadencia can be synonymous with sabor, while cadencia is particu-
larly associated with musical structure (measure and count), flow, rhythm, and
the interaction of the voice and the clave in the music. The association Gran
Combo makes between Afro-Caribbean cadencia, the European aesthetic of el-
egance, and a diasporic approach to creating Latin music with swing also sym-
bolizes the creolization inherent in salsa music and dance. Cadencia relates to
dance in that it can also be defined as “the correspondence of the motion of the
body with the music” (SpanishDict, n.d.) In the same way as with music, danc-
ing salsa with cadencia and sabor develops over time. Sabor is in the dancing
of elders as it is in the old-school, Afro-Caribbean rumba from Cuba and the
plena from Puerto Rico, both of which also influenced salsa.
“Arroz con habichuela” comments on the institutionalization of Latin mu-
sic and salsa, asserting that the genre is not contained in books or schools.
Rather, its substance is learned through practice on the street and requires full
immersion. The sancocho, or stew of root vegetables, red meat, and sofrito with
ingredients that make it sabroso, or full of flavor, is slow-cooked over a fire,
usually in the open air of the tropics, rather than in the microwave that cooks
instant, North American–style meals. In other words, tradition and the invest-
ment it requires help Gran Combo prepare a musical banquet for their global,
transnational Latin American and Caribbean audience, one with a uniquely
Puerto Rican flavor.

The Cultural Capital and Habitus of Sabor:

A Native-Ethnographic Perspective
Salsa is living, breathing, and experiencing the power of the
moment.

The substance of sabor is important not only for Puerto Rican salsa bands like
Gran Combo but also for salsa dancing, both professional and everyday. The
Latin-Caribbean cosmology on which salsa dancing is founded fuels the cor-
poreal processes of listening to, translating, and interpreting music. My first
perceptions of sabor as a spiritual, emotional, and corporeal form of musical
interpretation and appreciation involved witnessing my mother dancing and
singing along to old records by El Gran Combo, Celia Cruz, and Johnny Pa-
checo, cofounder of Fania Records, as well as many merengue tunes popular
in the eighties and late seventies. As a result, my younger sister and I grew up
listening and moving to Latin-Caribbean rhythms—including salsa, which
would come to play a significant role in my life.
Although merengue, through which my sister and I learned to move poly-
centrically and polyrhythmically, became my mother’s music of choice in the
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 121

eighties—reflecting the decline of salsa during that time (see Pietrobruno 2006:
65)—my aunts and uncles taught me the Latin hustle, a combination of salsa
and disco resulting from Puerto Rican circular migration (see Duany 2001)
during the seventies (Conrad 2006). This early familiarity, coupled with my
ethnographic experiences in Puerto Rico and New York, contributed to my un-
derstanding of sabor’s connection to Latino public and personal histories and
music.
I, as do many Latinos, credit my mother as my first teacher in my early for-
mation as a dancer. With roots in Puerto Rico’s capital city of San Juan and the
mountains of Jayuya, she has danced for most of her life, from her childhood
on the island to her adult days in the United States. My mother prefers Gran
­Combo’s first phase, after the band’s founding by Rafael Cortijo, featuring Is-
mael Rivera as the band’s lead vocalist. This was the era when Cortijo com-
bined the Cuban son and guaracha with the Afro–Puerto Rican rhythms of
bomba and plena, a practice that set the stage for the emergence of New York–
Puerto Rican salsa later in the seventies.
Mami also enjoys the earlier music of Celia Cruz, who came to be known
as the Queen of Salsa in the United States. One of my mother’s favorite pieces
continues to be “Burundanga,” performed and recorded originally by the re-
nowned Cuban band La Sonora Matancera and featuring Cruz, later remade
by New York–Puerto Rican salsero Willie Colón. During a performance of
“Burundanga” recorded for television in the sixties or seventies, Celia shouts
­“¡Sabor!” and “¡Azúcar!” (sweetness or sugar)—her signature phrases—while
briefly dancing with the show’s host, who seems challenged by her polycentric
movement.3 Celia’s moves—small, tight, and mostly in place, grounded through
knee flexion and downward energy, allowing the hips, torso, and shoulders to
move polycentrically—remind me of my mom’s strong connection to Carib-
bean music and how she used to dance to “Burundanga” at home.
Mami captured the song’s feel and Celia’s vocal sabor, as she did with other
Caribbean music, during her performances in our living room, at family gath-
erings, or while she was cleaning the house with Caribbean music playing in
the background. The music we played at home growing up reflected that of the
community of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans living in our neighbor-
hood, groups that all contributed to the birth of salsa.
Celia y Johnny, for example, is another of my mom’s favorite albums. César
Miguel Rondón describes the album as “full of old sones” but with a “Nuyorican
salsa. . . . [P]erhaps the best cut of the entire album [is] ‘Quimbara,’” which Ce-
lia interpreted with “intelligence and sabor” (2008: 87). Johnny Pacheco created
a path for Cruz, a self-exiled Cuban, to make her way into the contemporary
world of salsa music, which drew primarily from the Afro-Cuban son in its ini-
tial phase. The son has a strong history in the Dominican Republic, and Rondón
describes Dominican-born Pacheco as a “complete musician who possessed one
of the most important talents in this trade: a sense of sabor . . . [which enabled
him] to move easily among all styles and popular tastes. . . . [I]t was precisely
122 Priscilla Renta

his sabor that contributed to his success” (70). These assertions demonstrate the
belief, shared by performers from around the Caribbean, that sabor is a feature
of excellent musicianship in salsa music.
Musical sabor involves the feeling produced by the combination of musical
arrangement and instrumentation, vocal and lyrical composition, and exposi-
tion. It is expressed in the mambo, montuno, and descarga (jam) sections in
salsa, all of which feature improvisation and motivate dancers to move. The
songs that inspire dancers to connect with the music’s sabor and express their
own unique flavor through corporeal translation, interpretation, and expres-
sion are a matter of personal choice. Furthermore, Rondón writes, “in the con-
text of Latino popular music [sabor] is an untranslatable term that refers to
an undefinable quality in a musical performance, a unique sense of style and
rhythm, an edge and passion that allows listeners to identify with the music”
(2008: 4). Suggesting a form of je ne sais quoi, or yo no sé qué, Rondón’s defini-
tion stresses sabor’s grounding in the performer’s sense of personal expression
and uniqueness, leading to an intangible quality that escapes verbalization.
This kind of sabor also manifests in dance, through which the connection and
identification with the music is catalyzed.
The connection my mom has with Caribbean music is the foundation of her
sabor and unique personal flavor. When asked, for instance, how she learned
to dance, my mom responds, “A mí nadie me enseñó. . . . Yo siempre bailo al
ritmo de la música, a lo que me inspira la música; así es como yo me muevo, de
acuerdo a lo que oigo. . . . La música me hizo aprender; la música me decía como
mover mi cuerpo” (No one taught me. . . . I always dance to the rhythm of the
music, to what the music inspires in me; that is how I move, based on what I
hear. . . . Music made me learn; the music would tell me how to move my body).
The music’s recognizable and unique qualities, as described by Rondón, move
social dancers to connect with the music and translate its sabor into corporeal
expression on the basis of a common Caribbean experience rooted in every-
day life.
Sabor also involves the spiritual and emotional aspects of music making,
listening, dancing, and performing that escape verbalization, as Rondón sug-
gests. For instance, I can recall my mother dancing with eyes closed, one hand
on the center of her solar plexus and the other facing up, palm open, as if to
connect with divine energy. To dance with sabor in this way is to experience
one’s higher self, transcending material experience by surrendering to what the
music enables dancers to feel in the present moment. As Juan Carlos Quintero
Herencia writes referring to a 1975 performance by Celia Cruz, “Salsa associ-
ates itself with divinities” (1997: 190).
Combining the sacred and secular is common in Latino culture. These
days, my mother, my sister, and I still dance to old son records by Celina and
Reutilio, who incorporate songs and rhythms of Santería into their tunes.
Grooving to favorites such as “Santa Bárbara/Que viva Changó,” which refers to
Santería’s father of music and the drum, and “San Lázaro,” which pays homage
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 123

to Babaluayé, father of healing, my mom uses a red handkerchief to cleanse her

aura and body of negative energy, despite being profoundly Catholic. A kind of
despojo, or spiritual cleansing, her dance does not adhere to specific steps but
serves as a profound form of expression through improvisation that involves
a level of surrender. My sister and I also learned how to feel music this way,
through witnessing and moving.
Powerful states of consciousness that include present-moment awareness
are central to the salsa listening and production experience as well as to dance.
Enrique Romero, quoting Raphy Leavit of Orquesta la Selecta, describes salsa
as “vivir el presente a pleno pulmón y con la máxima intensidad. . . . [La salsa]
aconseja: ‘Vive la vida, mira que se va y no vuelve’” (to live the present full on
and with maximum intensity. . . . [Salsa] advises: “Live life, because before you
know it, it’s gone”) (Romero 2000: 41). Romero refers to the breath of life, filling
the lungs—pulmones—to capacity. Puerto Ricans on the island describe salsa
dancing as una forma de curarse (a form of healing oneself). Present-moment
awareness, which encompasses the healing capacity of breath, is one of the rea-
sons some consider salsa dancing therapeutic. Romero reminds me of a popu-
lar refrán, or saying, I often hear from my mother: “La vida es un soplo; hay que
saber vivirla, hay que saber gozarla” (Life is just a breath; one has to know how
to live it and enjoy it). She describes dancing to Caribbean music as something
that filled her with life and brought her joy in the context of la vida cotidiana,
everyday life, entertainment she preferred to watching U.S. television.
The Caribbean cosmology Romero discusses underpins salsa music’s poetic
universe, which is founded on the power of language and everyday experience
(2000: 42). My mother, for instance, recalls how the Gran Combo’s humorous
lyrics motivated her to laugh, dance, and have fun at home. Romero describes
this process of identification with Caribbean music and lyrics as an aesthetic
endeavor produced “thanks to that powerful bond between life and music,
pleasure . . . which is called sabor and sentimiento” (42). Romero’s explanation
of sabor and sentimiento centers on the validation of everyday life expressed
in Caribbean music. Rondón’s aforementioned definition of sabor focuses on
musicians’ identification with musical sonority and their unique personal ex-
pression. Romero’s focus is lyrical composition and rhythm, whereas Rondón
references musical arrangement, style, sonority, and instrumentation. These
concepts are equally important factors in the processes of corporeal translation
and interpretation.
Salsa’s poetic universe musicalizes la lógica de la clase obrera or de la calle,
the logic of the working class or of the street, through el caló caribeño, Carib-
bean vernacular (Romero 2000: 42–43), a way of validating Caribbean experi-
ences of everyday life and fueling corporeal expression. This Caribbean caló is
complex, moving beyond the repetition of the joyful experience of dance and
music alone. Caribbean musical production, recording, performance, listening,
and dancing unfold within a context of oppressive socioeconomic conditions
that can generate experiences of suffering, struggle, separation, trauma, racism,
124 Priscilla Renta

pain, and loss—all of which inform musical arrangement, lyrical composition,

corporeal expression, and sabor. Salsa, in particular, creates powerful states of
consciousness, including the harmonization and coexistence of emotions rang-
ing from pleasure, happiness, humor, playfulness, joy, excitement, and intensity
to sadness, pain, longing, nostalgia, melancholy, competition, rancor, despecho
(spite, bitterness), indignation, and burla (mocking). The broad gamut of emo-
tions experienced through salsa culminates in a form of polycentric, poly-
rhythmic catharsis.
Romero elegantly describes this type of multilayered corporeal-sonorous
experience from the perspective of the listener when he writes that salsa’s joyful
music is only half the story:

La otra mitad la compone la historia que cuenta en medio de su alegre

sonoridad. Los textos de la salsa (la crónica del Caribe) narran histo-
rias tristes. . . . Y aunque hay también textos gozosos, son los otros los
que priman con su melancolía, su dolor u su tristeza. Esto se da en los
textos, pero se refleja también en los arreglos instrumentales que, inci­
tando a bailar, dan alegría al cuerpo y cierta tristeza al alma, pero una
tristeza que se vive con felicidad. A este binomio, aparentemente con-
tradictorio, se le llama sabor y sentimiento. (2000: 40–41)
(The other half comprises the story it tells in the midst of its happy so-
nority. Salsa’s texts (chronicles of the Caribbean) narrate sad stories. . . .
And although there are also joyful texts, it’s the others that predomi-
nate with their melancholy, pain and sadness. This happens with the
texts, but is also reflected in the musical arrangements which, inciting
one to dance, bring joy to the body and a certain sadness to the soul, but
a sadness that is lived with happiness. This binary, apparently contra-
dictory, is called sabor and sentimiento.)

Romero’s words describe the more complex layers of the concept of sabor as
a Caribbean aesthetic practice that engages a binomial he calls el dolor que se
baila, pain that is danced (40).
Sabor, as Romero suggests, is pleasure, pain, sorrow, and sadness as well
as happiness and joy. The dialectical tension that arises from the Caribbean
aesthetic technique of juxtaposition (see Gottschild 1996: 17), stemming from
cultural philosophy and cosmology, manifests lyrically as well as in the dia-
logue between music and text). This corporeal-sonorous experience involves
surrendering to what one feels in the present moment as a source of resilience
within what Romero calls the Caribbean habitat (2000: 44).
The Caribbean habitat and the resilience of its people also involve salsa
compositions whose sabor and sentimiento come from contesting cultural im-
perialism, rebellion, intense indignation, and a sense of social justice. There
are many salsa music compositions whose musical arrangements and lyrics
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 125

symbolically mirror one another. For example, Eddie Palmieri’s “La libertad,
lógico” (Freedom, of course) musicalizes revolution and rebellion against impe-
rialism, combining a symbolic confrontation between the brass and percussion
sections with simple yet profound lyrics that describe the logic of freedom.4
Yet within the context of salsa dancing’s globalization, the complex meaning of
music that is danceable and joyful but whose lyrics deal with disturbing, trou-
bling, or sad matters can be misinterpreted or lost to the corporeal experience.
While the global commercialization of salsa dancing has its benefits, there are
internal aesthetic norms that are vital and integral to the genre. Romero, for
instance, writes that if a band or singer does not have musical sabor, “no están
en nada” (they have nothing going on) (2000: 137). The same is true for salsa
dancing in both its social contexts and its staged, choreographed versions that
emerged in the late nineties.

The RMM Salsa Music Concert: Performance,

Sabor, and Choreography
The Congreso Mundial disseminated salsa dancing techniques and distinct re-
gional styles throughout the world in an unprecedented and unparalleled man-
ner. New York–Puerto Rican choreographer Eddie Torres was also particularly
pivotal to the globalization of salsa dancing before the congress. For instance,
during the late nineties salsa dance aficionados from across the globe, particu-
larly Asia and Europe, would come to study with Torres, sometimes relocating
to New York to learn from him for extended periods. Torres is both an origina-
tor of stylized, choreographed salsa dancing (see Chapter 2) and an example
of the role Puerto Ricans have played in its globalization. In this section, I use
my perspective as a performer with the Eddie Torres Latin Dance Company
in New York to show how staged choreography can be created and performed
with sabor, but not without challenges. I also demonstrate how the move to-
ward choreographed rather than improvised movement transformed the Latin-
Caribbean dancing I learned with my mother and sister in our living room.
Although I have danced to Latin-Caribbean music throughout my life,
my particular interest in salsa did not begin to grow until my adolescence in
the eighties, when I first witnessed my cousin and his wife dancing at a fam-
ily party. I was mesmerized by their smooth, flowing synchronicity and their
relaxed, seemingly effortless movements. In college, salsa dancing became a
way to ground myself as one among only a handful of Puerto Rican women at
the liberal arts college I attended on scholarship. The mostly wealthy, upper-
and upper-middle-class student body contrasted dramatically with my family’s
blue-collar background. Having grown up in a working-class neighborhood
where we were the only Puerto Rican family, I found something both familiar
and foreign in the social aspect of my college experience, where I discovered
that I lacked the upper-class cultural capital in circulation.
126 Priscilla Renta

Once I graduated college, I entered the financial industry and worked in

communications for close to ten years during the nineties. Within that world,
it was similarly necessary to remain connected to the culture in which I had
grown up. Going to Latin nightclubs and restaurants offering Latin music and
dance reignited my interest in salsa dancing. Stylized, staged salsa dancing
was emerging during this time, and salsa dance classes in New York, where I
worked, and New Jersey, where I lived, were beginning to proliferate. My cul-
tural background and personal interests motivated me to become involved. I
was also attracted to the dance’s beauty.
I began performing and training with the Eddie Torres Latin Dance Com-
pany in the late nineties, after taking lessons with Torres for a few months and
New Jersey–based salsa instructor Ismael Otero, director of Caribbean Soul
Dancers, for close to two years. My informal training at home had prepared me
to move in ways I was not consciously aware I could, serving as an empowering
experience that demonstrated the cultural capital of growing up surrounded
by Latin-Caribbean music, dance, and the complex, multilayered life-world of
sabor.
My work with Torres culminated in a 1998 performance at Madison Square
Garden as part of the twenty-third-annual Salsa Music Festival concert, orga-
nized by Ralph Mercado, founder and owner of the biggest salsa label at that
time (RMM). The salsa musicians we performed with that evening included La
India, Tito Rojas, Elvis Crespo, El Gran Combo, and Eddie Palmieri.
Salsa musicians tend to create and improvise on the spot when playing live,
expressing their own sabor and transmitting it to the audience. Knowing this,
Torres choreographed short sequences and left room for the dancers to impro-
vise, thus helping us become more proficient in improvisation—a vital aspect
of sabor that is often suppressed in competitive salsa dancing influenced by
ballroom dance aesthetics. Staged choreography nonetheless affects improvisa-
tion for both musicians and dancers, just as “recording imposes control over
improvisatory elements” in salsa music (Quintero Herencia 1997: 177). Per-
forming to live music at the concert was also challenging given that rehearsals
were conducted to recordings.
“Vamonos pa’l monte” (Let’s go to the mountains), a powerful piece by Ed-
die Palmieri, was the opening number. Rondón fittingly describes how this
salsa classic has “a mysterious force, full of power and sabor, with all its feeling
intact” even today, despite having been recorded so long ago (Rondón 2008:
283). Successfully and safely completing eight spins within one clave cycle (eight
beats) in three-inch heels on a precariously narrow platform above and behind
the band was one of the most challenging aspects of the partnered choreogra-
phy, but it was met with a loud roar from the crowd at Madison Square Garden,
some of whom could see the performers only from projections on large screens.
The dancers felt the excitement the audience transmitted; it was an energy that
was unlike anything I had experienced before, despite previous performance
experience with live bands.
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 127

The opening line of the song says, “Vamonos pa’l monte, pa’l monte pa’
guarachar”—Let’s go to the mountains, to the mountains to party and dance
(guarachar). Going to the mountains can be viewed as a form of cimarronaje,
or maroonage—in this case, freedom or escape from industrialized urban so-
ciety to connect with tradition and nature while experiencing the joy of move-
ment and music.5 Ángel Quintero Rivera discusses the song’s improvisatory
descarga (jam), montuno, and soneo sections as further expressions of freedom
in salsa (1999: 336). For me, performing to this song represented freedom from
corporate American culture. There was also a collective power in performing
synchronized choreography.
For the RMM salsa music concert that year, Torres created a visual and cor-
poreal expression of the music’s audible flavor by choreographing aggressive,
intricate, and fast-paced open footwork. While Torres is a forerunner of styl-
ized, choreographed salsa dancing, his choreography demonstrates his strong
connection with salsa music’s flavor, perhaps stemming from his experience
as a musician. Furthermore, while choreography can seem mechanical, when
salsa dancers possess confidence in their technical ability based on formal and/
or informal training, practice, and repetition, they are able to bring the fla-
vor of their connection with the music to life on stage, much as experienced
musicians do.

The Global Circulation of Sabor and Salsa Dancing

through the World Salsa Federation
Performing inspired me to pursue an academic career in performance studies.
Salsa, sabor y control by Quintero Rivera (1999) motivated my ethnographic
research on the role of sabor in salsa dancing in New York (2000–2003) and
Puerto Rico (2006), and Frances Aparicio’s “Salsa, maracas and baile” (1989–
1990) inspired me to explore the spiritual dimensions of sabor.
The global commercialization of sabor has emerged through the WSF’s
efforts to centralize salsa dancing performance standards and instruction,
but the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress has had the most significant globalizing
power. Both organizations include competitive salsa dancing and often mir-
ror the ballroom dance industry’s suppression of improvisation (see McMains
2009). However, transnational Latin American and Caribbean contestation of
competitive salsa dancing, which demonstrates class consciousness with re-
gard to sabor and sentimiento, persists. Furthermore, as mentioned previously,
my native-ethnographic research indicated that dancing salsa with sabor can
serve as a symbolic form of cultural nationalism, which is also transnational.
A shared class consciousness and concern for Africanist tradition also exists
among Puerto Ricans. This section explores these topics.
The WSF, founded by ballroom dancers Isaac and Laura Castro Altman, is
a corporation with headquarters in Miami, Florida. The organization describes
128 Priscilla Renta

itself as the “recognized world governing body for salsa competition” (World
Salsa Federation, n.d.). In 2012 the WSF website also emphasized that the or-
ganization was recognized by the International Olympic Committee. The WSF
has been at the forefront of bringing Latin ballroom standards to competitive
salsa dancing since 2001. Its mission includes setting official rules, securing
international recognition of rules, and creating a salsa dance instruction syl-
labus to promote the dance as both sport and art (World Salsa Federation, n.d.).
While competition has its virtues, the use of Latin ballroom standards for
salsa dancing can be troubling, particularly with regard to sabor as a form of
creativity. Furthermore, the WSF’s emphasis on Latin ballroom standards, offi-
cial rules, and uniformity reflect the cultural imperialism of the ballroom dance
industry while mirroring globalization’s movement toward “transforming the
world into a single social and cultural setting” (Roland Robertson, quoted in Pi-
etrobruno 2006: 23), which can lead to homogenization. Nonetheless, the WSF
promotes its DVD Latin Body Rhythms as “a must if you want to dance Salsa
with the maximum body action and SABOR!” (United States Dance Founda-
tion, n.d.). Given the WSF’s investment in combining competitive salsa danc-
ing with Euro-American-derived Latin ballroom standards (see Pietrobruno
2006: 132) and the misappropriation of Caribbean and Latin American dances
of African lineage, it is commendable that the organization has recognized the
aesthetic concept of sabor and its corporeal expression in this production; how-
ever, I focus here on the production’s use of ballroom dance vocabulary and its
relationship to the Latin-Caribbean aspects of sabor.
Starring Castro Altman, the DVD presents a holistic corporeal approach to
what I have elsewhere described as “Latin motion” (Renta 2004), a polycentrism
(see Gottschild 1996) and polyrhythm evident in most Afro-Latin dances,
which the ballroom industry describes as “Cuban motion” (likely because the
Latin-Caribbean dances imported in the early twentieth century were primar-
ily Cuban and because of Cuba’s role as a tropical playground for Americans
before the Revolution). Elsewhere, I have explained how this is the most chal-
lenging aspect of salsa for aspiring dancers, since it requires a kind of immer-
sion that resists commodification (Renta 2004: 148; see also Pietrobruno 2006:
140). Nonetheless, the WSF has created a way to package and sell Latin motion.
The ballroom version of Latin motion seems to include a large, somewhat exag-
gerated hip motion that concludes with a rolling and twisting action designed to
emphasize the movement visually. This action differs from the more contained
Afro-Latin-Caribbean movement, which is powerful yet flexible and relaxed. It
emphasizes the kinesthetic feeling produced through the dancer’s body, which
in turn creates a kinesthetic effect on those watching. The difference between
these two aesthetics is likely based on the difference between stylized dance
for competition and performance versus social, leisure-time dance in everyday
life. Nonetheless, one cannot ignore the hegemonic tropicalization (Aparicio
and Chávez-Silverman 1997) at the foundation of ballroom interpretations of
Latin social dances, which tend to either distort Latin motion’s body isolations
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 129

and polycentric, polyrhythmic quality—creating a tropicalized representation

of the movement aesthetic—or suppress it altogether.
The Latin Body Rhythms “cool body movements” section also demonstrates
Latin ballroom’s historical relationship with Latin motion. For instance, Castro
Altman teaches the aforementioned ballroom version, describing it as “add-
ing spice”—or perhaps flavor—for show or social dance. Castro Altman also
teaches an “Afro-Caribbean side movement” involving what the ballroom
industry calls the “cucaracha,” a lateral movement in the rib cage with the
shoulders rolling back in unison. The WSF does make an effort to create con-
sciousness surrounding salsa’s body isolations, but Castro Altman’s interpreta-
tion misses the fluid aspect of polycentrism, as well as the comfortable, relaxed
feeling that it engenders through its grounded, rooted stance and deep knee
flexion. The DVD attempts to capture the complexity of sabor as a corporeal
technique, but misses the opportunity to validate the concept of feeling, which
salsa dancers can produce and experience through creativity, improvisation,
and connection with the music. The WSF’s Latin ballroom-inspired interpre-
tation of sabor thus reflects the view that the dance is primarily a corporeal
technique rather than a holistic practice that involves spiritual and emotional
consciousness. The following section focuses on the significance of sabor as,
in contrast, a form of sentimiento, or feeling, within the context of the Con-
greso Mundial’s World Salsa Open Championship, developed in the new
millennium.

Global, Transnational, Latin American,

and Caribbean Concepts of Sabor and Salsa
A 2010 performance by three-time World Salsa Open champions Anita Santos
and Adrián Rodríguez posted on YouTube generated passionate commentary
that revealed how the polemics of sentimiento and sabor in salsa dancing are
connected to concepts of nationhood, class, and race.6 The winning couple’s
original performance at the annual World Salsa Open Championship took
place in 2009. Although the couple was representing Spain, which is where they
currently live and operate their dance business, Santos is from Brazil, and Ro-
dríguez is from Uruguay. After viewing the YouTube clip of their repeat perfor-
mance at the Latin Festival in Ludwigsburg in 2010, one user from Venezuela
commented, “Que fastidio con la manía de convertir en ‘balet’ todos los estilo
[sic]” (What a nuisance, the obsession of converting every style into ballet). The
comment serves as an archival ethnographic example of Latino sentiment re-
garding the influence of Europeanist aesthetic values. To be able to enter the
market of dance, with its legacy of cultural imperialism, Latinos have to styl-
ize salsa dancing to serve Europeanist aesthetic values, subsumed here under
the canon of ballet that influenced ballroom dance (see Pietrobruno 2006:
120–122). Meanwhile, the repeat performance in Ludwigsburg demonstrates
130 Priscilla Renta

the global circulation of competitive salsa dancing, which destabilizes Latin

American and Caribbean national identification with the genre.
While numerous competitive salsa dancing forms from many parts of the
world circulate on the Internet, functioning as a global theater for a virtual
audience, this video generated more heated commentary than any other I have
seen, particularly with regard to questions of sabor, sentimiento, and the def-
inition of salsa dancing. The responses came from an audience representing
different countries, all chiming in on what it means to dance salsa with feel-
ing. They include the following (all with original spelling, accentuation, and
capitalization; the country of the commenters or city, if known, has also been
included to demonstrate the global cross-section):

Bonita pareja, pero carecen del sabor a salsa.

(Beautiful couple, but they are missing the flavor of salsa.) —United
States

Que espectacular se vio pero prefiero una buena salsa de un viernes en

la noche de gente con ritmo y sabor.
(Spectacular, but I prefer some good salsa on a Friday night with people
who have rhythm and flavor.) —Mexico

La salsa callejera tiene mas sabor esta es mas formal.

(Street salsa has more flavor[;] this one is more formal.) —United States

Lots o enegies:) [sic] but no grace, no sabor. —Canada

No flavor, cuban dance is not some kind of sport, is not about speed
and weird moves, its all about feeling. —Miami, Spanish surname

Me parece “lo mismo de siempre”, mùsica a 300km x hora y ellos que

le caen atràs como locos sin saborear lo que estàn tratando de hacer.
Seràn personas excelentes, pero esa mùsica y ese estilo no me transmite
sensaciones, ni me recuerda nada que tenga que ver con el origen del
baile de la mùsica cubana (de donde nace todo). Algunas de esas cosas
se podìan apreciar, pero solo a nivel de cabaret (Tropicana) y no como
baile popular.
(It seems to me that it is “the same old thing,” music at 300km/hour and
they chase after it without savoring what they are trying to do. They
may be excellent people, but that music and that style do not give me
any sensations, and it does not remind me at all of anything that has
to do with the origin of Cuban dance music (from which everything
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 131

comes). Some of those things can be appreciated, but only at the level
of cabaret (Tropicana) and not as a dance of the people.) —Italy, Cuban
respondent

On the surface these comments reflect a preference for salsa as a social dance,
as opposed to competitive, professionalized performance dance. The re-
sponses also associate sabor with the concept of street dance, emphasizing its
ritual value over its exhibition value (see Schechner 2003) and the value of pro-
cess over product. Nonetheless, the comments also communicate something
deeper.
The respondent from Canada, for instance, equates sabor with grace, which
is a challenging concept to quantify, qualify, and define in a competitive and
cross-cultural context. Grace is a form of elegance and beauty, and Brenda
Dixon Gottschild defines elegance with regard to Europeanist dance as “domi-
nating the dancing body” with a centered, vertical, and straight spine, which
functions as a “monarch” from which all other movement emanates (1996: 8).
For Gottschild, the ballet canon on which the concept of elegance symbioti-
cally centers and organizes itself is a “structural principle” whereby “Europe
posited itself as the center of the world, with everything else controlled and de-
fined by it” (8). This element is visible in the world of competitive salsa dancing,
dominated by Europeanist aesthetic values of grace, elegance, beauty, and form
despite recent advances in the global appeal of Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean
aesthetic concepts and practices such as sabor. It is possible that the cultural
capital of sabor has transformed it into a status symbol on the global, profes-
sional social dance floor over the last several years but not in competition. How
well the cultural capital of sabor can generate monetary compensation for com-
petitive salsa dancers remains to be seen.
Some online comments suggest that competitive salsa dancing can be
spectacular and beautiful from a visual standpoint, perhaps employing Latin
ballroom’s concept of grace based on “extended legs and straight joints” (Pi-
etrobruno 2006: 131) yet completely devoid of sentimiento and sabor. Thus,
salsa as a Latin-Caribbean dance with a vibrant African lineage contains its
own form of grace with the power to change dominant cultural values in com-
petitive salsa dancing toward valuing percussion and its correspondent Afri-
can “get-down” stance (Gottschild 1996: 8). This posture can seem profane by
Europeanist standards but is indispensable to polycentric and polyrhythmic
forms of corporeal expression.
Sanabria (n.d.) associates the soul of salsa with percussion and rhythm,
also related to sentimiento and sabor, and Jorge Duany likewise writes, “The
very term salsa—roughly equivalent to ‘soul’ among North American blacks—
hints that percussion and especially drumming is central to this type of music”
(1984: 199). Thus, it is reasonable to connect salsa dancing and sabor’s soul and
life-force to corporeal interpretation of the music’s percussive and rhythmic
132 Priscilla Renta

elements. This aesthetic philosophy and corporeal practice, which engages a

discourse on race, also involves the cathartic experience related to salsa music’s
mambo, descarga, and soneo sections, which feature percussion and necessitate
the get-down stance.
While I have focused on the more critical online comments, the dancers
nonetheless inspired respect for their commitment to excellence, technical ex-
pertise, capacity to create beauty, and ability to dance with sabor to the extent
possible within competition. Sentimiento and sabor seem most palpable, how-
ever, when the percussive aspects of the music are expressed visually through
the body to a greater extent.
Cultural habitus has indeed shaped my interpretation and aesthetic sensi-
bility. Yet, as Pierre Bourdieu writes, “a work of art has meaning and interest
only for someone who possesses cultural competence” (1984: 2). The Europe-
anist concepts of grace and elegance are related to class and race, therefore it is
likewise feasible that the grace of sabor in salsa dancing may be found in and
based on the sensibilities of the working, lower, and under classes, and that it
has been valuable enough to endure oppression.
Reception theory based on Stuart Hall’s decoding model (2006), which
distinguishes between preferred dominant readings and negotiated or opposi-
tional readings of performance, is useful here. Competitive salsa dancing, for
instance, functions within the sphere of dominant readings based on Europe-
anist aesthetic values, whereas the online commentaries are oppositional ones.
Bourdieu’s concept of the “legitimate” culture’s “hierarchy of taste” (Allen and
Anderson 1994: 70–74) can also be applied to salsa dancing’s transformation
into a concert-style art form and competitive ballroom dance in the context of
its global commercialization.
Sabor (flavor) and sentimiento (feeling) function within the concept and
practice of “legitimate” taste (Bourdieu 1984: 16) rooted in Western ideals.
These include elegance, associated with Europeanist “good” taste, which itself
is influenced by socioeconomic class, according to Bourdieu (1984: 75). Sabor’s
association with street salsa is thus powerful from a sociocultural standpoint in
that it challenges the dominant culture’s hierarchy of taste. However, the class
positions of the online respondents are not evident, and so the connection be-
tween taste and social class becomes destabilized in the age of globalization
and the equalizing Internet (Friedman 2005). And while YouTube clips may
share key ontological features with live performance (Blades 2011: 49), they
document without necessarily capturing feeling. Thus, watching salsa dancing
on YouTube can affect the perception and reception of sentimiento and sabor.
In light of this, the section that follows discusses my live native-ethnographic
experience on the island, focusing on the Congreso Mundial de la Salsa/Puerto
Rico Salsa Congress, including how the World Salsa Open Championship in
2006 destabilized the connection between Puerto Rican nationhood, salsa
dancing, and sabor. My research also indicated that some Puerto Ricans on
the island associate specific styles and dance techniques with sabor (see Renta
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 133

2008), leading to contentious discussions about the Congreso Mundial, global

commercialization, and competitive salsa dancing.

El Congreso Mundial de la Salsa and the Globalization

of Salsa Dancing
While salsa dance congresses now happen around the world year-round, it was
nonetheless the transnational collaboration between Puerto Ricans Elí Irizarry
from the island and Quetzy Olmos from New York that gave birth to the first
Congreso Mundial de la Salsa (World Salsa Congress) in Puerto Rico in 1997,
now called the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress. With the aid of the Internet, the
congress has had tremendous globalizing power. The event centers on staged
performances and workshops taught by salsa dancers from around the globe,
including Puerto Ricans from both the island and the U.S. diaspora. The trans-
national aspect of the salsa dancing industry, combined with the significance
sabor holds for Puerto Ricans in the United States, challenges official, insular,
classist, and racist concepts of nationhood on the island that exclude Diaspori-
cans (see Mariposa, n.d.), Puerto Rico’s African heritage, and the working-class
sectors of society that felt it necessary to migrate. This has been a postmod-
ern ideological shift also tied to salsa’s transformation from a social dance to a
globalized genre of stylized techniques, choreographed concert dance perfor-
mances, competition, and dancesport.
Salsa dancing has gone from a maligned street dance with African roots to
a showcase for the tourism industry as a result of the congress. Hosted annually
in the Grand Ballroom of the prestigious San Juan Hotel (located in the popu-
lar tourist area of Isla Verde), the congress has also transformed salsa dancing
into an official symbol or display of Puerto Rican nationhood. Thus, the global
commercialization of salsa dancing, the tourism industry in Puerto Rico, and
Puerto Rican nationalism have a symbiotic relationship.
The promotional alliance between the congress and the Puerto Rico Tour-
ism Company endorses salsa music and dance as a global, transnational Latin
American, Caribbean, and Puerto Rican national genre.7 Salsa music concerts
performed by the most renowned, nationally symbolic Puerto Rican salsa
bands and musicians, including the island’s bandera musical (musical flag), El
Gran Combo, are an integral part of the congress, highlighting the close re-
lationship between salsa music, dance, and nationhood. The globalization of
salsa music has set the stage for the globalization of salsa dancing through the
congress; thus, salsa dancing now joins music in its ambassadorship of Puerto
Rican culture around the world.
The global, transnational salsa music styles that have developed through-
out the last several decades include Cuban, New York, Puerto Rican, Venezue-
lan, Colombian, Japanese, African, and European salsa (see Waxer 2002: 10–11,
13); national salsa dancing styles have also developed across the globe. Irizarry
134 Priscilla Renta

identified six styles of dancing salsa in 2006, including Cuban rueda, New York
mambo, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Venezuelan, Los Angeles, and Dutch (“Ar-
ranca” 2005). One could argue that these national styles and their local varie­
ties of sabor challenge homogenization, despite the success of the congress in
globalizing salsa dancing.
Professional salsa dance instructor Miguel Pérez differentiated Puerto
Rican from other styles in 2006, stating, “Con el congreso se creó una nueva
manera de bailar: Los Angeles, acrobacia; New York, vueltas; Puerto Rico, sa-
bor” (The congress created a new way of dancing: Los Angeles, acrobatics; New
York, turns; Puerto Rico, flavor) (2006). Yet rather than a new way of danc-
ing, the congress brought a new way of classifying and categorizing what was
already happening. Pérez highlighted the relationship between Puerto Rican
nationhood, salsa dancing, and sabor within the context of global commer-
cialization. He also noted that at one point in Puerto Rico salsa dancing was
“paso libre na’ ma’” (free-style steps only), which he believed allowed for greater
creativity, and affirmed that the renowned dancer Papito Jalajala from Puerto
Rico “bailaba más que nada pasos libres, no en pareja” (danced free-style steps
more than anything, not partner work). Papito Jalajala was recognized globally,
especially in Italy, for his sabor, which may also make a case for the possibil-
ity that some New York approaches to salsa dancing can limit the expression
of sabor. For example, while New York dancers were known for excelling in
Palladium-style open footwork in the late nineties, they developed an emphasis
on spinning and turn patterns over the last ten years that can inhibit impro-
visation and expression, particularly for the follower (typically women). One
could say that, in limiting expression in this way, sabor is suppressed; however,
that does not diminish the aesthetic value of sabor for Diasporicans. Sabor is
transnational in scope.

The 2006 World Salsa Open Championship in Puerto Rico

The predominance of turn patterns relates to the ballroom dance industry’s
influence, which has made way for competitive salsa dancing. Competitive
salsa dancing also disrupts the dance’s perceived connection to Puerto Rican
nationhood, as demonstrated by comments regarding the World Salsa Open
Championship’s 2006 winners, Australian dance duo Luda Kroiter and Oliver
Pineda. Puerto Rican Ángel Rodríguez and Venezuelan Sheila de Jesús won the
championship in 2005, and Rodríguez competed once again in 2006. During
intermission a mechanical engineer who dances professional salsa said, “An-
gelito always gains points on improvisation; those focused on lifts and chore-
ography don’t do well in this area” (Santos 2006). Yet the 2006 title went to the
Australians.
Kroiter is a Dancing with the Stars celebrity in Australia, and Pineda, of
Chilean descent, danced in the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olym-
pics. A well-known instructor who often challenges congress practices seemed
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 135

vexed when he heard the announcement the following day. It appeared that the
connection between Puerto Rican nationhood and salsa dancing was becoming
unstable as a result of the new dance practices congress organizers brought to
the island. This viewpoint is reminiscent of Agustín Laó-Montes’s concern over
how “‘world historical identities’ . . . in Western modernity have been decen-
tered, fragmented, and eroded in the current phase of globalization of capital
and culture” (2001: 12). And just as Aparicio and Cándida Jáquez voice concern
about the effects of globalization on Latin popular music, especially “how local
meanings are transformed and lost” (2003: 1–2), the mechanical engineer wor-
ried, “Se puede globalizar [la salsa] pero no [debemos] desatender la raíz, por
ejemplo, el sabor. . . . Tenemos que responsabilizarnos de esto, los que tienen el
poder, como el congreso no lo está haciendo” (Salsa can be globalized, but we
should not neglect our roots, such as sabor. . . . We have to take responsibil-
ity for this, those who are in power, since the congress is not doing it) (Santos
2006). These concerns suggest the sense of belonging salsa provides for Puerto
Ricans, while pointing to the congress’s role in salsa dancing’s perceived loss of
national and local flavor in the context of globalization.

Sabor in Puerto Rico: Style and Technique

The competitive salsa dancing the congress brought to Puerto Rico was in-
fluenced by what many describe as salsa de salón, ballroom salsa, which em-
phasizes Europeanist aesthetic values over Afro-Caribbean sensibilities. Some
also critique the congress for what they call classist and elitist practices. For
instance, Arthur Murray Caribbean Dance Academy owner Tato Conrad re-
calls that, partly as a result of the first Puerto Rico Salsa Congress, promotion
for salsa classes on the island began to read, “Aprenda a bailar salsa con estilo,
con clase, con cachet” (Learn to dance salsa with style, with class, with cachet),
demonstrating the connection between stylization and notions of class within
the space of the dance academy. According to Conrad (2006), who is also a
musician, percussionist, and founder of the Museo Taller Africano de Puerto
Rico (African Museum Workshop of Puerto Rico), housed within the Arthur
Murray Dance Academy, these dance classes were part of a movement that so-
lidified the practice of dancing on-2, or beginning on the second count of an
eight-beat bar, in Puerto Rico (see Chapters 2 and 4).
Puerto Rican–style salsa dancing is associated with sabor, improvisation,
and polycentrism but also with technique.8 According to Tito Ortos, one of the
island’s most sought-after professional salsa performers, televised dancing was
the island’s first exposure to dancing on-2 (bailar en dos). Before that, Puerto
Ricans from the island danced primarily on-1, or to “el tiempo natural de la
música” (the natural time of the music). While the worldwide cultural impe-
rialism of the Arthur Murray studios, which teach salsa dancing on-1, raises
concerns, Puerto Rico’s Arthur Murray Caribbean Dance Academy contin-
ues to teach salsa dancing on-1 in a style Conrad calls estilo cocolo, rooted in
136 Priscilla Renta

the practice of salsa as a social dance with working-class, Afro–Puerto Rican

roots. He describes dancing salsa cocola as follows: “Se baila doblao, se marca el
paso; es circular” (It is danced bent forward, you mark the steps; it is circular).
This approach to dancing salsa contrasts with the salsa de salón promoted by
the congress, a more linear form that focuses on lengthening the body. The
grounding and flexion Conrad mentions are the foundation of the polycentric
aspect of sabor. In contrast, professional salsa dance instructor Miguel Rodrí-
guez affirms that for him “dancing on clave,” which is how Puerto Ricans on
the island refer to dancing on-2, has more sabor (Rodríguez 2006).
Clave underpins salsa music’s polyrhythm. As an African element in Latin
music, it is intimately tied to the concept of tradition. Ortos explains that the
reasoning behind the preference for the technique is that the second beat in a
bar of salsa music arranged in 2-3 coincides with the first strike of the clave
(Ortos 2006).9 Some performers, instructors, and dancers in Puerto Rico also
consider dancing on clave the more correct and “authentic” approach to danc-
ing salsa. In contrast, to Conrad, “el ‘uno’ es cocolo . . . y es también clave” (the
“one” is cocolo . . . and is also clave), indicating that perceptions of authenticity
are not necessarily tied to a particular technique. Such contradictions suggest
that the embodiment of sabor and its connection to Afro–Puerto Rican tradi-
tion can manifest through different approaches. Conrad further states, “Bailar
no es un conteo, es una expresión” (Dancing is not counting, it is expression).
In my view, what is “authentic” is the “spirit” of the dance, despite dancers’
wanting to concretize it in terms of the material experiences of race and class.
Furthermore, a salsa dancing champion from Latin America said, regarding
authenticity, competencia, y deporte (competition and dancesport), “No nos
permite ser auténticos porque todos sentimos [la música] diferente” (It does not
allow us to be authentic because everyone feels [the music] differently) (Santos
2006).
Material experiences of this kind necessitate discussion, despite the risk
that they will be perceived as essentialist from a postmodern academic perspec-
tive. Salsa dancers can express who they are and connect with the most authen-
tic part of themselves when embodying the aesthetic concept of sabor. As an
authentic expression of creativity—for example, through improvisation—sa-
bor may be among the losses involved in the global commercialization of salsa
dancing. Salsa’s nomenclature is based on the concept of flavor. Eliminating
sabor obliterates salsa’s purpose in the world of global movement and sound.

Conclusion
Salsa dancing and sabor are forms of performance, aesthetic expressions of
consciousness involving the spiritual, mental, emotional, and corporeal in rela-
tion to the global, transnational, national, and sociopolitical. Different perfor-
mance contexts may, however, focus on only one aspect of salsa, thus moving it
away from its holistic practice.
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 137

This chapter has been a journey through the global commercialization of

salsa dancing and sabor in the context of the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress and
competitive salsa dancing, as well as the private, everyday practices of salsa
dancing and sabor in my own family. Through these very different lenses, I
have explored the rise of professional, staged, choreographed salsa dancing and
instruction and the polemics surrounding sabor and technique, including is-
sues of class and race. A key aspect of the conversation has been the contrast
between the soul force and life force of salsa and sabor involving Africanist
aesthetic values, including the emphasis on percussion and rhythm, and Latin
ballroom and Europeanist values.
Through my discussion of the WSF, I have elaborated on the relationship
between the globalization of salsa dancing, the centralization of power, and the
homogenization often inherent in ballroom dance practices, which national
salsa dancing styles challenge. Focusing on the Puerto Rican style of perform-
ing and dancing salsa on the island, I have demonstrated that its relationship
to sabor reveals it to be associated with embodying Puerto Rican nationhood.
The WSF is generating a globalized and commercialized concept of sabor in-
fluenced by the ballroom industry, Europeanist aesthetics, and tropicalization.
While the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress is also influenced by these features, it
has produced a concept of Puerto Rican nationhood connected to salsa and sa-
bor, based on national or local philosophies, values, ideals, and practices. These
philosophies are still taking shape and may sometimes be in conflict but none-
theless reveal a shared concern for honoring tradition, African consciousness,
and aesthetics. Globalized, commercialized, staged representations of salsa
dance may indeed lead to a loss of sabor in salsa dancing. Nonetheless, sabor, in
its embodiment of working-class taste and its increased use as cultural capital
in the global salsa scene, may have the power to alter Europeanist concepts of
beauty, elegance, and grace.

Notes
Acknowledgments: This work was made possible by a Center for Puerto Rican Studies Di-
aspora Research Grant and a Northwestern University Graduate Research Grant in 2006.

1. See Schechner 2003: 227.

2. Regarding salsa music and global legitimacy, see Aparicio 1998: 73–74.
3. See [Link]
4. See [Link]
5. According to Quintero Herencia, salsa of this kind camouflages and conceals con-
testation. Thus, to “thematize this camouflage . . . is a strategy in the war over the sabor
(flavor) of the nation” (1997: 195), which is transnational.
6. See [Link]
7. The congress emerged during a prostatehood context that promoted entrepre-
neurship, competition, privatization, and the governor’s New Economic Model. The
February–March 2006 issue of ¡Qué Pasa! magazine reported that “Puerto Rico receives
approximately 3.7 million tourists annually which represent a $3,209 million injection into
138 Priscilla Renta

the local economy” (“Que Pasa TV!” 2006: 115). Puerto Rico Tourism Company strategist
Mario González de la Fuente, who collaborated with the tourist cultural initiative for eight
years, affirmed that the congress is “the summer event that generates the most nights/
rooms in the hotel industry,” representing “an economic injection of 1.8 million dollars” in
the area of tourism alone (quoted in “Arranca” 2005; my translation). Diasporicans are part
of this phenomenon. González adds, “Producers of the event also contribute to the local
economy . . . while promoting the cultural element: music.” Thus, it makes sense that the
congress holds such significance for Puerto Rico.
8. The influence of dancing on-2 on the island is the result of the circular migration
of Puerto Rican salsa dancers and instructors between the island and New York. This
transnational movement, which dates back decades, was pivotal to the development of
the transnational salsa dancing industry and the context in which the congress emerged.
Professional New York mambo dancers Aníbal Vásquez and Mike Ramos return-migrated
to the island in the fifties, bringing the practice of dancing on-2 back with them, which
led to the development of this dance practice in the following decades. Ramos was the
choreographer for Gran Combo, which began to be featured on Puerto Rican television in
the early sixties.
9. Chris Washburne writes that sabor is also synonymous with the clave, which “pro-
vides rhythmic momentum,” “drive,” and “swing” (2008: 178–179) in the world of profes-
sional salsa musicians, salsa music production, performance, and recording in New York.

References
Allen, Douglas E., and Paul F. Anderson. 1994. “Consumption and Social Stratification:
Bourdieu’s Distinction.” In Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 21, ed. Chris T. Allen
and Deborah Roedder, 70–74. Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research.
Aparicio, Frances. 1989–1990. “Salsa, Maracas and Baile: Latin Popular Music in the
Poetry of Victor Hernandez Cruz.” Melus 16 (1): 43–58.
———. 1998. Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Aparicio, Frances R., and Susana Chávez-Silverman. 1997. Tropicalizations: Transcultural
Representations of ‘Latinidad.’ Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College.
Aparicio, Frances, and Cándida Jáquez, with María Elena Cepeda. 2003. Musical
Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin/o America. New York:
Palgrave.
“Arranca el Puerto Rico Salsa Congress.” 2005. Fundación Nacional para la Cultura
Popular, July 23. Available at [Link]
.shtml.
Blades, Hetty. 2011. “Dance on the Internet: An Ontological Investigation.” Postgraduate
Journal of Aesthetics 8 (1): 40–52. Available at [Link]
thetics/article/download/64/61.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans.
Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Conrad, Tato. 2006. Personal communication. July 30. Puerto Rico.
Duany, Jorge. 1984. “Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa.”
Latin American Music Review 5 (2): 186–215.
———. 2001. The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the
United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Friedman, Thomas L. 2005. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) 139

Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 1996. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance:
Dance and Other Contexts. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Hall, Stuart. 2006. Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79.
Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Laó-Montes, Agustín. 2001. “Introduction.” In Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New
York, ed. Agustín Laó-Montes and Arlene M. Dávila, 1–54. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Mariposa (María Teresa Fernández). n.d. “Ode to the Diasporican.” Boricua Poetry.
Available at [Link] (accessed December
27, 2012).
McMains, Juliet. 2009. “Dancing Latin/Latin Dancing.” In Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy
Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, ed. Julie Malnig, 302–323. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Ortos, Tito. 2006. Interview by Priscilla Renta. June 7. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Pérez, Miguel. 2006. Personal communication. July 21. Puerto Rico.
Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. 2006. Salsa and Its Transnational Moves. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books.
“Que Pasa TV! A New Medium for the Promotion of Tourism Is Born!” 2006. ¡Qué Pasa!
February–March, p. 115.
Quintero Herencia, Juan Carlos. 1997. “Notes toward a Reading of Salsa,” trans. Celeste
Fraser Delgado. In Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America, ed. Celeste
Fraser Delgado and José Esteban Muñoz, 189–222. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Quintero Rivera, Ángel G. 1999. ¡Salsa, sabor y control! Sociología de la música “tropical.”
2nd ed. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.
Renta, Priscilla. 2004. “Salsa Dance: Latino/a History in Motion.” Centro: Journal of the
Center for Puerto Rican Studies 16 (2): 138–157.
———. 2008. “Migración de retorno y decisiones estéticas: Bailando salsa entre Nueva York
y Puerto Rico.” In El son y la salsa en la identidad del Caribe, ed. Darío Tejeda and
Rafael Emilio Yunén, 155–165. Proceedings of the I Congreso de Música, Identidad, y
Cultura en el Caribe. Santiago: Centro León and INEC.
Rodríguez, Miguel. 2006. Interview by Priscilla Renta. July 22. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Romero, Enrique. 2000. Salsa: El orgullo del barrio. Madrid: Celeste Ediciones.
Rondón, César Miguel. 2008. The Book of Salsa: A Chronicle of Urban Music from the
Caribbean to New York City, trans. Frances R. Aparicio and Jackie White. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
Sanabria, Izzy. n.d. “What Is Salsa.” [Link]. Available at [Link]
[Link]/[Link] (accessed December 26, 2012.
Santos, Manuel (pseudonym). 2006. Personal communication. July 24.
Schechner, Richard. 2003. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
SpanishDict, s.v. “cadencia.” Available at [Link]
(accessed January 1, 2013).
United States Dance Foundation. n.d. “Latin Body Rhythms.” Available at [Link]
latin_body_rhythms.html (accessed September 17, 2012).
Washburne, Chris. 2008. Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York City.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Waxer, Lise, ed. 2002. Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular
Music. New York: Routledge.
World Salsa Federation. n.d. “About Page.” Available at [Link]
.com/[Link] (accessed July 8, 2013).
8
Identity Is Also Danced
(Cali, Colombia)
Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel
(Translated by Sydney Hutchinson)

Bailar es Dancing is
escribir con el cuerpo en el espacio writing with the body in space
representar el tiempo sin nombrarlo representing time without naming it
marcar con el gesto un sólo instante marking a single instant with a gesture
soñar que uno no es uno sino el ritmo dreaming that one is not oneself, but rhythm
sentir que es la vida la que baila feeling that it is life itself that is dancing

Identity as Story: A Constructed Discourse

I
consider identity to be a story constructed by a social actor about that actor to
differentiate him- or herself from others. Participants in a construction may
include “different historical actors, like schools, governments, intellectuals,
[and] cultural researchers,” or mass media (Melo 2006: 87). Once the story is
defined, community members latch onto it to identify themselves inside and
outside the community as having particular characteristics and as being linked
to a group, a territory, a tradition.
The narrative about identity that is constructed presents certain arbitrary
features, since some characteristics are discarded and others are selected as
those that the subjects must accept to represent themselves and to be repre-
sented. The identity constructed in this way attributes the selected properties
to an entire community, as if everyone were equal, homogenous, and culturally
uniform. The homogenizing discourse of identity denies tensions and differ-
ences that may exist within the group at the same time that it ignores other,
equally constructed identity stories. Social agents identify with some stories
more than others insofar as those stories have common referents within the
group that adopts them. This identification is a form of recognition that is gen-
erally interpreted as identity.
In recent decades, the identity story of Santiago de Cali has unavoidably
intersected with the image created around salsa and its dance, as expressed
in the slogan, “Cali, world capital of salsa.” In my book Salsa in Cali (1992),
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 141

I discuss this and speak of the social process through which this music gains
meaning for the “popular” sectors of the city.1 Here I discuss the dance to argue
that identity is also danced. This means that through salsa dancing, identity is
constructed and expressed from the performativity of the body and not from a
rational or political discourse. Dance, as a kinesic and proxemic configuration,
makes the body a site for the enunciation of identity. It is not through verbal
language but through movement and body language that this new identity at-
tached to the city of Cali and its sectors is defined.

Dances and Dancers

If we define dance as a system of nonverbal communication and as an act
through which social relations are projected, we may now establish a distinc-
tion between studio dancers and social dancers. I use the term “bailadores”2
for those who enjoy dance as a recreational practice—“social dance”—linked
to leisure and spare time, undertaken for the pleasure it provokes, for desire, or
for other motivating factors. Bailadores have no pretensions to professionalism
or participation in the spectacle of show business, although they do have an
underlying interest in transcending the functional routines of daily life.
I use the term “bailarines”3 for the type of dancer who takes up dance not
only for pleasure but also as a profession, engaging in formalized exercises of
teaching or apprenticeship such as rehearsals and workshops. Bailarines per-
form in public or private shows, either as soloists or as members of a school,
group, or artistic company, and they obtain economic and symbolic capital
from their profession. Bailarines thus insert themselves into the show business
market and into a field of practices where they share the opportunities and ten-
sions of that environment with peers (companions and rivals) and also compete
for available resources within small or large cultural industries.
A bailarín begins as a bailador, becoming a bailarín if he or she has the
intention and the necessary conditions to do so. On the other hand, a bailarín
is a bailarín insofar as he or she achieves competence—creative capacity, not
only technical ability—and exhibits it to peers and audiences who endorse and
recognize it. In addition, however, the bailarín becomes more of a bailador
when participating in a festivity (rumba), detached from his or her mercantile
or corporate function. Another difference between the two is that bailarines
dance for an audience for whom they exhibit their qualities and virtues, while
bailadores do this principally for themselves and their partners, although they
also expose themselves to the gaze of others.
One can conceive of a third category to designate the bailadores who submit
themselves to formal pedagogy, not necessarily to participate in show business
or become part of the market for spectacle but only to qualify their abilities
and perform better in social dancing. In any case, transitioning from bailador
to bailarín requires advancing through stages, such as belonging to a school or
academy, participating in festivals and competitions (Figure 8.1), abiding by
142 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

Figure 8.1. A 1990s salsa competition held in Cali. (Photograph by Orlando Narváez. From
the collection of Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel.)

rules and procedures, and achieving standards of measurement and qualifica-

tion, besides the routes of practice and training.
The distinction between bailarines and bailadores as social roles is univer-
sal, whether they dance, for example, salsa, tango, or Brazilian samba. At the
same time, the relationship between the two is normally more complex, given
that bailarines arise from bailadores who, as part of a dance tradition (like salsa
dancing in Cali), not only become professionalized but also contribute to the
development of the dance, to its aesthetic re-creation as a highly elaborated ar-
tistic language, different from more conventional dance.
Cali is located in southwest Colombia, on a plateau in the Andes mountains
but close to the port of Buenaventura on the Pacific coast. However, it is musi-
cally tied to the Caribbean, above all to Cuba and Puerto Rico, influenced by
recordings and live performances by the most important groups from those
islands as well as by Mexican cinema. The population of Cali, or Caleños, is the
product of the a mixture of three ethnic groups: the white, Spanish minority;
the indigenous, who survive to this day; and the black African descendants.
Mestizos, blacks, and mulattos form the majority of the current population of
2.8 million. Cali’s economy was linked to gold mining between the seventeenth
and nineteenth centuries, which explains the presence of slaves. In the twen-
tieth century, manufacturing and the sugar industry were most important in
the city’s economy. In the twenty-first, Cali is developing into a city of services
thanks to growth in the service industry. A black population and sugar indus-
try are further similarities to Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 143

The historical conjunction between bailadores, bailarines, and the dance

tradition in a city like Cali gave rise to different bodily modes of salsa genres—
different ways of dancing salsa—in Cali’s recent history. Among these, the one
I call the classic Caleño style, developed by bailadores in the 1940s and 1950s,
stands out. Bailarines have presented this style on the international stage in
contests, congresses, films, and festivals since the 1970s.
This style, continued today by salsa’s old guard in dances and at viejote-
cas,4 has influences from son, swing, and foxtrot in the 1930s; the guaracha
and mambo that Caleños danced in the 1940s and 1950s, influenced by the
Mexican pachucos (youths belonging to a subculture characterized by its dis-
tinctive dress, speech, and dancing) in the movies; and bolero, pasodoble, and
chachachá, all danced in cabarets and brothels in Cali’s red-light district in
the 1950s. After the 1960s and with the popularity of pachangas (parties), it
was updated with the jumps of boogaloo, the improvisations of guaguancó,
the softness of the guajira, and the feeling of the son montuno, all grouped un-
der the generic term of “salsa.” During the last five years in bailarines’ shows,
classic Caleño style has been fortified with movements originating in classical
dance and ballet, such as standing on the toes or extending the arms and turn-
ing the hands.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, this language spread throughout the lower-
class barrios of Cali, embedding itself in the generations that developed it and
passed it on to their descendants and to the city that gave them life. The ges-
tation and consolidation of this dance language was a marginal construction
of the streets, far from formal institutions, foreign to official support, and in
opposition to dominant morality. It was a language created initially outside
schools and academies, although today these institutions have catalyzed the
existing repertoires to re-create and empower them within a new context.
This language has lived on in the feet and the memories of the current world
champions in the cabaret salsa category as a style with agility in leg move-
ment, audacity in the lifts and aerials, speed in the feet, and sophistication in
improvisation.
The language re-created and transformed by contemporary Caleño danc-
ers from some fifty schools and academies as cabaret salsa encompasses the
heritage contributed by several generations. This rigorous and demanding lan-
guage is the synthesis of a long-term process whose most remote antecedents
take us back to the colonial period, the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries,
when slavery existed in our region.

The Body in History

The presence of the bailarines and the classic Caleño style on the contemporary
global scene since 2000 is a conquest of great value for them and for Cali. But
it is not because of luck or happenstance. It is the result of a long historical and
social process throughout the twentieth century in which the popular sectors
144 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

Figure 8.2. Verbena callejera (salsa street party) at the Cali Feria in the 1970s or 1980s. (From
the collection of Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel.)

have participated with their musical and dance practices. In the second half of
the century, the style multiplied in street parties, or verbenas (see Figure 8.2),
during Cali’s Feria, a festival celebrated since 1957 between December 25 and
January 1, which includes bullfights, musical performances, and dances. It was
also reproduced in kiosks and discos and in the terraces and shelters (with
dance floor included) constructed whenever the city expanded and a new bar-
rio was founded. It was a style without a name, promoted by these griles (danc-
ing spots) in the city center through informal competitions in which couples
competed on the dance floor to win applause. Thus emerged the first famous
dancers of the 1960s and 1970s, who traveled from floor to floor throughout
the city, earning applause and free drinks on the dance’s tab.
It was in those spaces and in these practices, and others described below,
that the classic Caleño style was consolidated as a matrix that accepts variations
and improvisations in accordance with the salsa music played.

From Yesterday’s Slave to Today’s Dancer

The dancing body is a historically determined body, one that is modeled and
molded according to values, cognitive schemes, and social practices that we can
locate with relative precision in time and space. Dancing salsa in Cali is associ-
ated historically and anthropologically with the black body, the slave body sub-
mitted to an economic system of merciless exploitation from the seventeenth to
the nineteenth centuries in this city. Literary works like María by Jorge Isaacs,
El alférez real by Eustaquio Palacios, and chronicles of the nineteenth century
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 145

allude to dances and parties, at haciendas or in villages, where blacks and mu-
lattos were the principal actors.
Because of slavery and the sociocultural legacy of the slave hacienda, Cali
became a mulatto city, ethnically speaking, with a wide plebian social base that
generated fundamental values including personal autonomy and a more flex-
ible morality regarding the body and sexuality, less rigid than that imposed by
the white, Catholic, patriarchal elite of colonial society and the slave system. A
body repressed by Christian morality and control over sexuality could under-
take many activities but could freely deploy itself in dance only with difficulty.
Flexible morality meant that the body and eroticism were less constrained by
the Catholic religion, which imposes a strong censure on instincts and rigid
control over posture and bodily expression, both conscious and unconscious.
A less constrained body is freer to feel and to make itself felt, is a body less
repressed in communicating gesturally, without words, a body less inhibited
in its relations to others. Blacks developed those two values, flexible moral-
ity about the body and sexuality and personal autonomy, as forms of cultural
resistance in the context of unequal interactions with slaveholders but relative
equality in relation to other plebian sectors.
The survival and cultural reproduction of these values, together with the
availability of time in subaltern sectors, would be the anthropological basis that
made possible the development of dance as a language particular to the plebian
social base of Cali. Subaltern sectors, united by similar socioeconomic condi-
tions, had greater racial tolerance than did the elites and a democratization of
social relations. The town council therefore forbade “the plebians to celebrate
dances in the day or at night, or at any time, because of the evils they brought:
drunkenness, incest, concubinage, and other scandals and public crimes”
(Rodríguez 1996: 76).
In this complex cultural heritage of values, body, and social practices, one
can find the “cement” of the modern popular dance that develops in Cali in the
mid-twentieth century in the new subaltern social sectors.5
Although this corporeal language has been elevated to its maximal expres-
sion in recent decades, one must recognize these historical and anthropological
antecedents. It is no accident that the majority of the world champions of cab-
aret-style salsa are young blacks and mulattos from poor families and barrios,
descendants of former slaves and of the popular social strata I have described.
The dancers of salsa and Antillean music in the 1950s–1970s in Cali were also
mainly blacks or mulattos: Benigno Holguín, “El Negro Domingo,” “Telembi
King,” “Catacolí,” “El Negro Manchura,” “Yimy Bugalú,” Evelio Carabalí, “Wa-
tusi,” and many others who came from the outskirts and the margins, young
people who made use of the street and free time to make dance their raison
d’être.6 Black and mulatto women have also distinguished themselves as great
dancers. Mulatta-mestiza “Amparo Arrebato” and, later, the black women Lili-
ana Salinas and Venicia Cárdenas, inheritors of the 1980s–1990s Cali Rumba
dance company, contributed to the consolidation of this danced language.
146 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

Salinas was the first to participate in an international congress in Puerto Rico,

where she danced with Luis Eduardo “El Mulato” Hernández in the mid-1990s.
As in a relay race, El Mulato then took over the task of continuing to promote
classic Caleño style and to develop it with new steps, figures, and choreogra-
phies. Throughout this process, the black body has been indispensable. And
although not only black dancers excel at this artistic activity, many of the best
dancers are black or mulatto youth.
This proficiency is not a result of any essentialist reason or the lack of other
talents but rather of the absence of opportunities in most other, perhaps more
lucrative, areas of artistic or economic production. Thanks to these dancers,
however, a new identity story has been constructed with respect to the black
population and its aptitudes for music and dance. This story is directly tied to
the similar imaginaries that emerged from Latin music and salsa to circulate
throughout the world, vindicating Africa, its music, and its descendants. But
it is also an identity story involving black and nonblack dancers and favoring
Santiago de Cali, a tale globalized through the television and print media that
highlight these dancers’ achievements. Without doubt, strategies of profession-
alization were necessary to allow them to get to the summit where they are to-
day, but without historical antecedents and the popular acceptance that sustain
them, these strategies would have borne fruit only with difficulty.
Through salsa and its dance, black Caleños have been vindicated as musi-
cians and dancers. In both roles they have gained centrality and visibility and
thus some social inclusion, although only in small groups. As John Genner
Vásquez, one of the dancers I interviewed for this chapter, commented, “Thanks
to salsa dancing, I have been able to ‘change my closet’ [i.e., upgrade my ward-
robe and appearance], I have helped my mother, and my life has changed, as it
has changed for other dancers” (2007). But this is not a vindication achieved
through an explicit political discourse or through a social movement that fights
for the rights of ethnic minorities. It is a vindication achieved in a completely
different arena, that of the salsa event in Santiago de Cali, where many of these
young dancers are also gay.
This perspective reveals a changed pattern of action and a broken stereo-
type about salsa dancing, assumed generally to fall within a machista (male-
dominant) context, in which the man shows off his body and his dance and
seduces and conquers women, affirming his role as a macho. The gay dancer,
when he and his (female) partner compete with other couples, must assume a
masculine role like any other macho, denying or hiding his gay identity. This
role is imposed on him—or established—as one of the conditions of the enter-
tainment market. But when going out informally as a bailador in a disco, the
same bailarín exhibits his gay identity and assumes both masculine and femi-
nine roles when dancing with other men, whether gay or not, or when dancing
with women. In both cases, this irruption of the bailarín and the gay bailador—
or of the gay as a bailarín and as a bailador—is a very important achievement
for gays and for society in general, although it is still a small-scale phenomenon.
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 147

Even so, some gay discos in Cali have modified their usual pop, rock, techno, or
electronica musical programming to include more salsa, so that gay bailarines,
who attend as bailadores, will display their dance abilities and creativity.
The growth in number and visibility of gay male dancers is a result of fac-
tors such as greater acceptance of homosexuality in contemporary society; the
political work of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups; and new social
dynamics like the expansion of civil rights, recognition of diversity, and accep-
tance of minorities. While some mestizo and white gay dancers have also become
dance stars, the many black and mulatto members of the salsa schools have found
double vindication in the dance: vindication of their racialized ethnicity and of
their homosexuality, both stigmatized and discriminated against through racist
and religious ideologies. Their visible, central presence contrasts with the image
of the macho, womanizing dancer that predominated among the professional
dancers of Cali until twenty years ago, and although this type of male dancer still
exists, it is no longer the only valid model for male Caleño dancers.

Caleño Dance: From the Antillean Old Guard to Salsa

In Cali, different ways of dancing salsa come together. First is the classic Caleño
style, characterized by the agility and speed of the feet, with movement concen-
trated in the lower part of the body. This style is associated with the accelera-
tion by young barrio dancers of 33 rpm records to 45 rpm during the 1960s,
which distorted the voice, sound, rhythm, and indeed the entire piece and as
a consequence affected the dance, causing more rapid foot movements. It was
done with only some songs, especially salsas and boogaloos, which seemed very
slow to the young Caleños, including “Palo de mango,” written by Eddie Pal­
mieri and Cheo Feliciano, sung by Ismael Quintana; “At the Party,” written by
Héctor Rivera; “Cinturita,” written by Eddie Palmieri and Ismael Quintana;
and the boogaloos “Micaela” and “I Like It like That,” written by Pete Rodrí-
guez. Some of these pieces continue to be accelerated today, often in the viejote-
cas and sometimes when played on radio stations.
Another style is the cobao, originating with the blacks of Buenaventura in
the 1960s or slightly earlier and arriving in Cali with migrants from that city.
It consists of dancing extremely close to one’s partner, nearly still, with a light
back-and-forth motion of the hips, while staying in almost the same place. In
contrast to the classic Caleño style, the cobao is almost imperceptible, appropri-
ate for erotic encounters and face-to-face caresses.
A third is the pasito cañandonga, created between Cali, New York, and Mi-
ami in the 1980s, during the height of drug trafficking. In these cities, Colom-
bians and capital circulated intensely with different purposes. Its name comes
from a Cuban song written by José Antonio Pinares and popularized by Cer-
vando Díaz. It gave its name to a salsa club in Cali in the mid-1980s, the same
time the romantic salsa style emerged.7 The change in music style generated a
change in the dance, which took its name from a prestigious club that closed
148 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

in 2002 after a bloody shoot-out. It has less agility and speed than the classic
style but emphasizes other parts of the body, like the arms and the torso, which
rocks back and forth. The couple does not separate.
A fourth style is casino, or rueda de casino, defined principally by the turns
and movements of the couple in different directions. Finally, we have the many
possible combinations of these styles or their fragments, given the multiplicity
of interactions that occur in salsa spaces of the Cali scene, such as barrio open-
air dances; bars and discos; salsotecas, or parks, where salsa fans and music
collectors meet; or the Feria, during the last week of the year.

Popular Festivities: From Champú Dances to Fee Dances

While some of these early contexts for Caleño-style Antillean dance no lon-
ger exist, having been replaced by others, I have been able to find testimonies
from around 1930 in primary sources about the origin of the champú dances in
the barrios of San Nicolás, El Hoyo, Vilachí (next to San Antonio), Sucre, and
Obrero.8 The champú dances were evening get-togethers in family homes with
ample patios, where youths and adolescents would go to dance on Sundays,
from the afternoon until early evening. They were called “champú” dances be-
cause the eponymous nonalcoholic beverage typical of the Cauca valley, pre-
pared from corn, pieces of lulo fruit and pineapple, and leaves of bitter orange,
was served at them, along with empanadas and fried snacks. Afterward beer
and hard liquor would appear, which adult men would drink while the youth
filled up on champús.9 Champú dances were permanent fixtures in those bar-
rios for several decades until the aguaelulo dances appeared during the 1960s,
in which the champú drinks were replaced with soft drinks and only the word
“lulo” remained as a verbal reminder of what the popular festivity once had
been.10
In the champú dances of the 1930s, one danced the rumbas criollas by
Emilio Sierra, the porros of Guillermo Buitrago, and the foxtrot, bolero, pa-
sodoble, conga, son, bote, rumba, and guaracha popular at the time. I believe
that it was in those champú dances that many of the future dancers of 1940s–
1950s Cali learned to dance, including the mulatto Benigno Holguín, who
created the first dance academy (La Cumparsita) in 1949 and in whose family
home in the Vilachí barrio champús took place.
In the 1940s, according to my inquiries, “fee” dances (bailes de cuota) ap-
peared in the house of Doña Trinidad Martínez on Fifteenth Street between
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Avenues (Barrio Fray Damián). Her son, Héctor
“La Sombra” Martínez, a dark-skinned mulatto who was a professional soccer
player in Cali’s Boca Jrs. and a maraca player and singer for the Cali Boys in the
1940s, spoke to me of these parties.11
The fee dances emerged as a different kind of party from champús. They
charged five pesos as a cover that included drinks, tamales, or roast pig and
continued through the 1950s and 1960s. Attendees wore long jackets that hung
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 149

past the knees and wide, Mexican pachuco-style pants with a chain hanging
between the pocket and waistband, much like Tin Tán at the height of his ca-
reer. The dance would begin at nine o’clock and last until the next day, having
migrated to Lucho Lenis’s El Avispero, a shop in Barrio Obrero that became an
after-hours club (amanecedero) after 1948. Sometimes an orquesta (ensemble)
would play at the party, led by the Ospino brothers, Tito Cortés, or other lo-
cal musicians. Men and women, adults and young people of the nearby bar-
rios, would all attend—the same people who had formerly participated in the
champú dances and who now continued with the obligatory party every week,
when Cali was still more a large town than a modern city.
Both the champú dances and the fee dances that began in the older lower-
class barrios of Cali (San Nicolás and Obrero) would reappear with differ-
ent characteristics and a different name in the 1960s in other, more recently
founded barrios, like El Jardín or Santa Elena. The dances for minors were now
known as aguaelulos, and the fee dances for adults raised their prices, custom-
ers brought their own drinks, the roast pig and tamales disappeared, and cold
dishes with potato salad were served in their place. The parties were no longer
so calm, and one could no longer drink without fear of robbery. Times had
definitely changed in the intervening decades. The city had grown, and vio-
lence had taken hold.

The “Big Mamas” of the Cali Scene

According to testimonies I gathered, reception practices, or ways for listening
to and consuming music, for popular and Antillean music12 arose in houses
with ample patios, where the rhythms and their dances brought together ado-
lescents and adults, despite their different schedules, different attire, and dif-
ferent drink preferences, as part of a ritual of enjoyment and the pleasure of
dancing. This ritual was made possible in its early days by the “big mamas
of the scene” (“mamás grandes de la rumba”), like Doña Gregoria Echeverri of
Barrio El Hoyo, Trinidad Martínez of Fray Damián, Doña Ernestina and Doña
Encarnación of Barrios Obrero and San Nicolás, and “Misiá” Leonor of El Avis-
pero, who lent their houses for the parties. This barrio matriarchy was decisive
in initiating the earliest manifestations of the working-class dance in the poor
areas of Cali from the 1930s onward.
I believe that both the champú dances and the fee dances corresponded to
new forms of sociability in a city undergoing a slow and late process of modern-
ization. In the music’s case, the new forms were influenced by the novel and fas-
cinating impetus of the culture industry through radio, recordings, and cinema.
Families’ access to many of the epicenters of the scene, such as kiosks, case-
tas, terrazas, and clubs, made these a necessary part of life. Here, women were
exposed from early adolescence to parties and dances. Dance was a fundamen-
tal means of socialization, since through it women had direct interaction with
men. This early interaction, shown by the fact that children learned to dance
150 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

before they could read or write, had repercussions in future social relations, in
behavior, and in the woman’s role as conceived in terms of both her own perfor-
mance of self and the man’s understanding of it. Given the high symbolic value
placed on dancing well, parties became a school for molding the body and an
attitude toward it, as well as for seduction and courtship. This attitude toward
the body was fundamental for turning dance into a nonverbal language that
communicated sentiments, emotions, and sensibilities (see Ulloa 2005).
The attitude was transmitted, reproduced, and culturally inherited by later
generations, and today it materializes in the upsurge of dance schools in Cali.
There, perhaps, are keys for understanding the hedonistic image of the city and
of the Caleña, the woman from Cali, projected in the Colombian imaginary and
reflected in the poem “Cali mío” by Gonzalo Arango (see Ulloa Sanmiguel 1992:
392), founder of nadaism in Colombia, from about 1960. Arango uses natural
imagery to express his perception of Cali as a sensual, hedonistic, and joyful
city, full of beautiful women and made from “one of Eve’s breasts,” and as an
open city, receptive and informal, that he represents in a vision that matches
Colombians’ imaginings of Cali, an imaginary that grows ever stronger. The
participation of women in different settings and with different roles contrib-
uted decisively to the configuration of the classic Caleño style of salsa dancing as
an elaborated, complex language, which today is recognized worldwide and has
been included in international competitions under the category of cabaret salsa.
With respect to this style, my in situ observations reveal a pattern of dance
systematically differentiated from the international canon, or the one that
begins on the second beat of the rhythmic phrase, following the Cuban clave
timeline. In classic Caleño, one begins not on count 2 but on the first beat of the
rhythmic cycle, where the accent falls in salsa music. The fourth beat is a rest
marked not by silence but by a pique (tap) of one foot in place or else by moving
forward or to the sides, or it is simultaneously indicated with another body part
(the arms, the head, or the hips).
This pattern does not coincide with the clave canon, for which reason
Caleño bailarines have been considered rather unorthodox salsa dancers in the
international sphere, although their great ability as improvisers is widely rec-
ognized, and the diversity of steps and choreographies they perform, different
from those that characterize dancers from elsewhere in Latin America, the Ca-
ribbean, or North America, is appreciated.13 Also noteworthy is their facility in
subdividing the musical beat with their feet, in which they ornament and em-
bellish their stylistic repertoire, whether following the percussionists’ breaks
or inventing figures that accompany the melodic instruments like piano or the
brass section. This characteristic is not common among dancers of other na-
tionalities, who are more expressive in the use of their upper body, particularly
in moving the torso, arms, head, hair (for women), and shoulders.
In other words, in salsa music the strong beats are the first and third, and this
rhythmic pattern is kept in the classic Caleño style of dance, which also begins on
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 151

the first beat. Preliminary observations suggest that in some cases the first and
third beats are exchanged, without interrupting the flow of the dance.
In conjunction, these properties of classic Caleño style constitute the dance
as language, or rather as bodily knowledge that is simultaneously known and
unknown to the conscious mind, since it is learned in a spontaneous, intui-
tive way, having been taught by a sociocultural environment before any formal
schooling, such as through a later apprenticeship to a teacher or an academy.
Now, the conscious technical intervention experienced in an academy, as one
of the strategies of professionalization mentioned at the beginning of this chap-
ter, has allowed a qualitative transformation of the dance and those bailadores
who become bailarines. This cognitive transformation and its routinization is
one of the conditions that have allowed the latter to become world champions
of cabaret style. The strategies implemented for this transformation not only
have widened the gap between bailadores and bailarines but also have irrupted
into the conventional modes of dancing salsa in Cali. In other words, there is
a dialectical movement that begins with the bailador who becomes a bailarín,
moves on to the transformations that this change produces in relation to shows
and international competitions, and ends with the impact that bailarines with
their shows have on the everyday dancer. This impact is expressed in not only
the ways of appreciating and evaluating techniques or styles but also the steps
or figures that gradually begin to be adopted, which enrich the dance from
start to finish.
I believe that classic Caleño style, with all its variations, is as legitimate as
any other style, even though it is not ruled by the clave beat. It represents a
different mode of embodying rhythm and music, or rather another way of feel-
ing, another sensibility expressed through dance. If this is true, we are looking
at a characteristic that sustains the identity story constructed through dance
in Santiago de Cali. This characteristic emerges through relation and contrast
with the pattern governed by clave, which predominates in Cuba and Puerto
Rico, for example.
One must inquire after the historical and cultural reasons for the origi-
nation of this dance pattern, this distinctive feature that characterizes Caleño
dancers, which until a few years ago was not recognized as a part of the inter-
national salsa dance canon. Preliminary reflections lead me to think that in
Cali the learning of dance, principally guaracha and mambo, arrived already
with the marking of the downbeat. Older generations learned these dances as
medialized through the Mexican cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, and in some
of those films in which mambos and guarachas were danced, I have observed
that the downbeat is marked, and the clave is not followed as a rhythmic ba-
sis. In other words, Mexicans had already transformed the dance from the way
Cubans danced it. And this dance matrix was the one that was assimilated in
Cali, despite the music being indeed originally Cuban or Puerto Rican. This
matrix was transmitted to the following generations at the family party, the
152 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

barrio celebration, and the discotheque or when dancing at the kiosks, terrazas,
and casetas where salsa culture developed in Cali from the 1960s.
Another reason that may explain the adoption and establishment of this
dance pattern is the physical and symbolic absence of clave (the instrument),
congas, and bongos from Caleño popular dance, which creates a situation simi-
lar to that found in the Mexican case. In contrast, these instruments and many
others with which Cuban and Puerto Rican polyrhythms are produced have
been present in those islands and other parts of the Caribbean for two hundred
or three hundred years, or since the time of slavery, initially as a part of black
and mulatto daily life during colonial periods and, later, during the republican
periods, broadening into other segments of society in a process that has lasted
from the dawn of modernity up to the present time. Historically, percussion in-
struments were integrated in a natural and decisive manner into family, work,
and neighborhood spheres, fulfilling multiple functions in magical or religious
rituals and secular festivities, transcending different spaces throughout the Ca-
ribbean but particularly those in which slavery had existed. Thus, they are an
integral part of a culture lived through rhythm, song, and dance, re-created
by generation after generation, as can well be seen in the social and cultural
histories of Cuban and Puerto Rican music, especially in the lower social strata.
This has not been the case in a city like Cali, where after the 1930s music
from recordings, radio, and cinema predominated over live musical produc-
tion, such that contact with musical instruments—their uses, functions, tim-
bres, and polyrhythms—was mediated by the communication technologies
born with the twentieth century. Reception through communication media
rather than live performance, and industrialized, technical reproduction rather
than collective and popular creation, are the watermarks that define our musi-
cal culture at this level. In addition, although there was slavery in Cali, it was
in a lesser proportion than in the Caribbean or Brazil, so there are no ritu-
als for the ancestors or ceremonies for the orishas, no African polytheism or
Santería, and no batá or yuka drums that form part of our local or regional
history or that might have resonated with the clave from distant times. In Cali,
contact with the percussive polyrhythm of the clave and its relatives is a phe-
nomenon going back no further than the 1930s, when the first Cuban music
groups formed in the city. And its growing incorporation into musical groups
occurred late, in the 1970s (along with the height of drug trafficking), when
salsa groups multiplied, musical production was intensified, live concerts and
studio recordings proliferated, and show business and discographic production
increased. The cowbell and cowbell player came into style, as did the congas
and the conguero, the bongos and the bongo player, who began to play a part
in family festivities, in salseros’ get-togethers, in bars, and in salsotecas, spaces
that also included the clave, the maracas, and the timbales. Of this group of
instruments, only the timbales were used in bars and cabarets in the 1950s to
accompany the music that emanated from jukeboxes in the red-light district.
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 153

This late (or recent) presence of percussion and clave-based polyrhythm is,
in my opinion, the other fundamental reason for which clave is not present in
the dance. But, to those who hold that salsa cannot be danced without clave, I
wish to point out that salsa culture in Cali, a popular culture, generated and
consolidated a particular and widely varied style, something like a dance dia-
lect, that has its own specificity and is acknowledged among dancers the world
over. Until a few years ago, it was not widely recognized in international com-
petitions, where Puerto Ricans and North Americans are those who dictate the
canon and its legitimacy.
The classic Caleño style has been consolidated over half a century as a
dance complex composed of designs, steps, figures, and choreographies with
their own aesthetic and has survived despite fashion changes and insurgence of
other ephemeral dances. It is now time that it be recognized as its own expres-
sion, one that instead of contributing to the homogenization of dance styles has
instead enriched and diversified salsa dance as a language of the body. Proof
of this can be found in Caleño dancers Ricardo Murillo and Viviana Vargas
winning the First Annual World Salsa Championship in Las Vegas in Decem-
ber 2005 in the cabaret category, in which classic Caleño style prevailed as a
novel, creative expression, different from winning styles in earlier international
events. In 2006 the Cali dance school Swing Latino, directed by Luis Eduardo
“El Mulato” Hernández, won first prize in the group category and second prize
in couples in the cabaret division in the Second Annual World Salsa Champion­
ship, also in Las Vegas. In 2007 Swing Latino again took the top awards in the
Third Annual World Salsa Championship, this time in Orlando, Florida, where
they had gone to defend their titles and consolidate their prestige.

A Local Dance on the Global Stage

The success and triumphs of these dancers indicate, at the very least, three
changes in local Caleño salsa dancing and its internationalization. First, the
qualitative transformation in ways of dancing salsa effected by these groups has
enriched the style with new steps, figures, and choreographies. The develop-
ment of the dance has allowed them to achieve a degree of sophistication and
complexity that is difficult to imitate or reproduce without sufficient training
and preparation. In turn, this more complicated new style has led to the in-
creased professionalization of Caleño style salsa.
Second, this bodily language has now been inserted into the field of the
transnational cultural industry or entertainment industry. Winning several
world championships, with all the paraphernalia of big show business, trans-
mitted exclusively by ESPN to various countries, confers a universal status to
this occurrence and to the participants; it gives them a prestige analogous to
that conferred by large sports tournaments in the world today. It is no longer
about dancers who perform a show and then pass a hat asking for voluntary
154 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

donations and a smattering of applause. Now it is about competing in the big

leagues, with everything that entails—preparation, discipline, sacrifice, effort,
and creativity—to develop bodily intelligence and achieve the highest level of
expression and eloquence.
Finally, Caleño salsa dance (represented in Figure 8.3)—the classic style of
the bailarines complemented by the spectacle of aerials and acrobatics—has
vindicated this city in a way that contrasts notably with the global stigma Cali
has suffered from so many years of drug trafficking and violence. The new im-
age that is beginning to be projected at an international level will not eliminate
this stigma, but it does contribute to the generation of a new perception of Cali
and its inhabitants. It is significant that in the midst of the tragedy of recent
decades in Colombia, dancing salsa has become a source of income for youth
from the poorest sectors of this city, who have found in salsa a different alter-
native for their lives. Their presence in international shows and in the enter-
tainment industry in American and European cities not only has transformed
their lives, socially and economically; it also marks a new milestone in the
history of salsa and popular culture in Cali, which has in this way transcended
its local borders. Thanks to the dance and to them, the city now has a story
that identifies it as more than the seat of drug traffic and drug exporters; it is
a cradle of great dancers and an exporter of the pleasure and joy salsa dancing
offers.

Figure 8.3. Salseros Miryam Collazos

and Willian Valencia dancing in
Cali’s San Antonio neighborhood.
(Photograph by Aymer Álvarez.)
Identity Is Also Danced (Cali, Colombia) 155

Notes
1. “Popular” in Spanish and as I use it here often refers to the working or lower class.
2. [The closest English translation here is social dancers. The term “street dancer”
might also be used, as it has some currency in the salsa world; however, Ulloa is not making
the spatial distinction this term implies (studio/street or inside/outside).—Trans.]
3. [For this term, the most commonly used English equivalent would likely be studio
dancers, or professional and semiprofessional dancers.—Trans.]
4. Viejotecas are sites where older people dance to recorded music (see Waxer 2002).
5. Currently, the popular sectors constitute 85 percent of Cali’s population, distributed
among socioeconomic strata 1, 2, and 3, Colombia’s designations for the lowest class, with
a monthly income between approximately US$20 and $500. These are the strata in which
salsa culture developed over the last fifty years in Cali.
6. It is no coincidence that current salsa world champions train from six to eight hours
daily.
7. The name of the club transferred to its owner, the well-known dancer Jairo “Cañan-
donga” Obando, still living. Meanwhile, the dance style became so popular that La Cali
Charanga recorded the hit song “El pasito cañandonga” in 1990, and Grupo Niche men-
tions both the place and the person in their song “Del puente para allá.”
8. The description of the parties is based on the stories of Benigno Holguín, Hilda
Palta, Lucho Lenis, Edgar Mallarino, Héctor “La Sombra” Martínez, and Olmedo Rosero.
When they gave their testimonies in 1985–1986, all were over fifty years old and had par-
ticipated as adolescents in the champú and fee dances. The latter three were professional
soccer players during the time of “El Dorado” (a golden age in Colombian professional
soccer between 1948 and 1960, when many first-rate Argentine players came, including
Alfredo Diestefano, who was considered the best player in the world before Pele).
9. “I remember the parties in the house of Mrs. Gregoria, in the Obrero barrio, from
when I was a child. . . . They danced to string bands (guitar, tiple, and bandola) and to . . .
songs that played from Victrolas hooked up to an RCA Victor radio,” Edgar Mallarino re-
counts (1988). They were popular songs like “The Broom Dance,” a march by Juan Moriche
and Margarita Cueto, and the tango “Ladrillo” by Juan Pulido that had come at that time to
Cali. Ladies in long dresses and men in vests, ties, and hats gave a touch of elegance as they
enjoyed a healthy and mild event. Of the men, only those who wore long pants (i.e., those
who, having reached adulthood at age twenty-one, were allowed to wear pants) could par-
ticipate in the dance. However, as a place of socialization, the party was open to everyone,
producing bonding and the integration of the neighborhood.
10. According to the testimony of professional soccer player Edgar Mallarino, also a
mulatto, the champú dances of the Arce family in the El Hoyo barrio were very popular
and took place in an immense apartment building on Eighteenth Street between First and
Second Avenues, as were the Holguín family champús in Barrio Vilachí, where Benigno
Holguín was the disc jockey, and the champús in San Nicolás (Second Avenue and Twenty-
Third Street) and in Obrero (Ninth Avenue and Twentieth Street) barrios. The champú
dances were more than just a business to sell food and drink: they created a space for the
festive and friendly meeting of neighbors and family members who lived in a particular
barrio or sector. Because they were relatively large places where neighbors, family mem-
bers, and friends all attended, some began to worry about having a good sound system and
a comfortable discotheque, in accordance with the times, perhaps presaging the melóma-
nos (music connoisseurs) and music collectors of Cali, recognized on a national level for
their mania as music consumers and for the preservation of recordings. See Waxer 2002
for more on these collectors.
156 Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel

11. Los Cali Boys was a sextet founded in 1945 by Tito Cortés and José del Carmen
Beyibo, both mulattos, to play Cuban music. The group got together in the park of Barrio
Obrero, where Beyibo and Cortés lived. In Obrero, along with Sucre and San Nicolás, the
most ardent listeners of Antillean music in our city were concentrated. These barrios were
not only places of entertainment, prostitutes, dancers, and soccer teams but also where a
large part of the native Caleño population—mostly mestizo, black, or mulatto—lived and
was born.
12. Colombians often term music from the Caribbean islands “Antillean music.” This
category includes many popular styles, such as salsa and merengue.
13. According to Carlos F. Trujillo, in the World Salsa Congress held in Puerto Rico in
2002, two groups of dancers could be identified, a division representing the two tendencies
indicated here: those who dance on-1 and those who dance on-2: “Each group prides itself
on its style and manifests that pride through t-shirts, caps, bracelets emblazoned with the
phrase on-1 or on-2” (2003). This binary opposition clearly defined the tensions created
in the international salsa dance scene, which result from different factors, including the
continual and ever-growing presence of Caleño dancers and classic Caleño salsa dance.

References
Genner Vásquez, John. 2007. Interview by Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel. July 15. Cali,
Colombia.
Mallarino, Edgar. 1988. Interview by Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel. March 15. Cali, Co­
lombia.
Melo, Jorge Orlando. 2006. “Contra la identidad.” Revista el Malpensante (Bogotá), De­
cember 15.
Rodríguez, Pablo. 1996. “La sociedad y las formas: Siglo XVIII.” In Historia del Gran
Cauca, historia regional del suroccidente Colombiano. 2nd ed. Cali: Instituto de
Estudios del Pacífico, Universidad del Valle.
Trujillo, Carlos Fernando. 2003. Interview by Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel. March 13. Cali,
Colombia.
Ulloa Sanmiguel, Alejandro. 1992. La salsa en Cali. 2nd ed. Cali: Universidad del Valle.
———. 2005. El baile, un lenguaje del cuerpo. Cali: Secretaría de Cultura y Turismo del
Valle del Cauca.
Waxer, Lise. 2002. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture
in Cali, Colombia. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
9
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic
A First Look

Rossy Díaz
(Translated by Sydney Hutchinson)

M
usic and dance are inherent features of Dominican culture, and the
culture identifies people according to their favorite music-dance genre.
This association of music with dance is such that being a merenguero,
sonero, or salsero is a synonym for “dancer” even more than for “musician” (of
merengue, son, or salsa, respectively).
In the Dominican Republic, the passion for dance is an enduring facet. It is
not delimited by geographic or temporal styles and takes precedence over so-
ciopolitical or cultural topics related to the music, so that Caribbean and other
musics are danced without consideration for anything other than bodily enjoy-
ment. Salsa is one of the most popular musical styles in the Dominican Re-
public, and that this international genre coexists with local and regional dance
music styles, particularly the merengue as a “national” music, reveals the par-
ticular behaviors surrounding peoples’ preferences for one genre over another.
With Dominican migration to New York City and New York’s influence on
the island a new and marked sense of salsero identity has gradually formed in
the Dominican Republic since the style was introduced. This identity also was
affected by (1) the opening of the Dominican Republic to national and inter-
national mass media after the end of the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in 1961,
(2) the son dance culture, which has been strong in older barrios of the capital,
Santo Domingo, since the early twentieth century, and (3) rural migration into
the capital and the resultant new social class after the fall of the dictatorship.
The mass media have transmitted cultural values and salsa itself, spread-
ing social and cultural codes through the shared experiences of musicians and,
above all, dancers, which leads to the formation of a sociocultural group with a
salsero identity that parallels that of the merengue, salsa’s greatest competition
158 Rossy Díaz

for a listening audience in the commercial category of tropical music in the

­record market. The salsa dance schools and academies are one aspect of this
salsero culture, allowing interchange of social and cultural values among dif-
ferent social classes in Santo Domingo in addition to disseminating dance.
They are also a means of economic progress, social mobility, and ascent from a
marginal, or lower-class, culture for dancers.
Alongside the construction of this salsero identity within the many con-
temporary Dominican identities, a salsa dance cultural industry has also
emerged that permeates the entertainment and tourist industries, an important
part of the national economy. This salsa dance cultural industry, and the at-
tendant salsero identity, also competes for audiences in the record market and
in commercial establishments in Santo Domingo showcasing music and dance.

The Context: The Dance Music Scene in Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo has a population of 2.73 million, according to the 2002 census
(Oficina Nacional de Estadística, República Dominicana 2002). A huge influx
of rural migrants since the 1960s profoundly altered its social makeup. These
migrants brought with them their listening preferences for rural genres, such
as merengue típico from the Cibao region of the country or the guitar music of
the Northwest, adding those musical cultures to those of son dancing, Cuban
music, and other genres that already existed in the city’s barrios.
In this musical setting, Caribbean dance musics like son, bolero, and salsa
have come to share popularity with merengue, an autochthonous music and
dance genre that has enjoyed primacy in the local scene since the late nine-
teenth century. Musical fusions, like merengue-son and bolemengue, emerged.
The inherence of music and dance is evident today, especially with son and
salsa: the first because it represents a cultural heritage of the old barrios of
Santo Domingo, particularly those of the working and lower classes,1 and the
second because it is an expression of a more international Hispanic Caribbean
and new Dominican social class, that of the return migrants, or retornados, of
the New York diaspora.
As some Dominicans left for New York, others moved from rural areas to
urban centers. Santo Domingo was the destination of 62 percent of rural-to-
urban migrants in the 1960s and 1970s, and cultural friction occurred because
of the conflict between traditional rural and urban lifeways (Faxas 2007: 219).2
This demographic shift provoked a gradual mixture in the capital of the culture
of the old parts of the city center (e.g., San Carlos, Villa Francisca, and Borojol)
with that of the new barrios of peasant settlement, a new crucible of identities
heir to the son, bolero, merengue, guaracha, and the incipient bachata. Salsa
made its presence felt in this diversity of musics as a new and more modern
Caribbean popular style. This new music was heard only in the capital, where
there was access to mass media, and this access differentiated capital dwellers
from the rest of the nation for a time. For this reason salsa was identified as a
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 159

dance of the capital. In particular, it was a dance of the working-class and mar-
ginal areas of the city.
This chapter is based largely on the information, statements from infor-
mants, and participant-observation gathered during four events I coordinated
as part of my work for the Institute for Caribbean Studies (INEC) in Santo Do-
mingo during 2006 and 2007:

• Public discussion titled “The Salsa Boom on Dominican Radio” on

October 5, 2006
• Meeting of salsa teachers in Santa Domingo in Santo Domingo on
November 28, 2006
• Meeting titled “Passion and Style in Salsa” on December 6, 2006
• Dance workshop titled “How Is Salsa Danced?” on May 24, 2007

INEC researchers gathered basic data from participants, who usually included
dancers, musicians, radio announcers, dance teachers, and fans of son and salsa.
We recorded these activities in audio and video as a part of our work leading
up to the Second Congress on Music, Identity, and Culture in the Caribbean
(MIC2), an academic conference held in Santiago, Dominican Republic, every
two years. During this project, I was an activities coordinator for INEC, which
was one of the research institutions organizing the conference.
The participant-observer descriptions I present here relate to recognizing
local salsa culture as a type of Dominican identity rather than to standard-
izing the dance itself in relation to global salsa culture. Nevertheless, on the
basis of these notes and work experiences, through which I was able to observe,
converse with, and dance with outstanding salsa dancers and teachers, I also
outline a few of the dance’s features.
As I have come to understand it, local conceptions of salsa are closely re-
lated to two cultural processes: (1) the son tradition in Santo Domingo barrios
and (2) the formation of a New York–Dominican culture since the end of the
dictatorship in 1961, a culture that in a few short decades would come to influ-
ence national life as a whole.

(Tras)Pasos de Baile: The Dominican Sonero-Salsero

Several social factors important for understanding son and salsa as dances of
the barrios lie within this urban cultural collectivity.3 The greatest is that salsa
shares son dancing spaces in Santo Domingo. Others are that the dancer is the
primary person in son and that a cultural identity is formed as an alternative to
the national one. This latter aspect is especially vital to the localization of salsa
dance, since Dominicans want to revive the local citizenship of son and distin-
guish it as existing before Cuban son. A sense of son ownership is still present
among local soneros, even though the Dominican origin of son is a “myth over-
come already in 1971, after establishing the absence of illustrative arguments
160 Rossy Díaz

for this old theory” (Andújar 2007: 205). This myth nevertheless creates unity
among dancers of son and salsa and is why they jealously guard their dance
sites, which generally are somewhat exclusive.4 The connection between dance
sites creates a cultural geography of salsa, overlapping with that of son, in cer-
tain parts of the Dominican capital.
The Dominican performer and composer Rey Reyes connects son dancing
to salsa culture in the working- and lower-class barrios of Santo Domingo in
his popular salsa “Patios, bateyes y callejones (de Quisqueya son los sones)”
(Patios, plantations, and alleys: Son is from the Dominican Republic),5 on the
CD Llegó la rumba (2005). The Santo Domingo barrios mentioned in this song
include Cristo Rey, El Hoyo de Chulín, Villas Agrícolas, San Antón, Villa Mella,
Borojol, 27 de Febrero, Capotillo, and Luperón. Reyes is known as el Sonero de
los Barrios because of the importance his songs give to the Dominican salsa
geography.
The transfer from son to salsa culture occurred in the 1960s, when new Ca-
ribbean musical styles arrived in the Dominican Republic, as the Dominican
salsa reporter and radio announcer Eugenio Pérez reveals:

In the early 1960s, the sound of [Puerto Rican bandleader Rafael] Cor-
tijo provoked a renewed interest in Caribbean rhythms among Domini-
cans, initiating a true craze. Certainly, we already had Dominicans who
performed son and guaracha, but aside from Johnny Pacheco, a true
luminary of charanga in the 1950s, it was only after Trujillo’s death that
locals began to excel in salsa, which had recently emerged principally in
the barrios of New York. (2008: 418)

The development of communications and mass media outlets for music af-
ter the fall of the dictatorship gave Dominicans access to the outside world.
But the circular relation between Dominicans inside and outside the country
also mediated salsa music and dance. A large migratory flow developed after
the end of the Trujillo dictatorship, and large transnational communities grew
in New York and other cities, each with a local identity that participated in
the “salsa movement” of the time, as Lara Ivette López de Jesús calls it (2003).
But how are these two identities—the transnational and the local—related? Or
more specifically, how can the local salsa sensibility6 be defined?
Only a decade after the emergence of salsa, Dominicans in New York would
become a cultural force that “affected Dominican identity on the island” (Aus-
terlitz 2007: 97). At the same time, salsa, the most popular and most representa-
tive Caribbean diasporic music, was gradually taking over as the dance of the
barrios of Santo Domingo. I found that salsa dance sites in Santo Domingo fre-
quently had been former son establishments that were acquired by “Dominican
Yorks,” or return migrants, who put a salsa spin on them (Tejeda 2009).
Son and salsa fans shared an ambiguous attitude toward merengue, Do-
minicans’ national dance. Chino Méndez, host of the radio program Salsa Son,
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 161

noted that some bars in the 1970s and 1980s would program salsa exclusively.
He reported that “in these businesses salsa was listened to, like, ‘I don’t lis-
ten to merengue or bachata!’”7 Answers to questions by the INEC researchers
(e.g., “What other musical genres do you listen to?”) revealed that, after son, the
music participants generally preferred for dancing was salsa, followed by bo-
lero, bachata, and in a distant position, merengue, when mentioned at all. Salsa
stood out as a dance that gave participants pleasure and distinguished them
from others, particularly from dancers of merengue.
This preference for son and salsa brings us to what I believe is Dominicans’
cultural duality as expressed by dancing to and enjoying musics that have in-
teracted and shared space with the genre of merengue. But if on the one hand
they see son as their own, as Dominican, and on the other they elevate salsa as
the most modern, stylish Caribbean music and the most international Latino
dance, that continually creates tensions of identity in the country of the Do-
minican identity and likely determines many of the characteristics of Domini-
can salsa culture described in this chapter.
I do not see this as a deep identity conflict because diversity has also pre-
dominated as a central cultural paradigm in the Dominican Republic. How-
ever, social analogues of the dance of son and salsa do exist beyond the poor
barrios, which are basically a manifestation of the marginal sense conferred
on these musics in the past. What most distinguishes soneros from salseros
but also makes them resemble one another is their individuality within the lo-
cal, the assumption of being both Dominican and Caribbean, with no conflict.
Their decision to face the sea, not turn their back to it—just as Dominicans
seem to live, even today—makes these modes of association viable.
Two important aspects of the localization of salsa are the Dominican salsa
market and salsa media. Popular national and transnational Dominican or­
questas (ensembles) combined merengue and salsa repertoires on their albums
at the beginning of the salsa movement, and “although what some authors have
called a ‘sonic struggle’ between merengue and salsa has existed, both have
influenced each other mutually and their performers have practiced them to-
gether” (López de Jesús 2003: 146). A few important paradigms are apparent in
the relationship between salsa productions by Dominicans on the island and
those abroad. Production of salsa recordings from the 1960s to 1990s was based
mainly in New York. The samples published in research by the Puerto Rican
sociologist Ángel Quintero Rivera (2008: 62–64) reveal that not until the 1980s
and 1990s did the number of local salsa recordings come to rival that of New
York recordings.
By the 1980s Dominican artists had already recorded salsa, including well-
known merengueros like Joseíto Mateo; soneros Cheché Abreu and Cuco Valoy;
musicians like Johnny Ventura, who produced some recordings exclusively
featuring salsa; and Wilfrido Vargas, an essential artist for understanding the
fluidity of relations between Caribbean popular musics, above all during the
apogee of the Fania All Stars (the signature ensemble of Fania Records). Names
162 Rossy Díaz

central to the New York salsa scene include Johnny Pacheco and Ralph Mer-
cado, both with Dominican heritage and both of whom worked in merengue
and salsa; Cuco Valoy is better known as a salsero off the island, while on it he
is mainly considered a merenguero.
From the 1980s to the 2000s, musicians like Juan Luis Guerra also stood
out as part of the salsa identity universe, along with merengueros like Fausto
Rey, Sergio Vargas, Cherito (of New York Band), Alex Bueno, and Rubby Pérez.
Dominican salseros like Raulín Rosendo and Rey Reyes were heirs to earlier
Dominican salsa musicians, like José “El Canario” Alberto, Santiago Cerón,
Frankie Dante, and José Bello, as well as current Dominican salseros like Sex
Appeal, Asdrúbal, Manolé, and Michel. There are also Dominican composers
who have written internationally popular salsas, like Palmer Hernández with
his “Ven devórame otra vez,” written for Lalo Rodríguez; Alicia Baroni with
her “Esperándote,” performed by Tito Rojas; and Fernando Arias, coauthor of
“No me conoces,” sung by Marc Anthony. Dominican salsa arrangers and di-
rectors include the well-known musicians Ricky González and Ángel Fernán-
dez, the latter of whom also played merengue with New York Band and Milly,
Jocelyn, y los Vecinos.
This “moment”8 well illustrates what Deborah Pacini Hernández describes
as a real conflict between salsa and merengue,9 since they have both competed
in the international market as tropical music. But the point is that the output of
salsa recordings is substantial in both Dominican geographies, and the quan-
tity made abroad both confirms the importance and participation of Domini-
cans living abroad and affirms the influence they exert on the local market up
to the present time.
The role of the salsa media in Santo Domingo is also noteworthy. The radio
in particular has been important in the diffusion of salsa: as Chino Méndez
described it, salsa was already on the AM band in 1969 in programs such as La
Hora Brava with Hugo Adames on the station Onda Musical.10 Méndez men-
tions many radio programs currently on FM (including Salsa Picante, Coci­
nando la Salsa, Salsa Son, 95 Grados de Salsa, and Cimasalseando) that have
strong links with and in salsa culture and a large listenership. Their hosts are
the main presenters on salsa stages as well as important figures in the promo-
tion of salsa events and productions.
Dominican salsa radio does more than disseminate music and allow social
interaction: it also promotes the culture of salsa dance in the streets and disco-
theques. Telephone calls to stations to request songs, report listeners, announce
dance competitions, or advertise salsa businesses indicate the programs’ and
hosts’ popularity. Teodora Lahoz Banks notes that salsa programs increased
in popularity beginning in the 1990s because of dancers’ desire to return to
salsa brava, the more aggressive early salsa style also known as salsa dura, for-
saking the softer salsa monga or salsa romántica style, which was influenced
by the balada (pop ballad) style, that had dominated the dial (Lahoz Banks
2009). The audience was the cause for the return to playing old salsa recordings
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 163

in barrios, thus constituting an unusual form of interaction between the radio

and local salsa culture, something that would also be reflected in the dance and
in ­competition.
Salsa is reemerging as a competitive dance, principally in the discotheques
of Santo Domingo’s outer barrios, where salsa is heard and jammed to; where
scholars, promoters, radio announcers, and dance instructors come together;
and where special competitive events are often organized (see, e.g., Figure 9.1).
These are the area of the Manoguayabo turnoff, the western part of Santo Do-
mingo around Isabel Aguiar, the San Vicente de Paúl area, and establishments
on Venezuela Avenue in the eastern part of the city. Dance competition seasons
are also televised on, for example, 9 × 9 Roberto, La Opción de las 12, and sea-
sonal programs.11
With and because of competition in salsa dancing, an important character-
istic of the capital-city salsa dancer is defined: now the dance affords not only
pleasure but also the opportunity to stand out on the dance floor. Televising
dance makes people want to show off more.
Salsa dancing today is also profitable, and the dance industry has diversi-
fied; salsa schools proliferate in the outer zones of Santo Domingo (Los Mina,
Alma Rosa, Ensanche Las Américas, all in the eastern part of the city) and in
the western barrios (e.g., Herrera and Los Alcarrizos), as well as, more recently,

Figure 9.1. Salsa dancers at El Canario Patio Lounge, a Santo Domingo salsa club owned by
the singer Jose “El Canario” Alberto. (Photograph by Hanel Peña, 2012.)
164 Rossy Díaz

in the zones of the national district (Ensanche Miraflores, Paraíso, El Vergel,

Zona Universitaria, Zona Colonial). Examples include Salsoteca Internacional,
a school with a holistic vision of the dancer and Afro-Caribbean dance culture,
located in the Colonial Zone (near the intersection of Las Mercedes and Palo
Hincado) and also known as Eli Casandra School, and the Merengue, Son and
Salsa Academy of Doña Chicha near the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Do-
mingo, well known in the local salsa universe after more than three decades
in business, where upper-class dancers, who traditionally did not dance salsa,
have trained. Another well-known school where upper-class dancers train is
Pasos Dance Academy, a successful school in business seven years in Ensanche
Paraíso, an upper-class neighborhood, that has found new commercial niches
in salsa dance via business exhibitions, special shows to launch products, and
constant investigation into the current state of dance in Santo Domingo. Fran-
cisco “Quico” Medina, owner of Pasos Academy, attends salsa congresses, and
he states that he has a book forthcoming on characteristics and technical as-
pects of salsa dance in the Dominican Republic.
Other schools are that of Luis Melo, which is known by its slogan “Learn
to dance salsa in 21 hours” and is a dynamic business that combines classes in
Caribbean and Latin rhythms, special workshops for children and for soon-
to-be brides and grooms, and class sessions in discotheques and in customers’
homes and also offers entertainment for events. The Dominican-French school
Salsa Carib’Event, located in Las Terrenas, Samaná, offers trip packages that
include salsa class programs with intensive sessions and lodging. Indeed, in
recent years salsa has become a component in the Dominican tourist industry,
as is the case of Pipo La Fama and Salsa Carib’Event, which is establishing itself
as a model for dance academies in beach areas like Boca Chica, San Pedro de
Macorís, and Puerto Plata.
Through tourism, music, and increased exposure, dancer exportation
to other countries has occurred, and schools of salsa and other Caribbean
rhythms are opening in countries like France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland,
and Italy that project the dance industry model found in Santo Domingo.

Salsa Dance in Santo Domingo

I have emphasized in this chapter how salsa is a social action as well as a rep-
resentative of a total cultural space, and for this reason particular forms of so-
cialization exist among soneros and their salsero heirs. In particular, the use
of the same spaces (bars, discotheques, colmados)12 results in common musical
preferences, codes of behavior on the dance floor, and the like.
Chino Méndez distinguishes the forms of salsero socialization such as
recognition of the female salsa dancer. He writes of the pride many women
feel in receiving invitations to dance, which he attributes to the sense of “com-
panionship” in salsa dance.13 Therefore, assuming that dance is an instrument
of interaction between social processes and the body, behind salsa dancing’s
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 165

appearance of entertainment lies an expression of aspects of the cultural and

social condition of the Dominican lower classes. These include an attachment
to parties and alcohol as a means of evading adversity; tigueraje,14 both mascu-
line and feminine; machismo; pride in bodily form; and negritude.15
Salsa dancers occupy a special social position in the sector in which they
live: they are known as a personality in the barrio; are admired, particularly
those who compete on salsa dance programs on national television or those
who appear in the videos of local salsa artists; are sought after for parties and
recreational activities in the barrio; and are known by their artistic names,
which are allegorical to their way of dancing, some carrying the surname Salsa
(La Cometa de la Salsa, Luís Jala Rayo, El Tesoro Salsero, El Topo, Luís Estilo,
Tony La Fragancia, Papito Style, Julio La Salsa, and El Catedrático de la Salsa, to
cite a few). Such names connect them all as dancer personas.
In terms of the corporeal aspects of the dance, the particularities of local
salsa dance are best revealed by comparison. The Puerto Rican and the New
York styles, the styles most often referred to by the dancers interviewed, have
“differences,” asserts dance instructor Francisco “Quico” Medina (2009). “[Do-
minicans] use the feet more,” he says, thereby confirming another element of
local style, the lesser movement of the torso. Nonetheless, the basis in clave
and the combination of styles like the Puerto Rican one with legwork show
that there are also similarities between Puerto Rican and Dominican styles,
although the local salseros habitually perform figures in a more open position.
As Sydney Hutchinson observes regarding the professional style of salsa
dance in Santo Domingo, “It combines the Eddie Torres count with a foot tap
on the empty count that they call ‘el marque’ and use to facilitate the turns”
(2008: 130). She also asserts that “many dance in reverse, with the right foot
forward and the left back, in contrast to the rest of the world.” This refers to
the style of dance with the first step on the left foot, which I consider a special
feature, closely related to the local dance tradition, and something that distin-
guishes us from the whole of other salsa dancers, even though “here there are
very many influences,” as Medina (2009) told me. This has been better identi-
fied in son dancing, from which it transferred to salsa as a stylistic value, simi-
lar to other characteristics mentioned in this chapter.
In an interview with Pipo “La Fama” Alcalá and Cathy Launay de Alcalá,
founders and directors of Salsa Carib’Event, Pipo Alcalá explained:

Dominican salsa is mostly danced starting with the left foot and is char-
acterized by its rumbero [lively or festive] style—which is to say, with a
lot of movement. There isn’t really a “count” as we can find, for example,
in the salsa called “Puerto Rican,” but instead one dances along with the
timbales. That is why one speaks of a rumbero street style. (Alcalá 2009)

External dance influences, coming especially through the proliferation of in-

ternational dance schools and formulas, do not mar the particularities of some
166 Rossy Díaz

local styles, particularly from the western and eastern zones of the city. In these,
dancers like Ambiorix “El Bory de la Salsa” Saldaña, who invents his own steps
in the western part, and Marino “El Catedrático de la Salsa” Lizardo, a dance
instructor who uses his own dance terminology in the eastern part, stand out.16
Likewise, the dancer known as Tony La Fragancia states on his worksheet that
compared with the son tradition “there are different [types of] dancers, like
those who dance rumba or have more movement in their style, for the party,
and the classic dancer.”
Dance instructor Medina (2009) identifies the current style as a street, or
callejero, style: “It is more acrobatic, with a marked rumba style, a busier style
in which many figures that aren’t characteristic of the classic dance are used.”
Particularly during the flourishes of instrumental improvisation in salsa, the
dance is styled on the rhythm section, the clave, the tumbadoras (congas),
and the timbales—which also shows us the styles of salsa that are preferred
for dancing, such as salsa-mambo, boogaloo, and the salsa brava of the 1960s–
1970s. For this reason, some disdain toward salsa romántica and the balada
style persists among salseros.
In the current style the man generally combines footwork with drops and
leg crosses, knee movements, and crouches, while the woman maintains the
basic steps; nonetheless, dancers from eastern Santo Domingo (Herrera, Los
Alcarrizos) demonstrate greater participation by the woman in terms of free
turns and the leg movements, though the man still directs the turns and partial
turns and decides whether to let her go or hold her in any given moment.
Within the partner dynamic, the exchange of hands occurs while changing
weight from right to left and forward: they approach one another and move
away while holding both hands, a step that alternates with different turns using
both hands. The single-handed dynamic is similar, with partial turns to left
and right, and in the faster and more complicated turns the drops, lower-leg
crosses, and floor figures are often combined.
The New York influence is notable, but there is no doubt that the local
salsa aesthetic has a global sense that results from the dance congresses and the
boom of academies and schools of dance in Santo Domingo. During the meet-
ing of dance teachers in November 2006, Cathy Launay described “an interna-
tional salsa, with more turns and acrobatics,” that is danced as a standard form
in the Dominican Republic.
These ambiguities between one style and another have led to meetings be-
tween salsa schools. Angelina “Chicha” Tejeda, a well-known salsa instructor,
described her impressions of on-2 and on-1 dancing:

I began teaching on-2 a decade ago, because I had contact with dancer
friends in the United States who sent me dance videos, but two years
ago I changed to on-1, although I am starting from the beginning
again, because it is more comfortable, and it goes with the beat of the
music. (2009)
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 167

Together with her spouse, Fellito, Mariel—whom Tejeda recommends as

“an excellent dancer”—has a studio called On Two on Núñez de Cáceres Av-
enue, where only salsa is taught.
Medina pointed out:

In on-1 salsa the strong beat is not marked with the right [foot]; here
this is copied. Dancing on-1 is more traditional. The man’s starting foot
is the right one, with the first step forward; this is the natural [style].
On-2 is American style; more eclectic, it has a bit of other dances [in it].
In the classic style the turns are not so elaborate. (2009)

On the same topic, Pipo Alcalá stated:

The 1 count allows for salsa to be learned easier and faster by those who
are beginners. However, the 2 count comes from mambo, and it gets
you to follow the clave, to listen better to the music, and to dance it as a
consequence. The movements, steps, and turns can be more elaborate
or demonstrative when following this rhythm. (Alcalá 2009)

The dance schools consulted in the INEC activities teach both counts.
Tejeda told me that “they were trying to unify the on-2 dance for all the schools”
to avoid the stumbles and collisions of style between salsa dancers on the dance
floor (2009). When I asked this outstanding teacher how she evaluates women’s
contributions to salsa dance, she pointed out that in her school she notices that
more women attend classes, particularly at night, and that this year she has
twenty female and eight male students. She continued:

The role of the woman is to give a touch of grace to salsa. The woman
uses her arms and figure; she stands out. The man has control; he
sets out the guidelines; the woman works with what the man does.
(Tejeda 2009)

Nevertheless, I wish to point out a few interesting cases of women in salsa

dance. I noticed that, of the schools and couples consulted by INEC, the peda-
gogical role of the woman stood out. Many of the women danced both female
and male styles. Playero La Salsa, a male dancer from the western part of the
city, dances both leader and follower roles, as does his partner. La Sati de la
Salsa, a young woman I met in December 2006 at a cultural activity on the
premises of the Cultural and Sport Association of Gualey (Agrucudegua) is the
leader of her couple and was announced as such at the event. But the conven-
tion in these circles is to announce the man by name and not identify his part-
ner; she is just “his partner.”
The founders of the school Salsa Carib’Event enthusiastically enumerated
female dancers who were well known in the country, such as Miguelina, known
168 Rossy Díaz

as La Reina, who dances with José La Salsa in the Kandela review, and Yesenia
Peralta, who currently lives in Spain but who excelled for many years in the
Dominican Republic (Alcalá 2009; Launay de Alcalá 2009).
Also noteworthy is the ritualization of professional dance through spectacle
and flashy costumes with sequins and shiny trim, which are also great differen-
tiators from the “natural,” or street, dancer or the aficionado. The prominence
of professional salsa dancers, the centrality of the figure on the dance floor,
usually means that such persons eclipse the nonprofessional dancers. This is
further shown by the segmentation of space on the dance floor, since their dif-
ferent styles do not generally allow them to dance together.
This showiness has a lot to do with the mass media and with travel to dance
competitions and dance congresses, which creates greater exposure to staged
salsa. Likewise, the showiness has contributed to the imagining of a dancer
personage, one who transcends the dance space, is recognizable in society, and
thus receives greater economic benefits. A consequence, highlighted by the five
or more Santo Domingo–area dance academies participating in the “Passion
and Style in Salsa” meeting, is that, because these dancer personages establish
dance academies, salsa is ever more frequently danced by the middle and upper
classes in Santo Domingo.

Learn to Dance Salsa: A Local Cultural Industry

In closing, I return to the topic of the dance schools and academies and note
that these are phenomena that transcend their function in dance culture, com-
petition, and even the transfer and interchange of values between different so-
cial classes in Santo Domingo.
Dancing salsa in Santo Domingo is today a profession through which par-
ticipants may gain space and status within the city and may transcend a life in
the poor barrios. According to the participants at “Passion and Style in Salsa,”
this has led to the ascent of a marginal culture, the transfer of cultural val-
ues to upper classes of the capital and their acceptance of those values, and
a path to higher social position for dancers, who often are the owners of the
dance schools.17 At the same time, these changes have given new energy to the
original passion for salsa, and they attract new forms of association, whether in
the marketplace or with local and regional musical tendencies of the times, as
in the contrast between the limited circulation of salsa brava and the current
popularity of bachata and reggaetón. This small entertainment industry of salsa
dance has maintained itself and has expanded, despite market studies and cur-
rent cultural policy, contributing to the two pillars of the national economy:
music and tourism.
Salsa dance competition forms part of one of many Dominican identities.
But even omitting its competitive aspect, salsa dance is a local cultural indus-
try. In the absence of official cultural policy, this cultural industry has outlined
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 169

its own policies based on competition among dance styles and means of pro-
moting dance schools via the Internet, videos, radio, television, competitions,
and the like, thus guaranteeing the participation of dance styles and schools in
foreign commerce through their integration into the international context of
dance and competition.
Many professionals already known in the local sphere for their creativity
in dance are beginning to travel to congresses in Puerto Rico and New York
and to participate in and promote congresses on their home island. A first suc-
cessful meeting was held approximately four years before I wrote this chapter,
in Santo Domingo’s Palacio de los Deportes; the Dominican Republic hosted
the 2002 world salsa championships; and the Punta Cana Salsa Congress has
been held in the Dominican Republic since 2006. In the Punta Cana Salsa Con-
gress professional dance groups from the United States, Latin America, and Eu-
rope come together. The second congress, held in 2008, included the maestro
Eddie Torres.
However, precisely because of the lack of government backing for local cul-
tural industries, despite the benefits of music and dance for the Dominican
economy, Dominican dancers and salsa styles are not represented in the me-
dia in the way that those of our neighbors Puerto Rico and Cuba, for example,
are. Dominican salsa dance receives no promotion in shows, musical videos, or
other major forms of marketing.
I welcome other perspectives on salsa dance in Santo Domingo but restate
the idea that salsa in Santo Domingo gives prominence to the dancer in not
only the spaces in which salsa culture is articulated but also other spaces of
socialization in which a dancer rises from a lower-class and generally marginal
condition. Likewise, I emphasize that the cross-fertilization between the New
York Dominican community and island culture that I have described has given
rise to outstanding professional dancers of worldwide renown such as Tomás
Guerrero, who founded the New York dance group Santo Rico over a decade
ago, and Juan “Pachanga” Matos, a Dominican salsa dancer.
Finally, to put the dance into social and cultural perspective, salsa is one of
the most widespread musical styles in the Dominican Republic. Yet its coex-
istence with local and regional dance styles, particularly merengue, is a result
of its media strategy, established at the outset; of the participation of the New
York Dominican community and the role of the diaspora in salsa’s formation;
and similarly, of the formation of a new social class in the capital after the fall
of the Trujillo dictatorship, that of the lower-class barrios. The influence of the
Dominican diaspora on the island and the nation’s openness toward the mass
media, above all in the city of Santo Domingo, brought the older barrios with a
son tradition together with the new urban reality of rural migrants, who were
often on their way to New York City. Despite the lack of major-label or govern-
ment support, the mass media were and still are channeling these influences
and mediating the new components of the passion for salsa in Santo Domingo,
170 Rossy Díaz

including multiple fan-generated elements of publicity, marketing, and local

cultural industries, like the dance establishments, competitions, congresses,
and dance academies.
This sociocultural group, the salseros of the Dominican capital, has main-
tained its identity despite commercialization and has negotiated an unfairly
weighted competition with merengue. This competition coexists with a Ca-
ribbean feeling of regional identity, above and beyond the internal identity
conflicts advanced by the medialized moment both musics share. The passion
for salsa won out, and it is danced without consideration for anything beyond
bodily enjoyment.

Notes
Note: Work forms and guides of the Instituto de Estudios Caribeños used as part of the pre-
paratory activities for the Second International Congress on Music, Identity, and Culture
in the Caribbean (MIC2) held between October 2006 and March 2007 are available to the
public in print form from the Instituto de Estudios Caribeños, Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic ([Link]

1. [Díaz’s term is “clase popular,” or “popular class,” which refers to the lower strata of
society. Here I translate it as “working class,” except where I understand the author also to
refer to the unemployed. In the Dominican Republic the term “barrio,” or “neighborhood,”
is understood to refer specifically to the lower class and never applied to the middle or up-
per class; the term is used in this sense throughout the chapter.—Trans.]
2. Laura Faxas also refers to anthropologist Jorge Cela’s work Los imaginados (1987),
which gives a view of life in the urban lower-class barrios of the Dominican Republic and
an important context: “Free-time activities in the barrios are also the basis of important
social linkages, as in the role of the ‘colmados,’ stores in which cold drinks (beer) and rum
are sold. In general, free time is dedicated to cultural and sport activities, to listening to the
radio, watching television, and also to activities that are realized, according to the barrio
inhabitants, in ‘places of corruption’[;] . . . the poorer the barrio, the greater the tendency
towards the development of ‘places of corruption,’ and to the love of the party and of alco-
hol” (quoted in Faxas 2007: 225).
3. [In this section’s heading, the author plays on the common root word in dance steps,
or pasos de baile, and traspasos, meaning transfers or sales.—Trans.]
4. I noticed that soneros and salseros each have days on which only their music is
played at dance sites, and the merengues played are classic ones of the 1940s–1960s.
5. [Quisqueya is the indigenous Taíno name for the island that today includes Haiti
and the Dominican Republic; Dominicans also use it to refer to their country.—Trans.]
6. [The word Díaz uses, sentido, could also be translated as “feeling” or “sense,” and all
these meanings play a role here.—Trans.]
7. “The Salsa Boom on Dominican Radio.”
8. For more on four “moments” in immigrant musical production, see Flores 1993.
[Díaz uses “momento” (moment) to refer to the current musical situation in the Dominican
Republic, where both local and foreign (migrant) musics play a role.—Trans.]
9. According to Deborah Pacini Hernández, this conflict relates to the competition
between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans (quoted in López de Jesús 2003: 146).
Dancing Salsa in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 171

10. “The Salsa Boom on Dominican Radio.”

11. Lahoz Banks also refers to the 1970s and mentions dance pairs like Los Popeyes
who performed on variety shows at noon (Lahoz Banks 2009).
12. [Colmados are the typically Dominican corner stores, called bodegas in New
York City, where one can not only buy groceries but also stop to have a beer and listen to
music.—Trans.]
13. “The Salsa Boom on Dominican Radio.”
14. “Tigueraje” is a local term to describe someone disposed to fun and partying, living
in the most economically and socially marginal barrios of the city, and on occasion linked
to illegal activities or very informal working arrangements.
15. Negritude is a form of social and racial revindication in salsa, because it is a special
identity component within the Caribbean diaspora of New York and because of what it
means in local culture. In terms of resistance to dominant aesthetic patterns in Domini-
can society, salsa represents one of the most optimal means of reassertion of this identity,
which is so often denied by certain dominant sectors but which barrio culture assumes
with pride from a position of marginality.
16. These two examples were pointed out by Saldaña and Lizardo themselves on the
INEC work forms, and I do not have videos of performances, so their analysis is best left
to another study.
17. Participants base this opinion on a selection of four schools in the eastern zone,
seven in the national district, and five in the western zone. Nine salsa radio programs, five
son and salsa radio programs, and two television programs were also included. The figures
are based on INEC projects.

References
Alcalá, Pipo. 2009. Interview by Rossy Díaz. May 20.
Andújar, Carlos. 2007. “La situación del son en Santiago de los Caballeros.” In El son y la
salsa en la identidad del Caribe, ed. Darío Tejeda and Rafael Emilio Yunén, 205–220.
Santiago: Centro León and INEC.
Austerlitz, Paul. 2007. Merengue: Música e identidad dominicana, trans. María Luisa
Santoni. Santo Domingo: Secretaría de Estado de Cultura.
Faxas, Laura. 2007. El mito roto: Sistema político y movimiento popular en la República
Dominicana, 1961–1990. Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, Fundación Global De­
mocracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE), FLACSO.
Flores, Juan. 1993. “‘Qué Assimilated, Brother, Yo Soy Asimilao’: The Structuring of
Puerto Rican Identity in the U.S.” In Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity,
182–195. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press.
Hutchinson, Sydney. 2008. “Bailando en su lugar: Cómo los salseros crean variantes locales
de un baile global.” In El son y la salsa en la identidad del Caribe, ed. Darío Tejeda and
Rafael Emilio Yunén, 127–134. Santiago: Centro León and INEC.
Lahoz Banks, Teodora. 2009. Interview by Rossy Díaz. February 21.
Launay de Alcalá, Cathy. 2009. Interview by Rossy Díaz. May 20.
López de Jesús, Lara Ivette. 2003. Encuentros sincopados: El caribe contemporáneo a través
de sus prácticas musicales. Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores.
Medina, Francisco. 2009. Interview by Rossy Díaz. February 29.
Oficina Nacional de Estadística, República Dominicana. 2002. VIII Censo Nacional de Po­
blación y Vivienda 2002. Available at [Link]
.exe/PortalAction?&MODE=MAIN&BASE=CPV2002&MAIN=[Link].
172 Rossy Díaz

Pérez, Eugenio. 2008. “La República Dominicana en salsa.” In El son y la salsa en la identi­
dad del Caribe, ed. Darío Tejeda and Rafael Emilio Yunén, 417–428. Santiago: Centro
León and INEC.
Quintero Rivera, Ángel G. 2008. “Salsa, son, nación y migración.” In El son y la salsa en
la identidad del Caribe, ed. Darío Tejeda and Rafael Emilio Yunén, 53–70. Santiago:
Centro León and INEC.
Tejeda, Angelina. 2009. Interviews by Rossy Díaz. March 1 and May 7.
10
Allons à la Fête—On Danse Salsa
New Routes for Salsa in France

Saúl Escalona
(Translated by Sydney Hutchinson)

D
rawing from Patria Román-Velázquez’s (1998) work about the devel-
opment of a salsa circuit and the construction of Latino identities in
London, in this chapter I analyze the salsa movement in Paris.1 Román-
Velázquez, using the notion of route, examines salsa in London by describ-
ing where it came from—and thus how it spread. She asserts that salsa, as an
amalgam of rhythms and practices, is articulated differently in different cul-
tures. If this is true in the Caribbean, which includes Cuba, Colombia, Pan-
ama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and in places emigrants
from these countries live and perpetuate their cultural practices, then salsa’s
articulation will present different characteristics in European countries, whose
social and cultural characteristics are different from those of the countries of
salsa’s roots.
One of these characteristics is its geographic sense, meaning the transfer
of the music from the Americas to Europe. Salsa transports culture, a culture
that digs its roots deeply into the Latin American continent, and salsa is a re-
minder of one of the most painful and, at the same time, most fruitful times
for the lands “discovered” and colonized by the Spanish. Integrating itself into
Europe, particularly France, and establishing relations between Latin America
and Europe, salsa evokes a different conception of existence, at times the nos-
talgia of the excluded or oppressed, alongside its collective nature and spirit of
festivity, as Octavio Paz has indicated2 in his essays.
In the early 1970s,3 a Latin American colony in Paris was composed prin-
cipally of middle-class political refugees from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay,
Bolivia, and Chile. They held peñas, nighttime musical parties with Andean
174 Saúl Escalona

music played on instruments like charango and quena. In 1978 the discotheque
La Chapelle des Lombards4 opened, offering tropical music, particularly salsa,
to a French audience of academics, professionals, artists, students, and those
who were acquainted with the Caribbean region through travel or who found
the rhythm innovative.
A decade later, a new Latin American migration fit itself into this salsa
route, a heterogenous migration of social classes who came to France in search
of a better life. As a consequence of their different class and national origins,
they propelled a musical practice in which the charango and quena were re-
placed by congas and bongos. Other Latin Americans in Paris and other Euro-
pean cities joined this tropical atmosphere, and Colombians and Venezuelans,
among others, came to love salsa and learned to dance it. Although in their
countries of origin salsa was regarded as a music of “delinquents” (malandros)
or blacks or even the barrios,5 nostalgia for home brought acceptance of and
even affection for the cultural values of other social classes. In addition, salsa
in distant Europe was a way to meet others as well as an expression of iden-
tity. One sometimes heard, “You are Venezuelan (or Colombian), and you don’t
know how to dance salsa?” This first stage culminated with a large increase in
the size of the Latin American community, and salsa musicians contributed to
the music’s diffusion in the French musical landscape.

A New Path
My research has shown the birth of a new, commercial path in the late 1990s, in
which Latin Americans are displaced from the musical world and its economic
benefits, and salsa is seen as only a dance. New services flourish: food, disc
jockeys, “professors” of salsa, and tourist travel to Cuba and the Dominican
Republic. There also emerges a tendency to refer to Cuba for everything related
to Latin music.6 During this period establishments opened to take advantage
of the phenomenon and played music while customers were eating, drinking,
or talking, just as in any place in Latin America. The historic ballrooms of the
French capital adapted their programming to incorporate dance classes, shows,
spectacles, and the like. The turn toward this music did not occur for cultural
reasons but for financial ones, and it entails the complete and definitive erasure
of Latin American organizers from the scene, since the new promoters, all Eu-
ropean, had greater economic resources and knew better the regulatory legisla-
tion for mounting events or concerts.
In this context, salsa is associated with and marketed as foreignness with a
Caribbean climate, to make it a music without which one cannot live; as some
followers assert, “I look for salsa because it takes me out of the routine of work—
also because I want to get to know Latinos, to speak Spanish, and to travel
in . . . [Latin America] in order to see if all that beauty that is so talked about is
real.”7 An individual’s behavior, the lifeways of a social group, and the values of
Allons à la Fête—On Danse Salsa 175

a society are often influenced by publicity campaigns whose mechanisms are

invisible. In this sense, although assimilation imposes a particular taste, which
in most cases is linked to a desire for improved human relations, one must look
at the origins and mechanisms underlying the customs of these social groups
and work to establish closer ties without conventions or economic motivations.
Salsa is not a part of the everyday in Europe. Salsa is another type of entertain-
ment for European nights, nothing more or less. With these suppositions, it is
logical to ask, “Isn’t salsa in France more of a bodily therapy than the discovery
of another culture?”
The meaning of a music derives not from its place of origin but from its
function in the current location. In France a discourse tends to propose imme-
diate enjoyment from salsa, a discourse that

aims to erase all temporality, it must be said, history, with a notion of

absolute exoticism and valorizing Cuba or Puerto Rico above the East
Coast of the United States, which constitutes its true point of origin and
is never mentioned. These “lands of origin” objectively constitute an
environment at once more legitimate and more suggestive, seen from
Europe in winter, than those “Latino barrios” with their degrading
houses and the torn-up streets of the great U.S. metropolis. (Dorrier-
Apprill 2001: 37)

The salsa boom has extended into various Parisian recreational settings.
Román-Velázquez’s (1998) description of urban space indicates that my case is
different from London’s: there, the majority of participants are Latin Ameri-
can; in Paris they are usually French, with some other Europeans and a few
other nationalities. This means that salsa consumption in Paris entails only
places of business like rented halls, bars, or discotheques where events are held
and where the attending public is not principally Latin American. If salsa has
turned into a cult because of the passion it provokes, it is also because it is a
tremendously lucrative business, from record sales and dance courses, festivals,
and the like. Even more, salsa has brought back social partner dancing, which
had disappeared by the turn of the last century after having stayed popular
through the postwar period. As a form of entertainment with social ties, social
dancing thus has the feeling of being a popular French tradition (Argyriadis
and Le Menestrel 2003), which salsa continues.
When inviting someone to dance salsa in Paris, the opening always begins
with the famous interrogative phrase “Shall we dance?” The response is equally
interrogative: “Do you dance Cuban or Puerto Rican style?” For a simple
dancer things can get complicated, depending on which style he or she dances.
I describe the evolution of styles, focusing on (1) the context of their and salsa’s
reception, (2) the types of dance styles that underlie the Parisian salsa route,
and (3) the different dance steps.
176 Saúl Escalona

The Context of Salsa’s Reception

Elsewhere (Escalona 2001, 2007), I have written that the emotions of French
people have become open to the “Latin spirit”8 that many describe as a way of
living full of spontaneity. The dream of the Caribbean, the openness to finding
the Other—the foreigner—who is different but holds values close to ours, is a
symbol of fortunate changes that enter the anthropological plane like the dis-
covery of new sensations (Le Breton 1998). In this context of assimilation, the
salsa fan develops the same gestures: how to move, how to behave in a group.
These meanings contribute an image of extraterritoriality and of climate that
refers to the Caribbean, as mentioned previously, and is based on interactions
that designate a musical form as able to be danced and assimilated in the way
of an exotic flavor or color, using expressions composed of culinary, meteo-
rological, or erotic metaphors (Dorrier-Apprill 2001). Palpable proof is found
in the posters, flyers, and messages on the Internet or disseminated by other
means, announcing the weekly salsa or Latin parties or concerts, in which the
recurring terms are “fiesta,” “hot,” “Latin sensuality,” “tropics,” “spicy,” “en-
counter,” “seduction,” “fever,” and “sexy woman.” The symbolic force of 1970s
Latin American music, an important vector of socialization, loses its mean-
ing decades later, inaugurating with salsa a new period in which the audience
members do not listen to music, because they only want to dance.
In this sphere, salsa is a sensual music that invokes the “Latin lover,” given
that these rhythms and dances come from a certain representation of sensual-
ity or, rather, “latinidad” (sense of Latino identity) (Dorrier-Apprill 2001: 39).
It is here that clichés are born and debated, those that posit salsa as a music
that allows romantic encounters, symbolizes a consensual eroticism, and also
causes imaginings, as one fan asserted in an interview: “The women who dance
on the beach, each of them attractive . . . ah! What pleasure it is to imagine
being in the Caribbean.” Similarly, France Schott-Billmann (2001: 26), analyz-
ing partner dances that come from South America, demonstrates that the “hot
dances” provide Europeans with escape through sensuality and their effect on
the audience—for example, the swaying of the body when one hears the percus-
sion. Although this author does not refer to salsa specifically, his analysis helps
us understand it as a related experience.

Characteristics of the Currents of Dance Style

In the salsa courses now given in Paris, we find three levels. The beginners start
without music. The teacher contents him- or herself with simply saying one
to indicate that students should mark the first step with the left or right foot,
according to their method, and two to indicate the other foot. The courses last
this way for one hour. At the intermediate level, the students learn with music.
The movements are put together at a great speed. The teacher plays any kind of
salsa piece and even completely different genres such as cha-cha, guaguancó,
Allons à la Fête—On Danse Salsa 177

mambo, and guaracha, and they dance without rhythmic distinctions. The ad-
vanced students may progress more quickly, and they generally change into
clothes and shoes allowing greater agility in their movements. They attentively
follow the instructions of the teacher, who will say “mango,” “chocolate,” “hot,”
or any other predetermined word to indicate that students should execute a
turn or let go of their partner. For salsa dance enthusiasts, the proposed styles
are the only way of dancing salsa, and they do not search for other ways of
dancing that might include improvisation or other means of expression. In re-
ality, the styles most practiced today in the global diffusion of salsa dance and
music—for example, “Eddie Torres,” “New York,” “salsa mambo,” “breaking on
2,” and “Los Angeles” styles—are being integrated.
The stylized movements and the attitudes of the dancers are simply codi-
fied figures of dance inspired by these styles, which many adepts will repeat
similarly, dancing in successive circles without separating, executing figures in
which the arms and hands play an important role, with the body very straight
and without hip movement. Most of these dance styles benefit from vestiges of
rock and roll, still widely danced by all generations of Europeans, a tie com-
pensating for the difficulty of learning a new dance style. From there comes the
image of the European dancer,9 absent emotional contact and performing steps
and acrobatic figures that fit into a mentality closed to the festive spirit.

Dance Steps
Parisian salsa fans emphasize steps impelling codification that have been pro-
posed by teachers—Latin taps, ragga jam salsa, slave step, Cuban step, cha-
cha—in which one sees figures like the cross-body lead, the salto de caballo
(horse leap), and “shines,” or foot- and legwork. One also notices the “sweet
turns,” hip movements accompanied by small jumps. Fans reach an extreme
state of excitement when dancers perform shines (see Chapter 2). These move-
ments omit those that turn partner dance into a game of seduction between
a man and a woman, such as the pelvic movements or quebrados—that ges-
ture in which the hands, feet, and waist follow the musical rhythm during the
change to the montuno section in a salsa piece, as practiced in some Caribbean
countries.

A Route Only for Dancing

Commercial interest in salsa translates a salsa obsession into merely an inter-
est in a sexy music. Further, commercialization protects its interest by limiting
information dissemination, whether by radio, in stores, or in the many concerts
played for a public avid to learn more about composers, new recordings, music,
or groups. One might say that salsa in Europe is “only dead guys,” since the
salsa musicians now known in most European capitals are deceased icons such
as Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, and Celia Cruz (Feliciano 2006).
178 Saúl Escalona

If the globalization of trade offers a vast field of projection for cultural

products, their commercial use often divests them of all content, of any intrin-
sic social or cultural value. They then have no identity, only materiality. This
supports my contention that salsa, a consumer product, tends to become uni-
form and is a “trivialization of exoticism” (Aubert 2001: 123). Its representation
is manifested in dance as a type of spectacle in which each member of a couple
tends to negate the corporeality of the other, if we conceive of the dance as a
game of seduction.
We can see, then, that this route suggests arriving at a salsa that is a purely
aesthetic representation whose codification of steps impedes improvisation and
negates the joy of spontaneity, since it bestows rationality on the free expres-
sion of bodily movement and limits the ways one might move as it establishes
agreed-on norms. One thus thinks of a salsa without soul. This transpires in
part because salsa supporters attend courses only from a desire to learn the
steps and figures proposed by a particular teacher and his or her style, thus
leading to official dance practices, which all students attempt to apply to all the
musical genres without distinction. Learning this step and not others, begin-
ning to dance with the right foot and not the left or vice versa, just as is taught,
some apprentices believe themselves to be salsa stars and enthusiastically dem-
onstrate their technical knowledge, which allows them to say to other dancers,
“You don’t know how to do the one, two, three.”
Dancers exhibit different styles of dance at salsa events to demonstrate that
they are into the “salsa thing.” Some dancers require a minimal space in which
to move; others need a larger space to express their choreographic abilities.
Other dancers, either in couples or alone, I term the “crazy dancers,” because
the dance floor for them is a theme park in which they are the main protago-
nists, or the “salsaholics,” whose particularity is that they will converse about
only salsa.
Salsa in France is centered on an orchestrated campaign of exoticism. To-
day, salsa promoters claim that it is not necessary to visit distant lands to ex-
perience exoticism: it is here, two blocks from the Metro. Other musics also
generate partner dances but do not occupy much space in France, perhaps be-
cause they do not generate much economic profit. I refer particularly to the
tango, which does not command a large public despite the sympathy it enjoys.
Why it remains in the hearts of the French might be, in part, because the tango
is a part of the French musical tradition. Since the beginning of the last cen-
tury, tango has driven partner dance, and its popularity grew after World War
I along with the economic boom. Also, tango is usually associated with the
Sunday dances of the guinguettes,10 attended by the elderly and viewed as anti-
quated. The participants generally come well dressed in appropriate and com-
fortable dresses and suits, elegant and ready to dance. The guinguettes do not
have the same ambience of salsa concerts or parties; numerous dancers declare
a sentiment similar to the following:
Allons à la Fête—On Danse Salsa 179

In practice, [guinguettes] show a true enthusiasm for Latin-inspired

musics, which attract a large quantity of dancers to the floor to enjoy
tangos like La Cumparsita, Marinella, El Caminito, forming part of a
repertoire that fires the pleasures of the dancers. (Argyriadis and Le
Menestrel 2003: 130)

And So We Leave
In this new path, salsa is presented to the French as an easily accessible music.
As one admirer described it in an interview, “It is the only music that makes
me vibrate.” The public demands events, and organizers present salsa gather-
ings with names like “salsa meeting,” “salsa dance congress,” “salsa night,” or
“theatrical salsa group.” Organizers and impresarios find a hook that will at-
tract the public, such as the advertising for an event related to International
Women’s Day: “With salsa music, Latin rhythms, and the night’s special fea-
ture for all [women], ‘salsa kills you, man.’”11 Salsa becomes a commercial tool,
whose consumption manifests intrinsic desires rooted in an exotic and sensual
imaginary in which women are told that learning or knowing how to dance
salsa will help them seduce men.
Paradoxically, research has demonstrated that the movement driving salsa
counteracts an individualistic life model, showing greater social openness, at
least to foreigners. This is why in France salsa has contributed to a greater ac-
ceptance of Latin Americans, in particular. If French fans have assimilated the
dance with all its contradictions, salsa nevertheless contributes an enthusiasm
from which the French also tend to benefit, as they search for an ambience dif-
ferent from that of hard rock concerts, for example. Salsa, because of the envi-
ronment it creates, brings together different nationalities; it widens fans’ circles
and opens up a different cultural panorama. Hearing, for example, that Vene-
zuela is not in South America but in Africa is long past; today better geographic
knowledge of the Caribbean and South America has come about through fa-
miliarity with the origins of well-known salsa musicians, a familiarity only
deepening with time and making French salsa fans today also interested in the
Spanish language.
During the summer songs appear with percussive rhythms or rhythms or
melodies that resemble tropical musics. The song “Lambada,” not part of the
salsa genre, was heard throughout France in 1989; its popularity led to an ava-
lanche of songs with the same type of rhythm coming out every year around
the same time (see Escalona 2001). Interest in salsa has contributed to sales
of musical scores with Latin American airs (for example, Cuban and mambo)
and materials for learning how to play instruments like the clave, tumbadoras
(congas), or bongos. Television and radio programs include salsa songs to seem
livelier; salsa is even sometimes used in haute couture fashion shows as musical
accompaniment.
180 Saúl Escalona

Conclusion
Salsa has succeeded in Europe and in France, and in so doing has brought joy; yet
there, it is a music divested of social and cultural values, exactly the opposite of
what it is in its countries of origin. Nevertheless, what interests us here is to high-
light the phenomenon of its assimilation—in other words, its integration into the
French musical and cultural world, which conceives of it as a passionate music.
For supporters, salsa creates an enthusiasm like that for an ineffable delicacy, and
to some it does not matter if its message is grasped; they are interested only in
feeling happy when participating in a salsa dance party or concert in Paris.
Contrasts and contradictions are evident in salsa in Paris. If salsa has an
appeal, it is that it permits encounters between different communities. Salsa’s
effect in France is also a kind of revision of customs, a change from an indi-
vidualistic comportment to a greater openness to the world, which allows es-
tablishment of new social relations between people. Following this argument, it
is possible to think of the dance party as mirroring the real world and to believe
that salsa, with its aesthetic essence and its contradictions, contributes its spirit
of festivity.

Notes
1. Salsa in France began in Paris. This occurrence is logical because of that city’s im-
portant Latin American community. To refer to salsa in Paris thus also includes all French
territory in its breadth.
2. Paz is a Mexican writer (1914–1998) of international renown for his immense liter-
ary output of poetry, essays, and more, taking on themes about Indians, Mexican identity,
and contemporary Latin American culture. In 1981 he was awarded the Cervantes prize
and in 1990 the Nobel Prize for Literature.
3. The French capital in the 1930s received tropical music with great enthusiasm, creat-
ing a festive atmosphere into which some Cuban musicians quickly inserted themselves—
for example, Don Barreto, his brother Sergio Barreto, and the group Lecuona Boys. In
the 1970s, other Latin Americans began to migrate, creating enthusiasm first for Andean
music and later for tropical music.
4. La Chapelle des Lombards was opened by Jean-Luc Fraisse and his wife, Michèlle, in
a medieval wine cellar on Lombards Street in Paris’s first arrondisement. In 1981 it moved
to 19 Rue de Lappe in the eleventh. In 2001 it was sold, and the salsa programming was
radically changed.
5. [In this sense, “barrio,” or neighborhood, always refers to areas inhabited by lower-
class or marginal people.—Trans.]
6. In the late 1990s, I noted an emphasis on the Cuban. Taking advantage of this
emphasis, French impresarios promoted all things Cuban: first, tourism, which attracted
Europeans to the island and turned it into an exotic locale for sexual tourism, and, second,
gastronomy. Using “Cuba” commercially is thus an important, lucrative medium. Finally,
the music of Compay Segundo generated interest in Cuba in France and in greater Europe.
Also see Escalona 2007.
7. Quote from an interview with a male salsa fan. The unattributed quotations in this
chapter are taken from statements gathered through a survey of four hundred salsa fans in
France, Germany, and Sweden, conducted by the author in 2001 and 2004.
Allons à la Fête—On Danse Salsa 181

8. From an anthropological viewpoint, this has to do with cultural differences related

to a worldview and to social norms, which determine certain values and behaviors and
differ greatly between the French and Latin Americans. For instance, Latin American
individuals establish social relations between one another more easily than the French do.
And the French, even many couples, use the formal vous (usted) more than the familiar
tu, demonstrating social distance even in close relationships. For the French, the image of
supposed sensuality relates to everything, to a lifestyle, and one often hears, “Ah! He’s a
Latino”—an allusion to why a person never arrives on time, for example.
9. I refer here to the dancers for whom the soul of the dance is not the communion of
a partner dance but the desire to show an audience that they have mastered a style. The
absence of emotional contact means that what is important is to dance to show others that
one knows how to dance: “dance, dance—the important thing is that people see how you
dance.”
10. Guinguettes are French establishments whose origins date to the beginning of the
nineteenth century. One frequents them to drink wine; dance musettes, waltzes, polkas,
and so on; and spend the afternoon around a dance floor remembering old times. They
are located principally to the west of Paris, some twenty kilometers from the river Marne.
11. See Paris Boum Boum, no. 940, Paris, March 6–12, 2000, p. 24.

References
Argyriadis, Kali, and Sara Le Menestrel. 2003. Vivre la guinguette. Paris: Presses Univer­
sitaires de France.
Aubert, Laurent. 2001. La musique de l’autre. Paris: Georg.
Dorrier-Apprill, Elisabeth. 2001. “Entre imaginaires et réalités, la géographie mouvante
des danses ‘latines.’” Danses Latines, Autrement 207:32–47.
Escalona, Saúl. 2001. Ma salsa défigurée. Paris: L’Harmattan.
———. 2007. La salsa en Europa: Rompiendo el hielo. Caracas: Instituto de Musicología/
Fundación Juan Vicente Sojo.
Feliciano, Héctor. 2006. “La dernière salsa à Paris.” Courrier International, no. 793, p. 38.
Le Breton, David. 1998. Les passions ordinaires: Anthropologie des émotions. París: Armand
Collin.
Román-Velázquez, Patria. 1998. “El desarrollo de un circuito salsero y la construcción de
identidades latinas en Londres.” Revista de Ciencias Sociales (Puerto Rico) 4:53–79.
Schott-Billmann, France. 2001. Le besoin de danser. Paris: Odile Jacob.
11
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain
Isabel Llano
(Translated by Sydney Hutchinson)

T
he dissemination of salsa music in Spain began in the 1970s with the
Fania record label’s promotion of various singers; in the 1980s the popu-
larization of musicians and groups began through radio, live concerts,
and local groups that played current hits. In the 1990s discotheques playing
salsa multiplied, and the teaching and learning of salsa dance began. This
growth, together with the growth of the Latin American–origin population
since 2000, has led to the emergence of Latin dance schools and teachers in
the last decade and of radio stations dedicated exclusively to Latin music. Most
of these new stations and many of the discotheques opened since 2000 have
a relationship with a specific Latin American nationality. All these changes
in the socio­demographic panorama coincide with the internationalization of
salsa dance, particularly through dance congresses, such that, with the turn of
the century, the native population’s taste for salsa grows, dance companies are
founded, and salsa congresses at which the majority of the audience is exclu-
sively Spanish take place throughout the country. Currently, although there are
some exceptions, the salsa worlds of Latinos and non-Latinos do not mix, and
each group experiences salsa dance and other Latino musics in a different way.1
In this chapter I undertake a retrospective analysis of the dissemination,
consumption, and production of salsa music and dance from the 1980s to the
present in Barcelona. Since there is also a salsa circuit in Madrid, Valencia,
Seville, Bilbao, Cádiz, Saragossa, the Canary Islands, and other Spanish cit-
ies, however, I also consider aspects that pertain to the country in general. The
growth of salsa and Latin music in Barcelona is part of this movement around
the world, and it is framed within a context characterized by redefinitions of
identity through the ambivalent discourse about immigration and the growth
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 183

of transnational circuits of cultural and commercial exchange in which music

plays a crucial role. In particular, one must consider Catalan and Basque na-
tionalist debates in Spain, as well as the debates over European identity.
At a theoretical level, my analyses revisit the perspectives of Peter Wade
(2000: 210) and Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson (2003: 108) on the relation-
ship between listening and dancing to the music and the configuration of iden-
tity, as well as those of García Canclini (2001: 14) regarding hybridization. I
consider salsa dance in Barcelona to play a role in transforming cultural identi-
ties, since to a certain degree it is modifying or altering previous experiences
through the body. My argument coincides with those of Wade and Gilbert and
Ewan, who agree that listening to music and dancing to it are important prac-
tices for configuring subjectivity, sense of self, and in particular, bodies, and
they can offer a bodily experience that either stabilizes and affirms or alters
and modifies previous experiences. Dance in particular lends itself to incor-
poration and transformation of identity. After observing transformations in
Spaniards’ consumption practices regarding Latin music and Latin dances, I
believe processes of cultural hybridity are occurring, since here the dance is
generating new forms and new practices.
First, I note some antecedents to the establishment of Latin music in the
country up to the 1970s. Second, I discuss the development of record produc-
tion, radio stations, and discotheques, given their importance in relation to the
listenership and enjoyment of this music and of salsa dance, which many non-
Latinos see as extremely exotic and occasionally view with contempt. Third, I
describe the dance teachers, schools, companies, and congresses.
I speak about not only salsa in particular but also Latin musics in general.
This is because the dissemination and consumption of salsa has paralleled that
of merengue and bachata, timba, and other Cuban musics, as well as other
dances associated with the Caribbean with which the greater part of the Latin
American immigrant population in Spain has been identified.

Precursors of Latin Music in Spain and Barcelona

Before popularization of Latin music in Barcelona began in the 1980s, a few key
precursors set the stage. They include the historical ties between the city and the
Caribbean and the European tours of son groups and singers in the early twen­
tieth century. People and groups who paved the way for salsa include the follow­
ing: The Cuban performer Antonio Machín had been a fundamental influence
since the 1940s; he popularized the bolero and introduced chachachá. José Ma­
nuel Gómez (1995: 6) recalls that Pere Pubill Calaf, known as Peret, introduced
songs by Cheo Feliciano, Ismael Rivera, and others, and the Argentine Javier Pa­
tricio “El Gato” Pérez rediscovered the Catalan rumba2 in the 1970s and accen­
tuated the genre’s salsa and mestizo turns.3 Catalan groups like Mirasol Colores
and La Platería popularized well-known salsa tunes in the mid-1970s, and the or­
chestras of Fiestas Mayores spread dances like chachachá, son, and cumbia.
184 Isabel Llano

The record industry has, since the 1970s, promoted singers and groups by ra-
dio and through concerts. The first broadcasts of Latin music were made in the
1970s, coinciding with the promotion undertaken by New York’s Fania Records.
The early 1970s saw the birth of the record company Discophon, which pub-
lished records from the Fania catalog and later, in 1975, from Discos Manzana, a
label that maintained a line of radio promotion and specialized in re-editions of
recordings from the Fania and Cuba Records catalogs. By the 1980s these musics
had disappeared from radio and stores, and pop rock had completely taken over
the Spanish market,4 but not before Barcelona had seen Rubén Blades, Ray Bar-
retto, Willie Colón, Eddie Palmieri, Luis “Perico” Ortiz, Paquito D’Rivera, and
the Fania All Stars, among others, either in concert or on television.

Dissemination and Consumption of Salsa

and Other Latin Musics in Barcelona
The growth of salsa discotheques and radio stations and their relationship with
specific nationalities, especially since 2000, when the influence of Latin Ameri-
can immigration and salsa congresses starts to be evident, have been two of the
most important factors in the diffusion and consumption of salsa in Barcelona
since the 1980s.

Record Industry
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, record labels worked to promote Latin Ameri-
can singers and groups by radio. One such label was Bat Discos, which emerged
in 1990 to promote the singer Lalo Rodríguez and was run by Cuban brothers
Oscar and Jorge Gómez, friends of Ralph Mercado from before he created the
RMM label. It became a licensee of RMM, handling Celia Cruz, Oscar D’León,
Tito Puente, and others. At the same time, recordings of salsa erótica5 came to
Spain along with Dominican merengue and the cumbias that Colombian la-
bel Discos Fuentes promoted in addition to other Colombian rhythms through
Fonomusic, a Spanish distributor that also imported Cuban music. Spain also
had been an important site for distribution of Cuban music and salsa since the
early 1980s.

Radio Programs and Stations

Radio has played a crucial role in disseminating salsa and Latin music. The
importance of so-called Latin stations in the promotion of concerts by foreign
singers and groups has been evident since 1999, when stations dedicated exclu-
sively to programming these musics first emerged.6
The promotion of Latin musics by radio and the development of the record
industry associated with these musics are related to the tremendous success
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 185

that figures like Juan Luis Guerra of the Dominican Republic (with Bachata
rosa) and Gloria Estefan of Miami (with Mi tierra) had in Spain in the early
1990s. Although Juan Luis Guerra’s trademark song in this country, his idio-
syncratic version of the Venezuelan song “Woman del Callao,” went practi-
cally unnoticed during the summer of 1989 (broadcasting stations preferred to
continue with the old recipe of Spanish- and English-language pop rock), the
1990 Spanish edition of his album Ojalá que llueva café was successful among
dancers and deejays. This success was achieved, in part, through the spread of
the lambada, which although ephemeral awakened interest in dance, as did the
popularity of the salsa erótica song “Devórame otra vez” by Lalo Rodríguez in
the 1990 carnivals. With Ojalá que llueva café, Juan Luís Guerra ensured that
dancers became the first to perceive the difference in his subtlety of arrange-
ments and texts (López 1993: 8).
Despite the record industry’s promotion of salsa and other Latin music genres,
in the 1980s opportunities to hear salsa songs on the radio were scarce. Local
and national programs dedicated to Latin musics in the 1990s had weekly broad-
cast times of only a few hours. Up until the creation of Barcelona’s Radio Gladys
Palmera in 1999, no station had dedicated its entire programming to Latin music.
Since 1999 the panorama of Latin radio stations has been very changeable, partly
because of regulation. Thus, some appear, disappear, or change their frequen-
cies in a relatively short time span. In late 2008, besides Radio Gladys Palmera
nine other more recently formed Latin music stations broadcast in the Barcelona
metro­politan area, many of which also broadcast online.7
Latin radio stations can be classified by the nationality of their listening
publics and of their staff: some stations are associated almost exclusively with
a single nationality, others with several Latin American nationalities, and still
others with Spaniards with a more cosmopolitan outlook. The increase in Latin
Americans living in Barcelona,8 many of whom listen to radio music daily, even
during work hours, has led to the birth of stations run by Latinos and the trans-
formation of programming on regional public radio such as Sintonía COM 882
OM (now LatinComRàdio).

Discotheques
Currently, many discos that program salsa, timba, merengue, bachata, reg­
gaetón, cumbia villera, or tecnocumbia are dispersed throughout the city and
in neighboring towns according to the predominant nationality of the audi-
ence in each location or according to the discos’ interest in capturing a particu-
lar audience. Likewise, audience characteristics and the musical repertoire in
each disco determine the dance styles in each, so that there are clubs in which
mainly salsa en línea, or slot-form salsa, is danced and others in which Colom-
bian style or another style is danced.9 In the discos frequented primarily by
Spaniards, North American–style salsa en línea is commonly danced, while in
the discos Latinos frequent, club-goers dance in their own styles.
186 Isabel Llano

In 1981 the only place one could hear and dance to salsa brava (also known
as salsa dura) in Barcelona was the bar Tabú, on Escudellers Street in China-
town. However, the Latin American community grew in the mid-1980s with
the arrival of Cuban immigrants, principally 1970s exiles, and other sites began
playing salsa, including the dance hall Bikini, the bar Kennedy, and Zeleste, a
concert venue and important site for music from its opening in 1973 until 1987.
In the early 1990s, other sites like Cibeles, Carammba, Sahoco, El Bohío, Lati-
nos, Artículo 26, El Mojito, and Raíces Salsa appeared, and dance sites prolifer-
ated in the early 2000s.
The Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon, or the son revival related to the
album and movie of this name, has also been influential in the dissemination
of Cuban and Latin music in Europe since the mid-1990s (see Roy 2003: 185).
In the club Para Mi Gente on Lesseps Plaza, versions of the Buena Vista Social
Club’s famous songs like “Chan chan” and “El cuarto de Tula” were played live
between 2002 and 2003 by Cuban, Catalan, Colombian, and other musicians.
Live musical improvisation also took place in the club, with the participation of
Catalan, Spanish, and other salsa brava listeners and dancers.
Discotheques construct and communicate their own brands of cultural
identity and can be classified according to the predominant nationality of the
clientele. During my fieldwork, I could determine the nationality of the audi-
ence by not only the different dance styles but also such practices as liquor con-
sumption. In Spain, it is customary to sell and consume liquor by the glass, not
by the bottle accompanied by water or soda, as is characteristic in Colombia,
Ecuador, Peru, and the Dominican Republic, among other countries. Thus,
while those who order glasses can walk throughout the club, those who con-
sume liquor Latin style install themselves at a table where, although they may
get up to dance, they remain the whole night to continue serving themselves
from the bottle of whisky, rum, or other hard liquor. For this reason, there are
usually more tables and chairs in discos with a Latino majority than in those
a non-Latino or mixed public attends. In addition, the Latin discos differ from
the non-Latin in their lighting: the discos with a majority Spanish audience
are generally more brightly lit than the others, which are usually kept dark.
The facades and advertising for the majority of locations allude to a tropical
landscape—palm trees and beaches—and national insignias, particularly flags,
related to the country of origin of the site’s most significant audience. On the
inside, the Bolivian, Dominican, and Colombian discos tend to reproduce the
less cosmopolitan environment of the countries they evoke in a nostalgic way.
Among the cosmopolitan discos, Antilla BCN Latin Club (BCN refers to
Barcelona), founded by a Catalan couple in 1993, is the leading dance club
in Barcelona. With seventeen years in business, live weekly concerts by local
and foreign salsa and other Latin groups, a dance school, “taxi boys,”10 and its
hosting of the annual Festival Tempo Latino, the Antilla has achieved wide,
international recognition. Nightly activities include dance lessons interspersed
throughout the evening, in which teachers encourage club-goers to dance
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 187

casino, salsa, chachachá, or bachata. Since its opening, it has hosted a diverse
public of Catalans, Spaniards, Colombians, Cubans, Dominicans, Venezuelans,
Peruvians, and tourists and other Europeans. Principally salsa and bachata
are played in Antilla, and with the diversity of the audience and staff, salsa is
danced as often in Cuban or Colombian style as in the slot form. The public
at the discotheque Mil Pasos, located in the Heron City commercial center, is
equally varied, with both Latinos and non-Latinos in attendance. The public
may be majority Venezuelan, Dominican, or Argentine according to the art-
ists or group playing the concert, and both salsa en línea and other styles are
danced.
Other clubs are less diverse. The sites preferred by Cubans generally present
live concerts. Some, like Mojito Latin Club (also known as Buenavista), where
house group La Unión Habanera plays every Sunday, have more mixed audi-
ences but often a Spanish majority. The restaurant-club HBN-BCN (Habana-
Barcelona) also offers dance classes, programs live musical performances, and
presents entertainment that relies on a faithful, mainly female audience, as is
common in most of the clubs. Here both Cuban style and salsa en línea are
danced. In Dominican discos like Brisas del Caribe and Bailodromo Latino,
mainly merengue and bachata are played, although salsa and reggaetón are oc-
casionally heard, and the Dominican flag occupies a central spot in the decor.
Bolivian discos tend to cater to a very young clientele and play reggaetón, tec-
nocumbia, and salsa. The Bolivian club Enjoy also has a dance group, presents
Bolivian artists live, and as occurs in some other Latino discos, offers female
and male striptease shows. Principally Spanish discos, like the now-defunct La
Clave and Sugar, often also have dance schools and salsa en línea predominates.
Most of the discos opened since 2001 are markedly Colombian, in clientele
and staff and in the styles of liquor consumption, music, and decor. In all the
Colombian discos live concerts are presented, there is no dance school, and
people dance Colombian-style salsa, with the exception of SalSabor, which has
the most mixed audience, including a high percentage of Spaniards on Thurs-
days, when salsa en línea is danced.
Other clubs’ audiences vary day to day. Agua de Luna, opened in 2000, at
first had a mainly Spanish audience but now has a clientele that attends ac-
cording to the program. On some days it has a primarily Spanish audience that
dances salsa en línea and Cuban-style rueda de casino (see Chapter 6), while
on other days it has a primarily Peruvian and Ecuadorian audience dancing
bachata and salsa in their own style. Agua de Luna includes a dance school,
hosts performances featuring rueda de casino on Wednesdays, and presents
Orquesta Stylos, made up of Peruvian musicians, every Friday.
The characteristics of each club’s audiences are related directly to the club’s
music, as well as the social status and reputation of the club. Nonetheless, the
predominant nationality of a disco depends on not only the music played there
or the audience’s self-selection but also social exclusions or inclusions that oc-
cur among different Latino groups and between Latinos and Spaniards. On
188 Isabel Llano

many occasions, the doormen or club proprietors enforce these inclusions or

exclusions at the club’s entrance. The causes for exclusion or inclusion include
status symbols, prejudices tied to physical features, the attribution of legiti-
mized or stigmatized behaviors, or the difference between “Latin” and “Span-
ish” parties, for instance, in liquor consumption. On the part of the attendees,
separations are partly caused by dance styles. These and other factors cause
Latinos to prefer to go to Latino discos, specifically those of their compatriots,
while the non-Latinos tend to go to the more cosmopolitan or predominantly
Spanish clubs.
Spaniards are ambivalent about immigration, and their attitudes and opin-
ions toward it have changed in the past decade as the number of foreigners
residing in Spain and their social visibility have grown. During the 1990s,
immigration was progressively more accepted, but since 2001, as immigrants
have increased, acceptance has decreased (Méndez 2007: 81). Even though most
Spaniards consider immigrant workers necessary (M. Delgado 2007: 215), and
the growing ethnicization of the labor force is seen as natural, the widespread
perception is that there are too many immigrants and that immigration is out
of control. Immigration is seen as related to delinquency and urban insecu-
rity and as threatening dissolution of the cultural identity and is thus stigma-
tized (Bonet i Agustí 2006: 55). In the Catalonia region, of which Barcelona
is the capital and largest city, concern for language preservation and the se-
cession debate compound the problem. There are tensions between Spaniards
and foreigners as well as among the different Latin American communities.
For instance, doormen at some Colombian discos, believing Ecuadorians and
Bolivians get drunk and cause problems, bar those with markedly indigenous
features, which causes conflicts.
Despite the popularization of salsa and other genres, for many Spaniards
Latin musics continue to be foreign. They are not able to differentiate be-
tween salsa, merengue, and bachata, since for them all these musics are salsa,
or else they relate them to a so-called Caribbean mix or to the music for the
pachangueo de verano, the summer party season. To them, to dance salsa is
simply to perform steps or turns as a couple. Nonetheless, some Spaniards have
taken Latin musics, and particularly dancing, very seriously.

Barcelona Dances Salsa: Teachers, Schools, Companies,

and Congresses
Many discos and salsa clubs offer dance classes to a considerable number of
students, so that the classes have become indispensable for the dance halls.
In addition, some dance academies make agreements with dance halls so that
their students can practice there. In addition to the explosion of Latin disco-
theques and Latin dance schools, the growth in national dance contests, con-
certs, and festivals in which salsa plays a central role similarly demonstrates
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 189

the transformations of cultural consumption and production habits that affect

musical life not only in Barcelona but on the entire European continent as well.

Teachers
Cubans were the first to begin teaching salsa in Barcelona, and perhaps in
the country as a whole, in the early 1990s.11 Most of them had professional
dance training, had participated in dance companies, and had toured in Eu-
rope, principally Italy, and then remained in Europe. Yet others prefer to de-
fine themselves as bailadores (informal social dancers) rather than bailarines
(professional dancers; see Chapter 8) since, other than their cultural heritage of
dance, they have not had formal artistic training.
Barcelona dancers debate whether Angelito Labarrera of Havana, who ar-
rived in the late 1980s, or Carlitín (Carlos Enrique Arditti), who arrived in 1992
from Havana, was the first teacher in Barcelona. Whatever the case, Cubans
continued to arrive in Barcelona, including Víctor Méndez, teacher of rueda
de casino in Barcelona, who arrived in 1996; Jorge “Camagüey” Izalguez, a
teacher of timba (currently teaching in Central and Eastern Europe), who ar-
rived in 1997; Rogelio “Macusa” Lorda Moré, an Afro-Cuban dance teacher
and founder of the cultural center called Macusa, who arrived in 1998; Emilio
Prieto of Santa Clara, one of the best disco entertainers (animadores) in Bar-
celona, known for mixing Cuban salsa with salsa en línea in Barcelona, who
arrived in 2000; and Yamira Sánchez of Havana, author of articles about Cuban
dance and culture that have appeared in the magazine Salseros, who arrived
around 2001.
Next, Argentines, Uruguayans, and other South Americans began to dis-
tinguish themselves as salsa teachers in Barcelona. Some of them had prior ex-
perience; others discovered salsa after arriving in Barcelona. As was the case
for some Cubans without dance training, these South American teachers found
salsa dance instruction to be a way to earn a living in Barcelona. Argentine
Martín Rolinski, a Barcelona salsa teacher since 1992, explains, “Salsa was an
accident more than anything. I arrived here at nineteen; I was a child, because
I hadn’t experienced anything. One could say that I discovered [salsa] here.”
However, many who were his students ten years ago “now give classes in civic
centers, in other schools; they put together companies” (Rolinski 2006).
Although many salsa teachers exclusively teach, some create and direct
their own dance companies and academies. Around 2003, professional dancers
Emiliano Sosa and Sabrina Kacheroff arrived in the city from Argentina. Emi­
liano had been dancing salsa since 1996 in Buenos Aires. He is now choreogra-
pher for and director of Mythical Mambo, a company whose style is based on
New York mambo, which he founded in 2004, and he also teaches in the school
that shares the name.12 Kacheroff, born in Buenos Aires, founded the women’s
dance company Queen Style and Company and has directed Vibes, her own
dance studio, since 2008.
190 Isabel Llano

Since 2003, many other South American teachers and professional dancers
have emerged, including Adrián Rodríguez from Uruguay and Anita Do San-
tos from Brazil, winners of the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress competition in 2007
and 2008, and Evelyn Viana from Venezuela, also a journalist for the magazine
Salseros in 2007–2008. Although the Southern Cone is not typically associated
with salsa, the presence of so many Argentines and Uruguayans as prominent
salsa teachers in Barcelona has produced a regional perception of salsa as a pan-
Latin American rather than specifically Caribbean dance practice.
Finally, Spaniards like Ray Pradell, Olga Valls, Sandra Camargo, and Mario
Layunta began to enter into salsa teaching in the mid-1990s. Layunta, like Ray
Pradell, was a salsa en línea dance pioneer in Barcelona. He started dancing
salsa in 1989, and by 1994 he was teaching the Cuban style he had learned.
Since 2000 he has taught other styles, like Puerto Rican, Los Angeles, and New
York; he is now founder, dancer, and choreographer of the company Salsa del
Barrio.
Some Cuban teachers assert that salsa en línea is doing away with the Cu-
ban style in Europe because performances of salsa champions since 2002 have
spread and promoted it and because professional salsa in Spain has gradually
incorporated other nationalities. This opinion is understandable, because from
the time that salsa en línea has been taught and dance congresses held, Cubans
have ceased to be the only ones teaching the dance.
Salsa classes were first held in civic centers, then in gyms, and only later in
discos. Initially, salsa classes were scarce; salsa was intended principally to en-
tertain. The first style taught was Cuban rueda. However, today Barcelona and
surrounding towns have around forty schools that teach salsa and many other
dances, including some non-Latin ones similarly classified as exotic, such as
belly dance. Among these schools, 35–40 percent operate out of discotheques.

Schools and Dance Companies

Although some ballroom dance schools, like Bailongu (opened in 1989), had
already begun teaching rueda de casino and other salsa-associated dances, the
Buenavista became the first all-salsa school in Barcelona when it opened in
the Mojito Club in the late 1990s. The early teachers, including Layunta, Pra­
dell, Gemma Bosch, and Rosa Ginés (also the director), later would found the
first dance company in Catalonia, BCN Salsa Dancers. In 2001 dance schools
opened in the Antilla and Mil Pasos; since then, numerous other Barcelona dis-
cos with salsa schools have appeared, although most salsa schools in Catalonia
do not operate in discos.
Dance classes are diverse, and selection depends on each school, but the
most common courses include salsa, merengue, son, bachata, rueda de ca-
sino, and chachachá. One can find Cuban, Puerto Rican, Los Angeles, and
New York styles of salsa (on-1, on-2, and salsa en línea are also advertised), as
well as salsa fusion, salsa-ragga, acrobatic salsa, and even Cali-style salsa (see
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 191

Figure 11.1. The Cali-style salsa group Exhibición Baile Caleño performing in Barcelona’s
Sala Apolo, April 15, 2012. The show was part of the Salsa and Latin Jazz Festival organized
by the famous salsa singer Herman Olivera. (Photograph by Isabel Llano.)

Figure 11.1). Similarly, some schools refer to certain rhythms as tropical, while
others call them Latin, and it is ever more common to find modern dance, jazz,
claqué, hip-hop, funk, samba, mambo, rumba, boogaloo, lambada, lambazouk,
kizomba, capoeira, and batuka on the programs of schools alongside the more
conventional ballroom dance, ballet, tango, sevillanas, and flamenco. Similarly,
some schools focus on Afro-Cuban dances and more exotic offerings such as
break dance, hip-hop ragga, and Bollywood. Nevertheless, some classes with
an exercise, therapeutic, or body-care focus are also included, such as aerobics
or dance therapy, thus creating places that are more health centers than dance
schools and in which music and dance are employed therapeutically to improve
physical and psychological health as well as self-esteem.
In Spain there are more than forty performing dance companies and
teams; in Barcelona and surrounding areas alone there are more than ten pair
teams and ten dance companies. As noted, BCN Salsa Dancers was the first
company in Catalonia, and although in the beginning they danced Cuban
style, they later performed L.A. and New York styles and Puerto Rican salsa en
línea. The group first promoted salsa en línea through performances in Barce-
lona and later represented Barcelona in national and international dance con-
gresses, creating heightened interest in participating in such events. Although
it is common to find Latin American members—principally Argentines and
192 Isabel Llano

Uruguayans, later Colombians—in dance teams and companies, more and

more new groups are made up exclusively of Spaniards.13 Most of the current
companies dance salsa en línea, but one can also find mambo-, Colombian-,
and Cuban-style companies.

Salsa Congresses in Spain

Given the proliferation of dance clubs, schools, companies, and teams, it is no
surprise that in Spain salsa congresses and competitions are held throughout
the year.14 I use the term “salsa congresses” to refer to those events of national
or international character related to Latin American dances. The audience may
run from 400 to 1,500 people, and the name includes “congress,” “festival,”
“symposium,” “weekend,” or “meeting” depending on the event’s objectives and
characteristics. The growing number of those held in Spain indicates not only
the importance that salsa and other Latin dances are gaining among Span-
iards but also the level of appropriation occurring in the country with regard to
these dances.15
Table 11.1 shows all dance congresses held in 2009 in Spain. Twenty-seven
congresses took place, lasting between one and three days, and the congresses
in Barcelona and nearby provinces (like Girona and Tarragona) usually oc-
curred in coastal cities. Most congresses were for salsa, but other rhythms were
not excluded; thus a kizomba championship was also held to choose the Span-
ish representative for an international event in Lisbon. The Spanish cities where
dance congresses take place most frequently are those near Barcelona. The
most important national congress is the Spain Salsa Open, in which Spanish
champions are chosen to represent the country in the Puerto Rico Salsa Con-
gress at the end of the World Salsa Open.16 International events took place in
Madrid, Tarragona, Lloret de Mar, Castellón, Majorca, and Cartagena.
Congresses are usually organized by clubs or associations of salseros and
include workshops, dance exhibitions, and social dance. Deejays are indispens-
able, since live music is more an exception than a rule, as are the invited dance
teams and companies, who perform their choreographies, offer dance work-
shops, and promote future congresses. Alongside these activities, dance mer-
chandise is sold. Congresses are directed at Spaniards, and the Latinos who
participate are usually those invited as teachers, dancers, and deejays.
Congresses have a close relationship with salsa schools and the Latin mu-
sic clubs for Spanish audiences, so that the audience is composed mainly of
current or former students of the salsa schools. Many of these schools’ teachers
participate in the congresses as invited guests, either alone or with their re-
spective partners or dance companies. Thus, congresses are promoted in dis-
cos where dance classes are given and where parties with exhibitions by dance
groups are held.
For Spaniards, congresses constitute one of the principal avenues of contact
with salsa music and with other dancers. Congresses represent an opportunity
Table 11.1 Dance Congresses Held in Spain, 2009
Date Name City (Province or Region)
January 23–25 International Congress–ACM Salsa Lloret de Mar (Girona)
Festival
February 6–7 Festival de Bailes Latinos/Latin Huércal-Overa (Almería)
Dances Festival
February 6–9 Oscasalsa 2009 Huesca
March 6 Kizomba Championship Barcelona
March 6–8 Cantabria Tropical: Tropical Gem Camargo (Santander)
and Friends
March 6–8 Murcia Fusion Murcia
March 13–15 Barcelona Dances Salsa Barcelona
March 13–15 Euskasalsa Vitoria-Gasteiz
March 20–22 Latin Rhythms Congress–Murcia Murcia
Dances
March 28 Pamplosalsa Pamplona
March 28 DH Festival–Latin Dances Festival Seville
April 3–5 Salsa and Casino Enric and Montse El Perelló (Tarragona)
Meeting
April 9–12 International Symposium of Salsa Madrid
April 17–18 A Coruña Salsa Congress A Coruña (Galicia)
April 17–19 BurgoSalSon—“Spain’s Most Popular Burgos
Salsa Meeting”
April 25–26 “Tarragona City” Salsa Congress Tarragona
April 25–26 International Congress of Salsa of El Perelló (Tarragona)
Tarragona
April 30–May 3 Festival Va de Baile/Go Dancing L’atmella de Mar (Tarragona)
Festival
May 8–10 International Congress of Salsa Palma de Majorca
May 29–31 Salsalba 2009 Albacete
June 5–7 Danzarte Ribesalbes (Castellón)
July 3 Spain Salsa Open 2009 Valencia
July 3–4 Bizkai Salsa–Salsa Meeting in Bilbao Bilbao
July 23–26 Benidorm Salsa Festival Benidorm (Alicante)
October 30– Weekend Enric and Montse El Perelló (Tarragona)
November 1
November 13–15 Carthagosalsa 2009–Third Latin Cartagena (Murcia)
Rhythms Congress
194 Isabel Llano

for beginning dancers to meet renowned teachers and an opportunity for dance
teams and the companies they represent to show their work, enhance their ré-
sumés, and boost their reputation.
Former salsa students have turned into dance teachers with time and now
direct or are members of dance companies. For many veterans, their lives re-
volve around salsa: besides being teachers or dancers, some are deejays, record
collectors, or creators of websites dedicated to promoting the genre, and some
have begun to play Latin percussion. Many current students also live for salsa;
they go to discos to dance, take trips to the Caribbean, or join clubs for salseros
or salsa fans. They also exchange information about music and clubs, particu-
larly through Internet forums and e-mail.
These observations suggest that a new way of relating to dance is emerging
through such events. As more than an expression of one’s own culture asso-
ciated with the enjoyment of music, the dance becomes a means of widening
one’s circle of friends, a healthful leisure-time activity, and a way to have fun
while exercising. In some cases, dance also becomes a career. Nevertheless,
most students from dance workshops, as well as some teachers, are interested
in only dance steps and figures; they are not concerned with following the mu-
sical rhythm or with the quality of the musical repertoire. Paradoxically, the
music at dance exhibitions is salsa dura, while the “street” dancers, who have
not learned in class settings, are those who dance the so-called salsa monga, or
limp salsa (that of Marc Anthony, Jerry Rivera, and others, also known as salsa
romántica), which the critics have discredited. Finally, congresses constitute a
dynamic national circuit with international connections through market in-
stitutions, and thus the majority of workshop teachers, dance pairs and dance
companies, deejays, congress organizers, and purveyors of dance merchandise
participate in several different congresses, as do many attendees.
In salsa congresses and dance practices, we see a transformation in the
practices of musical consumption and, in a sense, of the cultural identity of
the Spaniards who tie themselves closely to Latin musics, since “salsa has never
been far from us in Spain, [although today] the general public and the non-
specialized mass media hardly distinguish one rhythm from another” (Gómez
1995: 6). Those who approach these musics to learn about them have begun
to make them their own, and for many, the musics begin to take on a funda-
mental importance, similar to the importance of popular music and singers in
Latin American intimacy and identity. As for dance, despite the close cultural
relation between Spain and Latin America, in general non-Latinos have had
to attend classes to learn the steps of salsa and other Latin rhythms. Among
these students, few are interested in feeling the rhythm of the music, and more
are concerned with how they look on the dance floor or with counting how
many steps to take before a turn. Nevertheless, given the growth in salsa danc-
ing, it is possible that right now children are beginning to dance at a very early
age, imitating their elders in their own homes, as it has been in Latin Amer-
ica. Salsa dance is thus playing a role in transforming cultural identities, since
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 195

to a certain degree it is modifying or altering previous experiences through

the body.
As I mention at the beginning of this chapter, Spaniards’ changing musical
consumption practices show that cultural hybridity (García Canclini 2001: 14,
22, 29) is occurring.17 Since Latin dances, particularly salsa, are turning into a
global language, I further argue that “the hybrid seems to be dethroning the
exotic” (Gruzinski 2000: 40).

Conclusion
The development of salsa dance, as well as of other Latin musics and dances,
has been tied to the growth of the Latin American immigrant population on
the one hand and to the internationalization of salsa congresses on the other,
with the music business having a hand in all these developments.
The importance of music and dance to Latinos has been a determining fac-
tor in the appearance of radio stations, clubs, dance teachers, musical groups,
and discotheques. Dance and music can help alleviate uprootedness and mar-
ginalization, the precise topics that many salsa songs discuss. In this sense,
disc­otheques have permitted Latinos to express their cultural identity beyond
the geographic borders of Latin American countries.
By analyzing salsa discotheques and Latin music in Barcelona, it is possible
to analyze Latinos’ and non-Latinos’ differing practices of reception and con-
sumption of these musics and their dance. These practices, depending on the
specific case, can be a motive for inclusion or exclusion among Latino groups
and by non-Latinos of Latinos. In general, Latinos bring to Barcelona practices
of musical consumption that are customary in their countries of origin, and
they influence the music and dance scenes in various ways: Latinos consume
liquor in Latino style; many discos present striptease shows or concerts featur-
ing singers popular in Latino countries of origin; Latinos do not dance salsa en
línea; and although in general discos play salsa, merengue, bachata, and reg-
gaetón, they play this music alongside rhythms particular to the predominant
nationalities of their clientele.
In terms of non-Latinos, although they consume liquor, it is not unusual
for many to drink only water or soft drinks; they have generally appropriated
salsa en línea, although they also like Cuban casino; their method of practic-
ing dance is different from that of Latinos (it is more associated with what they
have learned in class); and they have special dance footwear (some even change
shoes in the disco). These differences in the ways of experiencing the event, the
music, and its dance mean that discos are classed according to their clientele’s
nationality and that few have an audience of diverse nationalities. This analysis
also reveals disparities and social conflicts, since the inclusions or exclusions
correspond to the existence of social prejudices and conflicting attitudes re-
garding immigration, and some discos have trouble maintaining order. One
might also say that salsa en línea has become dominant in Barcelona because
196 Isabel Llano

of non-Latinos’ attendance at salsa classes and congresses where it is the most

frequently offered style.
Salsa and Latin music radio stations constitute one of the most important
means of promoting discos and concerts and creating a communal feeling
among the different Latin American populations. As with the discos, the radio
stations can be classified according to the predominant nationality of the lis-
tening public and the staff. The radio stations and discos that have an audience
in common establish relationships and promote each other, demonstrating the
interdependence of listening, dancing, and consumption practices.
The discos associated with particular Latino communities do not of-
fer dance classes, but they often present live concerts by singers and groups.
The discos with a non-Latino clientele do offer dance classes and, instead of
concerts, present exhibitions by dance companies, often as publicity for dance
­congresses.
In Barcelona as well as nearby cities, some dance schools are associated
with discos, and others are not. School offerings include all types of dances
taught by Latinos and non-Latinos. In the 1990s the teaching of dance was fun-
damentally the charge of Cuban teachers who taught rueda de casino in cul-
tural centers; since 2000, Argentines, Uruguayans, and Spaniards have begun
to teach salsa, particularly the línea styles, thanks to the salsa congresses and
the consequent relationship between local, national, and foreign teachers and
dance companies.
By promoting instruction in other styles of salsa dance and formation
of companies, teams, and new schools, salsa congresses have contributed to
growth in the non-Latino population’s attachment to the dance. Congresses
show even more clearly that non-Latinos practice the dance differently from
Latinos. Although some attend congresses to specialize their training as danc-
ers, in general, non-Latinos attend these classes as they would aerobics classes
at a gym. Many do not improvise while dancing; on the contrary, they dance
the steps they have learned and are concerned with only exhibiting their skills.
More concretely, Latinos do not separate music from dance, but many non-
Latinos privilege dance and do not feel the music to the same degree. Never-
theless, this is changing: more non-Latinos dance salsa all the time, feeling
and enjoying the music, and they identify with salsa in such a way that salsa
and other Latin musics and dances are transforming their cultural identity to
some extent.
Finally, this retrospective makes evident the power of Latin music and
dance—particularly salsa—and the importance they have in the lives of rum­
beros (dancers or partiers), both in Spain and in Latin America. However, this
music and dance do not always succeed in bringing together different groups
of Latinos or uniting Latinos with non-Latinos, since enjoying them does not
mean that all fans enjoy them together. Nevertheless, salsa continues to be inter-
nationalized, to be globalized, like jazz, tango, samba, and many other musics.
In particular, it is evidence of and part of a social phenomenon: the migrations
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 197

of Latinos, first those of the 1960s to the United States and, later, in this past
decade, to Europe.

Notes
Acknowledgment: I thank Mamá Inés for providing information on Alberto Bonne, Silvio
González, and the 2009 Puerto Rico Salsa Congress.

1. I use the category “Latino” to refer to the Latin American population living in
Barcelona, but this category includes people from different countries, regions, and cities,
with diverse ethnic, social, and economic characteristics. “Non-Latinos” include the native
local population and diverse non-Latin American nationalities; this, of course, also entails
a heterogenous group.
2. Catalan rumba is a musical genre born in Barcelona, created by gypsies, and derived
from gypsy rumba mixed with Cuban dance music and rock and roll.
3. See Pérez’s website at [Link]
4. During the early years of the post-Franco transition in Spain, a countercultural
movement, La Móvida Madrileña, emerged. It spread throughout the country until the late
1980s and was characterized by interest in alternative or underground culture, including
pop rock groups and singers different from those sponsored by multinational record com-
panies. Many are still around today.
5. Salsa erótica is also known as salsa romántica (see Washburne 2002).
6. Some discos and stations have the same owner, thus the stations promote certain
discos, and in most cases, the predominant nationalities in the discos coincide with the
stations’ nationalities. Some advertisements on stations are addressed to the community
that frequents the respective club, and radio personalities are linked to particular discos as
the people in charge of maintaining dancers’ enthusiasm in the disco.
7. See Llano Camacho 2008: 26–27, 231–233 and Llano Camacho 2009: 7–32 regarding
Latin radio stations in Barcelona.
8. Foreigners in Barcelona grew from 53,428 in 2000 to 282,178 in 2012, so that 17.4
percent of residents are immigrants. Of these, 40 percent are Latin American, principally
from Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic.
Spain as a whole is home to almost six million immigrants, or 12 percent of the country.
See Barcelona Government 2012; National Statistic Institute 2010. See also Delgado and
Lozano 2007.
9. Salsa en línea, or salsa danced in a slot format, can be performed on the beat (on-1)
or in a syncopated way (on-2) (see Chapters 2, 4, and 7).
10. Some discos hire two or three taxi boys, young men to dance with women who have
no partner, each night.
11. For instance, Cuban teacher Saúl “Papa Rumba” Barbosa Ventosa now lives in
­Castile–La Mancha and has resided in Spain since the 1980s, when salsa had only just
begun to spread in the country.
12. In Argentina, the taste for salsa music and dance is principally a result of promo-
tion by Cuban Alberto Bonne (1966–2001). He taught Cuban dance first in La Plata and
later in Buenos Aires and all of Argentina, where he also worked in radio, organized dance
congresses, and created the group AmeriSalsa. See Maani 2001 and “Alberto Bonne” 2001.
Argentines now also play important roles in congresses and as performers. The Argen-
tine Silvio González of 2X4 Mambo is responsible for the International Salsa Open; for
competitions in Spain, Argentina, and Puerto Rico; and together with his partner, Sandra
198 Isabel Llano

Ferreira, for part of the organization of the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress. See “Argentina en
la cima” 2009.
13. The presence of Argentines and Uruguayans in Spain stems from (a) the interest
many Latin Americans have for Spain and Europe as places to develop as music and dance
professionals, (b) the economic recession that began in 1998 in Argentina, provoking the
corralito (bank freeze) in December 2001 and the bank crisis in Uruguay, and (c) the fact
that many Argentines and Uruguayans have European citizenship through their parents,
allowing them to reside and work in European Union countries.
14. Likewise, congresses held at local, national, and international levels have been an
incentive to form dance companies and teams throughout Europe.
15. Dance teacher Saúl “Papa Rumba” Barbosa Ventosa, organizer of the congress
DanceArt (Danzarte), states that dance congresses began to take place in Spain in 1999
(Salseros, no. 15, January 2009, p. 45). The Congreso Mundial de la Salsa (World Salsa
Congress) indeed first took place in Spain in 1999.
16. Salsa congresses emerged initially in the United States and because of their com-
mercial success have since been exported to other countries. The Spain Salsa Open func-
tions as a branch of the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress, organized by Albert Torres, who also
created the Los Angeles Salsa Congress.
17. The processes of hybridization are “sociocultural processes in which structures or
discrete practices, which existed in separated form, get together to generate new structures,
objects, and practices” (García Canclini 2001: 14).

References
“Alberto Bonne: A dos años de su fallecimiento, sigue estando con nosotros.” 2001.
[Link]. Available at [Link]
“Argentina en la cima del ‘Salsa Congress.’” 2009. Fundación Nacional para la Cultura
Popular, August 7. Available at [Link]
_ago07.shtml.
Barcelona Government. 2012. “Població estrangera a Barcelona.” Available at [Link]
.[Link]/novaciutadania/pdf/ca/estudis/pob_estrangera_2012.pdf.
Bonet i Agustí, Lluís. 2006. Diversitat cultural i polítiques interculturals a Barcelona.
Dinámicas Interculturales, no. 6. Barcelona: CIDOB.
Delgado, Lola, and Daniel Lozano. 2007. Latinos en España: Cómo son y cómo viven colom­
bianos, argentinos, ecuatorianos, venezolanos. Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros.
Delgado, Manuel. 2007. Sociedades movedizas. Barcelona: Anagrama.
García Canclini, Néstor. 2001. Culturas híbridas: Estrategias para entrar salir de la mo­
dernidad. 2nd ed. Barcelona: Paidós.
Gilbert, Jeremy, and Ewan Pearson. 2003. Cultura y políticas de la música dance: Disco,
hip-hop, house, techno, drum’n’ bass y garage. Barcelona: Paidós.
Gómez, José Manuel. 1995. Guía esencial de la salsa. Valencia, Spain: La Máscara.
Gruzinski, Serge. 2000. El pensamiento mestizo. Barcelona: Paidós.
Llano Camacho, Isabel. 2008. “Músicas latinas en Barcelona: Espacios de reafirmación y
negociación de identidades.” In La política de lo diverso: ¿Producción, reconocimiento
o apropiación de lo intercultural?, ed. Fundación CIDOB, 227–235. Barcelona: CIDOB.
Available at [Link]
_de_lo_diverso_produccion_reconocimiento_o_apropiacion_de_lo_cultural.
———. 2009. “Inmigración y música latina en Barcelona: El papel de la música y el baile
en procesos de reafirmación e hibridación cultural.” Revista Sociedad y Economía
15:7–32. Available at [Link]
Salsa in Barcelona and Spain 199

López, Carlos, ed. 1993. Juan Luis Guerra. Madrid: Luca Editorial y SGAE.
Maani, Refah. 2001. “Alberto Bonne: Para recordar siempre.” [Link], Octo­
ber 11. Available at [Link]
Méndez Lago, Mónica. 2007. “Actitudes de los españoles ante la inmigración: Una mirada
desde las encuestas.” In La inmigración en España en 2006: Anuario de inmigración y
políticas de inmigración, ed. Eliseo Aja and Joaquín Arango, 68–81. Barcelona: CIDOB.
National Statistic Institute. 2010. “Notas de prensa.” April 29. Available at [Link]
.es/prensa/[Link].
Rolinski, Martín. 2006. Interview by Isabel Llano. June 14. Barcelona.
Roy, Maya. 2003. Músicas cubanas. Madrid: Akal.
Wade, Peter. 2000. Music, Race and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Washburne, Chris. 2002. “Salsa Romántica: An Analysis of Style.” In Situating Salsa:
Global Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 101–132.
New York: Routledge.
12
Diffusion and Change
in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan
Kengo Iwanaga

S
alsa dancing is now performed in daily life around the world, whenever
salsa music is heard. This form of everyday salsa dance, often called “street
salsa,” is distinguished from the stylized type of dance discussed later.
Sheenagh Pietrobruno argues, “Since many people who grew up dancing to
salsa music started as children, they have acquired their dance tradition through
numerous years of experience and practice” (2006: 117). Thus, it follows that it
is impossible for people living in a cultural context in which street salsa danc-
ing is not practiced to dance in the same way. It is also difficult to teach the
style because “salsa learned in a lived context does not distinguish between the
steps and turns of the dance and how the total body moves in dance” (Pietro-
bruno 2006: 125). In contrast to street salsa, “studio salsa,” which originated in
the 1980s in the United States and in other countries, is a more elaborate form
based on social dance styles that is gaining popularity around the world (see
also Chapter 2).
Salsa music was brought to Japan concurrently with its birth in the 1970s.
However, salsa dancing did not gain popularity there until the 1990s. Earlier
studies on the migration of salsa have examined salsa dancing in European cit-
ies such as London and Paris and in the Canadian city of Montreal. All these
studies focus on cities where immigrants from Latin America lived and on how
they brought salsa into the local communities. In contrast, in Japan the accep-
tance of immigrants has been limited to a small number of Latin Americans of

This chapter is a substantially altered version of Kengo Iwanaga, “Changing Salsa: How Salsa
Dancing Was Assimilated into Japan,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37 (2009): 13–21, a
publication of the Institute for Latin American Studies at Rikkyo University.
Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan 201

Japanese descent who arrived in Japan following changes made in the Japanese
immigration laws in 1990. It is clear that the impact of immigrants on Japanese
society, culturally and economically, proceeded in a substantially different way
from what was experienced by the countries investigated in other studies.
Salsa dancing’s diffusion in Japan would also have been different from that
in other countries owing to the rarity of physical contact in Japanese culture.
Couple dancing involving a man and a woman is commonly found in Western
cultures. In other words, pair dancing is part of the Western cultural habitus,
or shared bodily practices and customs. In contrast, in Japanese culture there
is little physical contact in public in daily life. The Japanese have few oppor-
tunities to witness social dances involving couples.1 In this chapter I analyze
the diffusion of salsa dance outide its original cultural context, examining the
popularization of salsa dance in Japan through the application of Pierre Bour-
dieu’s methodology and concepts of field and habitus.

Definitions of Terms
According to Bourdieu’s concept, habitus is “necessity internalized and con-
verted into a disposition that generates meaningful practices and meaning-
giving perceptions” (Bourdieu 1984: 170). The field is “a network of objective
relations (of domination or subordination, of complementarity or antagonism)”
(Bourdieu 1996: 231). Bourdieu conceptualizes the “literary field,” which is a
structure that includes authors, editors, publishers, and literary works. In the
field of cultural production, those who participate in a particular field com-
pete regarding how to differentiate themselves from others and how to relocate
themselves into a higher position of that field to obtain legitimacy. However,
according to Yojiro Ishi, the measurement of legitimacy is neither constant nor
absolute and may change with the social space.2 In Distinction (1984), Bourdieu
argues that Bach’s music is seen as aesthetically legitimate among listeners of
a high social class, but if his music is popularized, it would then be outside
their index of legitimacy. In this study, I apply these concepts to salsa dance in
Japan. We can assume that the “salsa field” includes those who conduct or take
lessons, salsa events and studios, informative magazines, and relevant Inter-
net information. Those who dance in the salsa field also fight for legitimacy in
the field.

Salsa Dancing and Habitus

Studio salsa dancing was invented by incorporating the movements of social
dance into a more formal framework. Since then, various salsa dance styles
have been created and performed worldwide. They are named after the place
of their birth, such as New York style, L.A. style, Cuban style, and Colombian
style, and each style is distinguished by its rhythmic or movement charac-
teristics (see Chapters 2, 4, 6, and 8 herein). Salsa dancing styles born in the
202 Kengo Iwanaga

Americas have been imitated and developed in Japan; no local dance styles,
such as Tokyo style, have been distributed.
Although the basic movements are similar among the styles, the actual
technique is relatively different. Therefore, mastering one style does not mean
mastery of the other styles. Despite the variations between salsa styles, salsa
enthusiasts can easily distinguish one style from another.
In my opinion, the habitus is different for each style because the attitude,
wording, and atmosphere of the field are unique. Salsa students judge whether the
habitus of the style they are learning fits their own habitus. Let us examine the dif-
ference between the habitus of followers of the Cuban and the L.A. styles in Japan.
The habitus of Cuban-style dancers in Japan in the era of emergence (dis-
cussed below) is authenticity oriented. A key criterion of the style is to dem-
onstrate a close connection to the features of the culture in which the style
originated, such as its music and language. Cuban-style dancers in this era
place less importance on the accoutrements of appearance, such as shoes, at-
tire, and accessories. Cuban-style dancers are often seen sporting T-shirts and
jeans. The teaching method of Cuban-style instructors is to focus on the basic
flexibility of the body, the flow of the dance, and improvisation. Adherents of
the Cuban style are interested in aspects of Cuban culture, such as Cuban mu-
sic and the Spanish language, and some of them even visit Cuba. Cuban-style
instructors are well acquainted with Cuba and its locals. Most teachers were
either born in Cuba or have resided there.
In L.A.-style salsa in Japan, however, the habitus is exhibition oriented. The
purpose of the style is to be noticed by the audience. Dance movements are pre-
cisely taught, even up to the degree to point the toes. Followers of the L.A. style
also place high importance on the selection of attire and shoes. They spend
time learning to dance to particular songs, and they are enthusiastic about per-
forming on stage. However, unlike Cuban-style enthusiasts, they are less inter-
ested in the elements of Latin American or Latino culture, such as local life and
music. Japanese instructors of the L.A. style are typically experienced in other
styles of dance, such as ballroom dance.3

The Expansion of the Salsa Field

In Tokyo today, the majority of salsa enthusiasts dance the L.A. style, but when
salsa dance first emerged in Tokyo, the majority danced the Cuban style. This
change occurred simultaneously with an influx of people who had a different
habitus. The following factors outline the process of change while focusing on
the expansion of the salsa field in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

The Era of Emergence

Even the greatest musical artists in Latin America are little known in Japan.
One example of this is the singer and composer Juan Luis Guerra, who is very
Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan 203

popular in the Dominican Republic and throughout Latin America but who is
a big unknown for most Japanese. However, some internationally popular Latin
songs, like “Bésame mucho” and “Lambada,” have become famous in Japan and
can even be heard in Japanese karaoke bars. Thus, when salsa arrived in Japan
in the 1970s, a period I term the era of emergence, its audience had little prior
knowledge of the style on which to build.
My own experience in salsa is illustrative. I first came across salsa music on
a CD by Japanese salsa group Orquesta de la Luz, which a friend of mine had
lent me in the summer of 1993. I did not realize that salsa was both a form of
music and a type of dance until I attended a salsa concert and saw a few audi-
ence members dancing. I began learning to dance salsa in a salsa club, and it
fascinated me so much that I eventually decided to quit my job to travel to Latin
America. This travel experience expanded my interest in the culture of Latin
America. I thought that the reason people were interested in salsa was because
it was viewed as something novel and easy to take up, compared to other types
of dance, such as ballroom dancing and Argentine tango,4 which require spe-
cial dance attire or shoes and long physical training. When I returned to Japan,
I studied anthropology and sociology as a graduate student, and I then con-
ducted field research on the popular music of the Dominican Republic. Mean-
while, I also taught salsa in a course open to the public at Seisen University
and contributed to a serialization of salsa dance in the monthly magazine of a
Spanish language course.
The first club exclusively dedicated to salsa dance was inaugurated in 1992
in Roppongi, one of the largest nightlife districts in Tokyo. Additional salsa
clubs soon opened, mainly in Roppongi, but they were seen in other areas also,
such as Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Yokohama. At the same time, salsa instructors
began to appear. In 1994 Japan had three salsa instructors; the number had
risen to thirteen by 1997 (Salsa Hotline Japan 1999: 112).
The number of salsa clubs in the era of emergence was small, and the ma-
jority of customers were Latinos of Japanese descent and people who worked for
American military bases in Japan. For example, at a salsa club in Motomachi,
Yokohama, Latinos made up the majority of customers who danced till dawn
on Sunday mornings, with only a scattering of Japanese people. Salsa dance
events, such as the Cuban Salsa Festival, hosted by the Cuban Embassy in Japan
since 1996, and the dance event Folkcuba Japan, held since 1994, also occurred.
Beginning in 1995, the Tokyo Caribbean Connection held monthly salsa events
attracting several hundred people. The promoters of salsa dancing in this era
were embassies or salsa enthusiasts who organized salsa events.
Also during this period, some Japanese salsa musicians enjoyed interna-
tional prominence. The best-known Japanese salsa group on an international
level is Orquesta de la Luz (see Hosokawa 2002), which formed and began its
musical activity in 1984. In 1989 it went on a self-funded tour across the United
States and in 1990 released its first album, De la Luz. In 1993 the group ap-
peared on the NHK television program Kohaku Utagassen, one of the most
204 Kengo Iwanaga

widely watched New Year’s Eve shows in Japan. Up until its breakup in 1997,
the band gave concerts in Japan and overseas, but its fame in Japan was much
less than abroad. Nonetheless, several groups still occasionally play salsa in Ja-
pan, one of which formed in 1978, before Orquesta de la Luz, and is called Or-
questa del Sol.

The Turning Point

The turning point of the salsa field occurred between 1998 and 1999. In 1999
salsa’s popularity intensified because of several factors, such as the success of the
French film Salsa!, a NHK television program dedicated to salsa, and an article
published in a magazine belonging to a credit card company. Gen Ohgimi, a
founding member of Orquesta de la Luz, criticized the salsa dance boom, ques-
tioning the trend of teaching the movements. Asked, “What do you think about
the recent attention to salsa as a gorgeous pair dance?” Ohgimi said, “Salsa is not
a subject to take lessons. Dance schools popping up are okay, but you can dance
without mastering dance steps” (Salsa Hotline Japan 1999: 123; my translation).
Nonetheless, interest in learning and performing salsa only grew.
An important factor contributing to the increase in the number of people
who were practicing salsa at this time was the improved availability of informa-
tion on salsa events and clubs. Sources providing information on salsa dance
had consisted mainly of flyers or word-of-mouth publicity. A change occurred
in 1998 when a magazine called Salsa Hotline Press, published by Salsa Hotline
Japan, was widely distributed in Japan. Salsa Hotline Press provided information
about salsa music, salsa dance events, artists coming to Japan, and salsa clubs in
New York City. In addition, Internet sites also provided information on salsa.5
Another factor that contributed globally to the expansion of the field was
salsa dance congresses. In Japan, the Japan Salsa Congress has played a sig-
nificant role in uniting Japanese salsa lovers with the global salsa industry (see
Figures 12.1 and 12.2).
George Watabe, a Tokyo-born Japanese and the publisher of Salsa Hotline
Press, started organizing salsa dance events as a business proposition. He says,
“I wanted to establish salsa more widely and deeply in Japan on the basis of
my experience in the music business. I take risks in my business, and I did not
want to do volunteer work” (Salsa Hotline Japan, n.d.; my translation). In 1999
Watabe organized the Japan Salsa Festival, later renaming it Japan Salsa Con-
gress. In 2002 forty groups and four hundred people participated in the event.
In 2004 the organizer moved to a larger venue, and in 2007 the numbers rose to
four hundred and four thousand, respectively. According to Watabe, the Japan
Salsa Congress became “the biggest salsa festival in Asia.”6
The Japan Salsa Congress is the largest annual salsa event in Japan, and it
is internationally oriented. During the event, international guest dancers con-
duct workshops for dancers. At the 2008 Japan Salsa Congress, Eddie Torres
and eight other invited dancers gave lessons for two days. No workshops were
Figure 12.1. Japan Salsa Congress, 2011. (Photograph courtesy of Salsa Hotline Japan.)

Figure 12.2. Salsa lesson at the Japan Salsa Congress, 2011. (Photograph courtesy of Salsa
Hotline Japan.)
206 Kengo Iwanaga

offered by Japanese dancers, however. At the shows held during the congress,
dancers perform and are ranked according to criteria such as technical com-
petence, creative expression, and audience appeal. However, only one person
judges the performances. He is Albert Torres, organizer of salsa congresses
worldwide and one of the presenters of the event.7 Winners at the congress are
eligible to compete in the world salsa congresses held in Los Angeles and Mi-
ami. For instance, winners of the 2008 Japan Salsa Congress qualified for the
Fourth World Salsa Championships held in Miami.
The number of people who have entered the salsa field in Japan since the
late 1990s has increased, and these new dancers possess a habitus different from
those who began dancing in the era of emergence. The recent entrants generally
do not have direct experience of Latin culture but have gained an understand-
ing of it through television and the print media. These people are interested in
salsa dancing itself and its physical movements rather than the cultural ele-
ments such as music and language. According to one DJ, there is a pronounced
lack of interest in salsa music itself. He says, “I have been a DJ for various genres
of music, but the toughest one is salsa. I feel playing as a DJ for salsa music is
worthless . . . because the audience is only counting the tempo and not feeling
the groove” (Salsa Hotline Japan 1999: 136; my translation). In addition, there
are few opportunities to dance salsa with live music in Japan. For example, dur-
ing the dance time after the shows at the Japan Salsa Congress, music is played
by a DJ, and no live music is performed.
Dance locations have become multipolar. Latinos of Japanese descent
mainly dance in the nightclubs in the suburbs of Tokyo and are less often seen
in salsa clubs in Roppongi. The polarization of people into street salsa dancers
and studio salsa dancers can also be observed. The people who started salsa
dance from the turning-point era mainly claim distinction based on differ-
ences of body movement. This change provokes the selection of dance styles
that are visually representative, such as the L.A. style, rather than the culture-
oriented Cuban style.

Salsa Today and the Systematization of Dance Movement

I have examined the diffusion of salsa dancing in Japan with regard to two
phases: the era of its emergence in the early 1990s and the turning point in its
popularity in 1998–1999. In each period, the habitus of participants in the salsa
field differs, and the differences relate to various dance styles. I now turn to the
current salsa scene in Tokyo and undertake a brief analysis of the systematiza-
tion of the dance.

Salsa Schools: Three Types

To achieve a deeper understanding of salsa’s spread, we cannot overlook the
salsa-dancing schools that brought together teachers and students. On the basis
Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan 207

of announcements for salsa classes published in a free monthly magazine called

120% SALSA, in August 1998 there were ten salsa instructors in the Tokyo metro
area, and the total number of classes was fifty per week. By March 2007 these
figures had grown to sixty-three instructors and two hundred classes per week.
The majority of those interested in salsa discovered it through the salsa schools.
Salsa is taught in three types of settings:

1. Salsa clubs, where during the first hour of the evening people can
participate without making a reservation
2. Dance academies that have a fixed schedule and offer classes at vari-
ous levels
3. Cultural centers or fitness clubs

In the first setting, that of the salsa clubs, a context that has existed since
the emergence of salsa teaching in Japan, the majority of classes begin at 7:00 or
7:30 p.m. on weeknights and last for an hour and a half. Dance teachers change
every day, and people who participate in multiple classes can learn a variety of
types and levels of dancing at a single club. Classes cost 2,500 yen ($25),8 and
the price includes a drink. Students do not need to make a reservation to attend
class, thus the number of participants changes for each class and each day.
In the second case, that of the dance academies, the majority of classes are
at night, but on Saturdays and Sundays there are also classes during the day-
time. The schools generally charge tuition and a monthly fee. The monthly fee
is between 8,000 and 10,000 yen ($80 to $100). There are different classes de-
pending on the level of the participants.
In the third case, at cultural centers or in fitness clubs the salsa class is one
activity among a variety of courses offered. Course duration varies between
one and three months. As with dance academies, the school collects tuition and
a monthly or semester fee. A typical cost for a semester lasting three months is
23,000 yen ($230) for ten classes.

Salsa Instructors (Teachers) and Students

Most instructors are Japanese, but some are foreigners, including Cubans and
Japanese-Peruvians. Instructors usually have another steady job, but those who
earn their living from dance teach classes every day in several clubs and dance
schools.
The types of people who attend salsa classes vary according to the types of
classes discussed above. In the case of the first type, the salsa clubs, and the sec-
ond type, the dance academies, participants tend to be workers between twenty
and thirty years old. They work downtown, and the clubs are located in the
downtown nightlife districts, near their offices. In the case of the third type,
cultural centers or fitness clubs, participants vary widely, ranging from college
students to retirees.
208 Kengo Iwanaga

Overall there are more female students than male. According to a survey
conducted by Salsa Hotline Japan in 2004, 19 percent of respondents had been
dancing for one year, and 31 percent had been participating for one to three
years. The most common reason respondents started dancing salsa was be-
cause of “an invitation from friends” (40 percent). The frequency they went out
dancing was “once or twice a week” (57 percent) or “three or four times a week”
(15 percent) (Salsa Hotline Japan 2004: 39).

Systematization of Dance Movement

For students who want to learn salsa, having standardized salsa dance styles,
such as L.A. style, removes the shame from dancing salsa. Japanese generally
have few opportunities for physical contact in daily life and almost never have
the chance to dance in pairs or to synchronize their body movements with a
partner. Given these cultural circumstances, dancing as a couple is out of the
ordinary and creates a feeling of shame. Following a particular, codified salsa
dance style serves to alleviate this feeling. To count and follow the steps of the
style serves as a rule that removes the shame.
Systematization—that is, making or creating a rational format—is also
helpful for salsa instructors. First, one can situate oneself within a particular
salsa-teaching trend, emphasizing style X, which clarifies one’s position. Sec-
ond, systematization can create some degrees or stages of learning and clarify
the criteria that establish the level of dance. This system can stimulate students’
desire to improve, which helps retain students over the long term. Instruc-
tors regularly give students the opportunity to demonstrate the results of their
learning by dancing for an audience. Instructors also recommend that students
attend salsa congresses and that they purchase learning DVDs. One salsa dance
instructor requires students to learn the steps shown on the DVD; they can-
not move up to the next level until they can perform the moves perfectly. In-
structors use these activities and techniques to encourage students to continue
learning to dance salsa.
Recently, there has been a movement to establish organizations for salsa
dance in Japan to pursue systematization. An incorporated nonprofit organi-
zation called Japan Salsa Association was established in September 2009. The
head of the organization, Mika Takenaga, explained that she established the as-
sociation because there was no organization in Japan for salsa dance like there
were for other acknowledged dance forms, such as tango and flamenco, and
she wanted to introduce salsa dance to the public and unite people belonging to
different dance styles and factions. According to her, salsa dance can be enjoy-
able without being associated with any organization; however, she felt that in-
troducing salsa into public events or schools would be easier if it was promoted
by a private studio or institution.
The organization performs two main activities: (1) hosting the Japan Salsa
Festival and (2) granting qualifications. The Japan Salsa Festival, also known
Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan 209

as the Japan Cup, consists of three dance categories: pair, team, and trial. The
first festival was held in November 2009. To progress through the levels of salsa
dance, one must pass a test with the organization in which qualifications are
granted on the basis of ten grades. For example, grade 10 is for beginners and
mainly consists of a variation of cross-body lead and under-arm turns, and
grade 9 is a variation of inside and half turns. Takenaga suggests that “the qual-
ification is a good method to keep motivation for dancing salsa.” It “provides a
definite target for dancers to achieve, and is not just about enjoying dancing in
a salsa club” (Takenaga 2009; my translation). Apart from the Japan Salsa As-
sociation, the Japan Salsa Professional Federation was established in April 2010
and plans to hold events such as an annual dance event.
As I have explained, every year salsa attracts more and more Japanese par-
ticipants. But the spread of salsa in Japan seems to follow the traditional Japa-
nese way of learning—systematization—such as observing strict rules, creating
currents or factions, and placing emphasis on the distinction of styles.
To dance salsa, Japanese need to learn a number of rules, such as dance
steps and partner positions; men need to learn how to lead, and women must
learn how to follow. By mastering these movements, and by following dance
styles, the Japanese seem to enjoy salsa. Other types of learning situations can
further illustrate the idea of systematizing dance or, rather, creating or observ-
ing a current or a form in a dance that was essentially free originally. For in-
stance, there are various currents (or schools) in the case of the tea ceremony;
there is also an association for examining and evaluating the students of this
art. The students must practice the appropriate form over a long period until
they are able to make the movements naturally.
Because there is so great a distance, not just physically but also culturally,
between Japan and the place where the music was born and nurtured, it is dif-
ficult for Japanese dancers to imagine salsa’s cultural background—how the
general public enjoys the music and dancing—without having experience of the
Latin American world. Outside the dance’s original cultural context, dancing
often follows standardized styles of physical movement, regardless of the cul-
ture in which it was born. The case of salsa learning in Japan is thus an interest-
ing example of the encounter between Latin American and Japanese culture.

Conclusion
In this chapter, I have described how the habitus of participants in the Japanese
salsa field has changed from the era of emergence in the early 1990s, through
the turning point of 1998–1999, and up to the current time, with its trends to-
ward organized salsa, a qualification system, and emphasis on the salsa dance
style—with “systemization” as a key word. I have also indicated how these
changes relate to concepts of salsa dance styles held by Japanese dancers.
This case study highlights the following points, which require further re-
search and analysis. First, to clarify the structure of the salsa field, we need to
210 Kengo Iwanaga

understand the changes in dance styles discussed in this chapter. Second, we

need to analyze the activities of participants in the field, such as salsa instruc-
tors and DJs. Finally, we must conduct studies of fields, such as the salsa con-
gresses and salsa clubs.
By taking this study further, we may come to understand how Japan has
been embracing foreign cultures. As mentioned previously, in the 1990s salsa
dance began to spread rapidly in Japan, and the foreign salsa dance was adapted
to the traditional Japanese way of learning practices. More specifically, in Ja-
pan the method of adaptation is to create definite formats of learning, such
as systematization of movement of dance styles, or the habitus people prefer.
This way of learning has been commonly observed for quite a while in the tea
ceremony and art of flower arrangement in Japan. This chapter has focused on
the localization of culture in the field of salsa dance—a global cultural phe-
nomenon.

Notes
1. For instance, the hero of the movie Shall We Dansu [Dance]? (1996) is very reluctant
to reveal that he is learning social dance.
2. See Ishi 1993 for details on the possible change of legitimacy.
3. In the case of one salsa instructor, she started to learn social dance at the age of eight
and became a champion of ballroom-style Latin dance.
4. See Savigliano 1995 for more on the diffusion of tango dance in Japan.
5. “Salsa Japan!” ([Link] one of the pioneers, has provided salsa music
and dance information since 1996.
6. Numbers are taken from the back cover of the DVD of the 2007 Japan Salsa
­Congress.
7. The organizer of the Japan Salsa Congress, Watabe, has been appointed a judge of
the Los Angeles Salsa Congress and the World Salsa Championships.
8. In this chapter, $1 is calculated as 100 Japanese yen.

References
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans.
Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 1996. The Rules of Art, trans. Susan Emanuel. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Hosokawa, Shuhei. 2002. “Salsa No Tiene Fronteras: Orquesta de la Luz and the Glo­
balization of Popular Music.” In Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Mean­
ings in Latin Popular Music, ed. Lise Waxer, 289–311. New York: Routledge.
Ishi, Yojiro. 1993. Sai to Yokubo. Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten.
Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. 2006. Salsa and Its Transnational Moves. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books.
Salsa Hotline Japan. 1999. Salsa! Koisuru salsa book. Tokyo: Ongakuno Tomo Sha.
———. 2004. Latin Dance. Vol. 1. Tokyo: Byakuya Shobo.
———. n.d. Home page. Previously available at [Link]
.html (accessed November 11, 2008).
Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan 211

Savigliano, Marta. 1995. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder, CO: West­
view.
Shall We Dansu [Dance]? 1996. Directed by Masayuki Suo. Tokyo: Daiei.
Takenaga, Mika. 2009. “Salsa Interview.” All about My Salsa, November 14. Available at
[Link]
 Contributors

Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez is a full professor in and dean of the Department of Dance
Arts at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, where she also coordinates the
master’s program in dance theory studies and serves as secretary of the Commission on
Academic Ranks. She received Cuba’s National Research Prize for her monograph El
íreme abakuá, an honorable mention at Cuba’s annual research awards for her work El
casino y la salsa en Cuba, and Cuba’s Annual Prize for Cultural Research for her book Las
celebraciones rituales festivas en la Regla de Ocha.

Katherine Borland is an associate professor of comparative studies in the humanities at

the Ohio State University. She is the author of Unmasking Class, Gender, and Sexuality in
Nicaraguan Festival and Creating Community: Hispanic Migration to Rural Delaware and
coeditor (with Sydney Hutchinson) of Latin American Dance in Transnational Contexts,
a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore. Currently, she is researching the his-
tory of humanitarianism and human rights activism in Central America and India.

Joanna Bosse is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Michigan State University

whose research involves the ethnomusicological study of couple dances in the United
States. She has presented papers at numerous meetings, including conferences held by the
Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, and the Society of Dance
History Scholars, and her work has appeared in the Journal of American Folklore, Dance
Research Journal, and American Music. In 2001 she was awarded a Nahumck Fellowship
for dance research from the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Rossy Díaz is a graduate student in art history and criticism at the Universidad Autónoma
de Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. She has conducted research for the Insti-
tute of Caribbean Studies in Santo Domingo and was a member of the 2005 and 2007
Organizing Committee of the International Congress on Music, Identity, and Culture in
the Caribbean. She currently coordinates the Bahoruco Community Culture Program
214 Contributors

and serves as consultant to the Dominican Network of Local Cultures. In 2011 she pub-
lished her first book, Rumbas barriales: Aproximaciones al análisis del merengue de calle.

Saúl Escalona, a sociologist living in France, is a researcher at the Center for Intercul-
tural Research in Latin American Cultural Fields. He writes for the journal Fermentum
at the University of the Andes in Venezuela and is the author of La salsa: “Pa’ bailar mi
gente.” Un phénomène socioculturel; Ma salsa défigurée; La salsa en Europa: Rompiendo el
hielo . . .; and Si La Peña m’était contée . . . ! Une histoire de la salsa à Paris and coauthor
of Parole et musique dans le monde hispanique; La fête en Amérique Latine; Musiques et
sociétés en Amérique Latine; and Músicas, sociedades y relaciones de poder en América
Latina.

Sydney Hutchinson is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of

Art and Music Histories at Syracuse University. Her articles have appeared in publica-
tions including Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Journal
of American Folklore, Folklore Forum, Revista Dominicana de Antropología, and Centro:
Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. In 2008 she received a De La Torre Bueno
Prize Special Citation from the Society for Dance History Scholars for her 2007 book
From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture and a Na-
humck Fellowship for dance research from the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Kengo Iwanaga studied at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Rikkyo University
in Tokyo. He is a member of the Japanese Association for the Study of Popular Music and
has delivered presentations at its annual conferences. His research involves a sociologi-
cal and anthropological analysis of Japanese society’s adaptation and transformation of
music and dance derived from Latin America.

Isabel Llano is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Journalism and Communica-

tion Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Included among her research
projects are Situación social del músico en Cali and Historia Social de la Música en Cali en
el Siglo XX (both funded by the Ministry of Culture in Colombia). She has taught at the
Universidad Javeriana and the Universidad Autónoma de Occidente in Cali, Colombia.

Jonathan S. Marion is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Arkan-

sas in Fayetteville. His ongoing research—geared toward understanding the construc-
tion of personal and collective meaning and identity—explores relationships between
performance, embodiment, image, aesthetics, gender, translocality, and activity-based
communities. He is a board member of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology and
president-elect of the Society for Visual Anthropology. He is the author of Ballroom: Cul-
ture and Costume in Competitive Dance and the coauthor of Visual Research: A Concise
Introduction to Thinking Visually.

Priscilla Renta is a doctoral candidate in performance studies at Northwestern Univer-

sity whose research focuses on Afro-Latino dance and music performance in the United
States and the Caribbean. Her essays have been published in the anthologies El son y
la salsa en la identidad del Caribe and Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o
Studies and in the journals Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies and
AHA! Hispanic Arts News. Renta, who has performed with various Afro–Puerto Rican
Contributors 215

music and dance groups, was a founding member of Puerto Rico’s first all-female music
ensemble.

Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel is a linguist, anthropologist, music researcher, and profes-

sor of social communication at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. His publica-
tions include La salsa en Cali, Pagode a festa do samba no Rio de Janeiro e nas Américas,
El baile: Un lenguaje del cuerpo, and La salsa en discusión: Música popular e historia cul-
tural. Since 2010, he has been developing Cali Cultura Salsera—El Mulataje Musical en-
tre el Barrio y la Ciudad Global ([Link] an interactive
online virtual museum that narrates and ­represents the memory of a musical culture
linking Cali with New York, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
 Index

Abakuá dance, 115n5 Alcohol, 87, 94, 106, 112, 148, 165, 170n2,
Academia and dance, 3–4, 17, 22n6; decoloni- 171n12; and consumption styles, 186–188,
zation of, 17; traditions of, 17 195. See also Drinking
Acrobatics, 31, 77n19, 101, 113, 134, 154, 166, Alma Latina (dance company), 70, 77n21
177, 190 Americanization, 119
Aesthetics: African versus European, 120, Andean music, 173, 180n3
131–132, 135, 137; in ballroom dance, 126, Angelenos, 3, 9, 20
128–129; of Caleño style, 153; cosmopolitan, Antecedents of salsa, 31, 143, 145–146, 183
13, 82–84, 89; dance as, 21, 142, 178, 180; Anthony, Marc, 81, 162, 194
Japanese, 47; of L.A. salsa, 72, 75; and le- Anthropology and dance studies, 4, 16–17, 56
gitimacy, 201; and sabor, 118, 123–126, 128, Antillean music, 145, 147–149. See also
131–132, 134, 136–137; of Santo Domingo Tropical music
salsa, 166, 171n15 Anton, Jimmy, 47
Aficionados, 1, 12, 16, 18, 41, 53, 84, 115, 125, 168 Apollo Theater, 34
Africa, 10, 17, 146, 179 Apprenticeship, 141, 151, 178
Africando (music group), 17 Appropriation, 23n17, 192, 195
Africanism, 127, 137 Archive, dance as, 40
Afro-Caribbean dance, 8, 22–23n10, 27, 30, 40, Argentines, 2, 155n8, 173, 203; in Spanish
71, 73, 164; and Puerto Rican salsa, 120–121, salsa scene, 183, 187, 189–191, 196, 197n8,
128–129, 131, 136 197–198n12, 198n13
Afro-Cuban dance, 31, 111, 115n5, 191. See also Arrangements, musical, 4, 6, 30, 105, 122, 185
Afro-Caribbean dance Arrangers, 38, 162
Afro-Cuban music, 34, 42n1, 66, 110, 115n5, Arroz con habichuela (Gran Combo), 119–120
120–121 Arthur Murray dance studios, 29, 135
Agility, 143, 147–148, 177 Asia, 35, 82, 84, 110, 125, 204
Aguaelulos, 148–149 Assimilation, 20, 84, 91, 98, 151; of salsa in
Aguilar, Pedro (Cuban Pete), 31–32, 42n10, France, 175–176, 179–180; of salsa in Japan,
42nn12–13 200
Albums, 106, 119, 121, 161, 185–186, 203. See Associations, salsa, 60, 102, 120, 132, 137–
also Recording industry 138n7, 161, 167–168, 192, 208–209
218 Index

Attire, 7, 72, 91, 149, 202–203. See also Broadcasts, 108, 184–185
Clothing Broadway, 26, 30–31, 57
Austin, Texas, 61n17 Bronx, the, 32–33, 43n24, 50
Australians, 77n25, 95n10, 134 Buena Vista Social Club, 22–23n10, 186
Authenticity, 14–15, 22–23n10, 54, 56, 100, 136, Businesses: clubs in New York and New
202; in L.A. salsa, 73–74; in Midwest salsa, Jersey, 47, 126; dance companies, 198n14;
81–82, 89–91, 94, 95n10; in New York salsa, discrimination in, 88, 93; Dominican clubs,
28, 35, 37, 40, 43n17 164; French clubs and concerts, 174, 176;
Japanese clubs, 207; the Palladium, 32, 47;
Bachata, 22–23n10, 158, 161, 168, 183, 185, schools, 141, 165, 167, 176, 207; Spanish
187–188, 190, 195 clubs, 187; workshops, 68, 141
Bailador, 6, 141–143, 146–147, 151, 189. See also
Street salsa Cabaret salsa, 31, 95n6, 99, 130–131, 143, 145,
Bailarín, 6, 141–143, 146–147, 150–151, 154, 150–153
189. See also Studio salsa Caborrojeño (nightclub), 37
Bailes de cuota, 148–149 Cadencia, 119–120
Balada, 162, 166 Caleño dancers, 9, 19, 142–143, 146–147; com-
Ballet, 54, 106, 129, 131, 143, 191; and New pared with Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto
York mambo, 30–32, 43n15 Rican dancers, 151–152; style of, 19, 142–144,
Ballroom dance, 6–8, 15, 23n15, 47, 52, 54; in 147–148, 151–153, 190–191
Cuba, 98–99, 101–103, 105, 107, 111–115; im- Cali, Colombia, 5, 19, 71, 140–154, 155n5,
pact of, on Puerto Rican salsa, 117, 126–129, 155nn9–10, 190–191
131–135, 137; in Japan, 202–203, 210n3; and Canada, 7, 64, 130–131, 200
L.A. salsa, 66–67, 71, 76–77n16; and New Cañandonga, 147, 155n7
York salsa, 26–27, 29–34, 40; and salsa in the Canons, 17, 64, 108, 129, 131, 150–151, 153
Midwest, 85, 87, 89, 91, 95; schools in Spain Capitalism, 6, 9, 11, 16, 19, 42–43n14, 95n5
for, 190–191; versus street salsa, 29, 32, 34, Capoeira, 54, 191
130 Caribbean Soul (dance company), 49–52, 57,
Ballrooms, 94, 174; in Cuba, 99, 102, 104, 106– 60n1, 126
107, 110 Carnival, 15, 99, 185
Barbosa Ventosa, Saúl, 197n11, 198n15 Cartagena, Spain, 192–193
Barcelona, 9–10, 20, 182–196, 197nn1–2, Casetas, 149, 152
197nn7–8; dance scene in, 20 Casineros, 104, 107–108, 111–112. See also
Barretto, Ray, 33, 177, 184 Casino (dance)
Barrios, 16, 19, 30–32, 94, 174–175, 180n5, 190; Casino (dance), 5, 8, 19, 52, 76n7, 98, 104, 148;
in Cali, 143–145, 147–149, 152, 155nn9–10; antecedents of, 99–100; basic step of, 103,
in Cuba, 104, 112; in the Dominican Repub­ 110, 112; birth of, 101–103; named steps in,
lic, 157–161, 163, 165, 168–169, 170nn1–2, 101–102, 110–113; in Spain, 187, 189–190,
171nn14–15 193, 195–196; styles of, 107–108, 113
Beginners, 51, 167, 176, 209 Catalan rumba, 183, 197n2
Berlin Salsa Congress, 7, 13, 40 Catalonia (Spanish region), 183, 186–188, 190–191
Berríos-Miranda, Marisol, 42n2 Categories of dance, 9, 22, 37, 77, 98, 134, 141,
Bilingualism in dance, 52, 58 209
Boas, Franz, 3 CDs, 61n14, 160, 203
Bolero, 143, 148, 158, 161, 183 Centralization, 10, 117, 127, 137
Bolivians, 173, 186–188, 197n8 Cha-Cha Aces (dance company), 31
Bollywood, 13, 191 Chachachá, 99–103, 106, 111, 115n4, 143, 183
Bomba (dance), 4, 33–34, 51, 110–111, 121 Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, 81–87, 95n7
Bongos, 152, 174, 179 Championships, 7, 153, 169, 206, 210n7; in Los
Boogaloo, 32, 143, 147, 166, 191 Angeles, 67; in Puerto Rico, 117, 129, 132, 134;
Borders, 2, 8, 13, 18, 76n6, 154, 195 in Spain, 192–193. See also Competitions;
Boundaries, 3, 28, 31, 39–40, 43n23, 48, 74, 94 Opens, salsa; World Salsa Championships
Bourdieu, Pierre, 95n5, 132, 201 Champús, 5, 148–149, 155n8, 155n10
Brazil, 8, 129, 142, 173, 190, 197n8 Changüí, 106
Index 219

Charangas, 4, 6, 33, 99, 106, 109, 113, 115n4, 132–137; in New Jersey, 49; in New York, 28,
115n9, 160 35; in Paris, 177
Chicago, Illinois, 60n8, 80, 83, 86, 90–91, Commodification, 4, 7, 11, 13–14, 16, 18, 65,
95n10 72, 128
Chile, 89, 134, 173 Competitions, 18, 33, 98; and Caleño danc-
Choreography, 178, 192; of Caleño dancers, ers, 141–142, 144, 150–151, 153; in the
150, 153; in competitive ballroom dance, Dominican Republic, 162–163, 168–170;
99; in Cuban salsa, 99–103, 106, 108–109, judging of, 76–77n16, 99; in Los Angeles,
111, 113; by Eddie Torres, 33–34, 125–127; 65, 68, 70–72, 75, 76–77n16, 77n17; in the
by El Mulato, 146; by Emiliano Sosa, 189; Midwest, 87, 89, 94; and Puerto Rican danc-
by Katherine Dunham, 29; and L.A. salsa, ers, 117, 128, 131–133, 136–137; in Spain,
68; by Mario Layunta, 190; by Mike Ramos, 190, 192, 197–198n12. See also Opens, salsa
138n8; in Puerto Rican salsa, 118, 133–134, Complexity, 2, 11, 13, 37, 56, 74, 83, 92, 105,
137; by Tito Puente, 43n20 107, 112, 119, 129, 153
Choreoscape, 16 Concerts. See Live music
Cinema, 142, 149, 151–152 Conga (dance), 29, 109, 111
Circuits, 49, 53, 173, 182–183, 194 Conga (music), 106, 148
Citizenship, 81, 91, 159, 198n13 Congas (musical instrument), 80, 152, 174;
Class. See Socioeconomic class rhythms of, 35, 38. See also Tumbadoras
Classifications, 9, 12, 20, 134, 185–186, 190, 196 Congo, the, 10, 60n2
Classism, 133, 135 Congreso Mundial de la Salsa, 19, 35, 68, 75n1,
Clave, 9, 18, 179, 187; in Caleño dance, 150– 117–118, 198n15; and Caleño dancers, 146,
153; in Cuban dance, 100, 107, 109–110; in 156n13; and globalization, 125, 127, 132–133.
Dominican dance, 165–167; in New York See also Puerto Rico Salsa Congress
salsa, 26, 34–35, 37–38, 42nn1–2, 43n18; Congresses, 8–9, 11–12, 16, 18, 27, 49–50, 58,
in Puerto Rican dance, 119–120, 126, 136, 64, 66, 70, 77n25, 95n10, 127, 179, 208; and
138n9. See also Rhythmic structure Caleño dancers, 143, 146; and Dominican
Clothing, 11, 51–52, 81, 89, 113; in Japanese dancers, 159, 164, 166, 168–170; in Spain,
salsa, 202–203; in L.A. salsa, 72–73, 77nn19– 182–184, 188, 190–196, 197–198n12. See also
20. See also Attire; Costumes; Hats individual congresses
Club Casino Deportivo, 101–102 Connoisseurs, 40, 47, 50, 60, 155n10
Cobao, 147 Consciousness, 94, 123–124, 127, 129, 136–137
Cocolo style, 135–136 Consumption, 14, 30, 47; in Cali, 155n10; in
Codification, 9, 13–14, 20; in Japanese salsa, the Midwest, 82; in Paris, 175, 178–179; in
208; in New York salsa, 32, 34–35, 41; in Spain, 20, 182–184, 186–189, 194–196
Parisian salsa, 177–178 Contests, 27, 31, 50, 52, 71, 143, 188
Collecting, 80, 142, 144, 148, 155n10, 194 Contradance, 99, 102
Colmados, 164, 170n2, 171n12 Contratiempo, 23n11, 34, 100, 107, 115n6
Colombians, 5, 8–11, 14, 17, 19–20, 22n3, 22n7, Conventions, 7–8, 82, 92, 175
43n22, 140–154, 155n5, 155n8, 156n12; Copacabana (club), 33, 47, 50, 52
dance style of, 1–2, 90, 133–134, 185, 187, Cordoba, Enio, 67
192, 201; and L.A. salsa, 66, 69, 76n12; in Corporeality, 7, 145, 165, 178; in Puerto Rican
the Midwest, 80, 84, 89–90, 95n10; in Paris, salsa, 118, 120, 122–125, 127–129, 131–132,
173–174; in Spain, 184–188, 192, 197n8. See 136
also Caleño dancers Corso (club), 47, 50
Colonial, 12, 143, 145, 152, 164 Cortijo, Rafael, 4, 33, 121
Colonizing, 12, 173 Cosmology, 117, 120, 123–124
Combinations in dance, 33, 53, 100–102, 107, Cosmopolitanism, 9, 12–14, 18, 21, 23n12, 30;
148 and aesthetic preferences, 83–85; and exclu-
Commerce, 81, 89, 93, 95n8, 169 sion, 83, 93–94; and identities, 48; local cos-
Commercialism, 5–6, 35 mopolitans, 83–85, 88–89; in the Midwest,
Commercialization of salsa, 6–8, 12, 17–18, 80–85, 87–89, 91–94, 95n5; in New Jersey
108; in Cuba, 102; in the Dominican salsa, 47–49, 56, 59, 60n2, 60n6; in Spanish
Republic, 170; globally, 117–119, 125, 127, salsa, 185–186, 188
220 Index

Costumes, 18, 27, 52, 102, 168. See also Attire; Dance instructors, 7–8, 20, 22–23n10, 151; in
Clothing Cuba, 105, 114–115; in the Dominican Re­
Counts, 34–36, 38, 100, 136, 150–151, 165–167. public, 159, 163, 166–167; in Japan, 202–203,
See also Timing 206–208, 210; in Los Angeles, 67–71, 76n11,
Creolization, 10, 120 77n14, 77n24; in the Midwest, 86, 91; in
Cruz, Celia, 29, 120–122, 177, 184 New Jersey, 40, 49, 53–56, 59; in New York,
Cuban dance music, 105–110, 130, 183–184 27, 31–32, 35, 38, 40, 43n23; in Paris, 176–
Cuban Pete (Pedro Aguilar), 31–32, 42n10, 178; in Puerto Rico, 121, 136, 138n8; in Spain,
42nn12–13 182–183, 186, 188–190, 192, 194–196, 198n15.
Cuban revolution, 104–105, 128 See also Dance classes
Cubans, 3, 10, 68, 98–115, 121, 151, 207; in New Dance schools, 31, 53, 110, 178; in Barcelona,
York City, 28, 40; versus Puerto Ricans, 5, 8, 182–183, 186–187, 192; in Cali, 146, 149, 154;
22–23n10, 93, 95n11, 106; in Spain, 187, 189– in the Dominican Republic, 161, 163–165.
190 See also Dance academies; Dance instruc-
Cuban style, 89–90, 95n10, 113, 115, 175, 187, tion; Dance instructors; Dance studios
190–192, 202, 206 Dancesport, 15, 23n15, 50, 133, 136. See also
Cultural capital, 125–126 Ballroom dance
Cultural Explosion Dance Company, 52–53, Dance studios, 15, 23n15, 86, 103, 135, 201;
55, 60n1, 60n8 in Los Angeles, 68–70, 72, 77n24; in New
Cultural industries, 19, 141, 158, 168–170. See Jersey, 49, 52–56, 59, 60n1, 60n9, 61n14,
also Entertainment industries, local 61n17; in New York, 30, 35, 43nn15–16
Cultural insiders as dancers, 18–20, 43n22 Danza, 99–100, 103, 105, 115n1
Cultural liberation, 60n3 Danzón, 28, 42n6, 99–102, 106, 115n4
Cultural nationalism, 118, 127 Decolonization, 10, 17, 19
Cultural policy, 19, 168–169 Deejays, 27, 39, 41, 60n1, 77n24; in Japan, 206,
Cumbia, 81, 89, 93, 183–184; cumbia villera, 210; in the Midwest, 80–81, 83, 86–90; in
185; and salsa style in the U.S. Southwest Spain, 185, 192, 194
and Mexico, 2, 8, 18, 22n3, 66, 76n6. See also Denmark, 64, 76n4
Tecnocumbia Depoliticization, 5, 13, 60n3
Descarga, 122, 127, 132
Dance academies, 4, 17, 60n1, 72, 81, 114; in Despelote, 8, 111–112, 115n8
Barcelona, 182, 188–189; in Cali, 141, 143, Deterritorialization, 11–12, 14, 16, 47
147–148, 151; in the Dominican Republic, Diasporas, 22–23n10, 27, 65, 95n5, 120, 133,
158, 160, 163–165, 167–170; in Japan, 200, 158, 160, 169, 171n15
207; in Paris, 176; in Puerto Rico, 126, 135. Diasporicans, 133–134, 137–138n7. See also
See also Dance schools; Dance studios Nuyoricans
Dance accent, 3, 16, 18, 20–21, 22n5; versus Dictatorship, 159–160, 169
dance dialect, 22n5. See also Dance dialect Diffusion of salsa, 21, 49, 77n26, 162; in Cuba,
Dance classes, 14, 23n15, 138n8, 147, 186; and 104–106, 111, 114; in France, 174, 177; in
Cuban social dance, 98, 106–107, 114–115; in Japan, 200–201, 203, 206–207, 209; in Spain,
the Dominican Republic, 176–178; in Japan, 182–184, 186
200, 202, 204, 208; in New Jersey, 50, 53; in Dips, 67–68, 72–73. See also Acrobatics
New York, 34. See also Dance instructors Discotheques, 16, 121, 174–175; in Barcelona,
Dance companies, 41, 43nn19–20, 53, 60n1, 182–190, 192, 194–196, 197n6, 197n10; in
60n8, 145; in Barcelona, 182, 189–192, 196, Cali, 144, 146–148, 152, 155n10; in the
198n14; in Los Angeles, 69–70, 77n21. See Dominican Republic, 162–164. See also
also individual dance companies Nightclubs; Venues
Dance dialect, 22n5, 73, 153. See also Dance Discrimination, 19, 41, 54, 93, 112, 147
accent Dissemination of salsa. See Diffusion of salsa
Dance events, 77n17, 127, 158, 174, 190; in Diversity, 1, 7, 10, 13, 17, 39, 41, 84, 114, 147,
Cuba, 99, 100–101. See also Championships; 150, 158, 161, 187; in the Midwest, 86, 95n6;
Competitions; Opens, salsa in New Jersey salsa scene, 47, 54–56, 59
Dance instruction, 35, 114; in New Jersey, 49, Dominican Republic, 5, 12, 121, 157–170,
52–55, 61nn14–15; in Puerto Rico, 117–118, 170nn1–2, 170n5, 170nn8–9, 171n12, 171n15,
127–128, 137; in Spain, 189, 196 174
Index 221

Dominicans, 3, 8, 10, 43n24, 90, 121, 158–170, Spanish salsa consumption, 183, 190–191,
170n9; dance style of, 165–166; in diaspora, 195
159–160, 169; in Spain, 185–187, 197n8 Exportation, 35, 154, 164, 198n16
Donay, Millie, 31, 37
Downbeat, 9, 29, 34, 151 Family, dancing with, 112, 114, 120
Dress code, 77n20, 89, 101, 103. See also Attire; Fania All Stars, 4, 161, 184
Clothing Fania Records, 4–5, 22nn7–8, 39, 120, 161, 184
Drinking, 92, 174. See also Alcohol Fans of salsa, 86; in Colombia, 22n7, 148; and
Dunham, Katherine, 29, 42n12 Cuban popular music, 105; in the Domini­
DVDs, 52, 61n15, 128–129, 208, 210n6 can Republic, 159–160, 169; in France, 176–
177, 179; and L.A. salsa, 67; and merengue, 90;
Eclecticism, 32, 46, 60, 167 in Spain, 194, 196
Economics of salsa, 82. See also Commodi­ Fashion, 9, 30, 153, 179. See also Attire; Clothing;
fication; Marketing; Marketplace for salsa Hats
Ecuadorians, 186–188, 197n8 Fee dances (bailes de cuota), 148–149, 155n8
El Canario (José Alberto), 162–163 Feliciano, Cheo, 147, 183
Elegance, 52, 107, 117–120, 131–132, 137, 155n9. Feria, Cali (festival), 144, 148
See also Grace Festivals, 16, 49, 64–65, 77n25, 114, 141, 143;
Elites, 13, 83–85, 88–92, 145 Cali Feria, 144, 148; in Cuba, 106; Cuban
Elitism, 105, 135 Salsa Festival, 203; Festival Tempo Latino,
Embargo, 22n8 186; Japan Salsa Festival, 204, 208–209;
Embodiment, 16–17, 20, 32, 64, 74, 136–137, 151 Latin Festival, 129; in New Jersey, 50; New
Emigration, 105–106, 173. See also Immi­ York/New Jersey Salsa Festival, 47; in Paris,
grants; Migration 175; RMM Twenty-Third Annual Salsa
Emotion, 7, 14, 38, 109, 129, 136, 150; lack of, Music Festival, 117–118, 126; Salsa and Latin
in Parisian salsa, 176–177, 181n9; and Puerto Jazz Festival, 191; in Spain, 188, 192–193;
Rican salsa, 120, 122 Varadero Festival, 108
Empowerment, 110, 126, 143 Field, 201; salsa field, 201, 206, 210
Ensembles, musical, 4, 6, 33, 105, 115n4, 149, 161 Fieldwork, 83, 86, 90, 186
Entertainment industries, local, 94, 168. See Flamenco, 31–32, 191, 208
also Cultural industries Flips, 67–68, 72–73
Eroticism, 5, 145, 147, 176 Folklore, 16, 105, 110–111, 114
Essentialism, 23n14, 60n6, 136, 146; and “natu- Followers (dance role), 74, 134, 167
ralness” of dance ability, 54–56 Footwork, 2, 27, 42n3, 53, 66–67, 90, 127, 134,
Estefan, Gloria, 185 166. See also Shines
Ethnicity, 17; and authenticity, 14; in Cali, 142, Foreigners, 114, 174, 176, 179, 188, 197n8, 207
145–147; and cosmopolitanism, 82–84; and Foucault, Michel, 15, 23n16
dance accents, 22n5; and diversity, 13, 47; Foxtrot, 37, 98, 143, 148
and essentialism, 23n14; and global salsa, 16; Freestyle, 31, 54
and identities, 14; and local salsas, 3, 48; in Funaná, 22–23n10
Los Angeles, 72–74; in the Midwest, 81–84, Funk, 6, 191
93–94, 95n6; in New Jersey, 52–56, 58–59; in Fusions, 10, 158, 190, 193
New York, 18, 27–30, 37–41, 43n22, 47; and
pride, 1; in Spain, 188, 197n1 Gaze, 15, 32, 141
Ethnography, 3–4, 83, 129; native, 19, 117–118, Gender, 14, 16, 22n7, 23n13, 55, 147, 164–165;
120–127, 132 in L.A. salsa, 72–74, 77n18; and roles in
Ethnomusicology, 4, 17, 80, 95n5 dance, 103, 107, 112–113, 166–167, 209. See
Europeanism, 129, 131–132, 135, 137 also Followers (dance role); Women’s partici-
Everyday life, dance in, 53, 70, 140, 149, 163, pation in salsa
187; for Puerto Ricans, 130, 132, 134–135 Geography, 2–3, 16, 21, 92, 160, 162
Exclusion, 5, 13, 39, 53, 59, 84, 115n5, 133, 173, Gestures, 15, 81, 140, 145, 176–177; in Cuban
187–188, 192, 195 dance, 102–103, 108–109, 111–113, 115
Exhibitions, 164, 192, 194, 196 Globalization of salsa, 3–4, 7, 10–16, 18–21,
Exoticism, 6, 8, 15, 58–59; in Parisian salsa 22–23n10, 35, 41, 64–65, 77n26, 92, 117–119,
consumption, 175–176, 178–179, 180n6; in 125, 127–128, 132–137, 178, 196, 210; versus
222 Index

Globalization of salsa (continued) Immigrants, 20, 22n8, 43n22, 54, 73, 170n8; in
cosmopolitanism, 48; and L.A. salsa, 65, 68, France, 179, 180n3; in Japan, 200–201; in the
75. See also Localization of salsa Midwest, 81, 93; in Spain, 182–184, 186, 188,
Global versus local, 41, 75, 95n5 195, 196–197, 197n8. See also Emigration;
“Glocalization,” 75 Migration
Grace, 100, 107, 117–118, 130–132, 137, 167. See Imperialism, 6, 124–125, 128–129, 135
also Elegance Impresarios, 179, 180n6
Granada (club), 71–73, 77n20 Improvisation, 5, 13, 54, 61n11, 61n16, 90, 166,
Gran Combo (music group), 119–121, 123, 126, 202; in Caleño salsa,143–144, 150; in Cuban
131–133, 135, 138n8, 145, 150 dance, 99, 103, 107, 110, 112–113; in New
Grupo Niche (music group), 155n7 York salsa, 30, 39–40; and Parisian salsa,
Guaguancó (dance), 111, 143, 176. See also 177–178; in Puerto Rican salsa, 117–118,
Rumba (dance) 122–123, 125–127, 129, 134–136; and
Guajira (music), 4, 10, 143 Spanish salsa, 186, 196
Guaracha (dance), 9, 102, 143, 151 Inclusion, 4, 13, 18, 47–48, 55, 58, 91, 146,
Guaracha (music), 4, 10, 106, 121, 148, 158, 187–188, 195. See also Exclusion
160, 177 Indianapolis, Indiana, 81, 83
Guerra, Juan Luis, 162, 185, 202 Industrialization, 118, 127, 152
Guinguettes, 178–179, 181n10 Inequality, 13, 40–41, 48, 145
Gumbe, 10 Institutionalization, 22n6, 120
Institutions, 11, 105, 143, 159, 194
Habitus, 2–3, 21, 95n5, 120, 132; of Japanese Instituto Superior de Arte (Higher Institute of
dancers, 201–202, 206, 209–210 Art, Cuba), 108–109, 114
Hall, Stuart, 132 Instrumentation, 122–123. See also Arrange­
Hamera, Judith, 40–41, 74 ments, musical
Harlem, 30, 32 Internationalization, 153, 182, 195–196
Hats, 77n20, 89, 153, 155n9. See also Attire; Internet, 65, 68, 75, 130–133, 169, 176, 194, 201,
Clothing 204; dissemination of dance via, 6, 11–12,
Havana, dance in, 103–104, 109–110, 112–113 20, 47, 51, 76n9, 128; and dissemination of
Heterotopia, 15, 23nn16–17. See also Kinetopia New York salsa, 27, 35, 38, 40. See also You­
Highlife, 10 Tube
Hollywood, 72–73 Irakere, 109
Homogenization, 3, 14, 18, 117, 128, 134, 137, Isolations, 8, 128–129
140, 153 Italy, salsa in, 7, 35, 43n16, 131, 134, 164, 189
Homosexuality, 146–147. See also Sexuality
Humor, 61, 109, 123 Jalajala, Papito, 134
Hunts Point Palace, 33 Japan, 17, 20–21, 92, 200–210. See also Tokyo
Hustle (dance), 31–34, 37, 43nn15–16, 47, 49, Japan Salsa Congress, 204–206, 210
71, 89, 121 Jazz dance, 26–27, 31, 34, 54, 66, 191, 196
Hybridity, 10, 14, 183, 195, 198n17; in New Jazz music, 4, 6, 30, 37, 42n4, 119. See also
Jersey salsa, 47–48, 53, 55. See also Mixtures Latin jazz
Jíbaro music, 4, 10, 33, 37
Identification, 2, 74, 130, 140; Latino, 93–94; Jitterbug, 29, 31
with salsa as Puerto Rican, 118, 122–123 Judging, 71, 76–77n16
Identities, 3–5, 12, 14, 16, 47, 55, 58–59; of Cali Jukeboxes, 86, 152
and Caleños, 140–141, 143, 145–147, 149, 151, Julio La Salsa, 165
153, 156n13; of Domincan salseros and sone­
ros, 19, 157–162, 165, 168, 170, 171n15; ethnic, Kinetic capital, 13, 15, 18, 20
in New York, 33, 38, 40–41; European and Kinetopia, 15–16, 20–21, 23nn16–17
Spanish, 182–183, 188, 194; of Latin Ameri­ Kiosks, 144, 149, 152
cans in France, 173–174, 176; of Latin Ameri­ Kizomba, 10, 22–23n10, 191–193
cans in Spain, 20, 186, 188, 195–196; and
politics in the Midwest, 81–84, 89–90, 92–94 La Charanga Habanera (music group), 109,
Ideologies, 83, 133, 147 113, 187
Index 223

La India, 61n12 Magazines, 20, 29, 31, 106, 137–138n7, 189–190;

Lambada (dance), 179, 185, 191, 203 and Japanese salsa, 201, 203–204, 207
Las Vegas World Salsa Championships, 117, Majorca, Spain, 192–193
153 Mambo (dance), 9, 11, 18, 47, 49, 134, 138n8;
Latin Americans: and cultural differences with in Cali, 143, 151; in Cuba, 109, 111; in the
Latinos, 50–51, 54; in France, 173–174; in Dominican Republic, 167, 177; in Los Angeles,
Japan, 200–201; in the Midwest, 83; in New 67, 70, 76n5, 76n10; in New York, 26–41, 42n4,
Jersey, 49–50, 59; in New York, 38, 43n24; in 42n8, 43n16, 43n20; versus rumba, 29; versus
Spain, 185 salsa, 26; in Spain, 189, 191–192
Latinidad, 12, 18, 47, 54–55, 59, 93, 176 Mambo (music), 4, 29–30, 38–39, 42n6, 42n8,
Latin jazz, 16, 37, 49, 191, 203 166, 177, 179; history of, 28–30; mambo
Latin motion, 128–129; versus Cuban motion, jazz, 30
128 Mambo (section of a musical piece), 122, 132
Latin music, 16, 34, 43n24, 131–132, 137– Mambo Aces (dance company), 31
138n7, 158; in Japan, 204, 207–208; in Spain, Mambo Society, 34
183–185, 191, 194–196, 197n7, 198n13. See Manhattan, 28–30, 34, 50–51
also Antillean music; Tropical music Manolín (el médico de la salsa), 109, 113
Latino versus non-Latino dance styles, 20, 177, Marginalization, 54, 88–89, 92, 145, 171, 195
195–196 Maringa, 10
Latin Quarter (club), 28, 51 Marketing, 7, 12, 14, 18, 32, 111, 119, 169, 174;
Latin Symbolics (dance company), 33 of L.A. salsa, 67–70
Leaders (dance role), 8, 74, 167 Marketplace for salsa, 28, 82, 92, 168
Lee, Winsome, 43n23, 60n1 Materiality, 178
Legitimacy, 10, 13, 132, 188, 201, 210n2; of Mayan (club), 67, 71–72
particular salsa styles, 74, 151, 153; of salsa Media, mass, 7, 22–23n10, 26, 32, 152, 206; in
worldwide, 118, 137n2 Cuba, 102, 113–114; and globalization of
Leisure, 128, 141, 194 salsa, 3, 11, 14–15, 19; and salsa in Cali, 151–
Lindy (dance), 31–32 152; and salsa in the Dominican Republic,
Listening to salsa music, 5, 7, 47, 92, 117, 120, 160, 169–170; and salsa in the Midwest, 93,
122–124; in Cali, 149, 158; in the Dominican 95n10. See also CDs; DVDs; Internet; Radio;
Republic, 162, 170; in Spain, 183, 185, 186, Television; Videotapes
196 Mena, Candy, 49, 51, 60
Literature on salsa, 4, 56, 82, 94, 105, 144, 201 Mercado, Ralph, 126, 162, 184. See also Ralph
Live music, 8, 39, 50, 74, 85–86, 152, 203; in Mercado Management (RMM)
Barcelona, 182, 184, 186–188, 195–196; in Merengue, 5, 8, 19, 33, 43n24, 90, 120; and
Paris, 174, 176–180; and Puerto Rican salsa, Dominican identities, 157–158, 160–162,
125–127, 132–133 164, 169–170, 170n4; merengue típico, 22n8,
Localization of salsa, 2–3, 7, 12–21, 22n7, 158; in Spain, 183–185, 187–188, 190, 195
23n17, 47–48, 88, 93, 117, 159–161, 210. See Mestizaje. See Mixtures
also Globalization of salsa Methodologies, 8, 27, 115, 201
Los Angeles salsa, 9, 15, 18, 22n9, 52, 64–75, Mexicans, 2, 9–10, 13, 15, 18, 22n3, 43n24; and
76n9, 76n11, 76n14, 77nn18–19, 134, 146, Caleño salsa, 142–143, 149, 151–152; and
177; globalization of, 68–69, 75; in Japan, L.A. salsa, 66, 73–74, 76n6; and salsa in the
202; in Spain, 190–191, 198n16 Midwest, 81–84, 87–94; and style of salsa
Los Angeles Salsa Congress, 72, 87, 198n16, dancing, 18, 89–90, 92–93
206, 210n7 Miami, Florida, 52, 66, 76n10, 90, 106, 117, 127,
Los Rumberos (dance company), 67, 69 130, 147, 185, 206
Los Van Van, 106, 109 Midwestern United States, 9, 18, 80–94, 95n10
Lyrics, 5, 17, 55, 66, 109, 119, 123–125 Migration, 4, 13–16, 19, 47, 49–50, 56, 83, 147,
149, 196, 200; circular, 121, 138n8, 160; of
Machismo, 76n7, 146, 165 Dominicans, 158, 160, 169; and New Jersey,
Machito (musician), 34 48–49, 51, 54, 56, 59; to Paris, 173–174,
Madison Square Garden, 118, 126 180n3; of Puerto Ricans, 121, 133, 138n8. See
Madrid, Spain, 182, 192–193 also Emigration; Immigrants
224 Index

Milan, Italy, 35, 43n16 59; and New York salsa, 26–28, 30, 33–34,
Minorities, 15, 20, 83–84, 142, 146–147 38, 41; and Puerto Rican salsa, 117, 126. See
Mixtures, 10, 16, 30, 32, 37, 158; in Colombian also Discotheques; Venues
salsa, 142, 145, 147, 156n11; in Spanish salsa Nightlife, 59, 105, 203, 207
music and audiences, 182–183, 188–189, Nostalgia, 18, 22–23n10, 26, 40–41, 59, 173–
198n17. See also Hybridity 174, 186
Mobility, 9, 13, 43n17, 48, 57, 91, 158 Nuyoricans, 2, 5, 6, 9, 18, 47, 55, 89, 121; and
Modernities, 14, 48, 135, 152 New York salsa, 26–28, 30, 33, 38–41. See
Montreal, Quebec, 22n7, 200 also Diasporicans
Montuno (section of a musical piece), 101, 122,
127, 177. See also Son montuno (music genre) Obrero (Cali neighborhood), 148–149, 155nn9–
Movies, 8, 31, 33, 111–112, 143, 186, 210n1 10, 156n11. See also Cali, Colombia
Mozambique (dance), 105 Ochoa, Ana Maria, 14
Mulatas del Fuego (dance company), 41 Olympics, 98, 128, 134
Mulattos, 10, 104, 142, 145–148, 152, 155n10, On-1 salsa, 20–21, 33–34, 147, 168; in Japan,
156n11 202, 209; in Los Angeles, 64, 66, 70, 72; in
Multiethnicity, 18, 29–30, 40 the Midwest, 80–82, 88–89; in Paris, 178–
Multisited ethnography, 3, 17 179
Musettes, 181n10 On-2 salsa/mambo, 14, 20–21, 150, 168, 189;
Music-dance relationship: in Caleño salsa, and Caleño salsa, 147–148; in California,
147–148, 150–153; in Cuban social dance, 64–66, 69–71, 73; definition of, 26–28; in
100, 109–110, 114; in Dominican salsa, 157, Japan, 202, 209; in the Midwest, 81–82,
166; in L.A. salsa, 66; in New York salsa, 33– 88–89; in New Jersey, 55, 59, 61n10, 61n14;
35, 38–40; in Puerto Rican salsa, 122, 126– in New York, 29–30, 33–34, 38–41; in Paris,
127, 131–132 178–179; in Puerto Rico, 127
Openness, 55, 110, 169, 176, 179–180
National Cultural Council (Cuba), 105–106 Opens, salsa, 117, 129–130, 132, 134, 192–193,
National dance styles, 133–134, 137 197–198n12, 198n16. See also Competitions
Nationalism, 2, 4, 12, 104, 118, 127, 133, 183 Oppression, 123, 132, 173
Nationalities of salsa dancers, 7, 9, 20, 98, 150, Organizations, salsa dance, 50, 105, 117, 127–
175, 179; in Spain, 182, 184–187, 190, 195– 128, 159; in Japan, 204, 208–209
197 Organizers, 41, 135, 174, 179, 194, 198nn15–16;
Nationhood, Puerto Rican, 118, 129, 132–135, in Japan, 204, 206, 210
137 Orishas, 111, 152
Neglia, Josie, 67, 68, 69, 76n9, 76n14 Orquesta Aragón, 106, 108
Negritude, 165, 171n15 Orquesta de la Luz, 47, 60n3, 203–204
Networks, 4, 6, 11, 16, 60n8, 84, 91, 201 Orquestas (ensembles), 47, 60n3, 105, 123, 149,
Newark, New Jersey, 52, 55, 57, 61n10 161, 187, 203–204; orquestas típicas, 115n4
New Jersey, 9, 15, 18, 46–60, 60n1, 60n3, 60n5, Ortos, Tito, 135–136
61n17, 126 Otero, Irene, 50, 60n9
New Jersey Salsa Congress, 47 Otero, Ismael, 48–53, 57–58, 60n9, 126
New York City, 26–41, 43n23, 169, 171n12, Otherness, 48, 176
171n15, 204; and New Jersey dancers, 47, 50, Outsiders, 15, 18–20, 26, 49, 71, 80, 89, 92, 119
65; New York mambo versus Cuban mambo, Ownership, 2, 8, 48, 77n23, 81, 95n11, 159
29, 42n8; salsa music in, 4, 22nn7–8, 22–
23n10, 42n2, 42–43n14, 43n22, 43n24; and Pachanga (dance and music genre), 37, 42n8,
style of salsa dance, 22n9, 27, 42n2, 42n4, 169
43nn15–18, 43n20, 52–53, 76n4, 89–90, 134, Pachangas (parties), 143
165, 177, 189–191 Pacheco, Johnny, 5, 120–121, 160, 162
NG La Banda (music group), 108–109 Pachucos, 143, 149
Nightclubs, 1–2, 8, 11, 13, 17–18, 20, 161, 197n6; Pacini Hernández, Deborah, 162, 170n9
and Cuban salsa, 98–99, 107, 111, 113–114; Palace Theater, 29
in Japan, 200, 204, 206–207; in Los Angeles, Palladium Ballroom, 29–34, 36–40, 43nn16–17,
64–66, 71–73; in the Midwest, 81, 84–85, 89, 47, 52, 66, 76n5, 134
95n6, 95n10; in New Jersey, 47, 49, 51–53, 55, Palmieri, Charlie, 33
Index 225

Palmieri, Eddie, 4, 33, 125–126, 147, 184 Prehistories, 14

Pan-latinidad, 14–15, 93–94, 105–106, 190. See Prejudices, 188, 195
also Latinidad Preservation, 53, 83, 114, 155n10, 188
Para Bailar (TV program), 106 Prestige, 21, 28, 40, 50, 53, 95n10, 102, 133, 147,
Paris, 10, 20, 173–180, 180n1, 180n4, 181n10, 153
200; salsa dance style in, 177–178 Pride, 1–2, 9, 12, 18, 37, 41, 55, 156n13, 164–
Parrandas, 99 165, 171n15
Partner dance, 7, 16, 39, 42nn3–4, 42n7, 49–50, Professionalization, 8, 13–14, 19, 23n14, 41, 57,
64; in France, 175–176, 178, 181n9; in Japan, 131; in Caleño salsa, 141–142, 146, 151, 153
20–21, 201, 208; in Los Angeles, 67 Promenade, 99, 100, 115n1, 115n3
Paseo (dance movement), 100, 115n1, 115n3 Promoters, 5, 11, 20, 49–50, 60n1, 87; in Japan,
Pasodoble, 99, 143, 148 163, 203; in Los Angeles, 67, 72, 75n1; in
Passion, 14, 51, 59, 122, 129, 159, 168–170, 175, Paris, 174, 178
180 Publicity, 169, 175, 196, 204
Patios, 148–149, 160 Puente, Tito, 5, 26, 30, 33–34, 39, 43n2, 177,
Pause in basic step, 34, 42n8, 100, 115n6 184
Pedagogy, 34, 141, 167 Puerto Ricans, 1, 3–4, 10, 68, 118–137; versus
Pellicoro, Paul, 34, 43n15 Cubans, 5, 8, 22–23n10, 93, 95n11, 106;
Pelvic movement, 29, 108, 111–112, 177 dance style of, 134–137, 165, 175, 190–191; in
Peñas, 173 New Jersey, 47, 56; in New York, 27–28, 30,
Peralta, Yesenia, 50, 57–58, 60n1, 60n9, 168 32–33, 37
Percussionists, 135, 150 Puerto Rico Salsa Congress, 49, 67, 117, 127,
Percussive aspects of salsa music, 131–132, 152, 132, 133, 135, 137, 146, 190, 192, 197–198n12,
179. See also Bongos; Clave; Congas (musical 198n16. See also Congreso Mundial de la
instrument); Timbales Salsa
Pérez Prado, Dámaso, 29, 105 Puerto Rico Tourism Company, 133, 137–
Performance, 7, 18, 23n17, 71, 81–84, 87–94, 138n7
94n3, 95n10, 150; bodily, 32; of music, 39, 86, Pulido, Juan, 155n9
119, 122, 152; performance-oriented salsa,
12, 20, 26, 69–70, 72, 75; performance stud- Quebradita, 2
ies, 17, 127; of Puerto Rican salsa, 117–118, Quickstep, 99
125–127, 129–132, 136 Quinceañeras, 57
Peripheries, 18, 53, 81, 91–92 Quintana, Ismael, 147
Peruvians, 49–51, 186–187, 207 Quintero Rivera, Ángel, 7, 10, 23n11, 30, 34,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 60n8 106, 127, 161
Piano, 1, 43n22, 115n4, 150
Pichardo, Johann, 46–47, 60n1, 60n9 Race, 10, 17, 30, 32, 39–40, 43n17, 43n22, 73–
Piedra, Christina, 53, 60n1, 60n9 74; and authenticity, 14–15; in Colombia, 19,
Pietrobruno, Sheenagh, 200 144–147; in Cuba, 99, 104, 115n5; in the Mid­-
Pilón (dance), 105 west, 82, 84, 92–93, 95n6; among Puerto Ri-
Pipo La Fama (Pipo Alcalá), 164–165, 167 cans, 55, 129, 132, 136–137. See also Diversity;
Piro, Joe, 31, 42n11 Ethnicity; Latinidad; Multiethnicity; Negri­
Place and dance, 2–3, 20–21 tude
Plena (music), 4, 33, 51, 119–121 Racialization, 14, 18, 32, 147
Poetry, 33, 58, 119, 150, 180n2 Racism, 15, 18, 39, 73, 123, 133, 147
Polycentrism, 120–121, 128–129, 131, 135–136 Radio: in Cali, 147, 149, 152, 155n9; in the
Polyrhythm, 27, 30, 110, 118, 120, 128–129, 131, Dominican Republic, 159–160, 162–163,
136, 152–153 170n2, 171n17; in France, 177, 179; in Peru,
Ponce, Griselle, 46, 49, 51, 56–57, 60n1 50; in Spain, 11, 182–185, 196, 197nn6–7,
Popularization of salsa, 4, 11, 100, 147, 183, 197–198n12
188, 201 Ragga, 177, 190–191
Posture, 3, 8, 91, 131, 145 Ralph Mercado Management (RMM), 5, 117,
Poverty, 41, 56 125–127, 184. See also Mercado, Ralph
Precursors/predecessors of salsa, 5, 22n7, 26– Ramos, Mike, 31, 138n8
27, 68, 99–100, 103, 183–184 Ranchera, 106
226 Index

Razz M’Tazz Mambo Company, 2, 27, 39–40, Rueda del Patricio, 104
43n16; counting system of, 34–36; syllabus Ruedas, 104, 110, 112. See also Casino (dance)
of, 22n2, 37, 42n8 Rumba (dance), 29, 31–32, 42n9, 108–109, 111,
Reception of salsa, 20, 108, 118, 132, 149, 152, 113, 115n5, 120, 141, 166, 191
175–176, 195 Rumba (music), 10, 119, 148
Recognition, 18, 128, 140, 147, 164, 186 Rumbas (dance parties), 141
Recording industry, 22–23n10, 147, 194, 196,
197n4 Sabor, 19, 115n5; as aesthetic practice, 124–125;
Recreation, salsa as form of, 99, 101, 104–105, and choreography, 125–127; and class, 135–
114, 141, 165, 175 137; commercialization of, 128; and competi­
Redfield, Robert, 64, 75 tive salsa, 129–135; definition of, 119; and
Reggaetón, 57, 168, 185, 187, 195 nationhood, 134–135, 137; and sentimiento,
Regionalization, 75 117–118, 123, 129–130, 132; as spiritual prin­
Rehearsals, 56, 101, 126, 141 ciple, 117–118, 122–123; and technique, 135–
Reparteros, 108, 112. See also Casineros 136
Repertoire, 33, 39, 105, 143, 150, 161, 179, 185, Sachs, Curt, 21
194 Saldaña, Ambiorix (El Bory de la Salsa), 166,
Representation, 68, 129, 137, 176, 178 171n16
Researchers, 17, 111, 140, 159, 161 Salinas, Liliana, 145–146
Resistance, 6, 9, 52, 54, 56–57, 128, 145, 171n15 Salsa: and food, 119–120; and sociability, 56;
Respectability, 56, 89 as term, 119. See also Salsa music; individual
Restaurants, 81, 85, 87, 126, 187 dance styles
Reterritorialization, 14, 16. See also Deterrito­ Salsa! (film), 204
rialization Salsa Brava (L.A. dance team), 67–69, 71
Retornados (return migrants), 158 Salsa brava (music genre), 162, 166, 168, 186.
Revival, 34, 46, 48–49, 57, 59–60, 60n3, 186 See also Salsa dura (music genre)
Rhumba, 29. See also Rumba (dance) Salsa dura (music genre), 5–6, 13, 27, 38, 47,
Rhythmic features of dance, 26, 29, 42n1, 71, 60n3, 162, 186, 194. See also Salsa brava
131, 177, 201; in Cuba, 99–100, 102–104, (music genre)
108–109, 113 Salsa en línea, 22n9, 85, 187, 189–192, 195,
Rhythmic structure, 6, 42n1, 150–151. See also 197n9. See also On-1 salsa; On-2 salsa/
Clave mambo; Slot (dance format)
Rhythms, 66, 76–77n16, 80, 105, 120–122, 149 Salsa erótica, 184–185, 197n5. See also Salsa
Rivera, Ismael, 121, 183 monga; Salsa romántica
Rivera, Ivan, 2, 27 Salsa monga, 162, 194. See also Salsa erótica;
Rivera, Jerry, 51, 194 Salsa romántica
Riverside, California, 65 Salsa music: in Colombia, 147; in Cuba, 98,
Rock music, 31, 101, 105, 119, 147, 177, 179, 106–108, 114; versus Cuban music, 26, 32,
184–185, 197n2, 197n4 106–107; debates over origins of, 8, 10, 14,
Rodríguez, Addie, 34, 37 22–23n10, 28, 32, 40, 42–43n14, 47, 66, 74,
Rodríguez, Adrián, 129, 190 89, 95n11, 114, 130, 174–175; in the Domin­
Rodríguez, Angel, 30, 32–35 ican Republic, 161–162; history of, 4–6; in
Rodríguez, Lalo, 162, 184–185 Japan, 202–204; localization of, 22n7; in New
Rodríguez, Tito, 30, 39 York, 38–39; in Paris, 176–177, 179; in Puerto
Rojas, Tito, 126, 162 Rico, 118–127; in Spain, 182
Romania, 77n25 Salsa Picante (radio program), 162
Román-Velázquez, Patria, 55, 173, 175 Salsa romántica, 5–6, 13, 51; in the Dominican
Romero, Enrique, 123–125 Republic, 162, 166; in Spain, 194, 197n5. See
Rondón, César Miguel, 121–123, 126 also Salsa erótica
Rootedness, 10, 37, 56, 72, 92, 122, 129, 132, Salsa scenes, 5, 9, 12, 15, 19, 21; in Barcelona,
135, 179 195; in Los Angeles, 65–66, 68–70, 73, 76n14;
Routes, 20, 57, 173–175, 177–178 in the Midwest, 82, 84–89; in New Jersey,
Routines, 57, 70, 76n13, 118 46–48, 58, 60n1; in New York, 27–28, 35
Routinization, 151 Salsa symposia, 192–193
Rueda del Oso, 104 Salsa y Fuego (dance team), 70
Index 227

Salseras, 33, 50, 69, 72–73 Sociology, 17, 75, 77n25, 161, 203
Salseros, 8, 11–13, 16–18, 21; in Cuba, 152, 154; Solidarity, 82, 93–94, 94n3, 99
in the Dominican Republic, 159, 161–162, Solos, 2, 8, 29, 42n3, 90, 130
164–166, 170; in the Midwest, 83, 88–89, 91– Son (dance), 19, 42nn8–9, 100–101, 103, 157–
94, 108, 121; in New Jersey, 46–47, 49, 58–59; 161, 170n4; and salsa culture, 159–164
in New York, 28, 32–33; versus soneros, 161; Son (music), 101, 120–121, 160
in Spain, 189–190, 192, 194 Soneo (section of a musical piece), 127, 132
Salseros (magazine), 189–190 Songo (music), 5, 106
Salsotecas, 148, 152, 164 Son montuno (music genre), 40, 42n1, 143;
Samba, 2, 29, 99, 142, 191, 196 versus son urbano, 100. See also Montuno
Sanabria, Izzy, 119, 131 (section of a musical piece)
San Diego, California, 64–65, 69–70, 76n14, Sophistication, 13, 83, 88, 91–92, 143, 153
77n21 South American dancers, 20, 189–190
San Francisco, California, 65, 69, 76n10 Spain, 11, 17, 99, 118, 129, 164, 168, 182–198
San Juan, Puerto Rico, 10, 35, 121 Spaniards, 20, 183, 185, 187–188, 190, 192,
Santería, 111–112, 115n5, 122, 152 194–196
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 5, 10, Spectacle, salsa as: in Cali, 141, 154; in Cuba,
13, 19, 158–170 101, 103–104; in Paris, 174, 178; in Puerto
Santo Rico (dance company), 169 Rico, 130–131. See also Staged salsa; Theatri­
Savoy (ballroom), 31 cality
Scapes, 16 Spins, 33, 71, 90–91, 113, 126, 134, 160. See also
Seaon Stylist, 70 Turn patterns
Seduction, 146, 150, 176–179 Spirituality, 38, 110; in Puerto Rican salsa,
Semiprofessional dancers, 13, 41, 77n17, 85, 117–118, 120, 122–123, 127, 129, 136
155n3 Staged salsa, 72, 118, 125–127, 133, 137, 168. See
Sensuality, 59, 99, 103, 119, 150, 176, 179, 181n8 also Theatricality
Sentimiento, 117–118, 123, 127, 129–132 Standardization, 7–9, 13, 32, 38, 40, 71, 99, 159,
Seville, Spain, 182, 193 208–209
Sexuality, 74, 145. See also Homosexuality Status, 13, 19, 38, 43n22, 65, 131, 153, 168;
Shame, 208 among dancers in New Jersey, 50, 56; among
Shaw, Steve, 39–40, 43n19 dancers in Spain, 187–188; among dancers in
Shines, 2, 27, 34–35, 42n3, 53, 67, 81, 177. See the Midwest, 84, 89, 92
also Footwork Stereotypes, 12, 20, 54–55, 77n18, 113, 146
Shoulder movements, 61n15, 90, 103, 121, 129, Stigma, 147, 154, 188
150 Strategies, 15, 82–84
Slavery, 142–145, 152, 177 Street salsa: versus staged salsa, 118; versus
Slot (dance format), 8, 22n9, 33, 71, 185, 187, studio salsa, 18, 32, 35, 37, 41, 43n15, 194,
197n9. See also Salsa en línea 200; style of, 166, 168
Small-town salsa, 80, 93–94 Structural configurations (of salsa scenes), 72,
Smiling David, 49, 56–57, 60n1, 61n10 82, 93–94, 131
Soccer, 148, 155n8, 155n10, 156n11 Struggle, 46, 56, 82, 92, 123, 161
Social dancers. See Bailador; Street salsa Studio salsa, 6–9, 11–14, 18, 22–23n10, 23n15,
Socialization, 149, 155n9, 164, 169, 176 91, 167, 189; in Cali, 141, 152, 155n2; in
Socializing, dance as a form of, 6, 18, 53, 55, Japan, 200–201, 206, 208; in Los Angeles,
58, 73, 95n6 65–67, 76n14; in New Jersey, 49, 52–59, 60n9,
Socials, 6, 27, 56 61n14, 61n17; in New York, 32, 34–35, 37,
Socioeconomic class, 17–19, 23n11; in Cali, 141, 40–41, 43nn15–16; studio dancers versus
143, 155n1, 155n5; in Cuba, 99, 201; in the social dancers, 141–143, 146, 151, 189
Midwest, 81–83, 88, 91–92, 95nn6–7; in New Styling, 31, 51, 61, 166
Jersey, 56–59, 61n17; in New York salsa, 30, Stylization, 14, 99, 125–129, 133, 135, 177, 200
37, 40; in Puerto Rican salsa, 118, 123, 125, Swing, 33, 66, 71, 89, 118–120, 138n9, 143, 153
127, 132–133, 135–136; in Santo Domingo, Switzerland, 7, 164
157–159, 164–165, 168–169, 170nn1–2 Syllabi, 2, 8, 22n2, 33–35, 37, 39, 42n8, 128
Socioeconomic strata, 114, 145, 152, 155n5, Syncopation, 2, 23n11, 34, 42n3, 107, 197n9.
170n1 See also Polycentrism; Polyrhythm
228 Index

Syncretism, 75, 84, 111 Trafficking, 147, 152, 154

Systematization, 34, 38, 206, 208–210 Training, 1, 8, 61n16, 126–127, 203; of Caleño
dancers, 142, 153; of dancers in Spain, 189,
Tango, 2, 20, 29, 69, 99, 142, 155n9; in Japan, 196; of L.A. dancers, 67, 69–71; of New
203, 208, 210n4; in Paris, 178–179; in Spain, Jersey dancers, 54–56, 61n14; of New York
191, 196 dancers, 34, 38
Tap dance, 31–32, 37, 42n3, 47 Transculturation, 10, 12, 17, 19, 41
Tarragona, Spain, 192–193 Translocality, 64, 74, 82–84, 92, 95n5
Taste, 82, 114, 119, 132, 137, 175, 182, 197– Transnationalism, 127, 153, 160–161, 183; of sa­
198n12 bor, 134, 137n5; of salsa dance community,
Taxi boys, 186, 197n10 7–10, 15, 28, 138n8; of salsa music, 12, 14, 17,
Tea ceremony, 209–210 22n7, 119–120, 133
Technique, 23n14, 52–53, 91–92, 151, 202, 208; Trios, 99, 102
in L.A. salsa, 71, 73–74; in New York salsa, Trombones, 4, 33
26, 31, 37, 40–41; in Puerto Rican salsa, Tropicalization, 12, 14–15, 128–129, 137
124–125, 129, 132–133, 135–137 Tropical music, 170, 174, 186, 191–192. See also
Techno, 147 Antillean music
Tecnocumbia, 185, 187 Tropicana (club), 130–131
Television, 33–34, 111, 135, 138n8, 163. See also Trujillo, Carlos F., 156n13
Media, mass Trujillo, Rafael, 157, 160, 169
Tembleque (dance movement), 111. See also Tucson, Arizona, 1–2
Despelote Tumbadoras, 115n4, 166, 179. See also Congas
Tempo, 27, 30, 110, 206 (musical instrument)
Terrazas, 144, 149, 152 Tumba francesa (dance), 113, 115n9
Theater, 29, 34, 130 Turino, Thomas, 13, 48, 56, 95n5
Theatricality, 7, 18, 27, 47, 109, 113, 179. See Turn patterns, 33, 61n15, 67, 148. See also Spins
also Staged salsa
Theory, 3, 9, 26, 74, 132, 160; community- Unity, 16, 160, 167, 196, 204
based, 37 Upward mobility, 91
Therapy, dance as, 123, 175, 191 Urbanity, 88, 92
Tigueraje, 165, 171n14 Uruguayans, 129, 173, 189–190, 192, 196, 198n13
Tijuana, 77n21 Utopias, 16, 18, 23n16, 29–32, 41, 59
Timba, 5–6, 110–111,183, 185, 189
Timbales, 4, 115n4, 152, 165–166 Valenzuela, Janette, 67, 71
Timing, 1–3, 50, 52–53, 61n14; in Cuban dance, Validation of salsa dancers, 83, 123, 129
100, 103, 107, 110; in L.A. salsa, 66, 68–70; Valoy, Cuco, 161–162
in New York salsa, 34–35, 37–38, 40–41. See “Vamonos pa’l monte” (song), 126–127
also Clave; Counts Vargas, Sergio, 162
Tokyo, 10, 20, 77n25, 95n10, 202–207 Vargas, Wilfrido, 161
Tony La Fragancia, 165, 166 Vasco, Steve, 67, 71
Topos, 29, 32 Vascones, George, 31, 33
Torres, Albert, 67, 75n1, 198n16, 206 Velez, Sweety, 60n1
Torres, Eddie, 51–52, 70, 76n5, 165, 169, 177, Venezuelans, 22n7, 108, 129, 133–134, 163; in
204; and choreography, 117, 125–127; in de- Paris, 173–174, 179; in Spain, 185, 187, 190
velopment of on-2 salsa, 31, 33–34, 36–37, 40 Ventura, Johnny, 161
Tourism, 12, 14, 19, 49, 58–59, 174, 180n6, Venues: in Cali, 144, 148–149, 155n10; in
187; in Cuba, 110, 114; in the Dominican Havana, 110, 114; in Japan, 204, 206–207;
Republic, 158, 164, 168; in Puerto Rico, 133, in Los Angeles, 64–65, 67, 72–73; in the
137 Midwest, 85–86, 88, 94, 95n7; in New Jersey,
Tradition: and Caleño salsa, 140, 142–143; and 47, 53; in New York, 6, 39, 43n17, 43n24,
cosmopolitanism, 48, 92; and Cuban dance, 75n2; in Paris, 174–175, 180n4; in Santo
98, 105–106, 115; and dance in France, 175, Domingo, 160, 164; in Spain, 186. See also
178; and Dominican salsa, 159, 165–166, 169; Discotheques; Nightclubs
great and little, 64–65, 75; and Puerto Rican Verbenas, 99, 144
dance, 120, 127, 136–137 Videotapes, 68, 76n9
Index 229

Viejotecas, 143, 147, 155n4 Whiteness, 30, 92

Vilachí (Cali barrio), 148, 155n10 Women’s participation in salsa, 149–150, 164,
Violence, 19, 57–58, 88–89, 149, 154 167–168, 179, 189
Virtuosity, 7, 83, 90, 104, 107 Workers, 83, 101–102, 104–106, 188, 207; social
Voice, 120, 147 circles of, 101–102, 104, 106
World Salsa Championships, 7, 67, 76n15, 117,
Wade, Peter, 183 210n7
Waldorf-Astoria (ballroom), 29 World Salsa Congress. See Congreso Mundial
Waltz, 37, 42n8, 98–99, 181n10 de la Salsa
Wardrobe, 91, 146. See also Attire; Clothing; World Salsa Federation (WSF), 117, 127–128
Dress code
Washburne, Christopher, 5–6, 9, 22n8, 32, 38, Yip, Jesse, 51, 60n1, 60n9
61n12, 96n13, 138n9 YouTube, 7, 118, 129, 132
Watabe, George, 204
Waxer, Lise, 85 Zegarra, Luis, 49–51, 60n1
West Coast Salsa Congress, 75n1 Zouk, 22–23n10