Oíste? Podcast: Connecting People to Place and Space One Salsa Story at a Time

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This article is part of Oíste? Listening to the Salsa Stories of Afro Latin Music.

The cover for the Oíste? Podcast series.

NPS Photo / Melissa Hurtado

The Oíste? Podcast is a podcast series that delves into the world of salsa by documenting the captivating stories of the people who contribute to it. Each episode takes listeners on a rhythmic journey through topics such as dance, personal stories, oral histories, and culture – From stories of non-binary dancing to Mickey Melendez’s oral history testimony.

Hosted by Melissa Hurtado (American Conservation Experience, Heritage Education Fellow) and Hermán Luis Chávez (National Council for Preservation Education, Latino Cultural Resources Intern), the podcast features interviews with celebrated dancers, a park ranger, music journalists, and historians. Through their personal experiences and professional expertise, listeners get an insight into the different elements of salsa and the profound impacts of them on people’s lives.

The Oíste? Podcast series is made for both salsa enthusiasts and newcomers alike. The series invites listeners to immerse themselves in the infectious rhythms and melodies of salsa while gaining a deeper appreciation for the personal stories that have kept salsa alive. Whether you’re an experienced dancer or have two left feet, this podcast series promises a good time as its weaves the different threads of history, culture, and personal experiences together to honor and preserve the enduring legacy of salsa.

The cover for Episode 1 of the Oíste? Podcast series.

NPS Photo / Melissa Hurtado

Episode 1: Salsa Stories 101

Oíste? Listening to the Stories of Afro Latin Music documents salsa stories in diverse ways including an online exhibit, explorations into salsa history, and this podcast. In Episode 1: Salsa Stories 101, Hermán and Melissa explain the elements of the Oíste? Project, discuss why salsa stories are important, and share a few of our very own salsa stories.

• Salsa Stories 101

  
  

  Oíste? Listening to the Stories of Afro Latin Music documents salsa stories in diverse ways including an online exhibit, explorations into salsa history, and this podcast. In Episode 1: Salsa Stories 101, Hermán and Melissa explain the elements of the Oíste? Project, discuss why salsa stories are important, and share a few of our very own salsa stories. (Music © No Más - La Banda)

  Credit / Author:

  National Park Service

  Date created:

  07/28/2023

  Audio Transcript

  0:21 Hermán Luis Chávez: Buenos días y welcome to Oíste?, a National Park Service podcast. I’m Hermán Luis Chávez…

  0:29 Melissa Hurtado: … and I’m Melissa Hurtado. In the Oíste? podcast, we explore salsa stories of Afro Latin music in the United States through interviews and conversations.

  0:38 Hermán Luis Chávez: In today’s episode, Salsa Stories 101, we’ll tell you all about Oíste, which is not only a podcast, but also three other exciting projects about salsa culture.

  0:52 Melissa Hurtado: We'll also be talking about salsa stories, both the ones we’ve come to know and love, and our own memories of salsa.

  [musical transition]

  1:09 Hermán Luis Chávez: We're finally here! This project has been a long time coming. But what even is Oíste? If you're listening to us now, you've probably stumbled upon the rest of our projects too. But just in case you haven't, Oíste: Listening to the Salsa Stories of Afro Latin Music is a digital interactive multimedia project. It connects to topics of the past, present, and future by exploring stories of salsa’s Afro Latin roots, understanding its role in US history, and highlighting its impacts on society today.

  1:45 Melissa Hurtado: We suggest you start off with reading Lo Necesario: Introducing Oíste?, which gives you an overview of salsa music and how it's related to US history while summarizing the content found in the rest of our projects. This is a great one to read, especially if you're low on time.

  2:02 Hermán Luis Chávez: For those curious about the people, places and stories across salsa culture, experience Pathways Through Salsa, which blazes trails through themes and questions to help you think deeply about how salsa histories relate to you and the world.

  2:19 Melissa Hurtado: Salsa is also the objects that people use. You can learn more about them, from instruments to posters to even Celia Cruz’s dress, by browsing Materiales, our online salsa exhibit.

  2:32 Hermán Luis Chávez: And of course, we've got this podcast season right here with six exciting episodes with and about some people who contribute to salsa.

  [musical transition]

  2:47 Melissa Hurtado: Now you know about Oíste?, and how a big part of this project is stories about salsa. When we say salsa, we’re talking about music, dance, and community, but what do we mean by stories? This is a big question, but it’s one that helps us understand what we're doing in Oíste?.

  3:07 Hermán Luis Chávez: A part of stories is who has the power to tell them. Stories shape history, so who tells those stories and how they tell them matters.

  3:17 Melissa Hurtado: When it comes to salsa, stories are documented not only through the songs that tell us about histories, but also in smaller communities that have come together in living rooms, restaurants, and clubs to remember celebrate and imagine together.

  3:30 Hermán Luis Chávez: What this tells us is that stories that make up history are also personal, and that personal aspect matters. It means that I have my own salsa stories, so does Melissa, and so do you. All have this is salsa history.

  [musical transition]

  3:55 Melissa Hurtado: My salsa story is about healing my inner child. My first sort of recollection of salsa ever was definitely when I was living in Colombia. And Christmastime in Colombia is pretty crazy. Everybody goes out in the streets, going to different people's houses and eating. And when I think back on that memory and that landscape, the soundtrack to that memory is salsa. And if you can visualize: like imagine you're me—little me—walking through the streets, and on each side you see people's doors and they're fully open, like welcome to come in. The whole street sort of playing music from like one boombox or whatever, or speaker. So that's a really early memory of mine. And when I think back on it, I definitely took it for granted, didn't know how beautiful that was, and how inviting the sounds were. Specifically in this time, I think these sounds are a way to kind of escape your reality and celebrate in the moment.

  5:04 Hermán Luis Chávez: I really like that about being able to stay more in the moment. The idea that salsa allows us to experience the present more.

  5:16 Melissa Hurtado: Not only is it a soundtrack of holiday times, but it's also a soundtrack to my mom cleaning at like 7am on Saturday mornings. I remember her like waking up super early—a lot of salsa was played. And this was like pre like Spotify and like Apple Music and stuff. So I'm like, “is she playing it on YouTube, or Pandora, like how is she finding these tracks?” I'm not really sure. It’s so funny that the soundtrack is like—yes, something that you listen to in community, but it's also something you listen to clean. And I think a lot of people can kind of relate to that as well.

  5:55 Hermán Luis Chávez: There's something about Latina moms and Pandora radio at eight o'clock in the morning. Yeah, I've definitely shared that experience, Melissa, and I think a lot of people have too. For me, I think coming out as a gender queer person makes it really hard to feel the same way as I did back then as like a little “boy” with salsa music, because now it's a little harder for me to dance with people and feel comfortable about it. Because people are coming from all sorts of different backgrounds when it comes to salsa, and many of us kind of only know one way to dance it in terms of the role that you take. So yeah, I think for me, salsa is also like, about asking the question, “where do I fit in? Right? Where, where exactly like do I fit in?” But you know, the good thing is, is that salsa has been somewhere with that question.

  [musical transition]

  6:58 Melissa Hurtado: Well, we know salsa is complicated and there's a lot of stories, but together we're recognising the diversities of all of the stories and places that have connections to salsa.

  7:09 Hermán Luis Chávez: And always remember, these are just a few things to get us started. You can discover so much more about salsa on the National Park Service website and throughout your community.

  7:20 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you and gracias for listening to Oíste? I'm Melissa

  7:26 Hermán Luis Chávez … and I'm Hermán. to learn more about Oíste?, American Latino Heritage, and Telling All Americans Stories at the National Park Service, please visit nps.gov/subjects/TellingAllAmericansStories.

  7:40 Melissa Hurtado: Tune in to the next episode for a conversation with a National Park Service employee about their own salsa stories in Episode 2: A Park Ranger's Salsa Memories.

  7:51 Hermán Luis Chávez: Hasta pronto!

The cover for Episode 2 of the Oíste? Podcast series.

NPS Photo / Melissa Hurtado

Episode 2: A Park Ranger's Salsa Memories

Documenting salsa stories contributes to the preservation of Salsa history since many historical accounts still live in people’s memories rather than history books. In Episode 2: A Park Ranger’s Salsa Memories, Daniel Agudelo shares what it's like to work for the NPS, tell us some of his salsa stories, and gives us some insight into what salsa preservation can look like through the NPS.

• A Park Ranger's Salsa Memories

  
  

  Documenting salsa stories contributes to the preservation of Salsa history since many historical accounts still live in people’s memories rather than history books. In Episode 2: A Park Ranger’s Salsa Memories, Daniel Agudelo shares what it's like to work for the NPS, tell us some of his salsa stories, and gives us some insight into what salsa preservation can look like through the NPS. (Music © No Más - La Banda)

  Date created:

  07/28/2023

  Audio Transcript

  0:20 Hermán Luis Chávez: Buenos días y welcome to Oíste?, a National Park Service podcast. I’m Hermán Luis Chávez…

  0:27 Melissa Hurtado: … and I’m Melissa Hurtado. In the Oíste? podcast, we explore the salsa stories of Afro Latin music in the United States through interviews and conversations.

  0:38 Hermán Luis Chávez: In today's episode, space in place, a conversation with Park Service salseros, we'll be looking within.

  0:41 Melissa Hurtado: We’ll be listening to Daniel Agudelo’s salsa stories. Daniel is the Nike Missile Site Coordinator at Everglades National Park.

  0:49 Hermán Luis Chávez: Together, we’ll discover how documenting salsa stories contributes to the preservation of Salsa history since many historical accounts still live in people’s memories rather than history books.

  [musical transition]

  1:11 Hermán Luis Chávez: On August 25 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act that created the National Park Service. Its mission is to preserve unimpaired natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of this and future generations. The Park Service cooperates with partners to extend the benefits of Natural and Cultural Resource Conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.

  1:39 Melissa Hurtado: Because the National Park Service is a land stewardship agency, all of the stories we tell are place based in some way. But what are place connections? Place connections are the cultural resources such as buildings, sites and objects that are in some way linked to a National Park Service Unit or program.

  1:58 Hermán Luis Chávez: The Park Service is dedicated to telling all Americans’ stories through these place connections, including Latino heritage stories. The National Park Service initially focused on Spanish colonial history, but today, the Park Service is exploring ways to tell these stories that represents the broader contributions of Latinos in our nation. Telling Latino stories for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of this and future generations is an important part of the National Park Service's mission.

  2:26 Melissa Hurtado: So today, we can think about different ways the National Park Service helps communities preserve salsa history. One example is Casa Amadeo in New York City, the oldest running record store in the US. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places because someone cared enough about preserving it to document and nominate it.

  2:47 Hermán Luis Chávez: During the Bronx fires in the 1970s and other perilous times, Casa Amadeo stood as a beacon of light for Newyoricans and other Latinos. Mike Amadeo, composer, musician and community historian cultivated a space where musicians and community members felt that they could reconnect with our culture through music. Casa Amadeo, along with other record stores around the country grew into key spaces for salsa.

  [musical transition]

  3:22 Hermán Luis Chávez: Let's welcome Daniel Agudelo, who is the Nike Missile Site coordinator at Everglades National Park. Daniel started off as an intern for the park service through different organizations such as the Student Conservation Association and the American Conservation Experience. He is committed to bringing institutional change by creating welcoming and diverse environments and programs such as leading tours in Spanish.

  3:44 Melissa Hurtado: Bienvenido! Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with us. We're very excited to hear your stories, your connections to salsa, and everything else you have to say today. How are you doing today, Danny?

  5:57 Daniel Agudelo: I'm doing great. Good morning or good afternoon to Herman and to you, Miss Melissa.

  4:03 Melissa Hurtado: Tell us a little bit about what you do, your experiences with the Park Service and what it means to be Latino, specifically Colombian American in the workforce.

  4:14 Daniel Agudelo: Sure. So I am living my dream as an interpretive park ranger at Everglades National Park. I do about eight different types of guided programs. But what I tend to focus the most is this historic Nike Missile base, which was active throughout the Cold War. It was constructed in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. So I tend to oversee an award-winning volunteer program, I'm proud to say, because the volunteer program won most outstanding volunteer program in the southeast United States, for the National Park Service. I really enjoy what I'm doing as an educator, you know, and it has also allowed me to appreciate my own home, I noticed the subtleties in the beauty of South Florida. I'll give it to the park that it's allowed me to learn a lot about myself. And it has made me actually feel more proud of my heritage.

  5:13 Hermán Luis Chávez: That's so amazing to hear. And, you know, you mentioned, you know, this relationship to getting to know yourself better through the Park Service, and the really strong connection that endures with South Florida. So have you brought in aspects of your Latino heritage into the work that you've done? Like, what does it look like to use your cultural knowledge and cultural competency in the work that you do?

  5:39 Daniel Agudelo: Yes! So I have been able to connect with people of all walks of life, and from all corners of the world, in helping them share my experiences, my wisdom, you know, through the guided program that I do. But also it's just being there, you know, present, right, you have to fill in this space that historically wasn't there, you know, and the fact that you have this local person from the local area that National Parks speaks volumes. It is very powerful for me, because there's kids, you know, that are from the area who come to the park, and they see someone who looks like them, you know, and that allows them to realize that this can be a realistic career, you know. It is very, off putting, if you go to a park, and you don't see people from from that local area, you know. So where are these local people? So the fact that I have that opportunity to be, quote, unquote, a, a representative of my community, is very rewarding, very humbling for me as well, especially the fact that I am Colombian American. We talk about how rare Florida Panthers are, but how rare is it to see a Latino in the green and grey, or let alone a Colombian American in that nature there, you know. So, how I present myself, and the actions that I do, oftentimes, weigh a bit more than other people who are of other Latino nationalities, because of the fact that there's not too many Colombian Americans out there in the current sense, but you'd think that this pressure would get to you. But on the contrary, you know, it makes you want to continue, I guess, paving a trail - paving the path for future Colombian Americans to do a job like a park ranger.

  7:45 Hermán Luis Chávez: That's so amazing to hear. This, like sense of community I think is so important in in the work that also means that we are connecting ourselves to other people to the work that we do and everything. And I think that resonates a lot with me as a like a Bolivian American as well. It's really this sense of understanding that, like these backgrounds, that you don't think that you can have a relationship with these different things like it's true, you actually can. And I feel like it's kind of similar with salsa, you know, that coming from all of these different places, and having these different senses of community, I think are also built through the way that we've experienced specifically salsa together. So, to talk more about that, can you tell us about your experiences, memories and connections that you have with salsa music, what it means to you, and if there are any spaces, I mean, you've talked about community so much, if there are any, you know, places that really resonate with this salsa experience that you've had.

  8:42 Daniel Agudelo: Sure. Well, I am Colombian, so that means coffee and salsa run through my veins, and that is the reason why I am the way I am. But salsa means home. It means passion. It means warmth. You know, in every family party or New Year's, you know, you will hear salsa music, and I was always dancing, you know, since I was young, and oftentimes I tended to be the only young person that was dancing. Being a young boy came to my advantage because then that allowed you to be able to dance with a lot of these older ladies that you know wouldn’t have the opportunity to dance with men. A little personal anecdote that I wanted to share with you guys a few years ago, maybe when I was eight, or nine. So a lot of years ago, we were in the New Years, and I was dancing with my great aunt, we were dancing the night away, and we were sweating and sweating and sweating. And well, long story short, she ended up getting a cold, because as she had left the party, she was sweating in the cold weather got to her. You know, so it's just interesting and funny how, you know, salsa provides that connection, that platform. And salsa, even though salsa, every country is unique and different in its own right, there is still a lot of similarities, you know, and salsa is something that allows for a lot more Latinos of different nationalities to feel a bit more connected. And to share something part of everyone's heritage.

  10:25 Melissa Hurtado: That's, first of all, it's such a beautiful story and the fact that you were able to connect with sort of older folks of your family through dance, because I know, sometimes it's hard to just have conversations or even connect with like the younger people of your family, but you were able to bridge that gap through music. I'm just really glad that you were able to tell us that story and the memories with salsa. Do you have any specific like public spaces, for example, in Miami, where you've gone out to dance salsa, or has it mostly been in like family, homes and spaces.

  11:03 Daniel Agudelo: So it's been both in family and friend’s places, but it has also been in a public venue. So, Little Havana is an area that is a hotspot, you have the famous Ball and Chain, you have the Latino Walk of Fame as well. So I remember dancing the night away, let's say with college friends that came to visit me from Michigan or from elsewhere, showing them a piece of my culture. Everyone feels connected with music, you don't have to understand the language to enjoy and appreciate the music, you know, you can enjoy the beats of it, you can enjoy the instruments of it as well. So I think salsa is a very, very, very unique, very, very, very powerful type of movement, for sure.

  11:55 Melissa Hurtado: I really appreciate you giving us your insights with that. And I just kind of want to talk about the power of place and bring it back to just aspects and conversations of the National Park Service, as well as your connections with it. So you mentioned in a previous interview, that the National Park Service as an institution is making serious efforts to look more like America, and that the most successful efforts to improve diversity often come from the bottom up. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

  12:29 Daniel Agudelo: Of course! You know, so if you want to build a movement, a coalition, you have to start from the bottom, right, because by being in the frontlines, that allows you to help gain supporters. You need the supporters for this movement to be a successful. This movement that I'm talking about is making the parks - making public lands more accessible. So if you see more Rangers that are in the front line, that connect with the visitors that look different, you know, that have different aspirations, or that came from different backgrounds, you know, that richness and diversity allows for people to want to come back, or it offers people from the local community to feel more comfortable to go visit because then they'll feel more connected. I am a big supporter of those initiatives. If it weren't for these initiatives, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. So I am eternally grateful at the fact that, you know, the Park Service allowed me to have these experiences because a lot of Latinos wouldn't have this experience. You know, sometimes you have low social economic status, or sometimes your career interests lay elsewhere. You have pressures, social pressures, societal pressures, you know, so the fact that you have this opportunity offers a good way for people to learn, for people to try things out, for people to wet their feet.

  14:05 Melissa Hurtado: I completely agree. I think when initiatives programs are tried out by what you know, what we call frontline workers, or people working directly with the community, you're able to sort of test the waters to see what for example, what is more engaging. Thank you so much for the work that you do. I've heard such great initiatives come from Everglades National Park from Nike Missile Site and just your interpretation efforts as well.

  14:32 Daniel Agudelo: Yes, you're totally right. You know, all of these initiatives do help ripple out, you know, and then the park starts to see, you know, these effects. And I'll give you guys a little personal story. Well, when I was a wee little baby, seasonal Ranger, I took it upon myself to do a Spanish lead guided walk, right. I am fluent in French. And it's funny how I use more French than Spanish at Everglades National Park. You're in South Florida, you'd expect to have visitors that speak Spanish. No, you know, so I said, well, gee, how can I make the park more accessible? Well, let me create this Spanish led guided walk. And I thought it was going to be easy. I thought it was going to be, you know, copying and pasting my English program script on Google Translate and translating it. But it wasn't that easy. Now, when I did this program, I said, well, how can I bring in this audience that I want, you know, I want people to know that you don't need to speak English to enjoy Everglades National Park, you know, so the audience that I wanted, wouldn't have been the audience that would have checked regularly on the social media of the National Park. So I said, let me reach out to the newspaper, and the Hojera to advertise this. I mean, they were able to advertise this program, you know, because different audiences do different things, whether they listen to the radio, you know, or you have Caracol, or you have these other famous Spanish radios, or you have the newspapers you have Telemundo. Univision, you know, so you can't you know, it's different, you know, people think, you know, it's all a monolith. But it is not a monolith, you have to really kind of dive in and see the type of audience you want, and how you interact with them. Well, I got my publication out in Hojera, then I did my program. I had about 25 people show up, which was successful in its own right, you know, whether I had one person, 25 people, or 500 people. I did my due diligence, which was to provide information out there, you know, and it worked. Because I had a family, a Venezuelan family, who were recent immigrants, to Miami from Venezuela. And they had known about the Everglades. They had seen documentaries of the Everglades on National Geographic in Venezuela, and they were so excited. But they swore that they needed to speak English, to enjoy the park. So they were going to wait until their young son turned of age so that then the young son can guide them through the National Park. Well, they were reading the Hojera, and they read this article that said, wow, Everglades National Park is advertising this free Spanish lead walk... I want to sign up. And so then they go out. And they tell me this story. And I say, wow, well, that was the mission. Mission completed, you know, the fact that people now know that you don't have to speak a certain language to enjoy something is just so powerful. And that, again, ties in with the whole salsa movement. You know, sometimes you don't have to speak the language to enjoy something that can be universal, you know. So that is a nice little personal story that I wanted to share with you guys. Hopefully, that, you know, can be tied in with this whole salsa movement. You know, because it's true. A lot of people are hesitant, or people don't do research, or people don't feel connected, when in reality is a lot more stuff that can get you connected. And salsa. Universal. Being out in these parks. Universal. These spaces of community where you can interact with people of all different walks of life and all different nationalities is awesome. You know, so you have your dancing stage, walking these trails, or dancing the night away, in Ball and Chain or these other salsa clubs.

  18:32 Melissa Hurtado: Yeah, wow, what an impactful story Danny, I think what you're doing is so impactful for families of people, and not to mention the way that you're actually you're getting the information out there. Because you're right, it's not a monolith. A lot of people don't necessarily go to social media to get their news. As you know, a lot of older Latino folk go to the News, the news is always playing right. It's that's sort of their own way of social media. So I really appreciate you looking beyond ways of communication. And it kind of brings me to my next question of interpretation. And so, the National Park Service interprets Latino stories and heritage. How do you envision the National Park Service telling more Latino stories that stray away from reducing it to one single narrative or identity?

  19:24 Daniel Agudelo: Yes, so for starters, there should be maybe regional, let's say, offices, where these regional offices then take into consideration the diversity of the Latino culture within that specific region. You know, because if you say, there's only one area in the country that will specialize in Latino culture, then most of it is going to be the majority of Latinos. So having regional offices, I think make a bit more sense than just having one central office, you know, because then that can reduce this whole monolithic perspective, that the Latino is just one type of group.

  20:11 Hermán Luis Chávez: Absolutely. I think that these recommendations that you're making, and the stories that you've told us as well, I think it really reveals this concept that even though the quote unquote Latino community has a lot of things that we might be able to share in terms of cultural experiences, we also each have our own stories, and you never know what representation or storytelling on and all these other things can mean for people from different communities when they see that and they realize that there is more available to them. So on that note, what steps do you think the NPS can take to preserve and interpret salsa history kind of within this frame?

  20:54 Daniel Agudelo: Of course, well, the first thing is, is to accept that salsa history is US history. Right? Once you have that accepted, you know, as a fact, then you can start moving on. US history is salsa history. I think that more and more and more people are accepting salsa, more people appreciate it, understand what salsa is and the movement of salsa.

  [musical transition]

  21:31 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you so much to Daniel for sharing his stories and connections to salsa with us, as well as his experience with the National Park Service.

  21:40 Hermán Luis Chávez: Today, we asked Daniel to share what preserving salsa history looks like to him. And here is our key takeaway. Salsa history is US history. And that point is so important. So I'm going to say it one more time: Salsa history is US history.

  21:59 Melissa Hurtado: We hope to continue this conversation on a national level to keep preserving and interpreting salsa history for enjoyment, education and inspiration of this and future generations. I don't know about you Herman, but personally, I think it would be really interesting to explore the Mariel boatlift and later musical connections to salsa and culture in Miami. I feel like this could easily be connected to some places within the South River Drive Historic District, which was actually listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

  22:32 Hermán Luis Chávez: That's such a great example, Melissa, I think this tells us all that we can spend some time thinking to ourselves: what salsa stories do you think should be told on a national level?

  [musical transition]

  22:53 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you and gracias for listening to us. I'm Melissa…

  22:58 Hermán Luis Chávez: …and I'm Hermán. To learn more about Oiste, American Latino heritage, and telling all Americans’ stories at the National Park Service, please visit nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories

  23:13 Melissa Hurtado: and tune in to our next episode, “Bailando Juntas: Salsa Dancing Beyond the Binary,” where we will talk to two dancers on what it means to reframe gender and salsa dancing.

  23:25 Hermán Luis Chávez: Hasta Pronto!

The cover for Episode 3 of the Oíste? Podcast series.

NPS Photo / Melissa Hurtado

Episode 3: Bailando Juntas: Salsa Dancing Beyond the Binary

Dance is a vital element of salsa culture, as people express themselves in spaces from family homes to national competitions. However, salsa dancing can often be restricted to binary gender roles. In Episode 3: Bailando Juntas: Salsa Dancing Beyond the Binary, we interview non-binary dance couple Angie Egea and Audrey Guerrero, who share their personal and professional stories of transforming salsa dancing.

Please note: This podcast features terms including LGBTQ+, non-binary, and queer. The LGBTQ acronym has multiple forms. The Q generally stands for queer or questioning. Sometimes A (asexual), I (intersex), and + is added in recognition of additional non-straight, non-cisgender identities. In this podcast, the word queer is used by individuals to refer to their own identity. Non-binary is used to describe being beyond two categories or options, including gender identity or a way of dancing.

• Bailando Juntas: Salsa Dancing Beyond the Binary

  
  

  Dance is a vital element of salsa culture, as people express themselves in spaces from family homes to national competitions. However, salsa dancing can often be restricted to binary gender roles. In Episode 3: Bailando Juntas: Salsa Dancing Beyond the Binary, we interview non-binary dance couple Angie Egea and Audrey Guerrero, who share their personal and professional stories of transforming salsa dancing. This podcast features terms including LGBTQ+, nonbinary, and queer. (Music © No Más - La Banda)
  Audio Transcript

  Please note: This podcast features terms including LGBTQ+, non-binary, and queer. The LGBTQ acronym has multiple forms. The Q generally stands for queer or questioning. Sometimes A (asexual), I (intersex), and + is added in recognition of additional non-straight, non-cisgender identities. In this podcast, the word queer is used by individuals to refer to their own identity. Nonbinary is used to describe a way of dancing.

  00:21 Hermán Luis Chávez: Buenos días y welcome to Oíste?, a National Park Service podcast. I’m Hermán Luis Chávez Luis Chávez… 

  00:28 Melissa Hurtado: … and I’m Melissa Hurtado Hurtado. In the Oíste? podcast, we explore the salsa stories of Afro Latin music in the United States through interviews and conversations. 

  00:39 Hermán Luis Chávez: In today’s episode, “Bailando Juntas: Salsa Dancing Beyond the Binary,” we’ll be discussing salsa dancing by speaking with non-binary dancers and organizers who believe in making Afro Latin dance a more inclusive space. 

  [musical transition]

  1:02 Hermán Luis Chávez: In salsa, dance is like a conversation. Dancers move together and respond to movements in the body, while listening attentively to the rhythms of the percussion as they move. Dancing salsa is often when many of us come together to form communities as we move together in happiness and expression. 

  1:21 Melissa Hurtado: Of course! And dancing takes place in certain spaces—although some places like clubs are regular salsa spots, locations like homes and restaurants are transformed into sites of salsa community where people come together to dance. There are many types of salsa dancing, from ritualistic to ballroom dancing—all of these bring people together. A space for professional salsa is the salsa congress, a multi-day festival and competition experience that started with the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress in 1997. 

  1:57 Hermán Luis Chávez: In a traditional professional setting, salsa dancing is led by a man and followed by a woman. Although this format may work for heterosexual dancers, it means that LGBTQ+ people who also want to dance salsa may feel uncomfortable in, or excluded from, joining dance communities.

  2:17 Melissa Hurtado: Today, we’ll be speaking to Angie and Audrey, a dance couple whose activism is creating space for more inclusive dancing.

  [musical transition]

  2:35 Hermán Luis Chávez: Saludos to Audrey Guerrero and Angie Egea, who are also known as “The Kueen & Queen of Non-Binary Afro Latin Dance” in their city of Austin, Texas where they perform and teach salsa dancing. Angie and Audrey are a married, queer, non-binary dance couple. Angie is from the coast of Colombia and Audrey is from the Dominican Republic, and together they specialize in Afro-Latin dances. By uplifting Afro-rooted art forms and breaking the traditional binary roles in partner dance, they aim to be representation for, and to inspire, queer and trans people of color who want to be leaders in inclusive and creative spaces. 

  3:13 Melissa Hurtado: Hola, Angie! Hola, Audrey! How are y’all doing today?

  3:17 Angie Egea: We're doing amazing. We're so excited to be here today! This is Angie.

  3:26 Audrey Guerrero: I’m Audrey, thank you for having us!

  3:29 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you, we are so honored to have y’all here in this space. What are your individual stories? And how did they bring you two together?

  3:39 Angie Egea: I actually first started dancing salsa more socially back in Colombia. It was part of what we did with, our parents, our tíos and tías. It was just part of our regular day-to-day. But when I started to really dance salsa in a way that was more professional, it was here in the United States about 12 years ago. Before that I actually trained many other styles. I did so many things, but once I actually started to train salsa a little bit more serious, I realized that it was the love of my life.

  4:16 Audrey Guerrero: Yeah, similar to Angie, I think for me, same thing at home, you know, being Dominican, you’re always, every party or every weekend, you're just dancing in your living room. For me the biggest thing as a dancer was making the shift from being the best dancer in my house, in the living room, to the standardized dance studio, counting and sort of making it more into a professional thing that can be a lot more technical. And that shift for me, I will say, I think at some point I felt like I was losing myself, like I was losing the love, the rhythm, the connection. I felt like I had to drop a lot of that to learn technique, to learn, counting to learn to pass this along. And so I think now I am fully now that I’m doing my own work and trying to teach others, I find such a big importance in including the part of just enjoying the music. I met this one [Angie] in martial arts, actually. We were taking Afro Brazilian martial arts, kicking each other, and I knew she did Salsa. So, when I wanted to kind of go back into dancing again, “what are you doing? drag me out to your spaces!” Angie was very connected at that point in the salsa scene in Boston, and that's how I got involved.

  5:46 Melissa Hurtado: That's actually amazing! I actually studied a little bit in Boston, and I remember, to find that community that I was missing, I would go to Salsa spaces.

  5:58 Hermán Luis Chávez: Thank you so much for saying that Melissa Hurtado, too. I think it says a lot about how these spaces do become places that bring people together, and where you find community so much. And so I guess I just wanted to ask is that where you all started dancing together in this sort of dance style that you've now continued and turned into your career?

  6:19 Angie Egea: Yeah, it was in Boston. Actually, we started to pretty much train together the same style in a dance company. It was mostly binary in the way that choreographies were, how things were taught in classes. But once we really fell in love and we started dating, that's when we decided that we wanted to create a choreography where I could lead them, and she could lead me. That's kind of how it started.

  6:45 Hermán Luis Chávez: In another interview you mentioned that your “mission is creating the queer dance community and spread the non-binary idea that is lead and follow rather than male and female.” So this is a super inspiring mission that really challenges the aspects of, for example, machismo and heteronormativity, that you might find in some dance spaces. So I’m really curious to hear more about how you conceive non-binary dance and what you've learned through this process of resisting norms in Salsa dancing.

  7:22 Audrey Guerrero: It took a lot of courage. I think it just started 5 years ago or 6 years ago, when we were starting to dance. It took a lot of courage for people to do it. But it's just still, very few. You can go to a Congress that you only see one or two of those, and 40 other dancers are binary. People are really trying to take it outside of those spaces and build new space, like the queer Afro Latin dance festival, and it's blowing up. On the social dance floor, there’s a lot of weird stuff because of the binariness that partnering dance has been over centuries, right, that comes from ballroom in Europe. For so many years now it's just so engraved into the culture and into the aesthetics of it that now, when you are a new dancer and approaching the social dance floor, and you are a person who not all the time do you want to fit the box that is of your presenting body, so people will show up to the social dance floor—and I’m speaking from personal experience—and I felt extremely uncomfortable in the way that I have to wait on the side lines and wait to be picked out to dance. That is just not my vibe. I am a person who, over the years, it's taken so much courage to understand that I do have, I am entitled to walk around and look at dancers, and be the one who chooses a dancer. Whatever the gender, whatever they want to do: are they a lead, are they a follow? It's getting close to 10 years for me. For me to have spent almost a decade not feeling comfortable, it's a lot. So I think that that's really it. That's like the molds that we're breaking right now, regarding misogynistic and binary “the man does this, the woman does that.” It's a tough thing to crack, but we are getting there, and we’re gaining momentum, so that's a good thing.

  9:18 Hermán Luis Chávez: That was so beautifully put. I think that this concept of discomfort actually is definitely something that I think about a lot, especially as a genderqueer person myself. I always feel so uncomfortable as someone who wants to follow. It's so amazing to see that even though this discomfort is there—and it doesn't necessarily go away—that it leads to the creation of new things. I think a really inspiring thing about you two is that aspect of education, taking this concept and spreading it out through students and workshops and these other different spaces that you enter into to kind of disrupt the normative elements. I would love to talk a little bit about what that sort of community space looks like. How would you describe the energy or the environment of your studio space when students come in to learn about non-binary dance? How is the place where you teach sort of unique for this type of community?

  10:17 Angie Egea: When we first started doing this work, I thought, okay, this is gonna be a beautiful space for people who are queer, who are non-binary, people who identify differently from the binary to come into this space and feel empowered to choose what they want to do. They don't have to stick with one, which I love that about our work, is that we teach lead, follow, and switching. I believe that everybody carries different energies within them, and feminine and masculine are just energies. It doesn't really have to do with sexuality or gender. It's just energies that we see in nature. For example, when we think feminine energy, we think flowy, we think nurturing. When we think masculine, we think diligent, responsible. All of those things are important for the aspect of partner dance. So there's that beautiful aspect, but I think it was also really surprising to see that people who do identify like “cis” or “straight,” they have also found empowerment within exploring those energies. I had a student that came to us, and she was like “I always felt like I wasn't always necessarily a feminine person. I like to take charge, I like to express differently, and I never felt like I could do that through dance.” I think that we’re also very heavy on thinking about dance as a tool. It's like a language. For example, I am pretty introverted myself. I think what dance has provided for me and for many people that is a language, is a way of speaking, is a way of processing, healing. It's just such a beautiful tool, and I think that in our community we really foster that.

  12:00 Melissa Hurtado: Just hearing you all talk about that really warms my heart and gets me excited, because these are spaces where people can come and not, like you said, not just learn about dance in and of itself, but learn about yourself, and the energies that you feel comfortable with and your space in the world. Y’all are making—really shaping—history in terms of salsa, but also the way we feel dancing as a whole, just dancing, and the energies that we feel around that. I think that is so beautiful and really what makes your space unique. I'm just excited for this to be well-accepted. Audrey, you were saying how it's trending right now, right? But it's not necessarily well-accepted. I really am hoping for the day where this is well-accepted, specifically in living room spaces. Audrey, you were talking about sort of starting this in your living room, and Angie you as well, like dancing with your tías and tíos. I know that space can be very intimidating at first, and when we think about salsa and the connections that a lot of us have to salsa, it does sort of start at the home right? It starts in these living rooms. It starts in these backyards, in these very family centered spaces. And so I really am hoping, one day, for these family centered spaces to accept the form of dancing and the way of being that you all are teaching, because I know that it will heal a lot of us. I just want to bring it back to space in general, and a lot of collective memory of salsa lives in our brains, right? A lot of these connections sort of stay at home, and are generally not seen as much in public spaces. You danced in front of very iconic Austin sites like Capitol Building, locally beloved murals, the Love-Hate sculpture, and on Congress Avenue Bridge. What does it mean for you to have the opportunity to connect your dancing to the places that represent Austin, and really bring it out of these living rooms, in Austin, and to the public?

  14:21 Angie Egea: It gave us the opportunity to really understand the culture and the environment in Austin. For example, the capital was something that we were a little bit scared. We were like, okay, how is this going to be received? You know, two femme queer dancers doing salsa with these beautiful blue dresses, but in front of the capital. I'm not sure what we're gonna get back from this. It was very surprising because we feel very welcomed. People who were watching were very, really respectful. It empowered us to be like this is a city where we can create that community that we're looking for.

  14:54 Hermán Luis Chávez: You’ve talked about, obviously, wanting to create this this space for yourselves and enter into community with the city, with other people. Obviously you travel and you perform at Congresses, you do workshops all over. I am really curious to hear about what these community members that have learned from you, or that have engaged with you, what they have shared with you about the impact of your work on them.

  15:22 Audrey Guerrero: One thing that we hear is people saying like this feels like church. [laughs] It's kind of like that energy they need to start off their week. I think the reason they say that I think it's because it's become like a judgment-free—like a first, for them—judgment-free space. Dance is one of those things that it's one very competitive, and two it’s all about the aesthetics and appearance of like how your body looks and what you're doing with it. They come, they do not just the exercise, but the art that they love, and they express through it. They don't feel bogged down by it at the end of the day. If anything it’s like, uplifting. I'm happy that we've been able to so far keep that energy. But I think it's not just us. The people who come and get drawn to us are holding that energy, and its sort of all of us together that create it. So I’m just kind of hoping and grateful that it continues to be in that high frequency. We just started a semi-pro team, and we had a lot of our members who started with us on team one make it, and new members. I think there's some people in the community that's been teaching in Austin for years before we got here, and they're in this semi-pro team. For them, particularly one story I can think about is someone who migrated from their country. When you're an immigrant, and you live through that as a kid or a teenager, you're very aware of the sacrifice that your family kind of does to be here to find more opportunity. This one's like hitting home. [laughs] But I think that you end up thinking that you're not allowed to. We think of it as like not a profession or not something that it's going to get your family out of poverty, you know? You think that pursuing dance, even though that's your love and your passion, it's like a downfall for your family. We have people who have shared that story, and like very emotionally, about feeling like we gave them a space to feel like in their adult years they can still pursue dance. We have a wide age range in our student body in general, in body shapes, and everything. And so for us, it’s very important for Angie and I that we're creating a space that is permanent for us and feels sustainable for us. We don't imagine that when we're having kids or growing old, that we're going to stop dancing. We don't imagine that the way that the industry has tried to tell us. So for us, we create a space for people—you’re like whatever, 40 or 30 and 60, and you were married and you’re like “what now I’m pursuing dance? like I'm taking it and learning technique. I'm becoming a professional.” They feel really touched by just having the opportunity to explore with something they’ve always love and have a passion for, but they have heard throughout the years that they don't belong there.

  18:26 Angie Egea: One more story that like really reminds me of how beautiful this work is: We have a dancer that in the company that she was part of they always forced her to wear what the what the women were supposed to wear. Actually, the way they express is more androgenous in the way that they like to dress. Over and over and over she felt very shut down and that led for her to stop dancing completely. When she moved to Austin, she found us, and since then she has been so inspired to start training again. Eventually she wants to teach. When she came to talk to us, she said “I just can't believe that I’m able to perform and wear something that I feel comfortable in.”

  19:07 Audrey Guerrero: She said, “I didn't think y’all were gonna let me.”

  19:10 Angie Egea: Yeah. I know. I think it's something simple as like what you're wearing on stage— which is a big deal—can change the way that you have your relationship with dance. So I just I love that so much.

  19:22 Audrey Guerrero: Yeah.

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  19:35 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you so much to Angie and Audrey for sharing your experiences with non-binary salsa dancing. 

  19:41 Hermán Luis Chávez: To wrap up our episode, we asked our guests to share what you can do to make your own salsa dancing a more inclusive form of expression. This is what they said:  

  19:51 Audrey Guerrero: There's the practical things by saying lead and follow in your classes versus like “the woman, the guy.” Guy! Changing your language goes a long way in making people feel included.

  20:06 Angie Egea: Also, going along with what the world needs right now, which is thinking about consent. Before even that dance like you can ask somebody, “hey, do you want to lead? Or you want to follow—”

  20:15 Audrey Guerrero: Or, we have added: “do you wanna switch?”

  20:18 Angie Egea: Can we switch in the middle of the dance floor as well? And it's scary, but I think that, really understanding that, leaning on that courage, and wanting that space for themselves and for others—just do it. It's scary. But you just want to start with something like if it's a class at a dance club, if it's just a regular weekly class. If you're maybe doing videos online with you and your partner. Anything that starts to put it out there that this is normal, and this is amazing, and we can do it, and we can have the community in our spaces.

  20:59 Audrey Guerrero: I like when Angie used the work courage, because I think courage also for your own un-learning and your own re-learning, and your own evolution. I think people are very afraid, especially people who have worked really hard at preserving the art. Salsa is passed down through storytelling, and because it hasn't been documented, a lot of the older generations feel a big responsibility to hold on to what they know of it, because they feel like, if you're changing it, then you're also changing the story. And the thing is that the story has always belonged to all of us, and there's just misconceptions about that. How we can continue to explore the art isn't necessarily going to kill it. The evolution of it, it might help it grow if anything. One important thing in salsa is the inclusion of Black people and Black voices. Salsa was so, is so, Latine, Latino, right, like Latinx, so colonized, and essentially we push out a lot of Black voices. We don't make enough room. I think it's people with that have been popular over the years, and that sometimes results to like either money or whiteness, who are carrying the voice of salsa. Sometimes it excludes. On the dance floor it's a big topic. It's starting to be a big topic—its not as big as it needs to be—how much Black women feel left out of the story, and how much Black women made up the story. Black people created this. I don't want to separate the battle of Black inclusion from queer inclusion, because the two go together. One big thing that we have in our company is to want to amplify and uplift Black voices, and that's why we call ourselves Afro Latin because we want to showcase the Afro part [laughs] of Latin jazz and Latin culture.

  23:02 Angie Egea: I think that’s way we talk about preserving the arts. That's part of it, is understanding where it came from, which mainly is Africa. It moved around and developed and then salsa, what we see today, was born in New York City. But the roots and the background, and what really everything gives it the spice of salsa, is Black. Being non-binary in dance is not necessarily a new thing, like when you think about dance, and Afro dance, it wasn't about gender. Even when you think about the evolution of tango, which is also African, it was men dancing with men. It was more about being bad***. The world took a turn where it became really binary and really machista and it really amplified, and that really influenced the way that salsa developed. If you want to preserve what the dance and the music is all about, its including Black people, including non-binary and queer people—that's where it comes from.

  [musical transition]

  24:14 Melissa Hurtado: I think the next time I go salsa dancing I'm going to try to be assertive, and whether I want to lead or follow, and make sure people don't just assume that I want to follow. I'll also make sure to really ask consent with whoever I’m dancing with because I think we have these pre-conceptions of who wants to lead and follow, and although I always try to not think in binary terms, it's so engraved in our society that I’m really going to challenge my perspective whenever I go salsa dancing and regardless of the space I’m in.

  24:50 Hermán Luis Chávez: Absolutely. I definitely feel the same way. I think something that I want to work on when it comes to Salsa dancing is being more vulnerable with myself and with the people around me, because it can be hard as a queer person sometimes to want to let loose in a dance style that can oftentimes be in this binary way, like you just mentioned. And so I want to make sure that, at the same time that I’m asking consent in the people around me, and being open to dancing with as many people as I can, I also need to make sure that I’m treating myself with that same consent, and asking myself what I am and am not comfortable with, and being willing to experiment with myself and with other people.

  25:45 Melissa Hurtado: I also want to be experimental in the way that will want to be in tune with what I feel and what energy I’m exerting that day, because I don't necessarily have to come into a size of space and be like I'm going to lead, or I’m going to follow. I'm just going to try to be in tune with myself and see how I feel.

  26:09 Hermán Luis Chávez: A big part of salsa dancing is listening to our own bodies, and I think something that Angie and Audrey inspire me to do is to not be afraid to listen to my own body.

  [musical transition]

  26:04 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you and gracias for listening to Oíste! I’m Melissa Hurtado…

  26:08 Hermán Luis Chávez: …and I’m Hermán Luis Chávez. To learn more about Oíste, American Latino heritage, and Telling All Americans Stories at the National Park Service, please visit nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories 

  26:25 Melissa Hurtado: And, tune in to our next episode, “Ritmos, Communidad, and Oral Histories” where we talk with Marcos Echeverria Ortiz, director of the Where We Were Safe project, about his experience with documenting salsa oral histories.

The cover for Episode 4 of the Oíste? Podcast series.

NPS Photo / Melissa Hurtado

Episode 4: Ritmos, Comunidad, and Oral Histories

Oral history is vital for salsa history as it captures the lived experiences, perspectives, and contributions of those involved in the culture. In Episode 4: Ritmos, Comunidad and Oral Histories, Marcos Echeverria Ortiz talks about Where We Were Safe, an ongoing interactive oral history map/archive that focuses on collecting memories about the lost and destroyed Salsa music places in New York City. In this episode, we listen and reflect to two testimonies from the oral history archive: Mickey Melendez and Aurora Flores. Both Micky's and Aurora's testimonies provided insights to the deep connections between Salsa, place, and community.

• Ritmos, Comunidad, and Oral Histories

  
  

  Oral history is vital for salsa history as it captures the lived experiences, perspectives, and contributions of those involved in the culture. In Episode 4: Ritmos, Comunidad and Oral Histories, Marcos Echeverria Ortiz talks about Where We Were Safe, an ongoing interactive oral history map/archive that focuses on collecting memories about the lost and destroyed Salsa music places in New York City. In this episode, we reflect on two testimonies from the oral history archive. (Music © No Más - La Banda)
  Audio Transcript

  Hermán Luis Chávez 0:20 : Buenos días y welcome to Oíste?, a National Park Service podcast. I’m Hermán Luis Chávez…

  Melissa Hurtado 0:30 : … and I’m Melissa Hurtado. In the Oíste? podcast, we explore the salsa stories of Afro Latin music in the United States through interviews and conversations. During our podcast episode Salsa Stories 101 we discussed learning about salsa through passed down stories and songs and how much that meant to us. Today, we’ll take that into a larger context and talk about why oral histories are so important for communities.

  H 0:56 : What an amazing idea! So, let’s get right into it. In today’s episode, “Ritmos, Comunidad, and Oral Histories,” we’ll be in conversation with Marcos Echeverria Ortiz to reflect on some oral histories and connecting communities with digital archives.

  [music transition]

  H: 1:25 Oral history stems from a tradition of passing down knowledge from generation to generation. It is a way to preserve history through personal recollections and interviews. Oral history is a technique we can all use to connect with each other as well as those close to us.

  M 1:46: That’s a great recap of what oral history is. Oral history actually plays a very valuable role at many National Park Service sites. Some sites use interviews to enrich museum exhibits and other interpretive and educational programs. Oral histories help bring place-based stories to audiences far and wide.

  H 2:03 : One example of oral history at play can be seen at Manzanar National Historic Site. Their oral history project documents the World War II history of Japanese Americans at Manzanar and other incarceration camps through the personal accounts of the formerly incarcerated, government staff, military personnel, and residents of communities near the camps.

  M 2:24 : Another great example is when 850 interviews were conducted between 2001 and 2005 on the first African American military aviators. The interviewees consisted of the airmen who trained to fly the airplanes at segregated facilities in Moton Field during World War II, the military and civilian support personnel who kept the pilots flying, and the wives of airmen who lived at Tuskegee while their husbands were in training. These oral histories have informed rehabilitation of historic structures and museum exhibit development at the site. The site is: Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site.

  H 3:03 : These are all such great examples! Oral histories are among the most valuable stories that the National Park Service preserves and protects for future generations.

  [music transition]

  M 3:22: Let’s welcome Marcos Echeverria Ortiz!

  H Speaker 3:26 : Marcos is an Ecuadorian award-winning multimedia journalist, photographer, and filmmaker. For the past ten years, he has developed transmedia web projects and cover stories related to culture, underground music in Latinoamerica, social movements, and human rights. Marcos was a fellow of the provost scholarship at The New School and graduated with honors from the Media Studies MA program. He has recently covered social justice movements and worked with organizations such as New York Communities for Change, United for Respect, Make The Road New York, and Lincoln Center. His writings have been published in the Latinx Project at NYU, and his pictures have been featured in The New York Times and Business Insider. He is interested in archives, so he created “Where We Were Safe,” an interactive documentary and oral history project about the lost and destroyed historical places of Salsa music in New York City. This project has been awarded and projected in various festivals around the world including Spain, Germany, Panama, Argentina, Puerto Rico, the US, and more.

  Bienvenido Marcos!, how are you doing today?

  MH 4:32 : Welcome, welcome.

  Marcos Echeverria Ortiz Speaker 4:35

  Hola Herman. Hola Melissa. Thanks for inviting me.

  HLC 4:38 : We're super excited to talk with you about your many experiences when it comes to salsa stories and the archive. So, we'd love to start with hearing about your connections to salsa. What's the story that you want to share about your experience?

  MOE 4:55 : It's been a really interesting process. You know, I was born and grew up in Ecuador, so you know, salsa, it's part of that. However, the salsa that I used to listen to, you know, it was like salsa Romantica because it was the 90s and I was an 90s kid. I didn't feel really attracted at once there, I really didn't understand salsa at that time, but when I started, you know, in my 20s in my, as a teenager, that's when I start kind of discovering music itself. And that's when I started kind of listening to Fania and try to understanding, you know, what it means.

  In this time, you know, I didn't really understood the kind of the political and social impact of salsa. So, when you're growing up in Latinamerica, or as a Latin American with salsa, you just have like, this idea that somehow New York City is the salsa city. But then fast forward, you know, when I moved here to New York in 2017, I came with that idea, you know, with that tail in my head, like New York City, the salsa city. So when I came here, my interest and my will was to find all these spaces. For example, like a museum or a monument for Celia or for Tito Puente or for Hector, you know. But yeah, when I came here, you know, as a newcomer I was like, okay, where is everything, you know, like, where's like, the museums? Where are like, these spaces? You know, where are, like, things that from the city that kind of, like, memorize these spaces?

  Obviously, you know, it's important to say that the genre and our culture has survived because the people, you know. That's the way that our culture has a way because the people exist still. But, you know, that's why you have people dancing on the street people playing on the street, but it was really shocking for me to, to come here and not kind of find nothing from the city or from the state or from, you know, the, the public kind of policy thing to-- that remembers salsa. That's something that you don't encounter or find, with other genres that happened at the same time in New York City, you know. For example, like hip hop or punk, or disco, you know, they're like, these kind of like memorializing efforts. But with salsa was not the case. And that's when I got really interested in understanding like, wait! What's going on out here? You know, like, salsa was this kind of huge, important cultural and political movement of 1970s that kind of like really invaded the world, and how come there is nothing related to space and to memorializing?

  So yeah, that was kind of my journey. And yeah, so me as an immigrant coming here to the US to New York. And, actually, my project comes from that question of identity. You know, like, the moment I came here, what first time that I asked to myself, what it means to be a Latino, you know, what it means to be Latino or Latinx here in New York City now. Yeah, a good way to start answering that question was salsa. And that's when I got interested in understanding and involving more in the salsa scene, you know, what salsa means and salsa history. And that's when I really understood and kind of the cultural and political power of salsa, as an immigrant salsa is what gave me like, motivation and presence and a way of understanding my role as a newcomer, as a Latin American newcomer in the US. So that's kind of my approach towards salsa, and how salsa informed my life.

  MH 8:06

  Wow, that's such a great approach and connects your personal stories to also your need to seek out these spaces. And it's really important to tell stories about these places. So can you tell us a little bit about why it's so important to tell stories about these places?

  MEO 8:24 : It's important to talk about space, because the space is our medium to render social political narratives. And I'm just going to cite an architectural historian called Dolores Hayden. And, you know, she states that place should be in the heart of the Urban landscape history, to understand how political and social struggles are worried. So for example, it's to understand the history of how places our planned, designed, built, inhabited, appropriated, celebrated, and later despoiled and discarded, you know. So, in this context, space development, it's understanding or implies a political history. And I was really interested in understanding how our community was related to place, how we occupy space, and how that allowed us to have this historical continuity. It's important to talk about spaces because spaces gives you a sense for, especially occupying spaces, gives you a sense of belonging, gives you a sense of saneness.

  HLC 9:28 : Thank you so much for that. I think these conversations about space, and everything that you're mentioning that make it so political and navigated by people means that we also have to think really critically about how people decide to tell stories about those spaces and decide to remember and create and continue what those spaces meant to them. And a big part of your project is using oral histories in order to highlight people's experiences of these spaces. So can you speak a little bit to what these oral histories represent for your project and how you engage with them as primary sources that tell these stories about space?

  MEO 10:11 : So, you know, when I started kind of like approaching the project and asking myself, you know how am I going to tell the story? That's when I decided to use oral history. Because for me, it was really important or the adequate way to reveal the history and the legacy of this space if the space doesn't exist anymore. And if there no evidence about these spaces, the most powerful way was to compile information, that oral history about the spaces to kind of like map and to render this image, or this scene, or the spaces that were only available in the memory of the people, you know. Memories is resistance and memory to kind of like reclaim and rebuild and remap these spaces that are not available anymore.

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  HLC 11:06

  Now, we'll be turning to two testimonios to learn together from the oral histories archive. Marcos, can you share our first recording with us?

  MEO 11:17 : Of course, the first this first testimony was provided by Mickey Melendez, this Mickey Melendez, is a Young Lord. He was member of the Young Lords Party at the late 1960s and in the beginning of 1970s. And I really liked my conversation, and because, you know, Mickey was the younger one that was most connected with music. In his teenage years, he was really connected organizing parties in the Bronx, you know, before becoming a Young Lord. And, and after he was a Young Lord, he also was really involved in organizing salsa concerts and concerts all around the city. So he was someone that really understood this connection between social justice, activism, and salsa music. This is the first testimonio:

  Mickey Melendez 12:03 : When you're in el barrio, anybody, you're safe, right? Because everything is okay there, whatever happens there, you're forgiven. There’s a way of talking to people, there's a way of being in all the existing in el barrio. Once you step out of el barrio, now you're stepping out into the world. So one way of looking at these spaces that you’re talking about is that we created our own little barrios, wherever we went to be safe in the them, you know, we can talk our language, you know, or the broken Spanish and English that we grew up with, you know, that we could dance to our music, you know, or that we can make fun at each other, you know, without other eyes looking at us, and that's because we created these barrios, you know, if you define barrio as a safe place for you to be who you are.

  MEO 12:58 :

  What kind of really motivates me and makes me this testimony to love is this idea of how salsa empowered the community to appropriate and to intervene spaces, you know. He's talking about that at a time you will, you'll only felt safe, and love in the barrios you know, but what happened was that salsa motivates people, or motivated a community to start kind of like intervening all around the city. So it's understanding you know, how salsa really allowed and empowered this community to intervene spaces and get out of the barrios. So for me, that's something beautiful, it's a way of being seen, it’s a way of extending our presence, it’s a way of reclaiming our presence.

  HLC 13:42

  That's so beautiful. And it reminds me of something that Melissa and I have talked about a lot with this project, this idea of like, the meta barrio, for example, and thinking about how, like, the organizing framework of the barrio empowers so much of this work to happen. And I really appreciate how not only is Mickey highlighting this in what he's saying, but how it's also a structuring element in some ways for the work that you are doing and understanding what the barrio means for people in the literal sense of the place of el barrio in New York City, but then also taking that and expanding it for what salsa means in other parts of the city, and then in so many other places as well. So I find that really, really impactful.

  MH 14:32

  What a great story. We'll move on to testimonio number two, go right ahead Marcos.

  MEO 14: 38

  Cool, so yeah, so the second testimony that I choose was provided by Aurora Flores. You know, Aurora Flores, is a journalist. I really admire her as a journalist, you know, because she was the first Latina woman at Billboard. She actually was one of the reporters that constantly covered the salsa scene in New York City for Latin New York Magazine, you know, like this kind of like important magazine like since 70s that kind of like recorded and archive and preserve salsa. And I really respect and I admire her so much. And I decided to include her testimony because I also want to address you know, the violence and kind of the machismo central culture in the salsa scene at that time. Although, you know, we're talking about the resistance and power and unity and, and so forth, for me, it's also really important to kind of understand and to explore, you know, what were some of the conflict things that happened at that time. And especially coming from the voice of a woman and from her experience I really want to address and to validate that. And I decide to include this testimony because she talks about one of my favorite spaces that's called the New Rican Village. I really love this space because it was an alternative space you know, at that time there were like these kind of like dichotomy, you know, there were like these more kind of like traditional salsa spaces and salsa clubs. But also there was like these new kind of like alternative leftist spaces and yeah most of the testimonies center of that kind of difference between these two spaces and these two different kinds of things that happen at the same time. And for me her testimony is of really valuable because of that. Let's hear it.

  Aurora Flores 16:26

  English version:

  When I saw the atmosphere, especially at the end when everyone was crazy after they (club managers) said “last call.” and guys were trying to see who they would take home. I would get depressed. So, you know, if I was not with a friend of mine listening to music, a band, like I was not interested in going to those places. The first time I went to a club was as a reporter. I didn’t grow up going to clubs, so... And when I went to a club, the first time I went to the Caborrojeno with my mother, they separated me from my sister, and we had to dance with those greasy old men and everything. They don’t want to dance with you, all they want to do is touch you. It’s inappropriate you know? So, I liked the New Rican Village and other places like that. Although there was always a little bit of that (harassment in the New Rican Village) but it wasn’t so intentional. Okay? In the other places, it was intentional. And in the New Rican Village it was not like that. For me it was a safe space because if a guy got very obnoxious, I went to the musicians. I would tell Eddie who was the owner “Look, this guy is bothering me.” They would take him out themselves. If I wanted to dance alone or if I wanted to dance with my friend, with my sister, with whoever... If I wanted to bring my puppy and dance with him, no one was going to tell me anything. (Laughs.) If I wanted to go naked or with a t-shirt not wearing a bra, no one was going to say anything. No one was going to come and look as if they have never seen boobs in their lives (like they did in other places.) It was very different, very different. I felt like I could go there as an artist, that I didn’t need to wear makeup, that I didn’t need to impress anyone... as if I was in a showcase. Like “hey, look how sexy I am.” you know? It was like, I was a journalist, so I was there doing my job, documenting. But when I wasn’t a journalist, I liked going there to share ideas, to read books and to discuss them. In those days we were reading 100 Years of Solitude. And we were discussing how it affected us, how I couldn’t do any of that in those other clubs (laughs.) You couldn’t even speak in those clubs. The music was very loud and it was not the same.

  Spanish version:

  Yo veía el ambiente, y especialmente al final que todo el mundo estaba bien rematado. Y cuando decían “last call” tu ves los hombres desesperados, buscando a quién podían convencerla que se vaya a la casa con ellos. Me deprimia. Entonces, ya tu sabes, si yo no estaba con una amiga mía escuchando una música, una banda, como que no me interesaba ir ha esos sitios.

  La primera vez que fui a un club fue para trabajar. Yo no me crie yendo a los clubs. So y cuando fui a uno, como te dije, la primera vez acabe jugando con mi mamá, que me separaron de mi hermana y que teníamos que bailar con esos viejos grasosos.Y todo que te quieren, no bailan con uno lo que te quieren hacer estar tocándote. No me gustaba. Sabes?

  Entonces, me gustaba más el New Rican Village, sitios como esos. Siempre había un poquito de eso, pero no era tan intencional, ok ahí era intencional. Y en estos sitios no era así para mí. Era un sitio seguro. Porque si un tipo se ponía muy odioso, yo iba a lo músico ,yo iba a Eddie, que era el manager, que mira el tipo me está molestando. Ellos mismos lo sacaban.

  Si yo quería bailar sola, si quería bailar con mi amiga, con mi hermana, con quien sea. Si yo quería tener mi perrito y bailar con él nadie me hiba decir nada. Si yo quería entrar en bajones y una camiseta y no ponerme un brasier, nadie me iba a designar. Ni me iban a venir los tipos a mirarlo así como si nunca han visto tetas en su vida. Muy diferente, muy diferente.

  Yo me sentía como que yo podía ir ahí como un artista, lo que no necesitaba pintarme no necesitaba ponerme en una exhibición, como si tuviera una vitrina. Como ven mira, mira como estoy qué buena.

  Entonces, ya sabes, era como bueno, yo era periodista, entonces yo estaba ahí haciendo mi trabajo, documentando. Pero cuando no era periodista me gustaba ir la compartí idea, a leer libros y discutirlo. En eso dias estábamos leyendo 100 años de solitud y como nos afectó como yo no podía hacer nada de eso en esos clubs. Tú ni podía hablar en esos clubs, la música era bien dura y no era lo mismo.

  MEO 19:04

  And, you know, it was amazing her commitment to journalism to telling the truth because although you know, she was supporting the community, she was covering salsa histories and all of that, when the truth needs to be told she did that. So that's something that I really kind of respect. And I admire like a lot. And yeah, you know, that's why this testimony is so powerful, because in a way elucidates and shows the experience of women at that time, I know that probably with my project, we tend to kind of like romanticize the spaces as safe spaces and as valuable spaces and spaces that were everything, were cool and chill, you know, and everything still feels safe. But you know, also I want to understand and address that. Yeah, things like this happened because of salsa was really macho centered culture. So for me, it was really important to navigate and to include testimonials like these.

  HLC 19:56 :

  We've talked so much about what Where We Were Safe means for the people that have participated in it and what it's meant to create this project. And of course, this project also means a lot to the communities that continue to remember these spaces that may or may not continue to exist. So Marcos, can you talk a little bit more about the kinds of bridges that communities have built with the project? And where you see Where We Were Safe going in the future as well?

  MEO 20:23 :

  Of course, yeah, you know, I noticed when I published about the project, a lot of people wrote me, you know, like DMs, and you know, send me emails and stuff like that. And that's when I start kind of understanding, you know, like, how a project like these kind of start reaching, like conversation between families and, you know, within the community and these kind of dynamics, you know, and that's something I really love. So, for example, you know, like, when you are a newcomer, a lot of people have told me that this is like a good project, or a good introduction, you know, to explore the history of the community with the city. Another thing that really is something that I really want to stress and to motivate in the project, is the intergenerational communication.

  In the end, you know, this idea was to make the story more accessible. That's why I did this interactive arcade, that's why it is this interactive map, because it's on the internet, because it's an interactive website. Most of the people that have engaged with them are like Latinx people or young people. And what happened there, you know, is that, thanks to the project, they started having more intergenerational communication about this topic with their families. So once someone told me that she discovered this, this space, she discovered this, this project, and she started talking with their family with their tios, with their abuelas you know, their parents about these spaces, and was like, “Hey, I didn't have idea that these spaces exist, were you part of them?”

  So you know, for me it was really important how this project started these intergenerational communications and these oral histories in their own families. And that leads me to another point, you know, that thinking about how the community start thinks about history, there is like a lot, these kind of like white supremacy side of mind, about history and white in our community. What I mean with this is that, you know, sometimes we don't value our community, we don't value our history, but with projects like these, that bridge with the communities can have understanding that kind of reframing the idea of what history is, and it's valuable in what's worth preserving.

  So a really important thing about this project is that I was not really interested in interviewing the big stars, you know. I was not interested in, you know, like, interviewing with these big salseros of famous success. I was really interested in interviewing the people: journalist, club bouncers, you know, the owners of the newspaper that you got out to these places to dance. The conscious decision there was, you know, because I'm interested in the community, in the people that literally occupy the spaces in which history has been not preserved, but also this idea of how we started to reframe and rethink about what history is, you know. So I'm not thinking, you know, these big stars, but in real people that struggled at that time, and they be of families, families, that it doesn't matter, you're famous or not, but your story matters, because your experience is the experience of a whole community as well. That's another way that how the project has engaged with the community and like, trying to kind of reframe these kind of idea of what history is and what needs to be preserved.

  And thinking about how this kind of like leads to the future of the project and how the community will engage with it, I really want to think this project as open methodology. You know, as you have like programs with open source on the internet, I'm thinking this project as an open methodologies. I really want to return the knowledge that I gained through this project to the community. And a way to do that is that I want to give these oral history and mapping techniques that I use and materials that I used to create Where We Were Safe, so that communities can through a workshop access to them to create their own maps or mapping projects in their own context, you know. It's this idea of how I can engage with community and how I can give back to the community. And it's important for me, because this is a good way in which they can empower themselves to reach this historical narrative.

  [music transition]

  MH 24:25 :

  Thank you to Marcos for sharing his wisdom and stories with us. We will leave you all to reflect on what we talked about with a quote from Eddie Palmieri’s “La Verdad.”. Herman, take it away.

  HLC 24:52 :

  A los jóvenes les dejo mi consejo

  Lo que digo es puramente cultural

  En el alma se encuentra la respuesta

  Raza latina, ya va a despertar… and in Eenglish

  I’ll leave my advice to the youth

  what I tell you is explicitly cultural

  You will find the answer in your soul

  Latinos, we are now waking up

  [music transition]

  MH 25:07 :

  Thank you and gracias for listening to Oíste. I’m Melissa…

  HLC 25:12 : …and I’m Hermán. To learn more about Oíste, American Latino heritage, and Telling All Americans Stories at the National Park Service, please visit nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories

  MH 25:25 : Tune in to the next episode “Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa” where we will be in conversation with Felix Contreras about all things music.

  HLC 26:36 : Hasta pronto!

  [outro music]

The cover for Episode 5 of the Oíste? Podcast series.

NPS Photo / Melissa Hurtado

Episode 5: Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa

Beyond the sounds of music and movements of dance, salsa is made up of the composers, songwriters, and journalists who write for and about salseros. In Episode 5: Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa, we discuss the life of composer and songwriter Tite Curet Alonso with journalist Felix Contreras, who also highlights the importance of Afro Latin identity in salsa marketing and lyrics.

• Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa

  
  

  Beyond the sounds of music and movements of dance, salsa is made up of the composers, songwriters, and journalists who write for and about salseros. In Episode 5: Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa, we discuss the life of composer and songwriter Tite Curet Alonso with journalist Felix Contreras, who also highlights the importance of Afro Latin identity in salsa marketing and lyrics. (Music © No Más - La Banda)
  Audio Transcript

  0:20 Hermán Luis Chávez: Buenos días y welcome to Oíste? a National Park Service podcast. I'm Hermán Luis Chávez.

  0:28 Melissa Hurtado: And I'm Melissa Hurtado. In the Oíste? Podcast, we explore the salsa stories of Afro Latin music in the United States through interviews and conversations.

  0:39 Hermán Luis Chávez: Izzy Sanabria, the famous salsa music promoter, once said: “salsa is not the music itself, but the spirit behind the music, the spirit that moves you to dance, sing, and go on in spite of all the obstacles.”

  0:54 Melissa Hurtado: In today's episode, Writing and Broadcasting the Spirit of Salsa, we will explore the multifaceted elements of the spirit behind salsa through a look inside Catalino “Tite” Curet Alonso’s life.

  1:08 Hermán Luis Chávez: We'll be discussing topics such as what impacted Alonso's writing, and complexities in defining the genre.

  1:15 Melissa Hurtado: We've invited a special guest today who will bring their own music expertise to our discussion, and help us answer some pressing questions. Together, we’ll learn how Tite’s life teaches us about the importance of lesser-known stories and finding your voice through community.

  [musical transition]

  1:44 Hermán Luis Chávez: Many salseros are known as performers, but how many are known as composers and songwriters? Today, we'll be looking into the life of a songwriter and composer: Catalino Curet Alonso, who was affectionately known throughout his life as “Tite.”

  2:00 Melissa Hurtado: Journalist Aurora Flores explains that “Tite Curet helped father the salsa movement that was marking time in clave through the streets of Puerto Rico and Latin New York. Through news events, music, and lyrics, his words inspired hope, faith, solace, and joy during a time of social upheaval. In more than 2,000 tunes, Curet was the musical narrator of current events and national pride, romance, and religion. He wrote when the social reality of the poor was in direct opposition to the political power line, leaving music as the life-support of optimism. Tite Curet reflected the face of a community in need of answers.”

  2:43 Hermán Luis Chávez: Tite was born in 1926 in Guayama, Puerto Rico and raised in Barrio Obrero. In 1941, he wrote his first song. He went on to graduate from the University of Puerto Rico where he studied sociology and journalism. He moved to New York City in 1960 where he would work as a sports columnist at El Diario La Prensa, the oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the United States. Journalism helped him curate his own elegant, metered, and literate style of song writing. He also worked for the United States Postal Service for over 20 years.

  3:21 Melissa Hurtado: In 1965, he collaborated with Joe Quijano. Tite composed one of Joe’s first hits, “Efectivamente,” and after that, the rest was history. His name was ever so slightly noticeable in album credits of artists’ music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

  3:38 Hermán Luis Chávez: Tite Curet Alonso’s songs were performed by many well-known salseros such as Hector Lavoe, Ruben Blades, Ray Barreto, Cheo Feliciano, Celia Cruz, Ismael Rivera, Roberto Roena, La Lupe, Pete “El Conde” Rodriguez, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, the Fania Allstars, Rafael Cortijo, and many, many more.

  4:06 Melissa Hurtado: Tite died in 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was transported to Puerto Rico where he would be buried next to Noel Estrada—the composer of “En Mi Viejo San Juan”—and Don Felo, his two amigotes.

  4:21 Hermán Luis Chávez: Tite’s writing style and focus on social conciouseness was instrumental in the development of salsa, and was a reflection of historical events weaved together with everyday life in the mid and late 20th century. Salsa wouldn't have been the same without him.

  [musical transition]

  4:48 Hermán Luis Chávez: It is a pleasure to introduce our guest for today, Felix Contreras! Felix is an American journalist who the co-creator and co-host of Alt.Latino, NPR’s radio show and podcast celebrating Latin music and culture. On top of hosting the show, Contreras programs music from the Latin diaspora for the acclaimed Tiny Desk concerts and appears regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines, All Things Considered, and Morning Edition.

  5:17 Melissa Hurtado: He is extremely knowledgeable and an international ambassador for Latino heritage and arts. “Tio Felix,” has been cited as a music and culture experts by the Smithsonian Institution and captures stories of important icons in jazz and Latin genres. He is also NPR's resident Deadhead and performs around the DMV area with his Latin music Beatles cover band, Los Day Trippers. Thank you for joining us today, Felix, it is a pleasure to have you here on the podcast. Bienvenido!

  5:48 Felix Contreras: Gracias, thank you so much, the honor’s mine to be able to participate in such an esteemed project. It's such an important project. Thank you so much.

  5:57 Melissa Hurtado: We want to start off today's episode by asking you about your connections to salsa. Did you grow up with it? What does salsa mean as music to you and as a movement to you?

  6:07 Felix Contreras: So my connection to salsa is very curious because I am of Mexican American background. I was born and raised in California. And by the time I was fifteen, 1973 or so, it's right about the time when salsa was becoming a social movement. As a Mexican American, we didn't have a connection to the Afro Caribbean, right? When I first heard the music, it was like, you know, the sky opened up and lightning struck me. So then I'm like, okay, I gotta find out everything I can about it. Pre internet, right? That was the beginning. Over the years, I immersed myself in trying to find out as much about the music as possible, and eventually started to learn how to play congas, and timbales. My experience is exemplary, is a very common story, of what was going on in California among Chicanos. We consider ourselves Chicanos. Chicanos to me are politicised or self aware Mexican Americans, right? So among the Chicanos in California at that time, it was, you know, post-civil rights movement. So on the West Coast, there was a lot of political activity—or out in the southwest rather—of Mexican Americans trying to have a seat at the table in terms of politics, economy and all that other stuff, right. Curiously, this Chicano movement, the soundtrack was basically Afro Caribbean music with bands like Santana, El Chicano from Los Angeles, Azteca from the Bay Area, Malo from the Bay Area. It was all congos and timbales right, what they were doing in California was reinterpreting what was going on the East Coast, right. So part of my experience was learning all that stuff, learning about my Chicano identity, but learning about it through Afro Caribbean music. It wasn't until Los Lobos came around in the 80s that accordions became cool, because it was strictly, it was an incredible phenomenon where we all absorbed this Afro Caribbean music and claimed it as our own as part of this progressive movement of thought, of art, of expression. Like if you were part of that, if you were listening to salsa from Fania in the ‘70s, and then listening to the Afro Caribbean based Latin rock out in California, you were, you're a part of the progressive movement, you were part of the vanguard of art and politics and everything else that went along with it.

  8:30 Hermán Luis Chávez: That is such an amazing story. You're mentioning these elements of inter- and intra-Latino identity and cultural elements going on here where there's these resonances for you, and I think for a lot of Latinos as well, that are not from the Caribbean, but who have created a relationship to salsa. And I think that tells us so much about what is complicated about the Latino identity, and how even when we think about the way that we conceptualise salsa, or Latin music more generally, these questions about who we are and how we fit into them are always there. And you did an interview as well with the Code Switch podcast where you were asking, along with your alt.Latino co-host, Anna Maria: what is Latin music anyway? And so I mean, that's, I think, a part of the discussion that we're wanting to have today as well. So why do you think it's so hard for us to define Latin music and to define salsa, right? Is it even necessary for us to define these terms and these genres and what does it tell us about Latinidad?

  9:42 Felix Contreras: I think that it is part of being outside of the mainstream here in the United States. When it comes to music, you know, it's a form of expression. It's art. It's something that's important to our lives, but it's also a business and then they have to be able have to sell records in order to make money in order to keep that business going. You can go back to the early 1900s when they started recording African American artists, and they called that race music, right? Instead of the blues, they called that race music, and they commercialise that right? They made money off of that. The term salsa, it was basically like a marketing method. Right? It's a way to quantify that type of music. And so then Latin music, here in the United States, the history has been well, it's basically anything in Spanish language. Over the years, in order to be able to market it, it was initially Spanish music, Spanish language music and Latin music. But it covers all these genres like Latin music here, in the southwest, its conjunto; mariachi along the Texas Mexican border. And then in the northeast, its Dominican music, its Puerto Rican music, its salsa, all the different forms. Come to the present, now, what is Bad Bunny doing? He's got, you know, on his last album, he has bachata that he has a little bit of salsa, a little mambo, of course reggaeton, you know he's got hip hop. And only here in the United States, is where people tend to have the tendency to use the catch all phrase “Latin music.” It's hard to define it because it's so many things.

  11:26 Hermán Luis Chávez: These are also choices that we make, too, when we decide to name things and when we decide to talk about them in certain ways. And those choices can sometimes be political, just in the way that the music—and you know, salsa itself and also some of these other genres and styles—can be really political things. I want to quote, Ruben Blades talking about the Tite Curet Alonso, who said that he “was a conscious person and that consciousness was manifested in many ways... Tite saw things clearly and because of that he expressed them: The Puerto Rican sensibility, condemning racism, the need for an expression of a much more fair reality than the one we are living in... [and] that was always very present in his music.” And that was Ruben Blades talking about Tite Curet Alonso. So what would you say is the importance of bringing these sorts of ideas into the musical world? And how did this effect the people who sort of took in salsa music and continue to take in salsa music to understand the world that we're in?

  12:30 Felix Contreras: Tite Curet Alonso is a fascinating character in this music history, because I don't think enough people know about him, right? He's like a musician's musician, a songwriter’s songwriter. With his immense body of work, and the social things that he took on almost from the beginning, we're talking 1965 or so, that coincided with the civil rights movement of African Americans. His music stands out because of that early commitment to speaking out against all these things. Coming from Puerto Rico, he of course grew up in a society that was shaped by colonialism, and continued to be, and then the way his music was banned from the airwaves, because of the dispute between the record label, or basically the publisher, and he as an artist, just added to him not being recognized properly among the broader public. He's part of a long tradition of socially conscious songwriters in Latin America: the stories of the underclass, stories about the people who were suffering, why this revolution was going on, in their storytelling, in their verse. So he is part of that trajectory of a long history, and even here in the United States.

  13:54 Melissa Hurtado: Just speaking about how his music was banned from venues in the US and Puerto Rico, it was banned for 14 years, and you really talk about him being a musician's musician and not really getting the credit he deserved, pretty much about the newer generation and the generation during sort of forgetting who he was. So I really want to pose this question, and see if you have any insight: what do you recommend newer generations can do to actually learn about the Tite Curet Alonso's music, as well as his legacy that he left behind through socially conscious lyrics?

  14:32 Felix Contreras: There are a lot of sources that are marking his contribution. And then you find interviews, like I know I've interviewed Residente from the group Calle 13, who is, you know, the epitome of socially conscious songwriter here in contemporary music in the United States, and in Puerto Rico. And he's mentioned him every time I talk to him in an interview as a source of inspiration. So that thing that he started going back to the early mid sixth 1960s is reverberating even now, in this century, among younger musicians like that. So yeah, I think that going back and finding those sources—the fact that you're recording this and doing this as part of the US government, and the Park Service, recognizing his contribution—these are all important steps and trying to correct a little bit of bad history, so that everybody else can catch up.

  15:29 Hermán Luis Chávez: And of course, so much of salsa is coming from such a place of recognition of the particularly Afro Latino experience. So why was this focus on Blackness and on being Afro Latino, something that was important to salsa, the movement of salsa at the time?

  15:49 Felix Contreras: You know, you have to consider the racism within Latin America, and how these Afro Latino cultures and communities were marginalized for centuries. Only within the last 20, 30 years, where being Afro Latino, there was an attempt to try to understand that, socially, politically, and musically, there was a strong movement among young musicians at that time, in 2001, from Colombia, from Venezuela, from Puerto Rico, from all these places that had the legacy of the slave trade, where they were going back into their history and reclaiming that. These musicians were reclaiming that Afro Latino, that Afro Colombian history, Afro Venezuelan history back, like bomba stereo from Colombia, they went back and they reclaimed that. And that's part of this process of reclaiming that history, that he was part of that Tite Curet Alonso was part of. And it's still going on. All of that stuff, it was an effort. It's a considerate and deliberate effort to reclaim that history that is part of the legacy of the slave trade. The tragedy and the horror, but what came out of that also were very unique and distinct musical expressions, based on whatever was going on in the country at the time, or that territory, and then whatever part of Africa that the folks were coming from. So yeah, he is part of that, that Renaissance, that reclaiming of Blackness.

  [musical transition]

  17:32 Melissa Hurtado: What place are they actually speaking about? You know, these societal issues are happening in the music right, in this cloud, and they're talking about a space that is symbolic, but also a space that exists within different places, not only in the United States, but in Latin America as a whole. And so that brings me to our point: that salsa history is US history. What they're talking about, not only in salsa but Latin music as a whole, are things that are happening within the nation. Much of the salsa that we know today was made in the US by of course, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Latinos. But let's tie this into a geopolitical context. So did salsa act as a way of cultural and lyrical expression for the people of Puerto Rico responding to the island's colonial status at the time? And is it still so today?

  18:30 Felix Contreras: The meta-barrio exists, whenever people gather to celebrate that music, to listen to the music, to dance, to go to a concert to put it in the background at a cafe. It exists in our minds, it exists in our souls, and it exists in our hearts. And it comes from the expression from the musicians, right? The difference between African music here in the United States and African music in everywhere else: here in the United States, the African folks were not allowed to play their drums, when in Latin America, that's why all the music sounds the way it does, because they were able to continue to play their drums even as they were enslaved. And then these songs, styles, and genres and cultures grew out of that. Here in the United States, the call and response of African music is found in the Gospel, in the blues in the field hollers. All of that stuff that's came out of the African American experience here in the United States. So that is also part of that legacy of enslavement and how, you know, again, we're going back to the meta-barrio, right like the spirit and the energy and the consciousness of just trying to survive, and trying to keep maintain a sense of identity and sense of self in the smallest way, and then eventually express through music. I think that what we're experiencing in this country right now, it's hard not to feel overwhelmed and wondering how are we going to deal with this as a whole, right? Music is a way to cope, for us to gather around a shared sense of, like, let's get through this, a shared sense of support, a shared sense of we got your back. So that right now, in this point in history, like it's so important, whether you express yourself in rap, hip hop, reggaeton, you know, whatever, musicians are out there right now making those statements. As a way to like, again, to fortify ourselves, to get us through this, because we will get through this, we will survive, and things will change eventually. But I think that that's the importance of music and that's the legacy of salsa and anybody else who used music as a means of self-identity, to express themselves. The community's like, you know what, this is who we are. This is who we are.

  [musical transition]

  21:09 Hermán Luis Chávez: Thank you to Felix Contreras for sharing his expertise and opinions on Latin music from then and today. To hear about more stories like Tite’s, check out more of Felix’s work at alt.Latino on NPR.

  21:22 Melissa Hurtado: To wrap up we wanted to list some of the many songs that Tite Curet Alonso wrote. Do you recognize any and if so, did you know they were written by him?

  21:31 Hermán Luis Chávez: Some of these songs include: La Gran Tirana by La Lupe, El Periodico de Ayer By Hector Lavoe, Las Caras Lindas by Ismael Rivera, Anacaona by Cheo Feliciano, La Esencia del Guaguancó by Johnny Pacheco and Pete Conde Rodriguez, Brujeria by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Tu Loco y Yo Tranquilo by Roberto Roena, and many more.

  21:57 Melissa Hurtado: Such great songs! We hope going forward that more and more folks know who the poet behind these classics was. And you know what they say: ¨The soul of the Carribean is the soul of the poet.” We are grateful for Tite the poet and his legacy in writing and broadcasting about the lives, triumphs, and struggles of Black and Indigenous communities.

  [musical transition]

  22:30 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you and gracias for listening to Oíste. I’m Melissa…

  22:34 Hermán Luis Chávez: …and I’m Hermán. To learn more about Oíste, American Latino heritage, and Telling All Americans Stories at the National Park Service, please visit nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories

  22:48 Melissa Hurtado: Tune in to the next and final episode, “Sembrando Stewardship,” where we will be reflecting on each podcast episode in this series while discovering how all of us can be stewards of salsa stories.

  23:00 Hermán Luis Chávez:

  Hasta pronto!

The cover for Episode 6 of the Oíste? Podcast series.

NPS Photo / Melissa Hurtado

Episode 6: Sembrando Stewardship

The NPS believes in responsible stewardship of our public lands and heritage. In Episode 6: Sembrando Stewardship, Hermán and Melissa recap their favorite moments of the season and share some ways you can continue to learn more about salsa in your own life and community so that together we can all take part in sembrando stewardship, or cultivating stewardship.

• Sembrando Stewardship

  
  

  The NPS believes in responsible stewardship of our public lands and heritage. In Episode 6: Sembrando Stewardship, Hermán and Melissa recap their favorite moments of the season and share some ways you can continue to learn more about salsa in your own life and community so that together we can all take part in sembrando stewardship, or cultivating stewardship. (Music © No Más - La Banda)
  Audio Transcript

  0:20 Hermán Luis Chávez: Buenos días y welcome to Oíste?, a National Park Service podcast. I’m Hermán Luis Chávez…

  0:26 Melissa Hurtado: … and I’m Melissa Hurtado. In the Oíste? podcast, we explore the salsa stories of Afro Latin music in the United States through interviews and conversations.

  0:35 Hermán Luis Chávez: In today’s episode, Sembrando Stewardship, we’ll wrap up our podcast episode by reflecting on each episode and revisiting a few of our favorite moments together.

  0:46 Melissa Hurtado: We’ll also share some ways you can continue to learn more about salsa in your own life and community, so that together, we can take part in sembrando—or cultivating—stewardship.

  1:09 Hermán Luis Chávez: I can’t believe we’re here! The final episode of the Oíste podcast has arrived. And we’re sembrando stewardship, but what exactly does stewardship mean?

  1:21 Melissa Hurtado: Well, stewardship is the practice of managing something carefully and responsibly. When it comes to stewarding salsa and its stories, we want to cultivate an awareness of salsa culture that each of us know how to engage with. Stewarding salsa means learning about and sharing salsa with the people around us.

  1:41 Hermán Luis Chávez: To get us started with sembrando stewardship. Let's begin by recapping the podcast season to remember the moments we've shared.

  1:47 Melissa Hurtado: In our first episode, we introduced the Oíste? podcast and what we mean by “salsa stories.”

  1:56 Hermán Luis Chávez: In episode two, we interviewed Park Ranger Daniel Agudelo to hear about how salsa thrives for him here at the Park Service.

  2:05 Daniel Agudelo: That salsa history is US history. Right? Once you have that accepted, you know as a fact, then you can start moving on.

  2:16 Melissa Hurtado: Episode Three featured Salsa dance couple, Angie and Audrey. Together, we learned about nonbinary dance in salsa and what it means to intentionally build a salsa community.

  2:27 Audrey Guerrero: Once we really fell in love, and we started dating, that's when we decided that we wanted to create a choreography where I could lead them and you know, she could lead me and so that's kind of how it started.

  2:39 Angie Egea: Yeah.

  2:41 Melissa Hurtado: Our fifth episode was a talk with journalist Felix Contreras, who shared his experiences and perspectives on what it means to share salsa with communities big and small.

  2:51 Felix Contreras: If you were listening to salsa from Fania in the 70s. And then listening to the Afro Caribbean bass led rock and in California, you were part of the progressive movement, you were part of the the vanguard of art and politics and in everything else that went along with it.

  3:09 Hermán Luis Chávez: In the sixth episode, we're not just recapping our time together. We're also here to share what you can do to learn more about salsa.

  3:18 Melissa Hurtado: But before we move on, we'd love to highlight a few of your favorite moments. Hermán, what were some of your favorite moments this season?

  3:25 Hermán Luis Chávez: I think one of the most impactful conversations that we had was hearing the stories of community members that are in the dance studios of Angie and Audrey, in Austin, Texas, and hearing about how that community was such a liberatory space for people who had no idea that a space like that could even exist.

  3:54 Melissa Hurtado: Yes! Those stories were super important to hear and they stuck with me as well. One of my favorite moments of the season was hearing Felix Contreras talk about salsa in a historical way, and really putting the timeline to the test and just speaking with him and seeing how much knowledge he has on the impacts of salsa history on society today. And that's something that I've never been able to encounter in such an articulate manner. I really appreciated that conversation that we had.

  4:31 Hermán Luis Chávez: Yeah, salsa has a history—a legit history—that we can and should talk about. And that this history continues in so many ways, not only with the people who are doing the work to remember and honor and educate, but also the people that are rewriting the stories of history for everyone. And it's important for us always to remember our salsa stories don't stop with this podcast. We can each do more to learn and add experiences of salsa in our own lives.

  As we wrap up Oíste, we encourage you to write your own salsa stories by reflecting on your relationship to salsa and what you’ve learned during this podcast. You can ask yourself questions like: How do I define salsa? What kind of salsa experiences do I want to have in my community and around the US? To help you get started, here are a few ways we recommend you explore salsa:

  5:38 Melissa Hurtado: Browse through Oíste? on NPS.gov to learn more about places near you that you can visit in person or virtually.

  5:45 Hermán Luis Chávez: Create your own salsa places by joining a salsa club, dance class, or jam session with the people in your town, city, or neighborhood.

  5:54 Melissa Hurtado: Listen to salsa artists of all backgrounds by finding or making playlists that mix salsa classics with songs or artists that are new to you.

  6:02 Hermán Luis Chávez: And of course, reflect on what you’ve learned through the Oíste podcast and various projects.

  6:09 Melissa Hurtado: It's important to share the resources with others and haven't heard as much about salsa or who are still learning about the importance of salsa. My favorite way is finding organizations, museums, or community groups that are doing the work to revitalize salsa for the newer generations and keeping salsa alive. Some of my favorites are El Museo del Barrio, the Salsa International Museum, and the Salsa Project NYC. A lot of these are in New York, but I'm sure you can find some locally wherever you are.

  6:39 Hermán Luis Chávez: That's such a great recommendation, Melissa! It's so important that we really support the people who are doing the work to engage with revitalizing salsa music. I wanted to ask, are there any ways that you are going to transform your relationship to salsa after this whole Oíste? experience?

  6:58 Melissa Hurtado: Definitely, I think every time I go dancing, every time I hear the music, I'll think back on a lot of the things I've learned that I didn't know before, and how many connections have been made. Specifically, I think that I'll map out a family tree of salsa that I haven't before, whenever I hear certain artists or think about, “oh, when was the song made and why does it have these themes? And you know wha,t let me look at the album cover and see if I can pinpoint when this was made.” So I think that's a little bit of how my experience with salsa would change after this project. What about you?

  7:42 Hermán Luis Chávez: My perspective is definitely changed, having gone through this Oíste? experience, I really appreciate the perspective of taking the time to spend time with our personal stories in a way that isn't just reflecting on the experiences that we've had, but also putting them into practice to inform the ways that we learn about ourselves and learn about the people that we care about at the same time that we're also learning about people from around the world and the incredible salseros that have made of salsa music over the decades. I think one of the things for me, that I feel transformed about with Oíste? is the way that we think about the special place that salsa takes up in music. It's a type of community and performance and transformation that is more than a genre. It speaks so much to the ways that people work through creativity to come together, to build together, to name injustices, to speak new futures. And this project shows me just how much salsa means to so many people that are involved in that process, not just the people who are writing the songs, and performing the songs, and dancing to the songs right? But the people who are listening, the people who are learning that people who come to salsa and discover something new. My relationship with salsa will continue to transform as I take the lessons of Oíste? with me.

  9:26 Melissa Hurtado: And we definitely have to note that salsa is more than just music, its culture, its freedom of expression, and it means so much to so many people. Thank you for joining us for the Oíste podcast and our other Oíste online projects. Now that our podcast comes to an end, we hope you’ll take a few of our recommendations and keep exploring salsa in your life.

  [musical transition]

  10:03 Melissa Hurtado: Thank you and gracias for listening to Oíste. I’m Melissa…

  10:07 Hermán Luis Chávez: …and I’m Hermán. To learn more about Oíste, American Latino heritage, and Telling All Americans’ Stories at the National Park Service, please visit nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories Hasta pronto!

The "Oíste? Listening to the Salsa Stories of Afro Latin Music" project was authored by interns, fellows, and scholars with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education including Elisa Alfonso, Marjorie Justine Antonio, Hermán Luis Chávez, Melissa Hurtado, and Jade Ryerson, and designed by Hermán Luis Chávez and Melissa Hurtado.

Acknowledgements: Alejandro Garcia-Maldonado, Alexandra Tarantino, Alison Russell, Amanda Schramm, Andres Espinoza, Angelita Alvino, Barbara Little, Blanca Stransky, Cynthia Hernandez, Derrick León Washington, Eleanor Mahoney, Elisa Alfonso, Ella Wagner, Frances Aparicio, Herman Luis Chavez, Jade Ryerson, James Barry, James Nyman, Jessica Dauterive, Laura Phillips Alvarez, Marcos Echeverria Ortiz, Marjorie Justine Antonio, Megan Springate, Melissa Hurtado, Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Naomi Torres, Noel Lopez, Paloma Bolasny, Roberta Wendel, Sarah Lane, and Teresa Moyer.