NY Times Salsa article

S

salsamarty

New Member
The New York Times has an article today, Sunday, July 29th, titled "Salsa Spins Beyond Its Roots". Check it out on the NYT web site. It has an interesting story about the origins of salsa in the NY dance scene. It also seems to imply that there isn't much of a dance scene in NY now or at least one that people, remembering the 70's, think much of. For those of you in the NYC area . . . what's your take on this article?

I'm from the San Francisco Bay area curious about the NYC scene.
 
The dance scene is still strong in NYC. Still my favorite place to go dancing. What the article is getting at is the dance has changed. I see it everywhere, it is not just limited to New York. In the four years I have been in the scene, I have seen a prolifileration of dance companies pop up. There are not enough good dancers to go around so dance companies start accepting beginners. It's all about monthly dues $$$. Beginning leaders learn choreography which includes how to dance fast and spin the crap out of the follow. Their tends to be a lot of back leading because the routine is too difficult for their given skill level. Many on teams rarely go out social dancing anymore. So what you see is people with no social dance skills doing performance moves on the social dance floor. They have never developed and therefore have little feeling and interpretation for the music and connection with ones partner. That is not to say all dancers today are like this. But the ones that truly dance to the music are rare.

I think it's great that turn patterns have evolved but the problem is they have evolved at the expense of the music. We need to get back to the music and connecting with our partner even if that means simplifying our turn patterns. I'm not suggesting we go back to the simplicity of the 60's but simplify it so we bring back in the feeling and flavor of the music.

I am always in awe after a visit to New York. There is such a high standard of social dancing. However, when I talk to dancers that have been in the scene for a long time, they just laugh and say this is nothing compared to the what it used to be. Back then performing was not a big thing so people just came out to dance to the music and have fun.
 
"All the emphasis on technique has had a negative effect on the clubs. That change is evident at the Taj Lounge. For the past year this Indian restaurant in the Flatiron district has converted itself every Monday night into one of the city’s few remaining salsa clubs with live music.

Under billowing saffron canopies one recent Monday, one couple moved seductively around the dance floor, the man guiding his partner with his fingertips. The band, members of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra and well-known salsa musicians like Bobby Allende and William Torres, played for no more that 15 people, all at some point expertly spinning and snapping around the dance floor."

Huh? They chose Taj as an example to say how club salsa in NYC is dying? Nobody goes to Taj. 15 people is like the max I've ever seen there. It's definitely not representative.

Anyway, I wasn't around in the salsa heyday so can't compare. I do think the article is right in one sense, but wrong in another.

I think the salsa scene in NY has had a schism. There is this one branch that is just like the article describes: studio-trained, on2, spin-happy, ethnically diverse, cultish salsa crowd. They have all their own venues and most of them are dance studios (Link and Cache are the only two popular on2 events I know of that happen at clubs, and Cache isn't really a club.)

Then there is this whole other group of people doing salsa that nobody hears about. They have their own clubs, lots of which are out in the boroughs but there are plenty of little niches in Manhattan for them as well. A lot of the dancing is on1, and nobody goes to a studio to learn how.

I lived in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood in Manhattan for years and my Spanish is pretty good so I got to know a little bit about this scene also. (Actually I knew about it long before I knew about the on2 scene.) It is definitely not dead. It's true that lots of the dancers are older (40s and 50s) but there are plenty of younger ones as well. You can walk around Inwood or Washington Heights and hear people playing salsa on their car stereos and boomboxes and see them dancing in the street in the summer.

I had a dance buddy in the on2 scene who crossed scenes also; I went to a couple of nights when he was DJing for 'the other side' and they were really fun - it was a tiny little hole-in-the-wall bar, the dancers were mostly 40s and 50s, they were all Latino except me and the on2 friend I brought, nobody was doing triple spins but they had sabor for sure.

There are a few places where the scenes can meet. Copacabana was one, which attracted a mix of people from the Latino/on1 scene, out-of-towners who don't know where to go, and a sprinkling of on2-ers who usually bring their own partners. Outdoor summer salsa events like Midsummer Night Swing and Irving Plaza also tend to get a mix. But even at those places the dancers themselves don't mix - people stick to dancing with 'their own kind.'

So anyway, I guess those are the people who were there for the pre-on2 heyday. It's true that there are no more huge clubs catering to them. (Copacabana did actually; and I don't think they closed right? weren't they just supposed to move to 18th street or something?) Probably a lot of the Latino crowd, especially the younger people, has been drawn off to venues with more hip-hop or reggaeton influence. Times move, music changes, there's definitely been a splintering of the scene. C'est la vie. Que sera, sera. Etc. But it's still not small by any means.

The very specialized on2 scene alone still has hundreds of hard-core regular dancers. I'd say there are at least 500 people who go to on2 events several times a week (enough that I'd recognize their faces). And there are many hundreds more who show up less often. (After going out in NYC for 3-6 nights a week x almost 2 years, I was still surprised at how often I'd see incredible dancers I'd never seen before. I think a lot of them either spend a lot of time on performance stuff and don't social dance very often, or burned out on dancing multiple times a week but still show up for a fun night every once in a while.) For the casual scene, there have to be thousands and thousands of dancers.

Anyway. I'd be curious to hear about this from boriken or someone else who's been in the scene for a long time.
 
We,ve covered this same topic , over and over.

I personally pre- date pretty much all those mentoned in the article ( back to late fifties ) and way beyond that in Rhumba ( the mother dance ).

Reporters are so provincial, in a subject that encompasses a very diverse culture , and should not be parcelled up, and tied with a neat bow.

There are so many people who had influence on the " scene ", that were not even mentioned . ( on both coasts ) , and , I,m sure, in Chi town and other latino enclaves .

It always seems to be referenced to the seventies ,when mentioned , when in reality, it was the late forties and much of the fifties, when the national surge occured.
The resurgence in the seventies and again in the nineties, belies the fact, that the mambo was still being taught and danced in P/R ,
Cuba , and certain clubs in the states-- not to mention the barrios, for all of those yrs .

The dance schools have always had the dance on its itinery, as a beginners social dance, since the forties .( plus other latin dances ) .

Reporters come on the scene like they have discovered sliced bread-- but the reporting is very superficial , and in some cases misleading.

The " bread " has been baked, eaten , and rebaked many times over ,its just that the general public has recently found the bakery !!!
 
Okay...i've been a lurker but i had to chime in with my limited knowledge:

1) Monday night is ALWAYS the slow night because most studios i've gone to have most of their salsa classes and practices on Monday. Also, if you do want to go out, Taj is not the place to go to. Session 73 is supposed to be better (i don't know, i'm always in class or practice :-)

2) Eddie and Maria Torres are not related? huh?? Does she refer to him as her husband just to impress me?

3) Copacabana is not closing because it was unpopular. NYC took the property over through eminent domain to get an extension of the 7 train over to that neighborhood. They are reopening at another location in October.

4) A more representative scene would have been the Latin Quarter on Wednesdays. Huge place, always packed...

I don't know much, but i have that to contribute :)
 
Ok can someone clarify whether the article is in error saying Maria Torres is no relation to Eddie? Either:

1) there is another Maria Torres who isn't the Maria Torres who is married to Eddie (this is what I gathered from the article)
2) Maria and Eddie weren't related back then and Maria's maiden name was also Torres. (This just means it's sloppy writing for not mentioning that they later married)
3) The writer is mistaken.
4) The writer is trying to look like he/she did more research than he/she did.

I'd be interested to know whether the truth is (1) (2) or (other)

Re: the original post, here's my take:

I certainly have the impression that latin music used to be the exotic, dangerous, cutting-edge sound. I wasn't there and don't know what was around, but music must mostly have been played live, and the staple for dancing must have been big band jazz. The Latin rhythms add a whole level of excitement and possibilities to that world.

Amplification brought smaller bands and portable reproduction equipment -- e.g. the boombox, the record deck -- removed barriers of technique and logistics and allowed a lot more creativity in music, leading to funk, disco, hip hop, breaking, garage bands, punk... Now we've had electro boogie, acid house, hard house, 2-step, grunge, gangster rap, speed ****l, turntablism and many other styles and innovations, the latin rhythms do not have a status of being 'new', 'exciting' or 'subversive' in a global context. Sure, people can feel this on a personal level, but it will not capture the collective imagination in that way again.

If you wanted to remanufacture salsa's heyday, it would have to start from the musical context we are in now. But the fact is, we don't listen to music like we did. The iPod and on-demand broadcasting mean that music is personal and self indulgent like it has never been before. Previously, since you needed to get instruments, musicians and a bandleader together to even play music, it was necessarily a social occasion.

These days, the cost-effectiveness of a DJs versus a band means that the soundtrack to our social gatherings is made up of the music that has been commercially recorded rather than a dialog between live artists and the audience.

If something were to reproduce what Latin music and dancing did back in the day, it would come out of something like Krumping, where kids with time on their hands have a channel for their creativity. Whatever it will be, those who "know how" to dance will certainly disapprove of it.
 
I think there was a Maria Torres who choreographed on So You Think You Can Dance and is not related to Eddie Torres. That Maria choreographed a hustle routine, IIRC.
 
Steve-- if you want to get a "feel " for that eras music- Machito-- Tito Rodriguez for big band--- and LaPlaya and La Plata , were sextets that played some kick a-- Mambo . ( didnt put Puente, more modern exposure )
Another interesting choice -- Rene Touzet . danced to these live, on several occasions.
But -- you are right to a certain degree, was sometimes ( particularly Machito ) heavily jazz influenced .
 
tangotime said:
Steve-- if you want to get a "feel " for that eras music- Machito-- Tito Rodriguez for big band--- and LaPlaya and La Plata , were sextets that played some kick a-- Mambo . ( didnt put Puente, more modern exposure )
Another interesting choice -- Rene Touzet . danced to these live, on several occasions.
But -- you are right to a certain degree, was sometimes ( particularly Machito ) heavily jazz influenced .
Click to expand...

Right, but I'm not talking about the influence of jazz on latin music, I'm saying, if latin music was in the foreground, what was in the background?

Today's background is gaudy, multi-faceted, and forever moving, since we have near-instant access to all the world's technologically-enabled back street bands, underground dance music, and bedroom boys. Thus the complexity of Latin music is nothing particularly new, it doesn't leap out as being the definitive dance music.
 
Kinda mis understood your post-- Hope i have it right this time-- background ( musically ? ) in the u.k. ted heath , ronnnie scott ,-- the u.s.-- so many to choose from .Of course. all we had was public dance venues and radio .

I think a more interesting q ( I dont have an answer ) would be who influenced the latin musicians ? ( from different genres )

As being definitive-- maybe not to the non latino community .

I have a dj. friend in the states, who is from Colombia. He had a discussion with me about his parents, and the huge collection of Latin music they had acquired over the yrs, from the thirties thru the sixties ( he even played a" vinyl "one nite ! ) was amazing over the sound system .

I guess the main differences for me-- latin wise-- are the clientele that attend clubs today ( music apart ) and, obviously, the advances technically in sound transmission ( funny thing, dont remember speakers, ever, in nite clubs ) and the availibilty of choices .
 
tangotime said:
I think a more interesting q ( I dont have an answer ) would be who influenced the latin musicians ? ( from different genres )

As being definitive-- maybe not to the non latino community .
Click to expand...

Also, tt, if you read the article, the author suggests that the latino community (well, in NYC at least) has moved on from salsa and has embraced reggaeton and hip hop as the sounds of the day.

And I bet waltzgirl is correct in regards to which Maria Torres is being interviewed. She said that she was in NJ, right? And I don't think Eddie and Maria are from NJ, are they?

And yeah, the article does sound very NYC-centric.
 
MarkoBarko said:
2) Eddie and Maria Torres are not related? huh?? Does she refer to him as her husband just to impress me?
Click to expand...

sweavo said:
Ok can someone clarify whether the article is in error saying Maria Torres is no relation to Eddie? Either:

1) there is another Maria Torres who isn't the Maria Torres who is married to Eddie (this is what I gathered from the article)
2) Maria and Eddie weren't related back then and Maria's maiden name was also Torres. (This just means it's sloppy writing for not mentioning that they later married)
3) The writer is mistaken.
Click to expand...

There are two Maria Torres. One who is married to THE Eddie Torres, and the other who isn't. I have heard that the two Marias have met each other.

I think the writer could have made it clearer/should have made sure that it was clearer that there are two Maria Torres in existence. :?
 
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