Popular Music and Society I) RoutledgeVol. 28, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 35-54 T, Ty]o, &F-dnc,, ;oup

Salsa Criticism at the Turn of theCentury: Identity Politics andAuthenticityMarco Katz

Turning the table on the critics, a salsa musician writes about the writings on music,becoming a critic himself during the process. Having played in at least one of the famoussalsa bands mentioned in each of the books he considers, the musician sets out with thepresumption that the critics will have nothing new to tell him. Picking his way along theprinted pages, he discovers answers to some of the questions that plagued him duringsalsa's golden age, as well as newly significant aspects of a musical style that has lastedlong enough to be heard by the children of its original audience. Some mysteries remain,however; the critics cannot agree on who plays this music authentically, who knows howto listen to it, and why. In the end, it may turn out that the music will create its ownlisteners: the interbred offspring of salsa's varied listeners who are as difficult tocategorize as the music.

Introduction

Driving along in silent disbelief, bassist Goodwin Benjamin and I contemplated theburned-out streets of what had once been the South Bronx neighborhoods where weused to make our livings playing salsa. There was no more Hunts Point Palace, norwas there a Cerromar Casino. In fact, there was nothing but the unvaried sight ofvacant lots along quiet streets that, several years earlier, had hummed with activityday and night. The eighties had begun and salsa was only a small part of the vastculture being swept away by the razing of buildings and a rising tide of gentrification.

Salsa had been our nemesis when played with lackluster bands, just as it hadallowed us to soar when performed with dedicated musicians well versed in the waysof blending salsa y control. It was the music we heard on the streets of our neigh-borhoods, through the walls of our apartments, and in the stores and restaurants wefrequented, providing a steady background for youthful love affairs, day-to-day

ISSN 0300-7766 (print)/ISSN 1740-1712 (online) ©D 2005 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/0300776042000300963

36 M. Katz

chores, and dreams of musical success. Salsa, the neglected child, gave us work inselected areas of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Upper Manhattan, along with occasionaltrips to Boston and Philadelphia and annual tours of the small towns of Puerto Rico.

Like all musical styles that belong to the people, it was often ignored by popularmedia outlets. Radio WADO hardly ever broadcast salsa, nor was it often foundamong las novelas shown nightly on Channels 41 and 47. Before the world was turnedon to the Fania All-Stars, the big Spanish-speaking audiences were lining up to hearthe commercial pop singers Camilo Sesto, Nelson Ned, and a still-to-be-crossed-overJulio Iglesias. Many of their sons and daughters, who sometimes owed their lives tosalsa, rejected all songs in Spanish.

Years later, the books began to appear, some of them from the children of thechildren who had abandoned the mambo, cha-cha, bolero, gua-guanco, and sonmontuno in order to embrace the hipper rock and disco sounds favored by the young"Americans" they wished to emulate. But how could any of these printed pages hopeto capture the combination of laughter and tears, joyous festivities, and desperatestruggles of a generation relegated to the most forsaken corners of the city?

1

I love Latin food, Latin music and Latin people. (KHSU Announcer, Arcata,California)

Issues of identity suffuse current studies of salsa, with varying constructions of whoshould be allowed in, how to define the music, and where its roots are planted.Differing takes on identity involve questions concerning musical training, the foci ofmusic as art or accompaniment, the ways in which music is marketed, the rise ofmechanical reproductions that replace musicians, and works of music as social andpolitical statements. The twenty-first-century salsa criticism considered here includesessays from Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin PopularMusic, edited by Lise Waxer, Tony Evora's El libro del bolero, and Enrique Romero'sSalsa: el orgullo del barrio.

If nothing else, the word "salsa" provides an excuse for publishing lurid pictures,even on books that pretend to academic importance; the covers of the books underdiscussion in this article include one with a red-and-yellow design featuring CeliaCruz in a passionate moment of song, another colored maroon with the graffiti-ladenLP cover of My Ghetto, and a third showing a couple embracing against a lavenderbackground. If Caribbean music does nothing else for the university press industry, ithas at least given it an opportunity to produce book jackets in a wider assortment ofshades of red.

The sense that these are texts dealing with an exotic "other" goes beyond thesurface. Ethnic distinctions that will guide discussion of the music are introduced inthe second sentence of Lise Waxer's Preface to Situating Salsa: "I do not come from aLatin American family, but through the experiences accompanying my research, I

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have become Latina por adopci6n." Not content to leave it there, she marshals hergrandparents' dim sum brunches and "Bubbi's special Jewish feasts" in order to placeherself in opposition to her "middle-class Anglo neighborhood in Toronto thatdidn't feel like somewhere I belonged" (xi). Her final coup is Medardo, a Latinospouse, and her Arias in-laws who are supportive of Waxer's work. Clearly, it is notenough to learn about these others; one must make an ethnic case that justifies one'sown participation.' To shorten the learning curve, perhaps, Waxer quickly admitsJews-including half-breeds with shikse mothers such as herself, and myself-andAfrican-Americans into the New York salsa scene.

By contrast, Evora's book, which uses the bolero's consistent popularity to createan exquisitely wrought sense of the western hemisphere's best-known musical styles,particularly those of the Caribbean, comes off as less self-consciously ethnic than theother texts considered here. Romero's text resembles that of Waxer and some of hercontributors when it suggests that the best possible case for inclusion elides white-ness. Questions of and about whiteness abound in salsa-related discourse, just as theyhave for so many years in discussions concerning jazz-the biggest difference beingthat the former has added language issues, which can serve to make accesssimultaneously easier and more difficult. After all, a white person can generally learnSpanish much more quickly than he or she can approximate black appearance,although this will in no way-Waxer's adopci6n notwithstanding-transform saidindividual into a Latino. This was made clear to me, yet again, at the November 2001conference of the American Studies Association in Washington, DC, where derisivecomments about the growing population of "granola souls" at Latin clubs foundgreat favor. Members of this disdained group of so-called Anglos2 make themselvesobjectionable by trying to fit into a scene where, according to several outspokencommentators, they do not belong. This discussion, although it involved occasionalpointed looks in my direction, amused me as I reflected on the many white peoplewho have suddenly developed a mania for all things Hispanic. Several questions arosein my mind, however. Why was there such a strong feeling of animosity towards the"granola souls"? After all, this group of academics was not exactly the kind of crowdone usually expects to encounter on a rinc6n caliente; many were themselves not onlyquite pale but also seemed more ghetto-sentimental than street-savvy. So how doesone decide which people fit in and which deserve banishment? Is it color, language,accent, dancing, or just a matter of getting oneself into the proper social set?

It must be palpable to any sentient reader by now that I am white enough to betaken for a "granola soul" anywhere. As entertaining as it was to hear the granolabashing-with its evocation of aging California hippies making fools of themselves atBuena Vista Social Club concerts and local salsa dance nights-I was vain enough toresist the thought of being lumped in with the rest of those other white folks. When itcomes time, however, to be visually identified and sorted, chewed up, and spat out bythe old scantron, my box will invariably be checked white, admittedly a fact that I amnever at pains to deny in certain situations, such as when being pulled over by a

police officer.

38 M. Katz

Juan Flores, one of the more thoughtful essayists in Situating Salsa, observes thedebates and dissensions inevitably brought to the surface by discussions of origins(79). That these debates remain valuable comes through clearly in ShuheiHosokawa's (292) powerful concluding essay from the same book, which exploresthe dissonances created by those who regard music "both as a universal language andas a particular expression of certain groups of people." Arguments for inclusion madeby white musicians, who generally share the meager earnings and abundantmistreatment dealt out to musicians of all colors, are heard more favorably whenmusic is regarded as a multicultural force. When musical styles are divvied up andassigned to select communities, the musicians-although not the critics, producers,and presenters-are only granted importance when they are members of the groupconsidered authentic. In jazz, for example, where "whiteness tends to be a sign ofinauthenticity," writes Hosokawa, "the appeals of white musicians to universalisticrhetoric can be perceived as power plays rather than genuine expressions of universalbrotherhood" (292). African-American musicians might be more inclined to take auniversal view when they are allowed meaningful participation in America's well-endowed major symphony orchestras. While waiting, it will be useful for allconcerned to keep a sharp eye on the Ideological State Apparatuses defined threedecades ago by Louis Althusser, notably the iron triangle of broadcast, cultural, andeducational institutions that profit from the continuation of easily categorized ethnicdistinctions.

Many of the problems inherent in this discourse are evident within the IdeologicalState Apparatus where this paper is being written-the California State Universitysystem, an institution charged by government with decisions pertaining to theownership of culture and the means of its dissemination. Strict adherence to thepostmodernist mantra "think globally, act locally" would provide years of meaning-ful activity for any truly concerned residents of Arcata, California, home to auniversity that continually indulges itself in tired expressions of "diversity andmulticulturalism" while remaining one of the most segregated campuses in thesystem. Examples of restrictive zoning and bigoted protectionism, often cloaked inliberal-sounding statements of environmentalism and concerns about development,abound here. Focusing on music, it takes little effort to discover that faculty hiring onthis campus can be fairly characterized as "affirmative action for white men." Notonly are there no nonwhite men in the music department, the white teachers of jazzand Caribbean percussion were hired with neither terminal degrees in music nor theprofessional experience normally required to offset such an educational deficiency.The few Cuban teachers who ever appear on campus are migrant workers employedfor Humboldt State University's short summer session and then sent packing. Imention this as an example close at hand; few readers, I suspect, can honestly say thatthings are better where they live.

On the other side of the United States, some campuses of the City University ofNew York have engaged in profiling so blatant that it might have provoked lawsuitssooner had the area involved not been merely music. While studying music at Hunter

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College, many of us noted that the students, overwhelmingly Latino and African-American, were pushed into jazz and other "popular music" programs, while con-servatory students from Julliard and the Manhattan School of Music, almost entirelywhite and Asian, were hired to play in the school's orchestra. At the time, some of thesame instrumental teachers offered lessons at both the public and private schools, anarrangement that gave them a profitable incentive-the ability to provide entry-levelmusic positions for their favored students-for helping to maintain the status quo.All of this should be remembered the next time a big-city philharmonic complainsthat it would hire African-American musicians if only they could find some who weresufficiently qualified.

The line quoted at the beginning of this section is an excerpt from an actualbroadcast by a scab announcer filling in for Spanish-speaking hosts who had beenforced off their weekly program by Humboldt State University's National PublicRadio affiliate. Like so many declarations of love offered to the Others, this oneinvokes food and music; when They are not performing for Us, it is time to devourThem. Some sing for their supper, while others sing in order not to become themain course. Spanish speakers will appreciate the wonderful self-deconstruction,which may not have been intended, in the opening line of the broadcast: "EstoyDeboritah."3

2

Hasta que el pueblo las cantalas coplas, coplas no sony cuando las canta el puebloya nadie sabe su autor. (Manuel Machado in Evora 383)

Composer and science writer Louis Jourdain has compared music to speechtranslation in order to highlight the difficulties involved for those attempting todevelop a true appreciation for the music of another culture. "In language, meaningis largely distinct from dialect. But in music, meaning appears to be partly embeddedin the idiom of its expression" (Jourdain 277). Who, then, can claim to speak salsa?Noting how the distance between Japan and the Americas "eases the dissonance" forthe well-known Japanese salsa ensemble Orquesta de la Luz, Hosokawa mentionshow, in spite of relatively extensive studies of salsa and its meaning for Latinos,"except for a few cynical notes about gringo audiences, there has been little examina-tion of the significance of its spread outside Spanish-speaking communities" (291).In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha informs us that "a range of contemporarycritical theories suggest that it is from those who have suffered the sentence ofhistory-subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement-that we learn our mostenduring lessons for living and thinking" (172). Obviously, careful readers need todetermine if "those who have suffered" is a literal reference or is meant to includeeven those descendents not currently subjugated under crushing wheels of fate.Assuming the latter, the pool of potential teachers must be enormous, considering

40 M. Katz

the ubiquity of slavery and other significant torture and oppression. In spite ofRomantic notions about the creation of Art, there has not been much music handeddown directly from victims of the world's worst abuses.

Having established herself as culturally exotic, Waxer views salsa as yet a furtherdifference, a type of other "other" that maintains a grand narrative of Americanmusical criticism in which whites toujours deja engage in the illicit appropriation ofwhat is essentially African. In her second essay, "Lleg6 la Salsa," one encounters manyrepetitions of Afro-Venezuelan, Afro-Colombian, Afro-Hispanic Caribbean, Afro-Puerto Rican, and even Pacific Coast-Afro-Colombian, as well as the ever-popularAfro-Cuban. Another Situating Salsa essay, "Se Prohibe Escuchar 'Salsa y Control,"'by Waxer's husband, Medardo Arias Satizabul, a Colombian columnist for the NewYork tabloid Hoy, also pursues African influences, as opposed to a supposed whitesuperficiality, in his homeland. This strained prose comes as a surprise, given thatWaxer's and Arias's primary areas of interest, Venezuela and Colombia, were neverpopulated by more than a handful of African descendants. In Salsa: el orgullo delbarrio, Colombian journalist Enrique Romero estimates that Blacks make up onepercent of the population of his country. The Colombians residing in New York Cityduring the late seventies and early eighties, when salseros started playing with cumbiabands, were regarded by many musicians as a largely white group that remainedensconced in their suburban neighborhoods, adamantly avoiding immigrants fromthe Caribbean islands, especially Puerto Ricans.

Identifying as a Puerto Rican can be filled with other perils; for Patria Roman-Velazquez, another Situating Salsa contributor, it sometimes made fieldwork andwriting difficult. She relates that on various occasions her "knowledge about salsa waseither overestimated, tested or taken for granted" with the implication that she was a"complete insider (which was not the case)" and that this provided her with "anauthoritative voice" (283-84). Conversely, the well-known musician and politicianWillie Col6n claims "The new fad is to redefine everything Latino as Cuban." Thischarge is supported in interviews for "The Making of a Salsa Music Scene inLondon," in which Roman-Velazquez quotes an unusually frank operating strategyoffered by Dave, the owner of Bar Cuba:

What can be Spanish Caribbean? Puerto Rico, well, no. Cuba, well, that is a goodidea, it is basically Spanish. Not Puerto Rico, because it normally reflects fairlyviolent images. Puerto Rico is West Side Story, things like that, Puerto Ricans inAmerica, and I did not want to have that sort of image. I wanted a mysteriousimage of the Caribbean extended in the food, be a little more competent in thefood, rather than just the tapas. (274)

Fidel Castro's government, however, hasn't always been quite so eager to claimsalsa. In fact, Tony Evora and Situating Salsa contributor Robin Moore both dealwith the fact that Cuba actually incurred financial losses owing to its socialist-inspired abolition of copyrights and composer royalties. Moore displays unusualawareness of the difficulties inherent in discussions involving Castro's government,pointing out how "much of the academic literature about Cuba from abroad is

Popular Music and Society 41

extremely polarized, either unrealistically supportive or critical of recent policies"(51-52). The complexities of this discourse are further revealed with tvora's rare andentertaining coupling of Camilo Jose Cela and Pablo Neruda-strange bedfellows,indeed-in a paragraph praising Cuban singer and pianist Ignacio "Bola de Nieve"Villa (109).

What is more difficult for Evora is an acknowledgment of the vital musicalrelationships between the Caribbean and New York City. Beginning in Cuba, whereEvora was born, his explorations of the music move on to Mexico, through CentralAmerica, down the western coast to Chile, over to Argentina, back up the easterncoast to Venezuela, returning to the islands for a look at Puerto Rico and theDominican Republic, and finally traversing the entire Atlantic to bring in Spain,where the author currently resides. In fact, this book, couched in the idioms ofMadrid,4 overtly aims for a Spanish audience whose fascination with all thingsCaribbean is much like that found these days in the United States. Even so, the BigApple pushes its way into Evora's narrative, popping up-however unbidden-inevery section of the book. Important figures such as Marcelino Guerra "Rapindey,"Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo, and Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros keep showing up inla gran manzana, often staying for the rest of their lives (102-03). Most of themusicians in Evora's book who develop new sounds out of mixtures of national stylesdo so in New York, an early example being the Mexican composer and performerGuty Cardenas, who established important contacts in that city with the ColombianJorge nfiez, the Argentine Gregorio Ayala, and the Cubans Nilo Menendez andAdolfo and Conchita Utrera (209-10). Properly establishing the importance ofMexico City, Buenos Aires, and Havana in music of the Americas, the author isclearly reluctant to let in any part of the United States, even as its internationallyimportant Spanish-speaking cities-New York, Miami, and Los Angeles-practicallybeat down his doors.5

Salsa musicians have long known about this Cuban diffidence in acknowledgingthe musical importance of New York and other cities in the United States. ManyCuban musicians, pro-Castro as well as refugee, believe that the blame for currentyanqui predominance lies with Fidel Castro; Havana would now be the center ofrhumba, son, montuno and salsa if only most of the really good musicians had chosenor been allowed to stay. Evora reserves his most openly political writing for this topic;in a ten-page section titled "El exodo de artistas" he discusses internationaldiplomacy, unions, homosexuals, expropriation of businesses, Milan Kundera, andthe Soviet Block, not always making clear connections between these topics and themusic under discussion (122-32). In future arguments, he would be more persuasiveby allowing the case to stand with the obvious reality that over the past four decades ahuge number of great musicians have left the worker's paradise presided over by FidelCastro, finishing their careers in Mexico City, Caracas, Buenos Aires, and Madrid, aswell as New York and Miami. One might add the many current stars who, thoughlegally Cuban citizens, basically spend their lives in hotel rooms around the world ormaintaining residences of one kind or another in Europe or the United States. Short

42 M. Katz

trips home to see family and bring sufficient funds into the country have becomeenough to keep one's Cuban citizenship intact these days.

Whatever other ambiguities exist about salsa and the politics of Cuba, Moorepaints a clear picture of a Cuban Communist Party-always dominated by whitemen-spending decades dismissing dance music as "'low class' music (munsica baja,sin nivel, de la hampa), crude and vulgar, as well as a cosa de negros," while supportingmostly "classical music, or pop music with overtly political content" such as SilvioRodriguez (56-57). According to journalist Crist6bal Sosa, "The 'salsa' from NewYork, that of Eddie and Charlie Palmieri, all that, was considered 'the enemy"'(Moore 63). Moore demonstrates how the views of Castro's government changed, inpart, with the rise of more "politically oriented salsa compositions by Ruben Bladesand others" (63-64). An immediately compelling force for policy change, discussedby both Moore and Evora, was occasioned by the abrupt break in the flow of moneyfrom Moscow to Havana following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the wholeworld knows, Hollywood promoters were suddenly able to find all sorts of previouslyhidden treasures on the island with the result that "performing music in touristrevues or abroad offers Cubans a potentially higher standard of living than they couldhope to achieve in virtually any other way" (Moore 64). Consequently, Havana'snational budget now enjoys 20 percent of the earnings of Cuba's resurrectedperforming rights society, Estudios de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales (Evora194). Moore points out: "One unfortunate result of these policies has been thedevelopment of a quasi-apartheid music system in which many live concerts todaycannot be attended by Cubans themselves" (66).6

Further studies of these issues might consider how the "granola souls" perpetuate asimilar system of segregation in the United States, where groups such as Buena VistaSocial Club and Mufiequitos de Matanzas play for white audiences while Spanish-speaking immigrants are most often found listening to other groups in differentvenues. A similar phenomenon in London is well documented in Roman-Velazquez'schapter, in which she carefully charts the different paths taken by Latino and Britishrevelers in search of salsa. One of her South American interviewees says that he feelsuncomfortable in places like the inanely named Down Mexico Way salsa club because"you don't see any Latin people around, but you are listening to salsa music, seeingMexican food, and perhaps the only Latin is washing dishes." Other respondentsnoted that these clubs "were reproducing the image of a 'ghetto"' (Roman-Velazquez279-80).

As is clear from the title of his book, the ghetto-specifically that part of New YorkCity known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio-is exactly where Enrique Romerodiscovers the birth of salsa during the 1970s as "an urban socio-cultural movement,synthesized in a musical expression created and developed by Caribbean emigrantsand some North American musicians identifying with Latino pathos and seduced bythe rhythms of Cuba and Puerto Rico" (12).7 Said pathos is no small thing forRomero, who believes that the original inhabitants of the Caribbean were essentiallyendowed with extraordinary quantities of generosity, social permeability, and ability

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to mix and adapt rhythms of other cultures-qualities that, in spite of theconquistadors, "remains present in the DNA of all Caribbeans and all Latinos ingeneral" (15) 8 Genes come up several times in Romero's work, explaining to hissatisfaction not only why Latinos came up with better salsa but, conversely, why "TheCaribbean hasn't participated in the Space Race nor in the development of scienceand technology" (21).9 Evora also implies that science and technology are giftsunique to Northern European nations, ignoring the many important breakthroughs,such as the treatment for malaria-an imported ailment-developed by Incanphysicians in the seventeenth century, that have been and continue to be made in allof the former Spanish colonies.'1

Latinos, in the sense that this consists of the Spanish-speaking population of theAmericas, have roots in the Taino, Caribe, Arawac, Aztec, Inca, Quechua, and Mayannations as well as in Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, Germany, England, Holland,Eastern Europe, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Persia, China, Japan, Korea,Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.'1 The appealingpart of Romero's genetic theory, suggested in part by his unreserved admiration forLarry Harlow, Barry Rogers, and other salsa greats from non-Latino families, is thateverybody must be Latino. Or, as Hosokawa writes in a reference to a CD byOrquesta de la Luz, "it is not that salsa has no borders, but rather that some groupscross over them more easily than others" (308).

Lest readers believe that such issues are confined to wrangling between constructedgroups identified as Latino and Anglo, Hosokawa brings in elements of Asianstereotyping found in the Americas, a hemisphere where many Spanish speakerscontinue to replace coreanos, vietnamitas, and japoneses with the all-purpose chinos,often not even aware-at least in the United States-of the Castilian words for theseother nationalities. Sometimes, though, the greater distance between Japan and theAmericas turns out to be beneficial to "musical communication at both ends byallowing the undisturbed production of OL [Orquesta de la Luz] in Japan and thecurious reception and consumption of them abroad" (Hosokawa 291). Elsewhere,claims of authenticity have sometimes proven useful as marketing devices topromote, or explain away, bad musicianship. Xavier Cugat, a white native ofCatalonia, tried to blame the United States for the commercial relics with which hemade his fortune: "In order to make it in the United States I gave the NorthAmericans Latin music that had no authenticity" (Evora 223).12

Attention must also be paid to differences among Spanish-speaking nations. Atone time, the Mexican singer and songwriter Guty Cardenas was branded with theepithet "malinchista" (quisling) for using the Cuban clave in one of his compositions(Evora 209). Marisol Berrios-Miranda begins "Is Salsa a Musical Genre" withGerardo Rosales's insistence that every style be set "in its place" with salsa reservedfor Puerto Rican bands because "Cubans cannot play salsa. There is not a Cuban salsagroup, it does not exist" (23). On another front, Francis R. Aparicio's elegantdeconstruction, in Situating Salsa, of a performance by Celia Cruz and La India castsan entirely new light on the endless debates of origination between Cuba and Puerto

44 M. Katz

Rico. This is accomplished through a meticulous unraveling of show-businesstrappings which identifies La India, a popular young Puerto Rican singer, with thelate La Lupe, "one of the few Cuban singers who identified salsa as Puerto Rican," inopposition, however unconsciously, to the "Cuban-centric perspective" publiclyinsisted on by Cruz, thus subverting "hierarchies imposed by the industry and Celiaherself' (154-55). Among current cultural critics writing on salsa, Aparicio standsout as a writer who uses critical theory that reveals the myriad complexities of themusic and the cultures in which it rises. A reflection on the history of profound pan-American musical criticism, moving from Alejo Carpentier to Aparicio, deserves, atthe very least, an entire chapter of its own.

"Culture is translational because such spatial histories of displacement-nowaccompanied by the territorial ambitions of 'global' media technologies-make thequestion of how culture signifies, or what is signified by culture, a rather complexissue" (Bhabha 172). Like the writers I'm reading, I've managed to drag the source,and discussion, back to my own madre patria, New York City. Still, there are otherscholars supportive of this view. In "There Goes the Transnational Neighborhood:Calypso Buys a Bungalow," Michael Eldridge includes the claims of calypso singers ofthe 1920s "that The Tropics are New York; that the two places have become virtuallyinterchangeable; that Gotham has been irrevocably inflected with Caribbean culture"(622). Caribbean connections with New York City provide many possibilities for theconsideration of some fundamental questions concerning American culture andidentity.

3

If hybridity is heresy, then to blaspheme is to dream. (Bhabha 226-27)

One answer that begins to emerge, but never entirely appears, in some of thesewritings is a concept of Music of the Americas. This phrase, suggested in works byJose Marti, arose among a group of New York City musicians during the late 1970sand early 1980s to explain some important, however unrecognized, similarities insalsa, cumbia, and jazz ensembles. By 1985, a few of us had created a bilingual schoolshow intended to reveal this aspect of American culture to elementary schoolstudents.'3 Educators at first resisted this as a confusing new idea; by the late 1990s,though, several arts-in-education organizations had included us in their programs,with schools beginning to ask for Music of the Americas by name. Our study guidesemphasized how our music came with our people from Africa, Asia, Europe, andthroughout the American continents. It also posited New Orleans as a Caribbean cityin order to demonstrate how musical styles of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the DominicanRepublic, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States washed back and forth overmaritime paths of trade and conquest, creating combinations that became known asragtime, blues, dixieland, swing, danz6n, cumbia, and salsa, all of which went on toinfluence performers and composers around the world. An example of this type of

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development can be found in my Preface to an edition of compositions by PuertoRican composer Juan Morel Campos that "exhibit forms and rhythms developedduring the following decades by Scott Joplin and other masters of ragtime" (2).

Waxer's anthology contains an interesting blend of observations on the global andlocal factors that help explain salsa's trajectory from a neighborhood mixture of stylesto an international phenomenon flourishing in an arena where it could in turnbecome an element in further musical concoctions. Her own writings provide neededinsight into distinctions between Latin music and salsa, showing how the latter hasbeen used as a general term that reduces Latinos to a stereotyped sameness (Waxer,"Situating Salsa" 5). Later, she explains how the New York experience moves peoplefrom specific national identities toward generic Latino identification (Waxer, "Lleg6la Salsa" 227). Aparicio sees this trend in other parts of the United States, as well,observing cases in which "second- and third-generation Latinos do identify them-selves as Latinos rather than as Mexicans or Puerto Ricans, as their parents still do"("La Lupe, La India, and Celia" 143). Hosokawa believes that a move away from a"barrio (street) aesthetic" was necessary for the acceptance of Orquesta de la Luz,where there "is no global 'street' but only global images of it" (293). The other side ofthis push and pull between international and neighborhood factors is nicely stated byRomero, himself an amazing combination of cobblestone and cosmopolitan, whoinforms us that:

[in] any Latin American country ... and above all for salsa, the concept ofneighborhood is more important than that of country. In one of his songs, RubenBlades sang this most clearly: "To hang out, you must have the keys to theneighborhood, ... you must love the street corner." (38)14

The inevitable results of this are new mixtures and auto-identifications. Aparicio'sstudent Wilson A. Valentin Escobar weaves a "diaspo-Rican" identity for the "white"singer Hector Lavoe with strands from Africa as well as the English-speaking islandsof St. Kitts, Nevis, Barbados, and Jamaica, all of which have been credited in thecreation of Puerto Rican plena rhythms. Lavoe's Bronx burial creates "a metaphor ofthe transnational character of the Puerto Rican community" (173-75). Othermixtures and their explanations actually begin in the Big Apple; Juan Flores quotesJoe Bataan, who "was not of Puerto Rican ethnic parentage" but was from El Barrio,where he achieved fame as a street gang member and later as a singer. "My father wasFilipino and my mother was African-American, and my culture is Puerto Rican"(91). Several of Waxer's contributors, as well as Evora and Romero, bring in anotherfamous casirriqueio1 5 native of El Barrio-"El judio maravilloso" Lawrence Ira Kahn,known as Larry Harlow. Whether or not one swallows George Lipsitz's asser-tion, quoted by Hosokawa, that Harlow's music provides him with a "powerfulcritique of mainstream middle-class Anglo-Saxon America as well as with anelaborate vocabulary for airing feelings of marginality and contestation," few woulddeny that el judio maravilloso played a huge role in salsa's formation (300).16 A lookat why a disproportionate number of Jews became involved as players and listeners of

46 M. Katz

salsa, not in the purview of the writings under discussion, would make a fascinatingfuture volume.

Without mentioning Music of the Americas by name, several of the authors underdiscussion delve into its cross-pollinations. Steven Loza, another Situating Salsacontributor, explains how New Orleans jazz may have influenced the inclusion oftrumpets in the son ensembles even as early blues and dixieland artists such as W. C.Handy and Louis Armstrong were being exposed to those Cuban sounds (210). Ellibro del bolero is filled with tonal matrimony sparked by the propinquity of homosapiens organizers of sound, arising from relationships formed during Olmec, Teoti-huacan, and successive Mexican civilizations, Spanish invasions, Chinese immigra-tion that provided labor for the Panama Canal, and Cuban politics and migrations.After demonstrating the influence of Italian operas, African-American influences onDebussy, Colombian openness to foreign musical styles, U.S. big bands and crooners,and Brazilian bossa nova, Evora finally arrives at a figure who could be a prototypicalmusician of the Americas: "Heitor Villa-Lobos, the brilliant Brazilian composer of'art' music, engaged in carrying out an American art based on a wealth of popularfolklore, capable of becoming one with the abundance of universal music" (329).17

Romero-who defines salsa as a fusion of Caribbean elements with jazz, samba,rock, and reggae-also brings in a wide array of musical styles and the people whocreate them, with particular attention to how major ethnic groups in New York Cityhave rubbed off on each other. His history of influences lists artists from Puerto Rico,the Dominican Republic, and Cuba along with big band leaders, bebop soloists, TinPan AHey songwriters, flamenco artists, musicians from Senegal and Morocco, andcomposers from the classical canon, especially Bach, "the most modern musician inhistory" (22).18 Bringing in the creator of The Art of the Fugue in this manner maysignal, whatever Romero intended, the beginning of a new Baroque era in music; thelast one came to prominence during similar times of cultural confusion and inter-nationalism. Like "jazz," the word "Baroque" was originally a pejorative reference toan art considered impure. It was, in fact, the Portuguese term for an imperfect pearl.

4

People compose for many reasons: to become immortal; because the piano happensto be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise offriends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; or for no reasonwhatsoever. (Robert Schumann qtd. in Jourdain 192)

One of the problems with writing about this music, according to Berrios-Miranda,is "that a study of salsa style requires a musical proficiency and musicianship thatmany salsa scholars lack, particularly those who have approached salsa from a literaryor cultural perspective" (27). It is a sad truism that some music critics have no ideahow to listen to music; their work suggests that they've spent too much time withmusic in the background while talking, reading, or performing some other activity.We might well ask, at this point, what has happened to the field of music history?

Popular Music and Society 47

Another problem in analyzing contemporary music is that some of the worst excessesof corporate musical production have helped create a musical scene that "is pro-foundly anti-intellectual [and where] the inability to read music is worn as a badge ofhonor" (Jourdain 262). In part, this bad bargain was made as a way to encouragelisteners to allow musical styles of the Americas into chambers where only seriousforms of art had previously been permitted. The most important advance inunderstanding music and the societies within which it flourishes will occur once webegin to consider our American music with a postmodernism prepared to findinstances of depth in all genres, including eclectic endeavors at nongenres, rather thana noncritical critical approach engaged in the creation of political egalitarianismwithin cultural spheres.

Bar Cuba's owner, who earlier expressed a popular view of Cuban mystery, seemsto have once again caught the pulse of a generation unprepared for complexpostmodernist rumination when he tells Roman-Velazquez why music "was one ofthe last considerations in constructing the identity of the place. 'You can get awaywith any type of music as long as it has the right atmosphere,' Dave said. 'The mainthing is the decor, then the people and then the music"' (275). In spite of Dave'smisguided patrons, there can be found in every part of the world a select group ofpeople who learn enough to perceive music on more than a superficial level. Literarycritics might regard them as music's informed readers. These listeners understandhow "classic salsa is like the music of Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, that continues tobe listened to and passionately enjoyed many years and centuries after its creation"(Romero 61).19

Aparicio is among the salsa writers who stress this music's importance asaccompaniment to dance. Although much can be learned from the connections shemakes between music, dance, and people, there are problems inherent in any idea ofdance as music's ultimate objective. Like some critics, bandleaders are often obsessedwith dancing; getting the people "on their feet" means more gigs and better money.If, however, good music makes people move, great music can make them still. Thebest memories of good players usually involve those moments of intense listening bya crowd absorbed in the music. When Mon Rivera had me stand at the front ofthe stage, as the trombone section launched into "Mosaico #2," people who knewthe band gathered around. After Mon shouted "iOye Mayagiuezf' it was time toimprovise, and I could feel a thousand eyes on me; it seemed as though everyone hadfrozen. The energy from that experience stayed with me and, although I've yet toformulate a properly mystical philosophy to draw upon in explanation, I am awarethat something well beyond my comprehension transpired in those places. A fewgreat conga players, such as Vicki Soto and Jose Venero, regularly generated thiskind of excitement, using two, sometimes just one, drum to entice crowds ofknowledgeable admirers into motionless enchantment around the bandstand.

Lyric is another area that causes writers to wander into strange places. Evora asks:"To what are we listening in a bolero, the music or the words?" (25).2° Oddly,considering its fundamental nature, this inquiry seldom arises, even though lyrics

48 M. Katz

often "provide a welcome memory aid for the musically undeveloped mind"(Jourdain 257). Some writers on music are so engrossed with the words that themusic never appears for them while others-although not many-concentrate ondiatonic maneuverings to an extent that lyric is excluded. In cases where both arejoined, one often has the sense of a shotgun marriage where no one is completely surewhether these disparate elements ought to remain hitched. In the theatrical world ofNew York, there is a famous old anecdote about a woman who approaches the wife ofRichard Rodgers at a party. Gushing about the famous Broadway composer's music,the fan breaks into "Some enchanted evening...," only to be stunned when Mrs.Rodgers replies that her husband never wrote that. In answer to the lady's continuedprotestations, Mrs. Rodgers finally sings what her husband did compose: "Da daa, Dada da daa....'21

All of these writers would benefit from rethinking their definitions of a musician;in these books the term is generally limited to signifying singers, songwriters, andbandleaders. In some cases this goes even further off track when people who operatenightclubs, agents who handle bookings, and DJs who play recordings are treated as ifthey were, in fact, the creators of the music. Aside from a few useful observations onmusicians as workers in Romero's book, there is scant consideration of the place of

22side-musicians in these histories. The two articles by instrumentalists that appearin Situating Salsa do little to correct the situation. Steven Loza and ChristopherWashburne do not appear to have been included because of any real interest in themas players per se, but because of their academic achievements. Loza's piece, adisproportionate celebration of one of his employers, should have prompted ethicalconcerns regarding the academic integrity of its inclusion in this publication.Washburne, an excellent trombonist, provides a nicely balanced discussion of thedifferences between 1970s and 1990s salsa. His consideration of the historical aspectsof the trombone in salsa, however, fails to include well-known side-musiciansGeneroso "Tojo" Jimenez, Barry Rogers, Jose Rodriguez, or Jimmy Bosch.

The omission of side-musicians in El libro del bolero is similarly surprising sinceEvora, credited as a percussionist on the back cover, focuses on the music. His bookcomes with a superb CD containing original recordings by Tito Rodriguez, BennyMore, Olga Guillot, Bobby Cap6, Lucho Gatica, Antonio Machin, El Trio LosPanchos, and other important artists. Eight pages of "Comentarios a la selecci6n delCD" discuss the singers and songwriters along with dates and circumstances of therecordings. Among the 22 recordings, however, one finds only two playersmentioned-trumpeter Chapottin and bassist Elpidio Vazquez. Similarly, the twentyartists singled out for individual biographical treatment in Salsa: el orgullo del barriowould also appear to have offered solo performances throughout their careers. Withroom for photos, discographies, and spacious margins, it is unfortunate that thosemen and women in the background were left unidentified.

Those who were on the salsa scene in the 1970s understand the importanceof those now-forgotten trombonists as well as the treseros, congueros, bongoseros, andtimbaleros. Bands of that era also featured great pianists, bassists, trumpeters,

Popular Music and Society 49

flautists, violinists, and occasional saxophonists. An expenditure of ink on trom-

bonists Barry Rogers and Jose Rodriguez is long overdue; their stature was equal to

that of their boss, Eddie Palmieri. With my superficial resemblance to Barry, I often

found myself besieged during the mid-seventies by young fans and well-wishers as I

carried my trombone case around East Harlem or the Lower East Side. The fact that

Barry, another Jew, and Jose, a Brazilian, were outsiders added to their luster at the

time, even if it has caused them to be neglected by purist historians. Hopefully, future

studies of this music will do more to highlight their vital contributions. When I last

saw Jose, he was living in a West Side Manhattan housing project, scuffling for

diminishing gigs. Generoso was living in a small, crumbling room when I visited him

in Havana in 1999. After enduring a period of critical neglect, Barry succumbed to abrain aneurysm in 1991.

Paying more attention to the musicians would help writers understand the properplace of musical scores and parts. When Berrios-Miranda, for instance, finally stopslecturing others on their ignorance and gets down to notated examples, it becomes

obvious that she is out of her element. Her rhythmic patterns on page 32 are either

overly simplistic or, in the bongo and conga parts, just plain wrong. A phrase sung byIsmael Rivera is accompanied by the observation that: "Perhaps the most instructive

aspect of this transcription is the fact that it cannot capture the rhythmic or melodic

subtleties of Ismael's fraseo" (Berrios-Miranda 40). This ridiculous idea that salsa,jazz, and other "Africanized" music cannot be written down would be hilarious if it

were not so demeaning. Recently developed computer programs prove that the

subtleties of all these styles can be traced with notes on manuscript paper, assumingthat one wouldn't mind reading beats pared down to fractions of the 64th, 128th, or

even smaller units. The more commonly employed whole-note-to-32nd parametersconvey an approximation of Brahms's symphonies or Chopin's piano works, with

their many tempo variations, just as inexact as that which can be given of CharliePalmieri's Arroz con bacalao or Duke Ellington's Black and Tan Fantasy.

The musical notations offered in Situating Salsa by Washburne and Loza will, forthe most part, be as useless to nonmusicians as they are simplistic for those who canread them. For those who need to know, Rebeca Maule6n's Salsa Guidebookfor Piano

& Ensemble is still the best source of information for musicians involved in salsa

performance and notation. Possibly attempting a mitigation of her own deficiencies,Berrios-Miranda recycles stories of untrained Puerto Rican musicians, ignoring the

fact that most players and composers have had enormous amounts of training, many

of them-such as Tito Puente-having studied at Julliard and other world-famousconservatories. Tony tvora's biographies constantly refer to conservatory enrollmentand operatic experiences, while researchers such as Ruth Glasser demolished such

stereotyping early on, describing even earlier generations of "Afro-Puerto Rican"

musicians as "reading musicians who were well-trained in Puerto Rico's municipal

bands" (15).An element inextricably tied to the notation of salsa is clave, and Berrios-Miranda

quite accurately points out the importance of this rhythm to the music; even when

50 M. Katz

not actually played by the instrument of the same name, the rhythm should always beimplied. She also brings up the musicians who believe "that a lot of great salsa musicis cruza'o ('crossed,' i.e., all rhythms are not properly lined up with the clave), but itstill swings and it is still good" (37). After hearing several criticisms of crossed clavein the music of the Lebr6n Brothers-possibly connected with jealous feelings arisingfrom the band's number-one hit in Puerto Rico at the time-I once asked the band'sarranger, Jose Lebr6n, about this. His response was: "Oh yeah, fick the clave. I nevereven think about it." Berrios-Miranda mentions that some "great musicians have atone time or another lost the clave, and other musicians love to comment about thoseinstances" (39). She is certainly right about this. During one of the recording sessionsfor The Heavyweight I was astonished to hear a couple of Charlie Palmieri's side-musicians criticize the great pianist for turning the clave around. The final, andunanimously convincing, proof was that Charlie's montuno, a repeated pattern,conflicted with the tapping of bassist Bobby Rodriguez's foot. While Palmieri was stillthe acknowledged master of all musical styles, everyone knew that Bobby's foot nevercrossed, so the montuno was dumped. The most beautiful players, like the mostarticulate writers, all improve when they can stand a bit of correction.

As Lise Waxer has endured brickbats as well as bouquets on these pages, herpassing on August 13, 2002 must be noted. Although already possessing a formidablelist of accomplishments, she was entirely too young to leave this life, still havingmuch to contribute. Her writing reveals social and musical scholarship, an ability toaccommodate a variety of viewpoints on a complex topic, and a sincere passion forthe sounds of salsa. I hope to have honored Waxer's work here by a critical view that,as much as possible, has ignored her physical demise while seriously examining theliving embodiment of her work.

Sadly, we will not see more of Waxer's thoughts on the place that recordings havetaken in the music and, by extension, in various societies. The best parts of her essay"Lleg6 la Salsa" build on Walter Benjamin's thoughts on the ways in whichreproduction liberates art from ritual, moving creation towards the political. Evoraalso takes on recordings and broadcasts, at one point showing us the irony ofHollywood films such as Blood and Sand, in which the voice of Rita Hayworth isperformed by Cuban singer Graciela Parraga. So far, however, it is Waxer who hasdone the most interesting work on the applications of these thoughts to salsa, noting,for example, that the "centrality of recorded music for Calefios [residents of Cali,Colombia] challenges the privileging, in most scholarly work, of live performance asmore 'real' or 'authentic' than its mediated versions" ("Lleg6 la Salsa" 232).

Future efforts by Waxer's colleagues and students would do well to expand onthese ideas of how, after "the age of mechanical reproduction separated art from itsbasis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared forever" (Benjamin 226).There are enormous societal gains to be made from answering questions of what issalsa, what differences and similarities it has vis-a-vis other musical styles of theAmericas, and who is served by these histories and denominations. Also, how are thevarious meanings provided for salsa, along with representations of its history, used to

Popular Music and Society 51

develop national policies, enforce cultural controls, bring people together or keep

them apart, or-in that famous old record company phrase-just sell product?

It is already clear that our labels for musical forms resist definition, and ever-

evolving styles will increase our confusion while adding to our pleasure. Also, as the

offspring of the granola souls and the original salseros find they cannot keep their

hands off each other, the categorization of human beings will become as difficult as

the selection of bins for recordings. This "mongrelization" of America can even be

found on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. "In a world brimming with badnews," writes Nicholas D. Kristof, "here's one of the happiest trends: Instead of

preying on people of different races, young Americans are falling in love with them"

(A33).So it turns out that these new texts dealing with the music Goodwin and I played

will be indispensable. They answer many questions we had during those hectic times,

and, even when the responses turn out to be wrong, they give our thought processes aplace to begin. The blend of critical theory, musical knowledge, and personal

experience presented in works on salsa has the potential to foster greater under-

standing of how places, times, and events are changed according to the signifiers that

are applied to them. Our increasing consciousness will help us reserve our judgments

as we endeavor to comprehend people with a clarity never to be possessed by thosewho have decided in advance what behaviors will be encountered and how they

should be addressed. The conclusions we come to, however temporarily in each

instance, and the feelings we have about them will have greater meaning with eachstep we take in this direction.

And that is not all. The neoyorriqueiio descendants have come back and evenbrought with them the children of those "Americans" and others from all over theworld who are beginning to discover the joy of learning how to listen to music from

the corners, las esquinas y los rincones, from the simple slap on the conga accom-

panied by hollow claves-clak-clak; clak, clak, clak-later joined by a bass line thatcomes as a revelation, introducing in its turn a swirling world of beats struck and

pounded on skins and wood and metal, all aligned with ever-shifting harmoniesplayed on the piano, brass notes pouncing on top until the singers enter with words

of love and anger and happiness and despair, and love again, and again, and again

until the world is filled with every emotion and the memories pour out all at once as

the beats shift, all changing the music and ourselves until everything comes together

in a final assault that leaves us both drained and filled, not sure what to think

anymore but knowing that nothing will ever be the same. The music. iChevere!

Acknowledgments

None of this work would have been possible without Dr. M. Elizabeth Boone, mimusa y mi mujer. Others who helped me express these thoughts are the peer reviewers

at Popular Music and Society, musicians Tony DiGregorio and Dale Turk, HumboldtState University (HSU) students Matthew Giffel and Andrea Schriner, and Dr David

52 M. Katz

Stacey. The English Department at HSU has provided a supportive home duringthese studies, especially my advisor, Dr. Barbara Brinson Curiel. jOs agradezco unmont6n!

Notes

[1] While contemplating the implications of Waxer's point of departure, I had the serendipitouspleasure of being shown how an author with very similar ethnic origins handled suchconcerns quite differently. Christina Accomando, a dark-skinned professor of English atHumboldt State University, confronts the question of her ethnicity in a note to theIntroduction of a book dealing with African-American slavery in the United States. Notingher own Italian-Chinese-Armenian-French heritage, she explains why she often employs awhite construction anyhow, "not to erase my cultural and ethnic background or theimmigrant status of my grandparents but rather to acknowledge my access to white privilege,by virtue of my skin color and class position" (Accomando 215).

[2] As should be obvious, this catch-all term for white people offends more than gringo. I amindebted to Ronald Schmidt's Language Policy and Identity Politics in the United States forreminding me that many so-called Anglos trace their descent from groups that themselveshave long histories of troubled relations with this English tribe. The idea that the UnitedStates is inhabited exclusively by descendants of the British is as ridiculous as the notion thatMexico, or any other Spanish-speaking country of the Americas, is populated with gallegos.

[3] More about KHSU hilariously playing Keystone Cops can be found in the Times-Standard,Eureka California, editions of September 12 and 17, 1999 as well as in my Arcata Eyeretrospective (Katz, "KHSU"). Another interesting take on this issue can be found in thewell-known bell hooks essay "Eating the Other."

[4] There are many examples of this, most strikingly on page 87, where manisero needs to betranslated for the Spanish reader as vendedor callejero de cacahuetes.

[5] In addition to the Castilian broadcast media found across the United States, three news-papers using the language of Cervantes are published every day in New York, gubernatorialelections in Florida include debates in Iberia's best-known tongue, and Los Angeles has-after Mexico City-the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world.

[6] The film Azucar amarga (1996), filmed in the Dominican Republic by the Cuban-borndirector Le6n Ichaso, provides a vivid, if polemical, portrayal of the rise of Cuban"apartheid" as well as these altered employment opportunities.

[7] "un movimiento socio-cultural urbano, sintetizado en una expresi6n musical, creada ydesarrollada por los emigrantes del Caribe y algunos musicos norteamericanos identificadoscon el pathos latino y seducidos por los ritmos de Cuba y Puerto Rico." This and allsubsequent translations by the author.

[8] "sigue presente en el ADN de todos los caribenios y, en general, de todos los latinos."[9] "El Caribe no ha participado en la carrera espacial, tampoco en el desarrollo cientifico y

tecnol6gico."[10] This information has been provided by Nathalia Katz, a graduate student of parasitology at

Tulane University. She also points out the thousands of other examples that can by found bysearching Peru or any other Spanish-speaking country at sciencedirect.com.

[11] Hopefully, this will provoke responses from Latinos with roots in countries not specified.Please go right ahead and write them in. I've limited myself here to my own circle of friendsand acquaintances.

[12] "Para triunfar en Estados Unidos le di a los norteamericanos musica latina que no tenia nadade autentica."

Popular Music and Society 53

[13] Dale Turk and J. J. Silva stand out as vital contributors to these efforts, made as part of thePerforming-Arts-in-the-Schools program at Teachers College, Columbia University.

[14] "cualquier pais de America Latina ... y sobre todo para la salsa, es mas importante elconcepto de barrio que el de pais. Esto lo cant6 bien claro Ruben Blades en uno de sus temas:"Para ser rumbero, tienes que tener las llaves del barrio, ... tienes que amar a la esquina."

[15] My own invention, which could be interpreted as almost-Rican.[16] Larry Harlow, a real New York character, was the only well-known bandleader who ever fired

me, a fact that did nothing to diminish my appreciation of his music.[17] "Heitor Villa-Lobos, el genial compositor brasilenio de musica 'culta', empeniado en la

realizaci6n de un arte americano basado en el caudal focl6rico-popular, capaz de integrarse aplenitud a la musica universal."

[18] "el musico mas moderno de la historia."[19] "la salsa clasica es como la musica de Bach, Mozart o Beethoven, que se sigue oyendo y

gozando con igual emoci6n despues de tantos aios y siglos de creada."[20] "~Que escuchamos en un bolero, la musica o las palabras?"[21] This anecdote was first related to me many years ago by Freddie Gershon, owner of Music

Theatre International.[22] This increasingly appropriate replacement for the word "sideman" was adopted in the early

1980s by the Musicians of Greater New York, Local 802 of the American Federation ofMusicians (AFM), for use in all of their publications and official communications.

Works Cited

Accomando, Christina. "The Regulations of Robbers": Legal Fictions of Slavery and Resistance.Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2001.

Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)."Trans. Ben Brewster. London: Monthly Review P, 1971. (Trans. of article first published inLa Pensee, 1970.)

Aparicio, Frances R. "La Lupe, La India, and Celia: Toward a Feminist Geneology of Salsa Music."Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular Music. Ed. Lise Waxer.New York: Routledge, 2002. 135-60.Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures. Hanover, NH: UPof New England, 1998.

Arias Satizabal, Medardo. "Se Prohibe Escuchar 'Salsa y Control': When Salsa Arrived inBuenaventura, Colombia." Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in LatinPopular Music. Ed. Lise Waxer. New York: Routledge, 2002. 247-58.

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations 1968. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, 1968. (Trans. ofIlluminationen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1955.)

Berrios-Miranda, Marisol. "Is Salsa a Musical Genre?" Situating Salsa: Global Markets and LocalMeanings in Latin Popular Music. Ed. Lise Waxer. New York: Routledge, 2002. 23-50.

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.Col6n, Willie. "Willie Col6n Speaks Out: Is There No Limit to the Miami Mafia's Egotism &

Greed?" Salsa Magazine 13 Sept. 2000. 19 Sept. 2002. <http://www.salsa.bigstep;com/generic.jhtml?pid=22>.

Eldridge, Michael. "There Goes the Transnational Neighborhood: Calypso Buys a Bungalow."Callaloo 25.2 (2002): 620-38.

Evora, Tony. El libro del bolero. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2001.Flores, Juan. "'Cha-Cha with a Backbeat': Songs and Stories of Latin Boogaloo." Situating Salsa:

Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular Music. Ed. Lise Waxer. New York:Routledge, 2002. 75-99.

Glasser, Ruth. "Buscando Ambiente: Puerto Rican Musicians in New York City, 1917-1940" IslandSounds in the Global City. Ed. Ray AUlen and Lois Wilcken. New York: The New YorkFolklore Society and The Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn College, 1998.

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hooks, bell. "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance" Feminist Approaches to Theory andMethodology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. 179-94.

Hosokawa, Shuhei. "Salsa No Tiene Fronteras: Orquesta de la Luz and the Globalization of PopularMusic." Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular Music. Ed. LiseWaxer. New York: Routledge, 2002. 289-311.

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Katz, Marco. "KHSU's faux pas of 1999 still aggravates." Arcata Eye 14 Jan. 2003: 11.Preface. Four Danzas for Two Trumpets, Horn, Trombone and Tuba by Juan Morel Campos.New York: International Music Company, 2001.

Kristof, Nicholas D. "Love and Race." New York Times 6 Dec. 2002, national ed.: A33.Loza, Steven. "Poncho Sanchez, Latin Jazz, and the Cuban Son: A Stylistic and Social Analysis."

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