They compare the breeding of horses to that of roosters as the latter are weighed, groomed, and fitted with a metal claw before being placed into a pit surrounded by male spectators. The men place their bets and the ones surrounding the pit lean over the barrier, pound it passionately to encourage the roosters, and yell as the animals claw at each other. Recurring shots show an owner inside the pit being physically restrained from interfering with the roosters.
The volume among the men increases dramatically, the roosters become frenetic, and various attendees are prevented from climbing into the pit. The fight over, the music from the Cheetah overlaps with the scene as the men at the cockfight embrace and congratulate each other. Shifting camera angles show the All-Stars performing on a stage surrounded by an audience that watches, cheers, and dances throughout the number. Crosscutting between the concert and the cockfight collapses the boundaries between the two events and spaces.
Back at the cockfight a man compliments the roosters the quality of the roosters and the fight. The parallel development of the cockfight and the concert emphasize the corresponding configurations of the pit and the stage, the enthusiastic response and participation of the audience at each event, and the collegiality among men in both settings.
The crosscutting conflates the social worlds of men on and off the stage and constructs sexual prowess—defined through physical stamina, aggression, and mastery—with aesthetic expression.
While women do not appear in Our Latin Thing on stage, they form part of the music-making that occurs in the scenes filmed outside the nightclub. In the opening scene a young conguera plays on the scaffolding with her fellow male percussionists. She happens to face away from the camera as it closes in on her, but viewers see the joy that radiates from her body, see the laughter that cannot be heard over the music, and feel the self-confidence she exudes alongside the other musicians.
There would be no female Fania All-Star until , and no women appeared on stage with the ensemble band or in the scenes outside the Cheetah.
The only audible presence of a female singer is that of an aging woman who sings as she sits on a stoop next to man playing a guitar. Unlike him, she repeatedly looks away from the camera, rejecting its spectacularization. The camera then closes in on the guitar player and leaves the woman outside the shot all together. Their presence within Our Latin Thing exceeds the films representation of these practices as exclusively male and signal the experiences of women in the development of Latin music since at least the post-World War II period.
The excess represented by female creative expression extended to the nightclubs and after-hours of the cuchifrito circuit. As in Our Latin Thing, nightclubs became spaces for the reproductions of male dominant narratives heteropatriarchy, and mapped dominant gender expectations onto the dance floor.
As sites for the production of potentially radical musical and cultural practices, however, a different narrative of gender and class power could still emerge. The memories of salseras propose a counter-narrative to the heteropatriarchal idealizations of the dance floor. Leticia Morales,13 who stopped going to nightclubs in the late s when she married, eagerly returned to these venues after her divorce. In an interview in her Brooklyn apartment, Morales recalled how a lot of guys who used to dance—because I used to go [out] with a Brooklyn guy—the fun was that one guy would dance with two girls.
They had more—Brooklyn guys could dance on the left and switch you over to the right very easily. Bronx guys and Manhattan guys stayed on the right all the time. Some guys do one step y te marean they make you dizzy. Brooklyn guys would improvise more. Morales and other women participated in the social hierarchies of the dancer floor while centering their own desires.
Emerging from the specific localities where Puerto Ricans and other Latin American immigrants established themselves in New York since the beginning of the twentieth century, salsa is eagerly consumed today across the globe.
In the United States, salsa has remained at the core of developments in the tropical Latin music market and has played an integral role in the evolution of ballroom dancing. While salsa was not a cultural object outside the market, to argue that its transformation from local musical expression to global phenomenon eventually subsumed its cultural significance reifies dominant paradigms of a monolithic market that reduces culture to economic interests and, as Andreas Huyssen has argued, fails to take into account the specificity of cultural products Notes 1.
See Waxer a, b on the informal distribution networks that existed in Colombia and Venezuela prior to Fania Records. The highest figure cited here first appeared in a newspaper article by salsa historian Aurora Flores Lastly, sales of pirated recordings cannot be accounted for in these numbers. The series of events initially included a Fania All-Star concert in August that was cancelled.
Rivera-Servera to examine the ways salsa informed the emergence of a Nuyorican subjectivity grounded in masculinist heteronormative pleasure. Ruben Blades has stated that the contract Masucci offered him in depended on the up-and-coming artist signing over the rights to any song he composed while signed to Fania subsidiary Vaya Records.
See Ruben Blades v. Fania Records. Many clubs, like the Corso, did not originally feature Latin music but were revitalized by salsa. On this point, see Roberts The intent is not to romanticize informal economies or ignore the possibilities for exploitation within them, but rather to emphasize how these establishments functioned within the cuchifrito circuit and complemented, but did not depend on, the infrastructure developed by Fania Records. Regarding the role of drugs in nightclubs and after-hours during this period, see Washburne Works Cited Aparicio, Frances.
Aparicio, Frances. Lise Waxer. New York: Routledge, Appadurai, Arjun. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Brooks, Richard. Blackboard Jungle. Personal interview. Cobo, Leila. Academic Search Complete. Berkeley: U of California P, Delgado, Jimmy. Fania Entertainment Group Limited. PR Newswire, 24 Apr.
Flores, Aurora. Frith, Simon. New York: Pantheon, Gallo, Victor. Garcia, Cindy. Durham: Duke UP, Gast, Leon. Sounds and Colors. Greenspun, Roger. Huyssen, Andreas. Bloomington: Indiana UP, Jennings, James and Francisco Graham.
Philadelphia: Temple UP: Kapper, Arturo. Katz, Marco. Kent, Mary. Altamonte Springs. FL: Digital Domain, Laurents, Arthur. West Side Story: A Musical. Lewis, Oscar. Santos Colon. Hector Lavoe Self as Self. Ismael Miranda Self as Self. Pete 'El Conde' Rodriguez. Adalberto Santiago Self as Self.
Bobby Cruz. Ricardo Ray. Renaldo Jorge. Roberto Rodriguez. Barry Rodgers. Larry Spencer. Leon Gast. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. Add content advisory. Did you know Edit. Connections Featured in Yo soy la Salsa User reviews 1 Review. Top review.
An uplifting chronicle on the origins of Salsa as a genre in NY. Mi Gente Live In Africa El Orbita Live In Africa Ponte Duro Live In Africa Live At Yankee Stadium Vol. Live Albums See All. San Juan 73 Live Live In Africa feat. Compilations See All. Greatest Hits Anthology The Best of the Fania All-Stars Latin Connection Commitment About Fania All-Stars.
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