“¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa” takes viewers through the rhythms, evolution and political significance of salsa
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Photos and video courtesy of the National Museum of the American Latino
If Spotify is any guide, then salsa music is surging in popularity worldwide as the musical genre continues to evolve and appeal to younger listeners. Over the past five years, salsa music streams are up more than 140%, according to Spotify, which defines a “stream” as each time a song or music video is played for at least 30 seconds.
Salsa’s cross-generational appeal is one factor that has contributed to its everchanging sounds and popularity, according to Pathways through Salsa, a series of articles published by the National Parks Service. The resource stated, “Salsa grows out of a mix of transcultural interactions over generations of global contact.”
The genre is also a medium for political messaging and cultural showcasing, as diverse generations have done while cultivating unique experiences and sounds.
Lead curator of the exhibition
“¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa,” the exhibition at the Molina Family Latino Gallery inside the National Museum of American History, showcases these experiences through instruments and artifacts connected to salsa pioneers like Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco.
Hola Cultura spoke with the exhibition’s lead curator, Ranald Woodaman, assistant director of exhibition development at the National Museum of the American Latino. Woodaman explained salsa’s roots in African sacred music, though he focused more on the evolution of salsa since the 1920s. Read more below.
Tell me about the exhibition. What should viewers expect?
For the total newbie, this exhibit is like a 101 Beginner’s Intro to the topic of salsa and its family of rhythms. It’s an introduction into what we consider to be a really important American cultural story, how Afro-Cuban music takes root in the United States and transforms a bunch of American genres like jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, disco, and also receives from these genres. We tell the story as it relates to the development of the U.S. Latino community not just in its creative hub of New York City, but how this music rapidly spreads across the country.
Please explain the different sections within the exhibition.
The exhibition has four sections … Section one: Salsa’s roots. It’s roughly the 1920s and 30s, starting that section’s story in Cuba, but landing in New York City.
The second section is when Afro-Cuban music has firmly landed in the United States, transforming into new stuff because of its interactions with jazz in particular, but also because of the creative impulses of people who were Cuban, Puerto Rican and other Caribbean and African American musicians.
The third section is all about the 60s … This is a decade which, by the end of it … salsa arises as a marketing term. It’s a way of grouping a lot of what’s happening in what you could call the “reimagining” of Afro-Cuban dance music. Salsa crystallizes the genre. It’s not happening in isolation, but in relation to other trends like Boogaloo, Latin Soul and Bomba.
You also have other Latinos taking on this music as their own and Latino communities everywhere creating and organizing communities around this dance music.
Finally, the last section is actually salsa. There was a golden age of salsa during the late 60s, 70s and early 80s. There was also a Fania empire … But lastly we make sense of salsa after the boom from the 80s until today. It didn’t die, and if anything there’s a cultural revival happening around salsa that we’re living through right now.
How do the featured objects convey meaning and connect to the themes you want to show museum visitors?
The roots of salsa are what we would describe as African sacred music. To convey that, we commissioned regalia for the Yoruba deity Shango. We essentially approached two highly regarded scholar practitioners in South Florida and said, ‘Hey, we think it would be most appropriate if we had folks from within the community make us a new outfit, but going by all the cultural and spiritual norms that would accompany whatever protocol they follow for making an outfit like this.’
We have an incredible work of art by the scholars Martin Tsang, an award winning bead artist, and Alex Fernández, as well as their apprentice. So we have this incredible regalia for Shango on view. This is appropriate because Shango is a Yoruba deity associated with drumming and dance as well as justice.
We have a number of objects relating to Johnny Pacheco, the co-founder of Fania Records in 1964, who was born in the Dominican Republic. We have a number of his outfits thanks to his widow, Cuqui Pacheco and their children. We also have his flute, which is really special because it’s a Charanga flute, so it’s a special French five-key flute made out of ebony. Maybe most remarkable of all is that we have the violin that belonged to his father, who was his first music teacher. His father was, in his own right, a really well known band leader from the Dominican Republic who’s exiled from the Trujillo regime.
Why do you think it’s important to preserve those types of objects?
Preserving objects, similarly to preserving songs or having books in a library, are all part of a historical record. For Latinos, remarkably little of our stuff of importance has been preserved. It’s important to preserve this because, essentially, this is our history. It tells us amazing things about immigration, aesthetics, small businesses, musical trends, gender roles and entertainment – about a million different things.
Why is it important for people to witness this exhibition in relation to current times?
It’s an important exhibit to see today because it helps sustain us and brings us joy and reconnects us with our sense of memory.
For a lot of folks, music is often about their homeland. I think an exhibit like this is very restorative in the sense that it’s cross generational. It appeals to groups of people that can enjoy it together. I don’t want to make too much about our need to have joy, but it’s definitely something that I think gives us a sense of uplift, unity, hope and inspiration.
I wanted to add … I think that one of the reasons why so many people love salsa is not just because it’s fun to dance to … it’s almost like our unofficial history book. The lyrics really speak to … our relatively recent past. For many of the authors of this music, slavery was a very recent memory, right? A lot of these songwriters are talking about the experiences of Black people in the Caribbean … for a lot of people whose roots are in this music, these have echoes with their own family experiences. In salsa written in the 60s and 70s, they’re talking about life in New York City, or like social aspirations that come out of the Civil Rights Movement. There’s a lot of history, politics and social messaging.
“¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa” continues through 2028.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
– Story by Valeria Lopez
– Copy edited by Valerie Izquierdo
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