La Hora de la Salsa: Nicolás Maduro and the Political Dimensions of Salsa in Venezuela

In this article I examine how, during a period of extreme social unrest, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took up the role of a salsa radio deejay as a show of confidence in his hold on political power and of his solidarity with ordinary Venezuelans. I argue that this all but unprecedented and, for many, controversial course of action by a sitting president provides us with an unusual opportunity to analyse Venezuela's long-standing political crisis. In particular, I highlight how Maduro harnessed salsa's long association with poor Latin Americans, its connection to Venezuela and its pleasurable character to bolster his socialist credentials, and I show how this strategy unleashed a public exchange of criticisms with one legendary salsero (salsa musician), Rubén Blades. By exploring the way music intersects with politics, I show how popular culture is neither ancillary to nor derivative of the country's ever-deepening strife but, rather, constitutive of it.

Salsa

While it has broad popular appeal, an instantly recognizable sound, world-famous performers, and is the subject of sundry books, articles, and movies, the music called “salsa” is, nonetheless, remarkably difficult to define or even to describe. Much that makes salsa meaningful as a musical category—including the origins and meaning of its name, the significance of its Afro-Cuban roots, the importance of Latin and especially Puerto Rican New York to its emergence, and its role as a symbol of ethnic or national identity—turns out to be hotly debated and often contested by its fans and musicians, not to mention the various scholars and journalists whose written work is cited and summarized here. We know that the use of the term “salsa” (literally “sauce”) as a marketing label first became widespread in 1970s when it was applied to a new brand of Cuban son-inspired dance music taken up predominantly by Puerto Ricans living in New York’s hardscrabble East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or “El Barrio.” That the term gained popularity only after fulfilling its function as a marketing tool for music that had clear Cuban roots is a key question that few authors fail to address—namely, whether salsa is merely a rebranded version of Cuban music or is, in reality, a new musical form that owes its provenance to the efforts of Nuyoricans, Puerto Rican New Yorkers. That many salsa performers of note including Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and Rubén Blades have credited Cuba as the source of the music they played has unquestionably solidified the position of the Cuba camp. At the same time, many scholars have argued that salsa is different from Cuban son. This is particularly true with regard to the subject and message of salsa’s lyrics, the breadth of the musical genres on which it draws, and the social context of Latin Americans in New York City, all factors that, scholars sustain, underpin the features of salsa that are fresh, innovative, and so passionately loved by its creators and fans. The intense Cuban-or-Puerto Rican origins debate notwithstanding, some contemporary salsa scholarship has focused on the ways in which the genre has become a representative music of Latin Americans of diverse national, ethnic, and social backgrounds. These studies have examined salsa practices and performance scenes in places far removed from New York City such as Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and even as far afield as Japan, all of which has expanded our understanding of the various meanings attributed to salsa as it has spread internationally and into increasingly diverse social and cultural settings. This list of resources presents a full picture of the various positions articulated in the debate described here as well as the different theoretical foci taken up by salsa scholars, historians, and writers.

La presencia del pensamiento narrativo en la letra de las canciones

<p>El presente artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación que buscó identificar la presencia del pensamiento narrativo en las letras de las canciones. Para ello, realizó un análisis de la letra de tres canciones de diferentes géneros de la música latinoamericana: <em>Jaime Molina</em>, de Rafael Escalona (vallenato), <em>Plantación adentro</em>, de Rubén Blades (salsa) y <em>Matador</em>, de Los Fabulosos Cadillacs (<em>ska</em>), el cual utilizó una matriz de análisis construida con categorías del pensamiento narrativo. Finalmente, el artículo plantea la importancia de estimular el pensar narrativo como posibilidad para configurar sujetos con conciencia histórica.</p>

Crossing over with Rubén Blades

Having won two Grammy Awards, attracted considerable attention in the English-language media, and appeared in several Hollywood films, Latin popular singer Rubén Blades has been much discussed as a crossover, that is, as an artist who, with a well-defined audience (in this case Hispanic), produces work that appeals in addition to another audience (here the audience for mainstream American popular music). El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, in contrast, continues to appeal to its traditional Hispanic audience and remains the undisputed leader in popularity with that audience. A comparison of a piece by El Gran Combo with one by Blades suggests ways of thinking about the relationship of both to their audiences and to each other and ways in which musicology might approach such questions in specifically musical terms. Blades is seen not to be crossing over from one audience to another but to represent transformations in his Hispanic audience, which is itself crossing over to become increasingly imbued with Anglo culture while remaining rooted in its own traditions.