Reading Week 2 Reflection

Latin Identity and Music

Cianci Melo-Carrillo

Myself being from Colorado, a state lacking the distinction of being a center of Latino
culture like Los Angeles or New York City, I found the readings to be a nice way to give origins
to music I had only listened to but had no clue of how it came it to be. I felt transported to the
time and place that the readings indicated. When I arrived there, I was surprised by what I found.
I was particularly struck by the statement from Morales: “thriving in the same inner-city
neighborhoods…that later nourished hip-hop, house, and freestyle dance music.” This reading in
particular drew connections from Latin music to all others in ways I did not suspect. I was taught
by my father, a mariachi/opera musician, that there are two types of music: commercial and non-
commercial. Mariachi and classical music were non-commercial and everything else was
commercial (derisively). In particular, he referenced hip-hop and rap as “musica de negros.” This
was a dichotomy I recognized until I started listening to the radio and growing up on the same
“diet” as my bilingual generation. The statement above from Morales, among others, have
completely blown away any remnants of that dichotomy. It had never occurred to me that all
those genres could coexist and be created in the same neighborhoods, but with the knowledge I
now have of their shared roots and inter-exchange, I see them all in a different light. Like Wade,
I see all these genres as mosaics, with a particular place in many of them for “musica de negros.”
I was surprised by the two extremes of the history of Latin music. In the modern extreme,
I was unaware that so many events which I had taken for granted happened so recently. I grew
up seeing the Latin Grammy awards and had assumed that they had always existed alongside the
mainstream awards. I never realized that these awards had the significance of being a recent
acknowledgement of Latin music diversity and popularity. To me it was just another showcase of
Latin artists on the television. I was little aware of the events that had to occur before a Latino
musician to Latino community connection could occur since television made that connection
seem immediate. The Hernandez reading, “Latino Market Themselves,” revealed to me the
business side of how Latino entertainment for Latinos came to be and removed the spontaneity.
It makes sense that an infrastructural support was needed for these entertainments to exist, but it
had not occurred to me that there was an economic power at play. It was enchanting to hear
about the beginnings of Latino economic power in New York, with music business directly
supporting music in their communities. This is far removed from the national television
broadcasts I would see, which promoted artists far away from home. There was no Colorado-
born popular Latin music. In contrast, it makes sense how the ever-growing insular community
in New York could “nourish” their music and keep it alive during the wars and depression, so
that its music could eventually become a symbol of Latinidad. The Hernandez and Morales
readings also made me aware of the economic power that Latinos gained by the influx of
immigrants and in being the largest minority group in the United States. I realize now that I am
part of that sea of immigrants, to which the mass media is targeting because of our numbers.
 A shared characteristic of the readings that I found interesting was their approach to
removing distinctions between previously held separate things. With regards to sources of salsa,
Flores attributes the naming of the genre to dialectical sources, such as commercial interests and
creative needs, but with a “highly porous line between them.” In this porous sense, there is no
pure sources, and everything is a mixture. In this light, the exchange between Jewish business
men and Latin musicians in East Harlem mentioned in Hernandez seems more positive than a
strictly advantageous economic opportunity for the Jewish club owners. Indeed, it is mentioned
that one the owners, George Goldner, was actually personally familiar with the Puerto Rican
community. It was his familiarity that helped his business, but his business also helped the
community. Another distinction blurred was between genres in Latin music, with a particular
example from Morales being that the original décima style created by Arabs/Spaniards translated
to the bolero which translated to the Latin Pop of Julio Inglesias which has translated to the rest
of modern Latin Pop. By having common roots, the distinctions between genres are blurred and
their sounds are given context within each other. This context is how I understand Morales’s
statement that Latin music is American music. In general, the shared characteristic of these
readings blurring distinction is analogous to the philosophy of mestizaje from Wade. All things
are mosaics, representing the mixture that is America.