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3 From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa New Jersey’s Eclectic Salsa Dance Revival Katherine Borland I think one of the things that makes us really unique is that connection that we have to New York. . . . And you know, we’ve been able to draw on that influence and really . . . make a name for what [New] Jersey is doing in the salsa map. (Alex Díaz) I say the trick is to recognize New York’s influence without getting engulfed in it. (Johann Pichardo) We all have to be realistic and understand that New Jersey will always be in the shadow of New York . . . but there’s no reason why New Jersey can’t compete, at least as second place to New York. (Mario B.) I don’t think we’re trying to compete with New York. I think we’re trying to be Jersey, stand on our own. (Griselle Ponce) On July 18, 2006, thirteen accomplished New Jersey salseros attended a focus group designed to document their local dance scene.1 Participant Jossué Torres called the meeting a historic occasion, because it was the first time this group of instructor-performers had sat down together to discuss the scene. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by some of the comments quoted above, these dancers struggled to define themselves as a distinct stylistic community, a consequence of their proximity to New York as well as their own internal divisions. Their story From Hip-Hop and Hustle to Mambo and Salsa 47 provides a useful counterpoint to narratives of localization, particularly those emanating from New York City. It reminds us that while all scenes are local, not all locales produce the conditions for the development of a place-specific style. Over the past decade scholars have attended closely to the ways that the internationally disseminated music and dance complex called salsa, which developed from a New York–Cuban–Puerto Rican axis, has adapted to diverse areas throughout the world and created distinctive regional styles (Arias Satizábal 2002; Waxer 2002a, 2002b; Rondón 2008; Román-Velásquez 1999, 2002; Hosokawa 2002). Moreover, with the rise of new consumers and producers, the music has accreted new and sometimes contradictory meanings (Waxer 2002b). Whereas it remains a potent symbol of national and ethnic identity among Puerto Ricans residing in New York and Puerto Rico (Berríos-Miranda 2002; Flores 2004; see also Aparicio 1998), it expresses a deterritorialized identity for Spanish-speaking migrants to English-dominated social spaces (Quintero Rivera 1999). In South America the music accrued a cosmopolitan value associated with the metropolitan centers from which it emanated, and connoisseur communities of listeners developed (Waxer 2002a).2 In the hands of Orquesta de la Luz, a Japanese salsa band that received considerable international attention in the 1990s, the music returned to its roots in the salsa dura (heavy salsa) of the 1970s. Yet Orquesta de la Luz’s concern for retaining the purity of a foreign form through hypersimulation betrays a thoroughly Japanese aesthetic sensibility (Hosokawa 2002).3 With regard to the dance, Priscilla Renta (2004) and Sydney Hutchinson (2004) have documented the rise and spread of the New York mambo, or on-2, style, which on the one hand borrows heavily from tap, theatrical, hustle, and ballroom traditions and on the other represents a specifically Nuyorican4 project for cultural recovery and artistic expression. New Jersey salseros both benefit and suffer from their proximity to salsa’s creative center. A steady stream of talented dancers from New Jersey enriches the burgeoning New York and transnational scenes. Yet local clubs and venues change from year to year, offering no fixed locales to rival either Jimmy Anton’s famed salsa social or the Corso, Copacabana, and Palladium nightclubs of earlier eras in New York.5 The New Jersey Salsa Congress of 2003, in fact, survived for only one year before being relocated to New York and rebranded as the New York/New Jersey Salsa Festival. Since 2004 Johann Pichardo’s website jerseysalsa.com has attempted to establish an identity for New Jersey. It provides a weekly listing of local classes and clubs and a photo and video gallery of events, but it remains unelaborated compared to websites serving the New York on-2 community. Nevertheless, the dance scene in New Jersey provides a useful contrast to New York–origin narratives. In contrast to the strong ethnic specificity of on-2 histories, New Jersey salseros articulate a message of cultural inclusiveness , which embraces the...

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