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Much has been said about the peculiar fact that New York City was the birthplace of the sound and style that came to define salsa. As many have noted, other Caribbean cities were home to as manyor more Latinos than this U.S. city, so it is hard to understand the incredible proliferation of orchestras in New York. It is even more remarkable that those orchestras were able to survive, record albums, and make a name for themselves especially when dependency on New York had desperate overtones for the Latinos who lived there. Yet, that situation explains only the characteristics of a sound, not the many musicians who produced it. Why, then, was New York City able to supplant Havana as the producer of Caribbean orchestras ? Why did Caracas not occupy that position, since, with the benefits of its petroleum industry, it had the luxury to cultivate other cultural enterprises ? Why not San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico, the land with which the majority of Latinos who produced salsa in New York felt an ancestral identification ? Why not Panama City or Santo Domingo? In other words, if all of the traits that generated and nurtured salsa were so wholly Caribbean, why was the city that produced salsa not part of the Caribbean? In the preceding chapters, I suggested a host of social and cultural reasons why the Latino communities in New York originated salsa. There are, however, seemingly less important reasons that may prove equally significant . Clearly, the new sounds needed musicians who could produce them, and the interesting fact is that the majority of these musicians were in New York at that particular time. We must keep in mind the conditions that historically have characterized the work of popular musicians in the Caribbean. First, Caribbean orchestras always had one major focus: the dance. The ability to play for dancing audiences—to define oneself in, through, and for them—determined the stability of the orchestras, steady work for the musicians, and the ongoing existence of a variety of dancing venues. When the dances were over, the musicians took their earnings back home: in other words, without dance gigs, there was no food. Thus, until the salsa boom, the record album was always a secondary objective. These dancing venues were divided into two specific types: public spaces and private parties. In the former, people paid up front and went from club to club depending on the attraction that a particular orchestra offered. In the latter, those two circumstances did not exist. The dancers T he T hin g in Mo n t u no went to a party for friendship or simple celebration and not for the music per se. The musicians were only a secondary consideration. When musicians have to depend on performing for private parties to make a living, they tend to produce a safer, more neutral sound, a sort of complacent amalgam of all the trends of the moment. There is no innovation. Conversely , a city with a sufficient number of clubs can support a great variety of orchestras, each able to create its own style and sound. When music comes from public spaces, orchestras enter a genuine professional competition , since a venue will only fill up if the orchestra represents a specific attraction for the dancing public. And, obviously, an orchestra that does not pack the house is condemned to failure. Havana, for instance, had enough clubs and cabarets to offer the public a great number of choices. Music consumers could choose between one orchestra and another, between one style and the next. This diversity obliged musicians to be innovating constantly, creating new styles and combinations of styles, and this could not help but enrich all musical production . This situation was rarely the case in other Caribbean cities. In Caracas, for example, the local venues were very few compared with the number of private parties where musicians could earn their livings. Only on holidays —particularly during Carnival—did the public venues become primary . Yet, even when this happened, the local orchestras were at a disadvantage because people were more attracted to visiting orchestras, such as Machito playing at the Casablanca or Tito Rodríguez at the Tamanaco.The rest of the year the Venezuelan dancing public went to their familiar and private parties with any old orchestra that could play all the popular styles. Therefore, the Venezuelan orchestras did not spend much time creating their own styles: there were no opportunities for musicians to develop and demonstrate...

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