Salsa Is Everywhere !

B

bailar y tocar

Son Montuno
I heard about this on a radio program and found the article. If they can do it in Juba (South Sudan), they can do it anywhere, so why are people griping in other threads ?

Anyone else know of a city/town/country as the most unlikely place for salsa ?

From: unmis.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=598&ctl=Details&mid=2748&ItemID=9282

A Dash of Cuba in Juba:
We had come for the popular salsa night that is held every Thursday night, and the place was packed with Caribbean music aficionados from different nations, races and backgrounds. Keen to be part of the crowd, we headed straight for the dance floor.

The salsa nights are the brainchild of Deng Aleer Leek, an architect and civil engineer who lived in Cuba for 14 years and was one of the hundreds of youth sent to the island nation to pursue their formal education.

He hit upon the idea about four months ago and pitched it to his cousin Deng Malual Leek, who happens to be the proprietor of De Havana.

Mr. Malual Leek pounced on the proposal, ever mindful of the need to offer something different in order to remain competitive in the burgeoning hospitality sector of the Southern Sudanese regional capital.

In addition to the Thursday night theme, De Havana launched dance classes for 10 Sudanese pounds, and word of mouth about the salsa classes raced through Juba like wildfire.

“There is a real need in Juba for any kind of entertainment,” said the lounge’s general manager Laurie Meiring. “People really need some form of release. In the first class, we had 20 people show up, and the next week we had more.”

Dedicated dancers
Piwang Ayang heard about salsa night from her friends. “I enjoy salsa because it is a workout,” said Ms. Ayang, who goes to De Havana every Thursday. “It is a different culture from my culture, and the whole movement and coordination look awesome.”

Vickie Desiree Baine was also at the lounge on the night we went. “I have been coming to De Havana for the last five months,” said the travel consultant who moved from Uganda to Juba at the start of this year. “I did not know much about salsa. Then I started training here, and now I know so much about it.”

The lounge’s dance instructor is John Agar who, like Mr. Leek, learned his salsa moves during his 14-year Cuban interlude. “When I came back to Sudan, people asked me to teach,” he said. “So I decided to teach.”

When De Havana opened its doors in March 2007, it attracted a clientele of mostly elite Southern Sudanese, some of whom spent time in Cuba pursuing their university education. But increasing numbers of expatriates are now frequenting the lounge.

Something for everyone
If salsa is not for you, another option is the Boom Boom Room, a soundproofed space at De Havana that can hold up to 40 people and plays music at eardrum-splitting decibel levels every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

“We play all kinds of music in the Boom Boom Room,” said Mr. Malual Leek. “You can enjoy reggae, raga and hip hop.”

But his resident dance instructor recommends salsa dancing as a great way to relax and unwind after a long day at the workplace.

“If we can do it in Cuba,” asked Mr. Agar, “why not in Juba?” Why not indeed.
 
bailar y tocar said:
If they can do it in Juba (South Sudan), they can do it anywhere, so why are people griping in other threads ?
Click to expand...

Well, I'll give my answer which might differ from what others experience.

You assume Juba is an unlikely place to have a thriving salsa scene but that is just because we know so little about it and not because the conditions for salsa there are so bad. If I can trust the information in the article, it actually has several important advantages compared to where I live.

First of all it is at least two and a half times bigger. Statistically, the bigger the city the better it is for building a salsa scene. I won't go into theorising what the minimal size should be. And there are many factors that play a role but I think you would agree that size matters.

Second, Juba seems to have a lot of people with first-hand experience with salsa, Latin culture, Cuba plus (I guess) nostalgic feelings of those years they spent in Cuba. Add to this the expat contingent and you end up with a core of affluent, educated people who can support the scene until it manages to reach in other parts of the society. We don't have this core group here or at least it is so tiny that it cannot support the scene.

Also, having a venue readily available helps. If you have to pay rent, you need a bigger group to make it financially viable. And searching for a place that can host a party which might attract about 15 people (if lucky) is not easy. So social dancing gets minimal. Add to that the women to men ratio of 5 to 1 in salsa here (which in my opinion is a cultural and historical thing) and it gets even more difficult and frustrating. And then add the crossbody/Cuban divide as locally there have been lessons in both and new lessons in one style might not necessarily attract the dancers of the other style.

My assumption is that in Juba dances like tango, WCS, ballroom/Latin did not have considerable presence, so, salsa came without much competition, clear identity and the image of an exotic thing. Here I see people approaching salsa as one of the ballroom dances. But ballroom dancing is (from what I hear) relatively strong here and salsa suffers a bit of an identity problem. Tango and WCS also seem to be around although I don't know how popular. Even in Tallinn where the scene is much better I see a lot of smooth dancers and beautiful styling but not much spark and passion for the music and the culture (with exceptions, of course). Also the ballroom mentality of having a fixed partner and mostly dancing with him/her is more popular than I'm used to.

I can think of more factors but I'll stop here. All of this is about having a salsa scene at all, I won't even go into a discussion on levels of dancing.
 
bailar y tocar said:
If they can do it in Juba (South Sudan), they can do it anywhere, so why are people griping in other threads?
Click to expand...

Compare salsa to soccer. Soccer is easy to learn - no need for expensive lessons from incompetent instructors running "dance mills." It's fun from your first kick. You don't have to worry too much about different skill levels or learning thirteen different styles.

You don't have to blow your brains out trying to figure out the "social scene," and it isn't one big clique. There's no "Beginner's Hell." People don't complain about soccer becoming too commercialized or being shallow and artificial.

Soccer isn't a soap opera, and it isn't riddled with false advertising.

Salsa began as a dance of the people and has evolved into something of a yuppie sport; soccer hasn't lost its roots.

Which isn't to say Latin dance is all bad, but it can be extraordinarily difficult for ordinary people to get to point B - and that's assuming they have a local salsa scene to begin with. And once they get to point B, they may discover it isn't what they expected. (Tip for beginners: Hang out in a few clubs before you start shelling out money for salsa classes.)

I suspect Juba is a salsa success partly because it was made in Cuba, not the USA. And, as someone already suggested, it sounds like there are plenty of Cubans to learn from and dance with. Nevertheless, it could be a yuppie haven. According to one article, it's one of the most expensive cities in the world; locals can spend $100 to spend a night in a tent.

http://www.pri.org/business/global-development/south-sudan-reliance-on-ngos3353.html
 
Salsa Bear said:
Salsa began as a dance of the people and has evolved into something of a yuppie sport; soccer hasn't lost its roots.
Click to expand...

Bad comparison. If you had said compare salsa to curling I would have been with you all the way. The romantic notion that soccer is bunch of poor kids in the slums of Rio, Lagos or Johannesburg kicking the ball around is a myth.

Promising talented kids are plucked from the streets, sent to boarding school soccer academies where they give up their childhood in return for a chance to make it on a junior world cup team and hopefully a world cup team when they are old enough. If they are good enough they are recruited by a major European pro league team. Some of these kids grow up in European cities with dual nationality and then get to choose between their home country (=roots?) and their adopted country (=opportunity?). Of all the sports that struggle the most with roots and identity of its best players that sport would be soccer.

Unrelated, yet curiously related: I just saw the amazing documentary 'Kinshasa Symphony' at the Minneapolis Intl Film Festival. The film describes this classical musical orchestra in the slums of Kinshasa with all amateur self taught musicians who build their own instruments (for the most part, they have to buy flutes and bassouns, but they build their own violins and double basses). Its such an inspiration and yet the music they perform is so unrelated to their every day life. In the film they perform Beethoven's 9th and one of the parts of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana which is extremely hard! At the Q&A after the screening of the film the conductor of the orchestra (who is in town and is a commercial airline pilot* not a musician) was asked why he chose these hard pieces and he said they wanted to show that they can do it, they wanted to challenge themselves.
*The airline's only plane crashed in 1994 and he lost his job. He wasn't flying it when it crashed. So he decided to become a classical orchestra conductor.

So in that light the idea of salsa in Juba makes sense. Its totally different just like Beethoven in Kinshasa. Its a challenge. Be it the strange German lyrics of Ode to Joy sung by people who speak Lingalla and French or the unusual syncopated rhythms of salsa for people who don't have housing, sanitation or other 'normal' things of everyday life.

Its telling that these stories are playing out in Africa.
 
bailar y tocar said:
Bad comparison. If you had said compare salsa to curling I would have been with you all the way. The romantic notion that soccer is bunch of poor kids in the slums of Rio, Lagos or Johannesburg kicking the ball around is a myth.
Click to expand...

But soccer IS a bunch of poor kids in the slums of Rio, etc. Sure there may be budding soccer stars who are whisked off to special training camps, but they're a tiny minority of the millions of people who play soccer around the world.

Salsa is infinitely more elitist - at least in the U.S. I've done both, and there's no comparison.
 
Salsa Bear said:
But soccer IS a bunch of poor kids in the slums of Rio, etc. Sure there may be budding soccer stars who are whisked off to special training camps, but they're a tiny minority of the millions of people who play soccer around the world.

Salsa is infinitely more elitist - at least in the U.S. I've done both, and there's no comparison.
Click to expand...

The tiny minority, the elite, is who every soccer player in the slums or on manicured suburban fields is trying to emulate and hopes to be discovered as such.

Maybe there are people who believe in reaching wealth and star power through salsa and maybe their dreams are not easily shattered or maybe they never had a close relationship with reality. Clearly, the only thing that salsa can deliver is to have fun and to escape from the reality of every day boring life. Nothing elitist about that. So, if you've come across people in salsa who you feel are elitist - let them dream on - its all they have to live for. You can chalk it up as a good deed.
 
Salsa Bear said:
Compare salsa to soccer.
Click to expand...

That post is presumably correct when applied to the US (where I hear women's football/soccer is really popular?) but here, in the old motherland of football, it's a very different story:
Football has evolved into exactly the kind of superficial, empty, yuppie spectacle that you think Salsa is.

There's a huge amount of debate on this online & in print like this one:
www.guardian.co.uk/ society/2010/dec/19/childrens-football-competitive-organised-professionalism

No, Salsa is nowhere near that bad but...it has been and is being dragged in that direction, there's truth in that.
 
bailar y tocar said:
Anyone else know of a city/town/country as the most unlikely place for salsa ?
Click to expand...

Riyad


bailar y tocar said:
I heard about this on a radio program and found the article. If they can do it in Juba (South Sudan), they can do it anywhere, so why are people griping in other threads ?
Click to expand...

In theory, I agree but as always with any business venture, execution is what matters and it's much less straightforward than the theory.
 
bailar y tocar said:
The tiny minority, the elite, is who every soccer player in the slums or on manicured suburban fields is trying to emulate and hopes to be discovered as such.
Click to expand...

I played soccer for about twenty years and have a hard time thinking of anyone who meets that description. I've played with a few guys who used to play professional soccer, and a few who came close. They may have had soccer heroes and dreams, but I never had the perception that any of them were hoping to be discovered; we just played for fun.

There was one guy who stuck out like a sore thumb; a crazy guy from Africa who seemed to think he was the best player on the planet and drove a van sporting a picture of himself doing a bicycle kick. He bilked some stupid Microsoft millionaire out of a lot of money, but that's a long story.

That guy was the exception that proved the rule. We played soccer for fun, and I don't think any of us were stupid enough to think we were going to wind up playing for a professional team.

Hockey was the same thing, except it costs a little more for ice skates, helmets, etc. Of course, ice time and availability is the real killer. (I was lucky enough to live within walking distance of an ice arena where I had free admittance almost every day.) But, again, it was hardly elitist. In fact, a lot of relatively poor people played with us when I lived in Newfoundland.

One good thing about soccer: It's free. Many people here describe salsa as an inexpensive hobby, but it can be incredibly expensive to learn, especially in this economy. I wouldn't call it a dance of the people so much as a dance for people who can afford to take endless classes, private lessons, attended congresses, etc.

The exception, of course, is Latinos who learned salsa while they were growing up. There does seem to be a striking separation between the Latino and non-Latino salsa communities here; it would be interesting to know why.

It would also be interesting to know how many people would like to try salsa but never will because they can't afford it. I've certainly met a few.
 
b y t, I found this the nicest story! Although it sounds mainly confined to the elite, South Sudan can absolutely use anything this positive and upbeat. I hope it works out. I've worked with Dinka refugees in Australia, and some of them had horrendous stories. It's also a place I haven't been yet and plan to once I take care of some things and get my life back to normal (i.e. hardcore backpacking :) ).

I've found salsa/Latinisms can pop up in places with a UN presence. I was walking down a dirt road once in Senafe, Eritrea, (with the entire town following behind me as it was so exciting to have a Western girl appear!) when a UN truck screeched out of a driveway and chased me down the road. It turned out the isolated staff were so thrilled to meet someone new, especially someone different (not related to aid agencies) and who reasonably understood their language (they were Uruguayan). We met up back in Asmara and they took me to a drab apartment block. Outside one apartment was the sign 'Casa Latina' and inside it was all color and salsa music. This is somewhere where the supermarket shelves were usually empty and most of the city dilapidated. The guys have since moved on to Haiti.

In Dili (East Timor), where my brother works, I hadn't thought to bring salsa shoes. However, I turn up and he and his girlfriend have planned a night out for me. We drive to a simplish wooden hut with a dirt 'car park', complete with a huge pig scavenging outside the door. Inside, wow! it was a salsa night with a bonafide teacher and DJ, from Brazil. With a Portuguese army detachment in the country, there's a market for salsa. There was one Indian guy there who knew LA style. I hear that night has stopped now, but Dili's Casa Minha plays all Latin music. I'll probably drop back over soon.

I didn't have a chance to go while I was there, but there was a salsa night at a hotel in Amman (Jordan) which apparently it was the locals attending. Don't know if it's still going. And that superb Ecuadoran restaurant in Dushanbe (Tajikistan) - they had the music, just needed to get a floor going!
 
Sudanese music is cyclic & polyrhythmic so salsa has more of a chance there than somewhere like England.
 
azana said:
b y t, I found this the nicest story! Although it sounds mainly confined to the elite, South Sudan can absolutely use anything this positive and upbeat. I hope it works out. I've worked with Dinka refugees in Australia, and some of them had horrendous stories. It's also a place I haven't been yet and plan to once I take care of some things and get my life back to normal (i.e. hardcore backpacking :) ).

I've found salsa/Latinisms can pop up in places with a UN presence. I was walking down a dirt road once in Senafe, Eritrea, (with the entire town following behind me as it was so exciting to have a Western girl appear!) when a UN truck screeched out of a driveway and chased me down the road. It turned out the isolated staff were so thrilled to meet someone new, especially someone different (not related to aid agencies) and who reasonably understood their language (they were Uruguayan). We met up back in Asmara and they took me to a drab apartment block. Outside one apartment was the sign 'Casa Latina' and inside it was all color and salsa music. This is somewhere where the supermarket shelves were usually empty and most of the city dilapidated. The guys have since moved on to Haiti.

In Dili (East Timor), where my brother works, I hadn't thought to bring salsa shoes. However, I turn up and he and his girlfriend have planned a night out for me. We drive to a simplish wooden hut with a dirt 'car park', complete with a huge pig scavenging outside the door. Inside, wow! it was a salsa night with a bonafide teacher and DJ, from Brazil. With a Portuguese army detachment in the country, there's a market for salsa. There was one Indian guy there who knew LA style. I hear that night has stopped now, but Dili's Casa Minha plays all Latin music. I'll probably drop back over soon.

I didn't have a chance to go while I was there, but there was a salsa night at a hotel in Amman (Jordan) which apparently it was the locals attending. Don't know if it's still going. And that superb Ecuadoran restaurant in Dushanbe (Tajikistan) - they had the music, just needed to get a floor going!
Click to expand...

Wow you really get around. I only hear about these places in the news because bad things have happened there and we forget that ordinary people live there too.
 
bailar y tocar said:
Any more info on that? Is it just expats or do local men and women actually dance together in public in Saudi Arabia? I guess one benefit would be that the venue can't complain about salsa dancers not drinking enough as no one is allowed to drink legally in the KSA.
Click to expand...

Ah sorry. That was a joke. You know, 'unlikely place for Salsa'? ;)

We like make joke a lot in England! We must, as weather bad and much immigrants (say Dave from telly).
 
We took you seriously! No reason why it wouldn't be possible :) Plenty of the African diaspora works in Jeddah. In Iran they have the party system down pat - word of someone coming and everyone has their task, with signs of the party cleaned up in minutes. Some girls I met in Shiraz invited me back to their house (once inside the front gate off comes the hijab and everyone is in tank tops, hair down, regardless of who's in the house) and demanded I give them salsa lessons. It was a little embarrassing (looking back at the photos, I look like an idiot...) and I didn't know where to start, but they were really into it. I didn't have any music so they put on a Shakira CD :) Seriously, being able to dance/comfortable with getting up in front of others makes it easier to meet people travelling. Of course, getting around Latin America is the best for this, but you can be surprised. It amazes me that people still show surprise that my friends and I will go to Korea just for salsa - yes, the scene is awesome!
 
azana said:
It amazes me that people still show surprise that my friends and I will go to Korea just for salsa - yes, the scene is awesome!
Click to expand...

Not at all surprised. There is a group of Korean dancers that has been coming to the Chicago Salsa Congress for years. One of the organizers of the Chicago congress is Korean. This particular group takes their on2 dancing very seriously.
 
Speaking of out of the way places...

I do have to go back to Timor next week for research. I have the Dili 'scene' sorted but I also have a night in Darwin (probably a Tuesday) - has anyone danced there / know of any places / know if the parties are worthwhile?

This request is sure to attract a ton of replies hehehe!! Well, worth a try :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top