Salseek

The Hottest Thursday After Work Party in NYC Rockin' Time Square "Salsa on The Square at B.B. King" Hosted by Al B "El Que Sabe, Sabe"

Salsa on the Square - After Work Thursdays

at the Legendary B.B. King in Times Square NYC

Featuring a Live Salsa Performance Every Week!

Music mixed by NY’s Hottest DJ’s

Salsa, Merengue, Bachata & Club Classics

B.B. KING BLUES CLUB

237 West 42nd Street Bet. 7th & 8th Avenue

FREE ADMISSION ALL NIGHT ! ! !

Doors Open 5pm - Show Times 9pm and 11pm

Happy Hour and Pre-Fixe Dinner Menu 'til 7pm

Discounted Parking at the Carter Hotel

250 W. 43rd St. Between 7th - 8th Avenue

Parking Stub Must Be Validated @ BB King Box Office

Subway to Times Square

For more information call: 347.848.8788

EL QUE SABE, SABE!

www.elquesabesabe.com

Please join us this Friday for the Grand Opening of Sabroso Fridays at Columbus 72 featuring Lower East Salsa

For more info and free admission pass, go to link below:

http://www.albentertainment.com/les1007.htm

The world of Ballroom & Dance Therapy come together to create a workshop that will help you improve your social skills, build your confidence and bring great joy to your life. Ballroom Dance Therapy integrates ballroom dance moves with special exercises in self awareness & reflection in order to help build self esteem and eliminate stress and depression. Don't miss our upcoming Intro class & 4 week workshop in October which will focus on Latin Ballroom Movement including Salsa, Samba, Merengue, Mambo & Cha Cha.

Date: Thursday, September 22nd

Time: 8pm

Cost: $10 Introductory Class

Location: Pearl Studios, 8th Avenue (between 35th & 36th)

http://pearlstudiosnyc.com/

For more information & to register for class, please contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

100 Years of Arsenio Rodriguez

August 31 1911 – December 31, 2011

By Aurora Flores

Can you imagine a salsa band without a conga drum in the line-up? Conga drums are seen everywhere today from classical music stages to rock concerts. However, there was a time in Cuba when congas with their connection to Africa, were considered taboo and outlawed by authorities. Arsenio Rodriguez changed that permanently adding congas to the percussion section while a line of searing trumpets play in four part harmonies. Arsenio defined an authentic black macho “conjunto” instrumentation and “son montuno” style that cleared the path for mambo and salsa.

Born Ignacio Arsenio Travieso Scull in Matanzas, Cuba, Arsenio was a prolific composer, percussionist, bassist and “tresero,” mastering the six stringed Cuban guitar that made his name as bandleader. His innovations in creating an authentic Afro-Cuban sound based on the musical foundation of his enslaved Congolese ancestors changed the course of dance music, its ripple affects still felt on the dance floor today.

Among the oldest of his fifteen siblings, Arsenio came from a musical family where cousins, uncles, brothers and sisters were attuned to music. Living in the country, Arsenio was kicked in the head by a horse causing blindness in the seven-year old boy. Although his outer world turned dark, the music inside him shone a light on the pioneering path of “El Ciego Maravilloso,” the blind marvel as he was later known.

From trumpeters like Armando “Chocolate” Armenteros, who got his first start with Arsenio to Felix Chappotin whose later “descarga” (improvisational) recordings are cult classics, Arsenio inspired a movement of Black pride and confidence within the very separate white and black Cuban communities that transcended the monochromatic racial borders of degradation imposed by the Cuban government, the last of the Great Antilles to abolish slavery in the Americas.

He composed many of his more than 200 songs during the forties and fifties including “Bruca Manigua”, “Llora Timbero,” “Dame un Cachito pa` huele`”. “Telaraña” and “Ritmo Diablo” many of these coded with double intenders referencing riffs on race, sexuality and politics.  His most popular bolero was a dark reflection on life as a much-anticipated 1947 trip to salvage his vision in New York turned into a sad diagnosis of permanent blindness. He penned “La Vida Es Un Sueño” in an ironic vision of life as a dream.

Although scholars continue their debate as to who really created the mambo, Arsenio was clear in his contributions taking from ritual Congolese traditions in developing his particular dance style. While many bands played to primarily white audiences Arsenio played to the blacks and mestizos of Cuba and everywhere.

When a young Rafael Cortijo appeared for the first time in New York’s Palladium in the fifties, it was Arsenio Rodriguez who greeted him. He quickly gifted the Afro-Boricua bandleader with the tune “A Bailar Mi Bomba” an African derived dance genre from Puerto Rico that Arsenio quickly absorbed. Cortijo recorded the tune making it a hit.

While in New York during the 50s and 60s, Arsenio spotted a young black singer in a club.  When Santiago Cerón told Arsenio he was classically trained to sing opera but wasn’t sure if he could sing “son” since he was Dominican and not Cuban, an annoyed Arsenio shot back: “You’re black. The Congo is in you. I will teach you to sing son!”

New York in the fifties rocked with the big band mambo orchestras of Tito Puente, Machito and Tito Rodriguez who eclipsed Arsenio’s brand of Afro-Cuban rhythms. Arsenio’s was too black and about twenty years ahead of his time. By the sixties, pachanga and boogaloo were the rage. After having wrestled with the racial tensions of the Cubans in Miami, Arsenio moved to California where, on December 30, 1970 El Ciego Maravilloso died of a stroke in Los Angeles.  His body was returned to New York and interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County of New York.

Among Arsenio Rodriguez more than 200 compositions:

1946 Dame un Cachito Pa’ Huelle
1946 Semilla de Caña Brava
1947 Los Dicen Todos: La Vida Es un Sueño
1947 Serenede
1948 La Vida Es Un Sueño, El Cerro, Tiene la Llave,
1948 Esa China Tiene Coimbre
1948 Tumba Palo Cucuye, Tintorera Ya Llego
1948 Yo No Engaño a Las Nenas, Tocoloro
1949 El Palo Tiene Curey
1950 Anabacoa
1951 Labori, Mira Que Soy Chambelon 1952 Pa Que Gocen, Jaguey

1955 La Gente del Bronx, Como Se Goza en El Barrio
1956 Mambo en la Cueva, A Bailar Mi Bomba
1957 Buenavista en Guaguancó
1962 Son Pachanga
1963 La Pachanga
1968 Arsenio Dice

In sharp contrast to his musical and cultural legacy, Arsenio Rodriguez’s final resting place has remained without a grave marker since his burial on January 6, 1971. Rumors of possible family disagreements and politics have condemned Arsenio to eternal sleep with neatly cropped grass covering his remains like a conspiracy concealing his ignominious fate. Hopefully, by calling attention to the present state of affairs, the enigmatic issues regarding the lack of a memorial will eventually be resolved and an appropriate grave marker bearing his name will be erected.

On Saturday August 27, 2011, at Ferncliff Cemetery, located in Hartsdale, Westchester County NY., musicians, fans and enthusiasts of Afro-Cuban music will observe the 100th birthday observance of Arsenio Rodriguez.  For more information about his memorial please contact Jose Rafael Mendez, Jr. or Henry Medina, Jr. at (917)-992-4387 /(631) - 273-1832 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Aurora Flores is a BMI composer, writer, and bandleader of Zon del Barrio. She can be reached at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

By Jayne Cooperman

We’ve designated August PROJECT: Cuba month here at Salseek—31 days to enjoy and embrace the spirit, culture, music and, especially, the dance of this island nation. And what better way to celebrate than with a visit to Nydia Ocasio’s Afro-Cuban Rumba/Salsa y Son class? Nydia is a dancer, choreographer, instructor, singer, folklorist, historian, and general keeper of the flame. As a child, she watched wide-eyed as women in bell dresses and “suited-up” men streamed into her father’s home in Red Hook to play and dance to Latin music. At 16, she was “blown away” by Tito Puente at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights, and has “not left the clubs since.” As a young adult, she began her professional career by performing with the headliners of salsa: the Titos (Puente, Nieves, and Rodriguez, Jr.), Celia Cruz, and the Fania All-Stars, to name just a few. As a member of folkloric companies that focused on the dances of Cuba and Puerto Rico, she began to explore the Afro-Caribbean roots of modern Latin movement. Finally, as a teacher, she’s sharing her vast knowledge and limitless passion with a new generation of students.

In contrast to most of the beginning classes I’ve observed, I’m struck by the continuous soundtrack, the absence of counting, the lack of partnering, and the fact that I really have no idea what it is I’m seeing. Nydia picks up a maraca and shakes it rhythmically.  “This is your timing. When the maraca goes, you step. Ladies, have you got your scarves?”  The women proceed to tie swaths of fabric around their hips, holding the ends with their fingertips. They swirl and swoosh to the slow strains of the son montuno, with its roots in the Cuban danzón of the past and its branches in the salsa “on 2” of today.  “Don’t look down,” Nydia counsels the students, many of whom are staring at their shoes.  “It’s like dancing blindfolded. You’ll get dizzy.”  She explains that, when the focus is “up” and the movement is in the torso, the body relaxes and moves naturally .  “Dancing is here,” she says, tapping her heart. “Not in the feet.”  Always, always, it goes back to the music. As she tells me later, “In order to dance flawlessly, you have to learn to make love to the music.”  Or, to put it another way, “If you don’t get the music, your feet ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

As it turns out, what I was watching was Cuban Rumba, which has absolutely no relationship to the style you might catch at bal l room competitions or on Dancing with the Stars. According to Nydia, a Rumba is “an outdoor Cuban street music and dance gathering where three forms of Afro-Cuban folk dance are displayed: Yambú, Guaguancó and Columbia.” More importantly, rumba is “where the body movement styles in son and salsa originated.” In Nydia’s class, I saw examples of both the Yambú, the so-called “courtship of the elders,” with its slower, statelier rhythms, and the more provocative (and popular) Guaguancó. The latter derives from a secular dance of the Bantu. In it, the goal of the man (“the rooster”) is to make contact with the woman (“the hen”), sneaking up on her with a pelvic thrust called the “vacunao.” The woman espouses a flirtatious demeanor “while skillfully avoiding and blocking” these attempts with her skirt, for which the scarf served as stand-in.

So, how can learning these traditional Afro-Cuban dance forms help our salsa here in the 21^st century? Well, for one thing, they get you to slow down.  “At this tempo,” says Nydia, “You can connect with the emotion, the spirit of the music. You won’t need to count your steps; you will learn to feel where the moves belong by simply listening.”  Yeah, about that… As someone more movement- than math-challenged, why must I give up the security of counting?  “You don’t need to count,” Nydia answers. “Because, guess what? The musicians are doing the counting for you! And, just as they have to stay within the timing, we as dancers have to do the same thing.”   Whether it’s the cowbell on the 1, or the clave and conga on the 2, what’s leading us is the rhythm—and it’s the rhythm that dictates how we move.   “If you’re dancing ‘on 2,’ the arms relax so that the whole body is moving in angles, forward and back. If you’re dancing ‘on 1,’ the movement is more circular. The posture, the arms are literally night and day.”

Why aren’t the men and women pairing up in her class?   Nydia is sensitive to the awkwardness and discomfort that new dancers can sometimes feel, and chooses to help them avoid, as she puts it, the calamity of “four left feet looking at each other.”   “I teach them first to dance with themselves—to become creative, to become inspired, to do what the music tells them to, and to interpret that music through their dance.”

And what better way to do that than to return to salsa’s roots in Africa and Cuba, where it all began…

Okay, so I know that, last time, I promised that I’d be dancing in the very next (i.e., this) column. But I was forbidden. Feel free to blame my chiropractor.

To see Nydia perform next, join us on Friday, August 19th at Hudson Terrace as we celebrate PROJECT: Cuba!

EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR OUR READERS: So, hens and roosters, would you like to explore Afro-Cuban dance with Nydia? Purchase a 4-class card for just $50 (reg. $75), or an 8-class card for just $100 (reg. $150). Each class is 90 minutes long and meets weekly; the next series begins August 13th. To register, simply call Nydia at 646/510-7607, and be sure to use promo code SALSEEK at the time of purchase. This offer is open to ALL students, but is limited to one card per student, though you may buy multiples to give as gifts.