New York Folklore: Volume 14, No.3-4: Puerto Rican Music in New York City

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NEW YORK FOLKLORE
Vol. 14, Nos. 3-4, 1988
Folk and Traditional Music in New York State
Ray Allen and Nancy Groce, Guest Editors

PUERTO RICAN MUSIC IN NEW YORK CITY
by Roberta L. Singer

The music most frequently associated with the Puerto Rican community in New York City is the popular commercial music known as salsa, but there are many other forms of music that flourish in varying degrees in the community. In fact, salsa itself is not a music form. Rather, it is a particular style of playing and instrumentation that is based on a variety of older musics that have been redefined and reinterpreted in the salsa format. The Cuban son, which had become very popular in Puerto Rico in the early 1930s, provided the primary basis for salsa, but other Caribbean musics, including many traditional Puerto Rican forms, have also been interpreted in the salsa style.

Traditional Puerto Rican music was first brought to New York during the migrations of many thousands of Puerto Ricans that began in the 1920s and reached a peak in the decade following World War II. Changing and diminishing opportunities for performance of traditional music, combined with the popularity of commercial music, overshadowed and threatened the health of Puerto Rican folk music in New York. Traditional music was relegated primarily to holidays and special occasions, and was practiced largely by an traditional population.

The large and powerful Latino identity movements of the late 1960s and early 70s, however, with their focus not only on social and economic justice but on seeking the roots of their own cultures, brought about a renewed interest in traditional musical forms on the part of younger New York Puerto Ricans. Presently, in addition to informal grassroots performances of traditional music, Puerto Rican musicians have organized formal groups to perpetuate the traditional styles and present them to both in-group and more general audiences.....

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