From Mambo to Hip Hop

            This week in class when we watched a documentary and learned about the emergence from mambo and salsa to hip hop. Even though Salsa didn’t give birth to Hip Hop, both came from the same place: the south Bronx; and it’s the people that made them what they are. This documentary is basically “a Bronx tale” because it’s the center of where both salsa music and Hip Hop really started.

             Salsa Music was more than just the beats and instruments that came together to create the music, it was something spiritual to those who created and played it. Following World War II there was an influx of immigrants from Puerto Rico to this side of New York, and these immigrants brought their own musical influence. From the dancing to the songs, they used salsa as a means to help define who they were as a people. They could bring some of their old heritage to this new place and keep a sense of their old traditions with them. As a result it helped formulate their new identity in a new country. It was something that became new and hip. People wanted to fit in so they started talking differently and dressing differently to conform to the society created in East Harlem and the South Bronx. African-Americans and Puerto-Rican children grew up together in this community to help define this genre of music. This music helped transform the landscape of the world they created in these cities.

            Eventually in 1970 there was a fire that was said to have “spread like cancer.” It completely burned down the South Bronx. People were moving out of the neighborhood and migrating to wherever they could. However, they could not escape being a part of the South Bronx. The new place they moved to, even though it was west, was the new South Bronx. Because they had defined their neighborhood earlier, it was bound to follow them. By the early 70s it was an idea, not a place anymore and residents kept moving to avoid devastation.

            With a new neighborhood, though, came new developments in music. The use of DJ equipment came into the picture, and it is almost like Hip Hop rose out of the ashes of the fire in the South Bronx of 1970. People would flock to the park and dance to music played by djs. DJ’s took over salsa music, and salsa dancing transformed into break-dancing. Hip Hop was a “street thing”; it came from desperation and was used as the people’s need for an outlet. It was said in the documentary that, “their society was going to start Hip Hop or start a revolution.”

            In the end the cultural phenomenon’s known as Mambo/Salsa and Hip Hop were the cultural expressions that people used as their own medicine. It was the medicine they needed to help escape their environment and yet keep some of their history and identity close to home at the same time.