Duany’s article highlights the progression of Puerto Rican musical traditions that culminated in salsa’s rise, tracking the development of a racially complex boricua identity that straddled both the island and mainland USA (particularly New York). While the island of Puerto Rico was defined by loosely racialized regions and areas (ie. the heavily black sugar-rich flatlands near the southern coast that sustained bomba music, versus the largely white and Spanish mountainous interior that conceived more folksy seis music), New York offered a site of syncretization of the styles that had emerged among racially specific groups on the island, and also borrowed heavily from Afro-Cubano styles that had also migrated to the Big Apple. The “gritty” and “metallic” nature that, Duany says, makes salsa the “voice of the Puerto Rican ghetto” seems to connote a ghetto sound rooted in both the island and its satellite cultural enclaves on Manhattan and the Bronx.
How is diaspora conceived of when we’re talking about a U.S. Territory, and does this influence how we talk about “American” music that stems from “transnational” cultural dialogue? Is salsa conceived of as a transnational art in this article, despite Duany’s articulation of its special relationship to the U.S?
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