Description: Salsa Rising provides the first full-length historical account of Latin Music in this city guided by close critical attention to issues of tradition and experimentation, authenticity and dilution, and the often clashing roles of cultural communities and the commercial recording industry in the shaping of musical practices and tastes. Author Juan Flores brings a wide range of people in the New York Latin music field into his work, including musicians, producers, arrangers, collectors, journalists, and lay and academic scholars, enriching Salsa Rising with a unique level of engagement with and interest in Latin American communities and musicians themselves.
Review Quotes: "The book is sure to become an indispensable point of reference in the cultural history of salsa." -- Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia, New West Indian Guide
"[I]n this vividly narrated account he [Flores] narrows his focus from a wholesale history of so-called Latin music to a specific cultural moment in a single (albeit uniquely large and diverse) city...most illuminating."--Times Literary Supplement"Salsa Rising is organized into six chapters, all chock full of information. A brief coda provides additional discussion of the Latino flavor in the popular music of New York. Although he focuses on salsa, the author devotes chapters to other genres of Latin music that were popular in New York during the 1960s--pachanga Alegre, boogaloo soul, the Salsoul challenges. This history of the rise of Latin music in New York City should stimulate study of the cultural experiences, social identities, and aesthetic expressions of Latino diaspora populations in other parts of the world. Written in clear, simple prose, this book is for all who are interested in the history of Latin music or the social interaction between the Latino diaspora and US citizens in the New York City of the mid-20th century." --Choice