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Pre-COVID, one of my favorite things to do was to get some friends together and head to Salsa Saturday at one of my local bars.

Unfortunately, it looks like that bar was another victim of COVID. As of the last time I drove by it, the space was gutted and the lettering completely stripped off the windows. My only hope is that they’re remodeling and this is just an ugly step in that process. My hope is not high.

While I look for a new Salsa spot, I want to reminisce on the good old days, when COVID didn’t exist and my single ass only had to worry about finding a date for Saturday night.

I hope the popularity of In The Heights helps bring a bump in popularity to Latin music and Salsa Saturdays.

Salsa Saturday – The Institution

It’s no surprise the majority of my friends do not speak Spanish. If I had to guess, I would assume the number of Spanish speakers in my circles is under 5%. However, that didn’t stop them from buying in on the concept of Salsa Saturday.

I had discovered that a bar in my city did Salsa Saturdays right around the time that I turned 21. It was a perfect situation as a girl friend (later girlfriend) of mine had just turned 21 as well. The bar opened at 9:30pm with lessons on how to dance salsa, merengue, and bachata (which I never mastered) at 9:45. Once 10:00 rolled around, the stage lights would come on and the music would start.

Now I obviously wouldn’t show up sober but 10:00 was the signal to really get the engines revved up. Every Salsa Saturday would start with a shot of tequila, always gold, and a beer. My friend(s) and I would grab our drinks and stake out a table. More often than not, with the liquid courage running through my veins, I would be the one to lead the way to the dancefloor.

Now, getting someone to the dancefloor is the toughest part of this whole process. The implicit rule was that if we didn’t know the song, we wouldn’t go out there. We also couldn’t be the only ones out there. While I wasn’t nervous about being the center of attention, the people I was with usually were. Once the crowd started to show up, we would end up out on the dancefloor, some of us with very random people.

We would keep the drinking and dancing going throughout the night until one of the following happened – 1) closing time 2) we were too tired to keep going 3) we were too drunk to keep going. Sometimes, it was a combination of the three.

The Classics

No matter where you go for your Salsa Saturday, there are some songs that would come up again and again. These songs track pretty closely with what comes up if you just google “Spanish music”. I just tried that and it’s about 97% accurate.

There also tend to be DJs who play songs to get the average Midwesterner moving. Some of those examples are below.

If you’re looking for some real classics that get a lot of play, your champions are below.

The Appeal

For my friends, mainly white folks from the Midwest, Salsa Saturday probably has a few different appeals. One of the big ones I can think of is that there’s something of a structure to it. Structure in the sense that you know exactly the kind of music that will be playing and you know that there are corresponding dances. Once they get the basics, they also come to love dancing.

These kinds of events are notably lacking in other parts of our musically culture. What I find interesting is now that TikTok has become such a powerful platform, I wonder how that will change the culture in clubs. Is everyone going to know the dances to songs or is everyone going to pretend those trends aren’t real?

Anyways, for a lot of people I think the big appeal of Salsa Saturday is that it’s something foreign to them. It’s not something they experience every day. For most of my friends, coming to Salsa Saturdays with me is the only time they hear a lot of this music. It’s a new way to experience a different culture. That culture also happens to be filled with excitement and energy unlike a lot of places and events they’ve been to before.

On a final thought, what I think makes these places so energetic is that everyone there buys in. They’re usually all in. Since these events are a little more rare, people who show up know what they’re showing up for. A regular club doesn’t always have that.

The world is slowly reopening and while things come back to normal, I plan on keeping this series going with some more stories going forward. If you have any stories, feel free to send those over to be featured (PaLaCulturaBlog@gmail.com).

By: JTags: