Growing up in the diaspora, the best way for me to connect to my culture was through music and food. Both have been on my mind as of late.
I love music, to the point where I’d say that it’s instrumental to my being, that my life hinges on being able to listen to a salsa orchestra every once in a while. Music is how my family connects, and it is also how we’ve recorded our history. Before the abolition of slavery, bomba music and dancing was how my ancestors communicated to each other. Whether that be for the purposes of escaping enslavement or for simply having a fun time despite the inhumanity of their lives, bomba was how they connected and this tradition has come to me through my father, seating itself in my heart.
Then came plenty of other genres but there is one in particular that is personally important to me: salsa. That’s the music of my parents’ generation, of my grandparents’ generation, the music that has been there since my birth and that has followed me to college. When I lived in Puerto Rico, my family took me to festivals where salsa music reigned supreme and where dancing salsa was the ultimate pastime. Salsa music is the background to every family party I can remember. Salsa dancing has recently become a source of bonding for my father and I—over the summer, when we visited family, he took me to bars to dance salsa. When we had some downtime, at my uncle’s place or at my grandmother’s, he would slowly walk me through the basic steps. And still do I practice those steps in my room any time I get. Salsa is also a genre of storytelling: it has told the stories of slaves, the stories of people in love, and the stories of the lowest in society, those that nobody thinks about. And these stories make us dance.
There is so much to cry about in the world but one thing Latinos know how to do is dance the pain away. With the time we have to ourselves, we go out to dance, to drink, and to eat.
October will be here soon, and that means some pockets of Puerto Rico will begin their Christmas season. As for my family, we start to play Christmas music on November first and put up the Christmas tree sometime after Thanksgiving. And with the Christmas tree up and El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico playing in my home, starts one of my favorite Christmas traditions: making pasteles. To explain, the best way I can describe them is that they’re similar to a tamal, except the dough is made with pumpkin, green plantain, green banana, and yautĂa. It’s my favorite Christmas dish and every year my father and I sit down together to make them from scratch.
It’s somewhat of a family operation: my grandmother sends us the plantain leaves that we use in a similar manner to how corn husks are used in tamales. My father and I often stay up late in the night making the pork, blending the dough, and putting it all together to then be saved in our freezer for Christmas dinner. We make huge batches as we don’t just make pasteles for ourselves: we make them for other diaspora Puerto Ricans in our city and we make them for gringo friends who find them delicious or simply want to try this delicacy of our culture.
I look forward to doing this with my father for another year; it will be particularly special this year as, recently, he moved away to go to school. I look forward to trying not to stumble over his feet as he teaches me how to dance salsa. Happy Latino Heritage Month, and I look forward to being able to continue to participate in the culture I so dearly love.