Seb's Hong Kong Salsa Blog

Archive for the ‘opinion’ Category

Before I dive into this piece, I’d like to offer a disclaimer: this is purely an opinion piece, sharing some of my thoughts on the business of Salsa. I mean no criticism of any professional or group of professionals in the industry, in Hong Kong or elsewhere.

Over the years, I’ve seen a number of teachers teach on2, and even I, for a time, taught a transition class for on1 to on2 dancers. Each teacher, I found, places different emphasis on different things. Additionally, Ive often been told by people in the transition that they are not yet comfortable dancing on2 because they can’t “hear the 2″.

Before I explore my thoughts on the matter, I need to share some of my personal experiences in switching to dancing on 2, but first of all, a matter of terminology.
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It is normal for a DJ’s “sound” to evolve with time. About four years ago, when I coined my stage name of DJ Yorican, I did so in great part because my “sound” of preference was old-school new-york, from the 60s and 70s, which was then nicknamed Nuyorican (for NY-Puertorican).
In the intervening years, however, my sound has evolved to towards a groovier mood, less hard-hitting. And somewhat more modern.
Little by little, I have been shying away from the older sounds, in great part because the recordings are not available in great quality, either because the original recordings were in low quality studios but also often because I played music so rare it was never released on CD, and only available on vinyl or vinyl-rip.

All too often, I received (or was told second-hand) criticisms that it sounded like I played low-quality mp3s downloaded from the web. That was never the case. The problem was with the original recordings, that are flattened, or contain scratches or hissing inherent to vinyl conversions.

So little by little, I played less of these rare songs.
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One of the things that has always appealed to me about salsa is the high degree of subjectivity within the discipline.
Unlike most other forms of dance, there is not ONE correct way of doing anything. There are pretty much as many styles of salsa dancing as there are dancers.

This obviously extends not just to teaching, but also to the culture itself.
Ask 5 teachers where salsa comes from, and you’re likely to get 5 different answers.
The terminology is not fixed. Several teachers use the same name for different steps, or different names for the same step…

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A number of years ago, while DJing at an international event, I received the following comments from a world-reknowned DJ: “You are playing the best music I have heard in this city.” While I accepted the compliment for what it was, I also felt that something was missing. In my mind, the best compliment a DJ can pay another was “you played a great set,” not “you played great music.”
In the absence of world-class tutelage, how could I teach myself to play better? How could I work on keeping improving my DJ skills?
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I am writing this as I am preparing my set for DJing on Feb 22, to share with my readers my methods and thought processes as I set about deciding what and how to play my music.

First off, a few comments about methods and structure. I plan my sets in small segments, usually 3-6 songs per segment, songs that work well together, have some sort of connection to one another, and usually build up to a climax. I separate these segments usually with a non-salsa song, usually cha cha cha or bachata. I also pick out a short list of songs that I want to try to play somehow, though they might be difficult to fit in.

To start, I want to fit in a segment of hard salsa that might take dancers a bit by surprise. Two such songs that immediately spring to mind: Larry Harlow’s Un Tipo Liberado and Bobby Valentin’s Indestructibe. Both start very moderately, but build up to high-energy percussion segments. I often follow-up Un Tipo Liberado with Angel Canales’ La Humanidad, because I feel that the funk accents in the first one’s percussion segment tie in nicely with the intro to the second one. I know have a first mini-segment; I’ll need a few more songs to set it up, but I can figure that out later.

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A few weeks ago, I mentioned on Facebook that my salsa collection had just passed 25 thousand titles. This is just the latest of several milestones that I have crossed over the past few years, as my collection grew and grew (and keeps growing). I thought it might be interesting for my readers to learn a little bit about the various workflows I use to manage such a huge collection in a manner that keeps it efficient for personal use as well as for DJing.

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One of the difficulties of DJing in Hong Kong is that local culture does not encourage people to be vocally critical. In other terms, you can play music the crowd dislikes, and you won’t hear about it. To make matters worse, a too-large proportion of the crowd will dance regardless of whether they like the music or not, so you can’t really gauge your effectiveness on whether the floor is busy or not.

In this article, I’m going to share three major tips for DJs (particularly for Hong Kong DJs, who really should be aware of this).
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