Musical routes with roots runnin’ deep from African soil to Iberian roads onto Caribbean beaches finding its spotlight in El Barrio. We’d beat the summer heat splashing water from fire hydrants onto the burning streets, jumping and squealing to the bang of bongos and congas that crisscrossed corners as if keeping time to our youthful banter. We walked in step to the music that surrounded us.

Beyond the unspoken street laws of gangs and institutional exclusion, there were the smells of family: fried bacalaitos, fresh Italian bread, strong Puerto Rican coffee and my mother’s lipstick as she kissed me on the forehead.

Saturday mornings were spent at La Marketa. The fish smell was intense, the floors were nasty and wet but those shelves held the ingredients of our daily nourishment. I was the family translator–my mother’s eyes, ears and voice to the menacing, outside world.

Beyond the compartmentalized produce tunnel under the train, there were lines of merchants hawking their wares. But always, there was the music, the poetry and the many words, in Spanish and English, that would dance together to the rhythms, lyrics, poetry and passionate pain of people deceived by government, lured by propaganda into a City not their own while adapting to a lifestyle and language that was cold, concise and cunning. The nostalgia of a luscious life taken was the cultural inheritance of my displaced tribe in the metropolis.

El Barrio: my first glimpse at how we were misfit in this society somehow creating our own collective har monies we call Salsa in spite of it all. El Barrio: where I witnessed young people take power into their own hands helping me find my own voice while knowing that I could make a difference. El Barrio: the womb of my Latino tribe in the Big Apple.