Interview with DJ Mario October 15, 2006

     Today we had lunch with DJ Mario and had a nice interview with him. He gave us a lot of information and most of it was given before we even had a chance to get a question in. Not that he was being overly pushy with his opinion, but just that he already new what he wanted to say and what he thought was important about the genre and sub-community. In other words, he is very passionate about salsa music and was very eager to share with us what was most important to him.

      He started out by telling us that there are only three DJ’s in town that he knows of that do a lot of salsa, or has an extensive collection of salsa music. He told us salsa is very popular in a lot of different countries, particularly tropical ones, but it is not real popular here in Lubbock. Mario then went on to tell us that the majority of the people involved in the salsa community are students from other countries.

     Mario stays on top of his music from catalogs that he subscribes to that sends him updates of the most recent, most popular music that is going on right now. This is how he is able to stay on top of the latest music in the genre. He said that on an average night he plays for about 4 hours and can get in around 70 songs. A lot of what he does as a DJ is reading the crowd and playing music that will get people up and dancing, as well as introducing new music at the right times. He said the best way to get the crowd into it is to play the classics. Later on he gives a list of artist that would qualify under this category.

     The related genres such as reggaeton, machata, meringue are all genres that are often put under the same umbrella of music that is commonly played at any given salsa night. Meringue and machata are both dances that originated from the Dominican Republic. Machata is a dance that was started in the low-income communities and was popularized by big name groups that started playing in that genre. He said that the Machata was a more sensual kind of dance, or very intimate.

     Mario said that he started getting his collection of music from a radio station that he worked at that would just throw CD’s away. Mario also told us that the favorite genre of Latin music changes from place to place using El Paso as an example as the popular music there is Spanish traditional and the favorite in Lubbock right now is reggaeton.

     He confirmed the fact that this is a community that is trying to grow and get more people involved. They are trying to “expand” to use the exact terminology. He said that the crowd is a mixed crowd of old and young, rich and poor. He said that a lot of doctors like to come on the weekends and will bring their own CD’s of stuff they want the DJ to play. It’s a very diverse crowd that just wants to have fun dancing.

      I asked him what songs are the most popular or influential to the community, and he said that it is not so much what song, but what kind of music is being played. He then stated again that machata and meringue are the two most popular genres.

     I then asked him who some of the most popular artists where and this is what he told me:

Celia Cruz, Victor [Mahoney]*, Rojas, Michael Stuart, and an extra emphasis on DLG (Dark Latin Groove).

Elvis Crespo was cited as being the artist of the song suavamente that is very popular.

Some of the new groups he cited where, NG2 and Mark Antony

     I asked him if there where any connections of topic or anything within the music, and he said he really didn’t think so. Upon giving love songs as an example, he said that a lot of songs are love songs.

     Upon coming to the end of the interview said he knew several other people that knew a lot about salsa that could help us with questions as well. He said he wanted to get them all together and have a meeting with all of them and all of us to have a big question and answers session, as well as some dancing, and listening to some music.

Thanks to Aaron, who typed up the content for this interview!

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