| Homepage | Links on the side will take you to a floorplan, and below you can read an explanation of why we were where we were for our fieldwork experiences. Melt: One of our first informants, Theresa L. talked to Nicky and said that Melt was a really good place to go to see "real" salsa. She said they have salsa nights every Wednesday night and that there is a dress code. Theresa also told us to look for her friend, DJ Mario, and Don - a choreographer. Nicky and Aaron talked to DJ Mario the first night. Also, Abi knows a friend that works there who told her that this was a good place to go that had a salsa night every Wednesday night. We had also spotted adds in the school newspaper for it. Once we got there we quickly discovered that this was defiantly a good place to go to observe what is going on within the salsa community. The majority of the music played was salsa or closely related, and many people seemed to be there that knew a lot about it, and the other events that where going on around town. Jakes: We decided to go and check out the salsa night that was happening here every Thursday because we had heard radio announcements for it and it was recommended to us by Jacob at Melt. He told us that he used to be a part of that salsa night and it was where it all began. So we went and checked it out to see how it compared and found that there where some striking differences, as well as similarities. Some of the differences have to do with the music choices, and focuses of the establishment. The similarities mostly have to do with the people that attend the events, and the environment that these situations are held in. |
| Melt | |
| Jake's | |
| Rec.Center | |
| Southbeach | |
| Fire and Ice | |
| Field Reports |
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South Beach: We had known some people from school who had told us that they had a salsa night every Friday. We were further convinced that we needed check it out when many people from Jakes and Melt told us that what goes on at South Beach “is not salsa.” We listened to Dr. Smiths suggestion of do exactly what they tell you not to because you do not want to be associated with any particular click. Well we discovered primarily that the reason why we had been steered away from this place is because the focus is really more on a Spanish Traditional kind of music and didn’t really actually have a lot of salsa music going on. Although Spanish traditional does fit under the umbrella term of “Salsa”, we decided that our primary focus should be on the sub-community that was involved with the more literal definition of Salsa. Fire and Ice: This was a place that we wanted to go and we never really got the opportunity to go. This place was recommended to us by one of Joe’s dance partners because she does an occasional salsa night there. We thought that this would be really good to go to because it seemed as though it might be a night for more of the insiders of the community and not as well known from the outside community. Unfortunately, one of these events didn’t fall under this semester for us to be able to go and check it out. This is also a possible location for the start of a new weekend salsa night that would be intended to sort of replace the Wednesday night salsa night at Melt to help get more attendance since it would be on the weekend. This would have been interesting to see how this affected the insider to outsider ratio. --Aaron |
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The instructors at the Rec., Gilbert and Margarita, usually stood on the platform to demonstrate the steps. The little silver dots represent people; usually when we walked in, everyone sat along the wall opposite the mirrors and that's what the diagram shows. For the actual class we moved out onto the floor with a dance partner, facing to the left or right wall so that we mirrored the instructors. The stereo was left of the platform. Most of the music played sounded very familiar after spending time at Melt. When the class was learning something particularly hard, the instructors would sometimes come off the platform and walk through the class to watch how we were doing and correct any mistakes we were making. (Like me, who always tried to turn using both feet instead of one.)
~Nicky |
