Elena Martínez: Boogaloo is a form of Latin music. We think of the 20th century all these different forms of Latin music that became popular forms of music, mambo, of course there was the mambo craze in the 1950s and cha-cha-cha is part of that. And Boogaloo in the mid to late ’60s was this form of music that was sort of like a mix of some R&B rhythms with Afro-Cuban rhythms. But sometimes it was sung in English. Sometimes it was sung in Spanish. It’s sort of the perfect mix of that generation’s music because the musicians who were making mambo music like Tito Puente, Tito Rodriquez, Charlie Palmieri, Eddie’s older brother in the ‘50s they were sort of the kids of the immigrants so they were singing in Spanish. They were taking those old the Afro-Cuban rhythms and making the music to them. But now you have the next generation that’s born here, born here in New York. They’re not really Puerto Rican. A lot of us identify ourselves as Nuyorican. If you grow up in New York and when you grow up in New York you might be of Puerto Rican descendent but your Spanish might not be as good. You speak Spanglish. You hang out with a lot of African-Americans so you’re listening to funk and R&B. You know, you’re part of New York City as part of your culture as well. And to them mambo music was my parents music. No one as a teenager wants to listen to their parents’ music even though mambo is a hip form of music. But when you’re 17, 16 you want to listen to what’s hip and new at that time.

And Boogaloo was fun, and people just danced to it. And that was the thing. It was the 1960s. People were having fun. You could just go and dance however you wanted to with Boogaloo. So it was really fun music. And I think also, you know, speaking of the social history I think it does talk to that generation that grew up at that time. And also at that time when they were growing up these Nuyorican generation of growing up is also this time of like ethnic politics. You’ve got the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, American Indian movement. The so there’s all this political stuff going on. And so I think it speaks to shifting identities and conflicts, generational conflict of that era.