ragland - sonideros

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Society for Ethnomusicology

Mexican Deejays and the Transnational Space of Youth Dances in New York and New JerseyAuthor(s): Cathy RaglandSource: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 338-354Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for EthnomusicologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3113938

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ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

Mexican Deejays and theTransnational Space of Youth Dancesin New York and New JerseyCATHY RAGLAND / Graduate Center of theCity University of New York

The innovative and unique forms of creative expression fashioned bydiasporic communities have come to be recognized as among the mostnotable features of globalization. As Arjun Appadurai (1996), George Lipsitz

(1994), and others have noted, the transnational movements of peoples,ideas, technologies, ideologies, and capital have inspired many marginalcommunities, especially immigrant subcultures, to express their senses ofcommunity in distinctively innovative and radical ways. Animated by a seem-ingly shared sense of displacement and, often, by a blurring of real and imag-ined representations of home and history, diasporic groups have availed them-selves of new technologies and ideas to create not only hybrid musical styles,but also distinctively new performance formats. While several writers (e.g.,Garcia Canclini 1995:231-32; Rouse 1991:20-23) have pointed out the dy-namism of "border zones" as crucibles for new expressive art forms, it is in-creasingly apparent that such zones need not be actual geographical bound-aries, but can also include the experiential borders created and invoked bydiasporic groups, wherever they may be, through structured performancesand socio-musical events (see, e.g., Rouse 1991, Flores 2000). It is these kindsof localized events that support the notion, posited by sociologists LudgerPries (1998), Robert Smith (1996), and others, that migratory movements cangenerate extensive lasting and new forms of social linkages, obliging us torethink our understanding of the relationship between geographic space andsocial space.Some of the most inventive contemporary performance idioms, such asdance-hall reggae and Colombian pic6 (Pacini Hernandez 1993), centeraround deejays who manipulate sound systems and present various forms and

? 2003 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

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VOL.47, No. 3 FALL2003


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Ragland: Mexican Deejays 339combinations of pre-recordedand originalmusic, sounds, and speech. In thispaper I discuss a unique form of social dance event which has become in-creasingly popular among the Mexican migrantandimmigrantcommunitiesin New YorkCityandnearbynorthernNewJersey. In these weekend dances,the deejay, or sonidero as he is known, together with those in attendance,creates a powerful transnational musical and social experience. By manipu-latingmusic and simultaneouslyreconfiguringtime andplace, they turnfeel-ings of displacement and marginalizationinto a collective sense of identityandconnectedness, generatingwhat Appadurai 1996) hascalleda "diasporicpublic sphere." In the process they dramatize and mediate their own expe-riences of a modem life that oscillates between and encompasses bothMexico and the US.They effectively portrayand create a modernityanimatedby both real and imagined interpretationsof historyand culture, andby theirshared experiences of travel, dislocation and a reinvention of their lives asboth Mexicans and Americans.Mexicans in New York and Northern New Jersey

The Mexican population in the New York-NewJersey area has grownexponentially in the past two decades. Although traditionallyoutnumberedby CaribbeanLatinAmericans,New YorkCity'sMexicans,both documentedand undocumented, now number over 300,000 and constitute the region'ssecond-fastest-growing immigrantgroup. Theirpresence as workers in arearestaurants, delis, bars, hotels, factories, and construction sites and as daylaborers on the streets is increasingly visible. It is in these service industryjobs that the majorityof workers are undocumented, and as a result, oftenneed to work over fifty hours a week (Smith 1996:74-75).In contrast to the deep-rooted, well-established Chicano and Mexican-American populations in the West Coast and Southwest, New York-areaMexicansremainrelativelymarginalized,exerting little impact on local socio-political structures and leading a relativelyprecarious economic existence.Over sixty percent of the community's immigrants are from the region in-habited primarilyby Mixtec Indians of Mexico, which includes the states ofPuebla, Oaxaca and Guerrero.1Most come from ruralvillages and towns inPuebla,such asPiaxtla,Chinantla,Tulcingodel Valle,Tehauacan,andAtlixco,though several pass time in Mexico City before coming to the US (Smith1999).

Almost half these Mexican immigrantsare men between the ages of six-teen and twenty-five years old, who, duringtheir firsttriphere, maytypicallyremain stateside three years before returning home to visit (Binford 1998).My own conversations with community members have revealed that mostof these young men have been sent by their families to the US to work. De-


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340 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2003spite the difficulty of traveling to their homeland, many of them, like thosein the west coast studied by Rouse (1991:18-20), remain in close touch withtheir relatives in Mexico and are often involved in family and business deci-sions. Depending on the economic status of his family, the young Mexicanmale often sends more than half of his earnings home and takes responsibil-ity for helping other members of his extended family who choose to cometo the city.2 As in the case of Roger Rouse's informants, Mexico, for most ofthese immigrants, is not simply an ancestral homeland to be regarded withnostalgia, but rather a site with which the workers continue to be emotion-ally and economically invested. Rouse suggests that the expansion of inter-national capital (in both the U.S. and Mexico) has allowed for a widening ofthe international border and the eruption of miniature borders throughoutthe country. David Gutierrez takes this idea further by observing that "theinflux of immigrants in recent years has expanded the ethnic infrastructureof jobs, communication, entertainment, and local cultural practices in theUnited States to the extent that, in many ways, Mexicans can now live in theUnited States as if it were simply a more prosperous extension of Mexico"(Gutierrez 1998:322). Their lives and future possibilities involve simultaneousengagements in locations that are associated with different experiences,cultures, and political systems.Sonidero Bailes: Creating a New Social Space

For the many young migrants who reside in the New York region, theCatholic Church traditionally has provided the primary "social space" forcommunity gatherings and maintaining social practices and customs. How-ever, as this community has grown, Gutierrez (1998:317) describes what hecalls "alternative social networks" that have begun to appear within localcommunities as they become more adapted to life away from Mexico. Orga-nized social dances are an important way to examine how marginalized im-migrant communities can transform the cultural landscape in this country.In the case of New York and New Jersey, Mexican sonidero bailes (deejaydances) are held most weekends in clubs, restaurants, community centers,and bingo halls in Queens (New York) and in New Jersey towns with largeMexican populations such as Paterson and Passaic. Although young womenare present at these events, they are typically outnumbered by young menat a ratio of at least three to one.

The focus of these dances is the sonido or "sound system," of whichthere may often be six or more set up at any given dance, with each sonideroperforming roughly thirty-minute sets in a round-robin style. Thus, for ex-ample, at a given night in the Bingo Hall in Paterson, one of the most popu-lar baile locations in New Jersey, the sonidos are typically positioned in a


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Figure 1. Playbill for sonidero dance held at the Bingo Hall in Patterson, NewJersey.

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342 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2003circle around the dance floor. The hall is decorated as it would be for a birth-day party or wedding reception, with red, white and green balloons tied tothe tables and backs of chairs, streamers hanging from light fixtures, and aglittering "disco ball" suspended above the dance floor. Many of the sonideroswill have erected their own banners, creatively designed with their stagenames and visual images. Dances in New York City might happen in smallerclub venues, generally the Casablanca or Town Hall in Jackson Heights, orin larger ballrooms in Queens and Brooklyn organized by local producers.The sonideros are responsible not only for the music, but also for manyother aspects of the event. At times, they are the organizers and promotersof the dances themselves, and they also provide the elaborate and colorfullight systems and obligatory smoke machines. The sonidero, who is alwaysmale and usually five to ten years older than most of the dancers, is recog-nized for his voiced "personality" which he manipulates with a myriad ofprocessed tape loops, pre-recorded samples, and sound effects (such as de-lays, reverb, echoes, and phase-shifters). With his synthetically distorted voiceand other effects, he achieves the desired sound: big, loud, and superhuman.The sonidero takes great and, one might say, fetishistic pride in his "tech-nology" and his ability to sonically transport his audience. In conversationswith me, sonideros would often begin our discussions with detailed descrip-tions of their equipment and its cost, and their ability to simultaneously jockeythe various required elements in order to construct the desired sonic andsocio-musical environment. Jacques Attali (1985) has described the record-ing industry as one "of manipulation and promotion" where the recordingis "only a minor part of the industry." However, in this case, the expressivepower clearly resides with the individual who manipulates the recording (andthe industry) in order to satisfy the demands of his own community, or sub-culture, for the reinterpretation and creation of new meanings and a newsense of place.Having the proper music is, however, essential for a successful baile, andthe favored genre is a substyle of the Colombian-derived cumbia. Thesonidero must have on hand the latest cumbia hits, by groups with nameslike Los Angeles de Charley (Charley's Angels), Los Angeles Azules (The BlueAngels), and Los Socios del Ritmo (The Partners of Rhythm). However, thesecumbia bands are not those typically heard on commercial Spanish-languageradio in Mexico or the US, but instead are widely sold in Mexican flea mar-kets, by street vendors, and in small record shops in New York and NewJersey. The artists do not represent the style of cumbia initially popularizedin the US and Mexico in the late-1980s and early 1990s by norteno and tejano(Texas-Mexican) performers such as Selena ("Baile Esta Cumbia," and "BitiBiti, Bom Bom"), Bronco and Los Bukis, and more recently, Limite. Rather,the cumbias of the sonidero bailes in the New York area, like those in the


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Ragland: Mexican Deejays 343Mexican towns whence the immigrantscome, are recorded specifically foruse in the baile context. The songs arelargely nstrumental, eaturingarootsy,Colombian vallenato-style sound, based on accordion and guacharacascraper, often with distorted or electronically-treatedvocals unintelligiblypunctuating the repetitive four-beatcumbia rhythm (with its heavy empha-sis on beat one, and secondary accents on three and four). Unlike the main-stream "commercial"Mexican cumbias, these songs generally last six min-utes or longer. Although lyrics and CD covers often contain distinctreferences to the genre's Afro-Colombianorigins, the songs are recordedprimarily by Mexican groups. Manyof the sonideros I spoke with said thatthey look for cumbias that have a identifiable "tropical"or Afro-Colombiansound, but, they always insist, the songs are performed and recorded byMexican groups.3Commercial Mexican cumbias, primarilyrecorded in Monterrey(north-ernMexico), arevehemently rejectedby sonideros and theirlistenersasbeing"naco,"a slang word describing something that is "tacky"and excessivelycommercial, or a person who is uneducated and lacking in style.4Thoughthe "naco"cumbias are more likely to be played on Spanish-languageradio,the sonidero-sponsored recordings areaggressivelymarketed in local shops.These recordings and artists are popularized primarilyby the sonideros, forit is the sonidero's choice, as publicized in the baile, that validates certaincumbias as authentically "tropical"and worthy of popular consumption.Everysonidero has a stage name, logo, and boastful tagline that makeshim recognizable as a personality. Nearlyall of the logos-displayed on busi-ness cards, vans, jackets, and t-shirts-use some combination of the colorsof the Mexican flag (green, yellow, red, and white); several also include thestars and stripes of the Americanflag, the Statue of Liberty,or other Ameri-can iconic symbols. Also typical alongside these are "tropical" mages suchas palm trees, coconuts, the sun, the beach, and bikini-clad dark-skinnedwomen.Sonic Travel and "El Disco Mobile"

While the cumbias favored in sonidero bailes are in their own way spe-cialized, what is most distinctive and unique about the bailes is their socialstructuring.At the baile, the sonidero creates what Rouse (1991) has char-acterized as a socio-spatial environment, acting as the voice of a displacedcommunity whose emotions and attentions are constantly shifting betweena fragmentedrealityof "here"and "there"-in this case, the US,Mexico, andthe pan-Latinocommunity in New York. The sonidero acts as a virtualnavi-gator of the sound experience at the baile as well as the authoritativevoiceof the baile's distinct cumbia genre. He also encourages and mediates the


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344 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2003Figure 2. Fausto Salazar, aka. Potencia Latina, with his sound system.

involvement of the individual dance participants, who share in the creationof this diasporic public sphere, as the following description illustrates.The sonidero begins his set with a five-minute (or longer) largely pre-taped prologue to the dance. His introduction is a sound collage comprisingsamples from radio advertisements and announcements, in English and/orSpanish, and musical excerpts, many of which are English-language popularhip-hop, house and techno-pop dance songs. After the prologue, the soniderosegues into "lapresentaci6n," which generally begins with a countdown to"lift-off' given in English by the sonidero (i.e., "five, four, three ... "), and isaccompanied by "space travel" sounds and pronouncements about being"transmitted" to some other place. The sonidero reminds attendees at thebaile that the "disco mobil" (the mobile disco of the sonidero) is always"ready for travel." Frequently reiterating his stage name, such as "PotenciaLatina" (Latin Power) or "ElCondor," he boasts of his powerful system andunique music selection: "el sefial mas potente" (the most powerful signal)or "mzisica electr6nica inteligente" (intelligent electronic music); through-out he reiterates his boastful tagline, such as "la maxima autoridad delsonido" ("the maximum authority of the sound system"), or "el destructorde leyendas" ("the destroyer of legends"). The "presentation" continues withmore commentary about the "authenticity" of the sonidero's musical selec-


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Ragland: Mexican Deejays 345tion and the sheer volume andpower of his sonido. Hisvoice is syntheticallyaltered by echoes, phase-shiftersand other effects which, while often mak-ing his words nearlyunintelligible, nevertheless constitute trademarksof hisown recognizable "sound."Stillrepeating his stage name, he welcomes andthanks other sonideros who are also performing at the dance. Some of themore popular sonideros include El Condor, Orgullosito (Little Pride), ElGigante de New York (The New York Giant), Magia (Magic), Fantasma(Ghost) and Master.Fantasmaand Masterhappen to be sonideros fromPueblawho often travel to New York and New Jersey to perform. In fact, most ofthe largersonidero productions that occur on the weekend and include fiveor more deejays will often feature a guest sonidero who is from Puebla orMexico City.Duringthis "presentation"portion of the baile, most of the attendees arestanding in a circle around the dance floor, waiting for the dance to start.Most focus on the sonidero, who is positioned behind his stacked soundsystem, standingcompletely out of view of the audience while turningknobs,changing tapes and CDs,pumping smoke onto the dance floor, and manipu-latingandadjusting ightswhile greeting andguiding his listeners, thus bring-ing to mind the affected voice of a superhumanWizard of Oz, secretly oper-atedbehind a curtainby avery ordinaryandhumandeejay prototype. Alwaysvisible, however, is the sonidero's "crew,"generallyconsisting of four or fiveyounger men who assist him duringperformances. The "presentation"con-tinues while the smoke envelops the dance floor and the dancers in a giantcloud. The effects and sounds transport them to another place that is partfantasyandpart irony,as is particularlyevident when the "presentation" ndswith the thunderous sound of a spaceship landing and the "swoosh" of elec-tronic doors sliding open.After the "landing," he sonidero's voice becomes more audible and lessdistortedby effects. Inplace of the English-language echno andhip-hop thatdominated the "presentation"and "lift-off'portion, we now hear a selectionof Latin music styles like salsa, bachata and merengue, but still not thecumbiaspeople have come to dance to. The sonidero then directlyaddressesthe audience in the hall. He welcomes the dancers to New York, New Jer-sey and the Bingo Hall,but seconds later he also welcomes them to Mexico("Bienvenidos a Mexico, bienvenidos a New York").At the moment thesonidero plays the first cumbia is when the dancing actuallybegins. At thispoint, the feeling is that the baile locale has shifted closer to Mexico, but asthe evening progresses, and through the sonidero's dialogue, there is alsoan affective shift back to the US, New York and New Jersey as the imagina-tion becomes further imbedded in the reality of the collective experienceof the dancers and sonideros.


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346 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2003Communicating in the Socio-Spatial World of the Sonidero

The cumbias constitute the core of the dance. However, ratherthan sim-ply playing songs, the sonidero continues to speak through the microphoneover the music. He continues boasting about the power of his sonido, reit-erating his stage name, welcoming the other sonidos who are also on theevening's bill, and acknowledging the local promoters of the show and theaudience members he knows personally. He also might comment about thesong's title or lyrics or, if relevant, about the special day or event that is be-ing honored, such as "The Battle of Puebla"(Cinco de Mayo-May 5) or "ElDia de la Virgen"(Day of the Virginof Guadalupe-December 12).However as the baile progresses, the sonidero's most important and clearlymore taxing job is to read into the microphone the personal dedications andsalutationswhich members of the audienceand dancers are now givingto him,via crew members, in greatnumbers. The dedications are written by attend-ees on napkins, scrapsof notebook paper, on the back of miniatureplaybillsfor future dance events, or whatever is handy. As more of these come in, thereis less improvised banter by the sonidero. While he changes CDs, sets up pre-recorded tapes, and manipulateseffects and lights, he must now read these

Figure 3. Crew members collect the hand-written dedications and salutationsfrom the young, mostly male, dancers and arrange them so the sonidero(CesarJuirez, aka. Fantasma) can read them over the cumbias.


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Ragland. Mexican Deejays 347messages with creative flair,personality, and conviction, serving as a media-tor, or a ventriloquistof sorts, who articulatesthe thoughts and emotions ofthis community. The sonidero never changes any of the words that are writ-ten down and does not comment on what he has read.At the end of the set, the sonidero's crew members begin the high-speedduplicating of cassettes for the individuals who justhad their salutations anddedications read aloud; these individuals are now queuing up to purchasethem for five dollarseach. The cassettes contain the entire set (roughly thirtyminutes for each sonidero), which usuallyconsists of the prologue and "pre-sentation"portion (with its "lift-off'and "landing"), nd three to fourcumbias,with the sonidero's banter and dedication-reading. Significantly,these cas-settes are not purchased for private listening at home or work. Instead, theyoung dancers mail the cassettes to Mexico or to relatives and friends livingin other parts of the U.S. and to whom the salutations and dedications arewritten. The dubbing and sale takeplace on the spot, since the next soniderowill have alreadystarted his set and the dancerswill want to engage him withmore dedications.A popular sonidero living in Passaic, New Jersey, Angel Lezama(aka.,"Orgullosito")described his role to me thusly: "Asa sonidero, you must cap-ture the sentiment of the dedication and who it is being sent to. You arehelping that person create an imagination, an image, something very specialthat will be sent to a familymember or friend who is living somewhere else,maybe in Mexico, or someone that you want to get to know that is at thedance." Lezama's own definition clearly indicates that these dances are notabout nostalgia, or even the idea of simply returningto Mexico. Rather,theyevoke a newly constructed landscape of social life in New York that is builton a shiftingof location, sounds, and images in which the Mexicanimmigrantyouth lives and creates his own cultural and personal reality.

Manyof the salutations and dedications that Lezamaand other soniderosdeliver are written in a loosely poetic, though fragmented, style with vary-ing degrees of effort to rhyme and utilize creative imagery. Manydedicatesongs to girlfriends,friends, gang members,5neighbors, parents, other rela-tives, and the sonidero himself. Others simply want to acknowledge theirpresence at the dance, often naming the sonidero and stating that the indi-vidual is there, "presente,"with the sonidero, "cienporcento" (one hundredpercent). There is usuallymention of the individual'scurrenthome borough(Queens, Bronx, Brooklyn) or town (Passaic, Paterson, Union City) as wellas the state and town in Mexico the person is originally rom, such as,Atlixcoor Chalchiupan in Puebla. Sometimes these locations are deliberatelyjumbled:for example, "Puebla,New York"or "Brooklyn,Mexico."Mentionmay also be made of other cities in the US,such as LosAngeles, Chicago andLasVegas, where friends and relatives are also living and working.


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348 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2003The most popularsonideros performon a circuitbetween the New Yorkarea and Mexico-especially Mexico City and Puebla. As Brooklyn-basedveteran sonidero Fausto Salazar old me, sonidero bailes in Mexico are simi-lar to those in New York and New Jersey, though they are often held out-doors in the town's plazaand are attended by entire families, not justyoungmen. Salutationsare also written, recorded and mailed to the USby parents,cousins, girlfriends, neighbors, and high school friends, which allows for aconstant dialogue between individualsthrough the context of the baile ex-

perience. Salazaralso notes that it is important for the sonidero to travel toMexico, because people in Mexico prefer to send salutations to the youngmen in the US through the same sonideros from which they receive theirmessages, thereby rendering the communication more personal.The sonidero's constant travel to and from Mexico for performanceshelps keep Mexico alive in the immigrants' collective imaginations. Thissensation is enhanced by the physical presence of the sonidero, who actsas a conduit for communication between individuals on both sides of theborder as well. The sonideros recognize the validation of this experienceand the authentication of this reality as a crucial aspect of their role. Thesonidero is thus more than a mere messenger of dedications and salutations.His presence at dances and his travel between both countries also enablehis audiences to imagine themselves "presente, cien porcento." As Salazartold me:WhenI amperformingn Mexico,people often end their salutations nd dedi-cations with "presente, cien porcento." That is to say that they are here, withme, completely. Since I have traveled from New York, it is importantfor manypeople who have familyandfriends in the USto send their dedications and salu-tations through me and say that they are with me. Also, in the US it is the samefor a sonidero who travels from Mexico to perform. They will want to be"presente"with him too. It is like you are "there" n Mexico, or with me you are"here" n New York.

The dedications and salutations presented below were collected at one ofthe Bingo Hall dances. Notice the references to location, as in the referencesto Los Angeles and Chalchiupan, and that placing Puebla in New York. Alsoof note are the colloquial slang expressions and references to the Mexicancactus (maguey) and mesquite plant, both powerful symbols of rural Mexicoand Mexican identity. The dance styles-cumbia, salsa, and danz6n-eachoriginatedin other LatinAmerican Countries (Colombia, Cuba/PuertoRico/New YorkandCuba),but have become Mexicanized over time andhave beenadopted as Mexican popular music styles, particularly in the case of danz6nand cumbia. Finally, many dedications and salutations praise the sonidero(e.g., Fausto or Fantasma) who is delivering the message.


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Ragland: Mexican Deejays 349#1Cumbia,Salsay Danz6n,Lizbette quierocon todo mi coraz6nHastaLosAngeles, CaliforniaDe parte de VictorCien porcento Fantasma#2Espinasde mesquiteespinas de magueyPotencia Latinala pura leyAtt: El Flaco y el amorde su vida, Marta#3Entre calaverasy esqueletoscuando llegan los primose inquitos [sic] todosse quedan vien [sic] quitos [sic]diavolicos [sic] sienporsieto [sic]Primos: ElCholo, ElMalaber,ElArdilla,ElCatrin,El Gato#4Puebla, Nueva Yorkyo estoy con el mejorel mas ching6nchabelo tofio sagradoFausto nacho poloPuebla, ChalchiupanPuebla de los angeles

Cumbia,Salsay Danz6n,Lisbeth I love youwith all my heartAll the way to LosAngeles, Californiafrom VictorOne hundred percent [with] FantasmaThorns of the mesquite [tree]thorns of the maguey [Mexicancactus]Latin Power [sonidero]the absolute lawAtt: "theSkinny"and the loveof his life, MarthaBetween skulls and skeletonswhen the cousins [friends]arriveand everything is a messthey make it all right againdiabolical one-hundred percentCousins: The Half-breed,The Juggler,The Squirrel,The Dude, The CatPuebla, New YorkI am here with the bestthe most "bad-ass"the "guy"[with the] sacred soundFausto "nachopolo"Puebla, Chalchiupantown of the angels

La Maxima Autoridad: The Sonidero as ArchetypeAs mediators of the baile experience, the sonideros use technology toassert LaMaiximaAutoridad, the "Maximum Authority." Their electronically-

manipulated voices are painfully loud, garbled, and distorted. They call at-tention to themselves and the "power" they can assert, much like the bor-der-blaster deejays on the Mexican side of the Texas border during the earlydays of radio, who would overpower American radio stations and penetratethe US as far north as Chicago, Illinois or Washington's Yakima Valley. Thesonidero at once authenticates and disrupts the cumbias he plays, perpetu-ally talking over and electronically manipulating them. Yet despite his self-constructed image of power and authority, he remains respectful of the au-diences and their dedications. In reading the salutations, he never interjects


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350 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2003his own words or merely paraphrases the messages; instead, he faithfullyreads them as they are written. His popularity, as well as the success of thecumbias he chooses to play, derives not from the dominant commercial ve-hicle of radioand record sales, but rather from his role as messenger, as "au-thority," within the community of Mexican youth, and from the sheer"power" of his sound system.This community further trusts and respects the sonidero because, likethem, he has alsotraveledandexperienced in his own way the displacement,marginality,and ambiguity of the migrantexperience. I learned that manyof the sonideros I interviewed are undocumented, and those who travel toand from Mexico often do so with forged papers and passports. It is alsohighly likely that the supposedly real names associated with the sonidero'sstage names are also invented. However, it is the mysterythat surrounds thesonidero and his own experience of travel to the U.S (or la aventura, as it iscalled by many) that both intrigues and links these young men and thesonidero. The search forwork has broughtboth the itinerantworker and thesonidero to oscillate variously between New York, Los Angeles, Chicago,Texas, Tijuana,Mexico City, and Puebla. The sonic experience they createtogether becomes a dramatizationof that life, with its personal and collec-tive historyof living andtravelingbetween two countries with complex andalways changing political and social relations. The baile and the sonidero'srole allow these migrantsto metaphorically"travel o Mexico,"as Salazarputit. However, through imagination, improvisation, and the constant real andimaginedshiftingof locales, these workers are also learningto exist and thrivein the constantly fluid world of global America.

Concluding ThoughtsThe sonidero bailes invite a variety of interpretive perspectives. At onelevel, they present yet another idiosyncratic fusion of tradition and moder-

nity, in which the roots-orientedsounds of a ruralvallenato-stylecumbia arecombined with the sonidero's space-age sound effects. The creative appro-priation and cultivation of the Colombian cumbia to suit a specifically Mexi-can sensibility is another phenomenon with many parallelsworldwide, andworthy of further study in itself. The baile can also be seen as a variantof"deejayculture,"in which the deejay, in place of a live band, becomes thefocus of a music and dance scene. The sonidero, of course, is a unique sortof deejay,who serves simultaneouslyas entertainer,as a vehicle for commu-nication between distant parties, and, ideally, as a quasi-heroicfigure whotravels the same internationalmigrantpaths as his audience, albeitas a figurewho is at once empowered and empathic.Ultimately,however, the most distinctive features of the sonidero baile


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Ragland: Mexican Deejays 351are not the specific music genre, but the unique performance format andaudience participation. In effect, the music itself need not be overtly "syn-cretic" in character, since the sense of transnationalityso essential to theevent is achieved and dramatizedby other means-especially the role of thesonidero and the innovative use of technologies and media. It has becomecommonplace to observe that diasporic music events frequently invokememories of the homeland, particularlythrough renderings of specific mu-sic genres. At the same time, technologies have come to be used in variousways by transnational communities, who make recordings by combiningtracks recorded in separate continents, distribute them in several sites, andsonically invoke both ancestral and new homelands. The sonidero phenom-enon can be seen as a new, strikinglyoriginalexample of these sorts of prac-tices-in this case incorporatingmusic recordings,microphones, synthesizedsound effects, CDs, cassettes, hand-writtendedications, and ultimately, thepostal system.Those attendingsonidero bailes, havingvaryingdegrees of actual memo-ries of Mexico, develop a new sense of personal and national history, bothimagined and real, based upon Mexican and American myths, their ownexperiences, and those of relatives and friends. CarenKaplan(1996) pointsout the distinctive notion of memory among displaced communities, refer-ring to the fragmented mental images these individuals still maintain abouttheir home, along with those absorbed from the host society, which allowthem to create a new history and a new identity. The sonidero bailes accom-modate, dramatize, and legitimize this sort of ambiguous existence andmemories, with its sense of presence and absence, and its simultaneous in-vestments in both the US and Mexico. Baile attendees are able to imagine thepresence of those who are physically absent. They can speak to them andbring them into the local public space, while also addressing those that areat the dance who overhear the dialogue aswell. Throughthe space-agetravelsounds played by the deejay, the juxtaposition of American and Mexicanmusics, and the dedications of those present to those in Mexico, the experi-entialforegroundandbackgroundof the baile shiftsconstantlybetween NewYork and Mexico throughout the evening.This shifting could be seen to exemplify the concept of the moveableor expandable borders and the "new space" of the migratoryhomeland de-scribed by Americo Paredes (1993:46-47) in his writings about Texas-Mexi-can border culture andfolklore. Even more applicable to the sonidero worldis FredricJameson'snotion (1988) of "postmoder hyperspace,"where thereare no boundaries between Mexican and American culture. However, inorder to locate oneself in this new space, a new set of images, new coordi-nates and a series of more effective maps must be developed. Those attend-ing sonidero dances are not only redrawing these maps, but metaphorically


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352 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2003traveling on them, retracing the migration route many of them actually tookto get here.

Lastly, and perhaps most overtly, the sonidero dances represent onemore example of how communities and subcultures are able to exploit fea-tures of a commercial music industry to create their own expressive eventsin accordance with their own sensibilities and desires. The collaborativeconstruction of a unique sonic environment by the sonidero and those writ-ing dedications metaphorically addresses and ennobles the needs, desires,and creative fantasies about the community's future in their new homeland.It disrupts or bypasses the mainstream political economy of music, with itsdominant patterns of music industry ownership and dissemination. Thesound environment created by the sonidero, along with the salutations anddedications provided by the young dancers, can be seen as an example ofJacques Attali's "future order," where the "noise" created by individuals rep-resents the subversion of the stockpiling, commercialization, and corporatecontrol of music (Attali 1985:87). It is the noise of a community that is de-termined to maintain family and community cohesion despite being geo-graphically scattered, socially marginalized, and politically powerless. Thesonidero offers an opportunity for these individuals to feel at home and beheard, a place to share their experience with those physically present in theminds of the dancers themselves. Finally, these dances are a place for Mexi-can youth to socialize, to express a shared identity as Mexican Americans,and to be on the cutting edge of something new, exciting, and completelymodem.

AcknowledgementsIwant to express my gratitude to Steven Feld, Juan Flores, Peter Manuel, andRobert Smith for their invaluable comments and advice during the variousstages of the writing of this paper. Special thanks to my deejay informants:Fausto Salazar(Potencia Latina), Angel Lezama (Orgullosito), Arturo Escalante(Condor), Cesar Bravo (Congo), CesarJuarez (Fantasma), Francisco Martinez(Candela), and Armando Cuautle (Master). Also to the many baile attendeesin Queens and Brooklyn, New York and Passaic and Patterson, New Jerseywho politely answered my questions, informed me of upconiing dances, andallowed me to take photographs and collect some of their dedications andsalutations. All interviews cited were conducted in Spanish, and are trans-lated by the author. This paper is a revised and expanded version of the ar-ticle, "Mediating Between Two Worlds: The Sonideros of Mexican YouthDances," published in Voices: TheJournal of New York Folklore, (Fall-Win-ter, 2000); Volume 26: 8-14.


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Ragland: Mexican Deejays 353Notes

1. In recent years, New York and New Jersey have seen a greater increase of immigrantsfrom Mexico City (particularlyan impoverished settlement on the roadleading to Puebla,calledCiudadNezahualcoyotl, nicknamed "NezaYork,"which has grown due to funds sent by Mexi-can workers in New York).2. As one young man who had been livingin New York for over eight yearstold me, "WhereI am from, when you turn sixteen you are ready to go to the US. You are considered to be anadult andyou are obligated to work and send money back home; you must do what you can tohelp your family."3. This situation recalls the case of the pico deejays in Cartegena, Colombia researchedby Pacini Herandez, but with a different twist. Among the Afro-Colombianpico deejays, themusic that is played on the system is earlyAfro-poprecordings, which have been renamed andredefined according to local aesthetics and conventions. The pic6 deejay extols the music's"Africanroots," foregrounding a local view of the community's Africanheritage as mediatedby his stockpile of recordings.4. Naco is a term often used by Mexican youth from Mexico City to describe a "hillbilly"from the Northern region of Mexico (primarily states bordering the US). The phrase, naconorteno refers to a popular, but "less sophisticated" accordion-based dance music (featuringthe cumbia rhythm), also associated with the relatively "rural" order region.5. Though most sonideros deny any connection to gangs, they admit to reading boastfulmessages and "shout-outs"between members and groups (see example #3). Some soniderodances, mainly in Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been disrupted in the past by fights betweenalleged gang members. However, the police are a visible presence at most Mexican soniderodances (even the Bingo Hall in Paterson where gang members are not known to attend).

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