Here, it is useful to turn to Cruz’s positioning—both as a gendered and racialized subject—in the salsa industry to understand the factors which led to her recognition, and the tensions inherent in her success and visibility. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, women have been influential to the production and development of salsa, especially as the genre struggled to enter a new era of Latin musical production in the U.S. (Aparicio 2002, 136). Artists like Celia Cruz, Yolanda la Duke, and La India gave much to the genre in terms of artistry and sound, but the overt masculine gendering of salsa made it easy for their contributions to go unrecorded. The invocation of drugs, sex, and violence in many classic salsa songs (El Malo [The Bad] or
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In addition, her racial positioning was frequently erased; she was always Cuban first, but Black second. Even today, Cruz’s racial identity is so subsumed by the allure of her pan-Latinidad (she has become an icon for unifying Latinas/os of all backgrounds) that artists of all racial identities perform her music without giving much thought to the identity politics at play in Cruz’s music, their performance of it, or their positionality as non-Afro-Cubans (Gosin 2016). While many of Cruz’s songs employ the use of the word “negro/a”—which is literally translated as “Black,” but carries a semantic value akin to the n-word—her Afro-Cuban identity allows her to use the word in an act of reclamation. However, when artists perform her works posthumously, they continue to use the word, perpetuating the negative racialization of Afro-Cubans and dark-skinned Latinas/os. A striking example of this is Jennifer Lopez’s tribute performance to Celia Cruz during the 2013 American Music Awards. As a light-skinned Latina, Lopez embodied Cruz (a racialized subject) on an international stage, in front of millions of viewers, receiving a round of thunderous applause at the end of the five-minute set, which included Bemba Colora’, a song which uses the n-word …show more content…
Her consistent musical expressions of Afro-Cubanidad exposed Latinas/os and white consumers in the U.S. to a segment of the Cuban population that went largely unacknowledged, both on a political and sociocultural level. In fact, Cruz’s overt acceptance of her Afro-Cubanidad helped lift salsa out of its denigrated status as a music of “malandros [lowlifes]” and into a global arena of praise and cosmopolitanidad (Waxer 2002, 225). The merits of salsa’s transition into the global music industry and its commodification by middle- and elite-class listeners is a subject for another paper entirely (see: Waxer, “Llegó la Salsa”). What is important to recognize here is Cruz’s contributions to the Blackening of salsa. This is not to say that salsa was not a style influenced by Black performativity and musicality before Cruz. After all, its roots in working-class barrios already lends it not only a “street” sensibility, but also an Afro-racialized subjectivity (Waxer 2002, 230). Rather, Cruz strongly highlighted salsa’s African roots in more explicit ways than others: through her body, her performance, her music, and her
In addition, her racial positioning was frequently erased; she was always Cuban first, but Black second. Even today, Cruz’s racial identity is so subsumed by the allure of her pan-Latinidad (she has become an icon for unifying Latinas/os of all backgrounds) that artists of all racial identities perform her music without giving much thought to the identity politics at play in Cruz’s music, their performance of it, or their positionality as non-Afro-Cubans (Gosin 2016). While many of Cruz’s songs employ the use of the word “negro/a”—which is literally translated as “Black,” but carries a semantic value akin to the n-word—her Afro-Cuban identity allows her to use the word in an act of reclamation. However, when artists perform her works posthumously, they continue to use the word, perpetuating the negative racialization of Afro-Cubans and dark-skinned Latinas/os. A striking example of this is Jennifer Lopez’s tribute performance to Celia Cruz during the 2013 American Music Awards. As a light-skinned Latina, Lopez embodied Cruz (a racialized subject) on an international stage, in front of millions of viewers, receiving a round of thunderous applause at the end of the five-minute set, which included Bemba Colora’, a song which uses the n-word …show more content…
Her consistent musical expressions of Afro-Cubanidad exposed Latinas/os and white consumers in the U.S. to a segment of the Cuban population that went largely unacknowledged, both on a political and sociocultural level. In fact, Cruz’s overt acceptance of her Afro-Cubanidad helped lift salsa out of its denigrated status as a music of “malandros [lowlifes]” and into a global arena of praise and cosmopolitanidad (Waxer 2002, 225). The merits of salsa’s transition into the global music industry and its commodification by middle- and elite-class listeners is a subject for another paper entirely (see: Waxer, “Llegó la Salsa”). What is important to recognize here is Cruz’s contributions to the Blackening of salsa. This is not to say that salsa was not a style influenced by Black performativity and musicality before Cruz. After all, its roots in working-class barrios already lends it not only a “street” sensibility, but also an Afro-racialized subjectivity (Waxer 2002, 230). Rather, Cruz strongly highlighted salsa’s African roots in more explicit ways than others: through her body, her performance, her music, and her