The New York City Bands Reimagining Salsa and Challenging the Patriarchy

Ra ta ta, tá tá. The sound of the clave plays across Brooklyn on a windy Friday night in September. Under the Brooklyn Bridge in the Dumbo Archway, Lulada Club ​​— a 10-member, all-woman band — starts playing their instruments along to Hector Lavoe’s “Mi Gente,” which a DJ had been playing as the band set up. The crowd moves closer to the stage, singing the salsa anthem in unison: “Oigan mi gente / Los más grande de este mundo / Siempre me hacen sentir / Un orgullo profundo / Los llamé.” Everyone cheers at the end of the song, applauding the group and anticipating their next move.

Just miles away in Bedstuy, Las Mariquitas is taking the stage at C’Mon Everybody, a gay bar and club known for live music along Franklin Avenue. The queer and trans ensemble, made up of 15 rotating members, plays as a community of fans surround the stage, all dancing together. Eventually, the band dives into a cover of La Lupe’s “Qué Te Pedí.”

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Both Lulada Club and Las Mariquitas are intergenerational bands from New York City, reimagining salsa music and bringing the soundtracks of Seventies-era salsa to life. By emphasizing the music’s roots of liberation and proudly representing their identities onstage, they are also confronting the genre’s long history of misogyny and queerphobia — and challenging patriarchal standards of straight men that have long plagued salsa’s history.

“If we think about the message that has led us here today, we want to see more diversity onstage,” says Andrea Chavarro, the founder of Lulada Club. “I think in salsa and many other genres, there isn’t a lot of gender diversity.”

The two bands play old school music and original songs that pump energy into a new generation of salsa. They’re empowering listeners as well, drawing on histories of anti-patriarchy, community, and Afro-indigenous resistance that lies at the core of the genre.

“I want to abolish patriarchy in salsa. I think this is a duty that honors its lineage. Salsa is the music that narrated the direct action of the Young Lords and to a certain extent the Black Panthers. It has that core at its root as liberation music. [Salsa is] at the bed of ancestral language which the colonizers couldn’t get rid of, like in the rhythm,” says Mobéy Lola Irizarry, co-founder, creative director, and conguere of Las Mariquitas.

Organized in early 2022, Las Mariquitas was formed “as a political project and as an urgent need for there to be queer places to feel safe in salsa,” Lola explains. “As a trans-fem person, it was really unsafe for me at times. I had instances where I got into fights in these established clubs and was not welcomed in the ritual that was happening.”

Lulada Club, meanwhile, takes its name from a famous drink from Cali, Colombia; the moniker is also a nod to the Buena Vista Social Club, the famed Cuban ensemble that formed in the late Nineties. Lulada Club stepped on the New York scene in 2021, inspired by the all-woman band Orchestra D’Cache that has existed in Colombia for 31 years.

“For some reason in 2023, there are still not a lot of women onstage. They are limited to the instruments they play. I think salsa in particular is very machista. [A woman’s] role is always the singer. I’m the singer, but also the director,” says Chavarro. Her role challenges the traditional practice of the director role being handed off to a man.

Although a colonial past still haunts salsa, Lulada Club and Las Mariquitas represent interventions in the face of misogyny, queerphobia, and other prejudices that have existed across Latin music. The roots of salsa go back to the 15th century, with much of its history forged between confrontations of indigenous natives, Spanish colonialism, and the African slave trade.

Over the decades, Yoruba, Bantu, Fon, Kongo and other African musical influences introduced polyrhythm and collective gender participation to popular music. Indigenous musical heritage contributed the use of maracas, güiros, and slit drums and the call-and-response technique employed in socio-religious ceremonies, all components that shaped Afro-indigenous religion and spiritual rituals of Cuban Santería, Haitian vodou, and more. Folk contredanses, stringed and wind instruments, ensemble orchestration, 10-line poetic stanzas, and certain styles of romantic narratives drawn from Europe shaped the music further, with those traditions disbursing strict ideas of gender and sexual identifications.

Afro-indigenous religions and music that emerged starting around the 15th century became a guide for a variety of forced migrants from all parts of Africa and indigenous people, as well as those of mixed race, constructing a new religious, political, and cultural identity as a form of self-preservation. Their legacy paved the way, generations later, for the New York City salsa boom in the Sixties and Seventies, a result of the mass Puerto Rican migration that brought a wave of art and music with it. The synergy of new musicians in condensed areas like Spanish Harlem and the Bronx birthed the Fania All Stars, a 43-member group (all men with the exception of Celia Cruz, the only woman) who toured around the world for sold-out concerts. Whether they knew it or not, the ancestors and Fania paved the way for future generations like Lulada Club and Las Mariquitas, who honor and uphold their legacy today.

Still, throughout salsa’s history, stories of women getting used and abused abound. One example is La Lupe, one of the biggest female stars in salsa in the Sixties. The iconic performer faced major professional setbacks when the men who ran the industry left her behind, defacing her reputation by calling her crazy and claiming she abused drugs even though she and her family have denied those claims.

Lulada Club and Las Mariquitas have experienced ugly and gendered prejudices firsthand. Chavarro, along with her co-band leader and saxophonist Katherine Ocampo, shared that they were insulted by a bar owner who refused to pay the band more money, even though it was a big night. In a separate incident, another man claimed to have discovered them. “When I walk on stage, men feel a sense of ownership or give unsolicited advice. ‘She’s singing too soft or she’s just mumbling. Or she needs to hit the conga a little harder.’ They would never say that to a man,” Chavarro says.

Lola and  pianist Kneeco Hanton, tres player and dance leader Jamila Ramon, trombonist Aaron “Aani” Kisslinger, and singer Adriana Vergara also explain that traditional salsa spaces are often hostile towards the Q&T community. They’ve experienced people denying their basic right to use the bathroom, they’ve received weird looks  and have even witnessed verbal and physical violence.

Despite these episodes, both bands are reaffirmed by the followings they’ve cultivated. They feel supported by venues like The Clemente, Lincoln Center, SummerStage, El Puente, and many others who show support and respect to the groups and their craft.

They’ve also found an outlet creating original music that responds to the ongoing issues but that also extends the salsa canon. Lulada’s songs are written from a woman’s perspective and establish agency in narratives that have traditionally come from a male perspective. In the past, stars like Cuban singer Celia Cruz experienced, often had to perform material written by men, despite the fact that she was capable of writing her own songs, too.

Lulada Club references the women of salsa on “Lulada Llegó,” an original song the band uses to close off each set. It starts with a call-and-response between the piano and the horns, followed by lyrics toasting to Celia Cruz and La Lupe as they share the recipe of the Lulada drink: “Las santas aquí presentes, Celia y La Lupe con su guaguancó / Candela, caleña y poder femenino y esta orquesta te traigo yo. “

Las Mariquitas music is a collection of self-love, resistance to oppression, and speaking to issues of the land like in “Cuidao Con Ese Humo.” The percussionist-heavy tune incorporates bomba elements, focused on a sica rhythm while celebrating the natural world: “Hay un humo que no me dejas respirar / Y una realidad que no podemos evitar / Si envenenamos este planeta, también nos vamos a envenenar.”

These are the sounds that power Las Mariquitas second set at C’mon Everybody in September. Through Cheo Feliciano’s 1971 song, the band ends the evening with a tribute to Anacaona, the Arawak princess who fought against Spanish colonization. People dance in a circle, waving a handkerchief while the backdrop of the Afro-Cuban rhythm pattern transports them to the Orisha ceremonies that point to spiritual freedom.

“When we play, [the audience] says,’ I’ve needed this my whole life,” Aani from Las Mariquitas says. “People don’t have to choose parts of themselves. In order to imagine new futures and possibilities, we have to look towards the lineage of creation and struggle from our ancestors. From here, we can dream of liberated futures.”

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