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"Hi Edie, A London Salsa freak!!!" You have it all wrong brother. "the mixing cultures issue" is so old... it's so... "last week". It's all in your head, and whoever planted it there, needs to have their heads examined. Just go, dance, and have a great time. Hi there Edie, This is [dancer] here from London. How are you? Good i hope. Congratulations on the wedding front. Hope you guys have a great married life together. The reason I am writing to you Edie is because of this article below. I suggest you read it now before you, read on with my e-mail. I mean what can you say about such an article. In the Salsa world right now where everyone is trying unite and have fun. We get such an idiotic article. We could do without such Racist, one tracked elements. Raul, (The Editor) releases this magazine monthly. He has offended so many people including myself ( I'm _____) with such an outrageous feature this month. It was released last week and I have not stopped hearing about this the whole time. It is very obvious that a lot of people have taken this to heart. And so, my friends and me have decided to hand this matter to you, as ____ is a Salsaweb Cityguide representative for London, or that's what he claims to be. We as just dancers or instructors cannot do anything about this, as there are no other magazines here that we could oppose with. On a personal note ( and this is only my opinion ), he is an absolute disgrace to even be classified as a Salsa dancer, let alone a Salsa instructor. He is organizing parties with the Salsaweb name, and I didn't know this till yesterday. So, if anything he's mis-using the whole site for his own purposes. He poses no threat to any of us, but a lot of my students have really been ticked off, and want us to do something about this ( my students being mainly of the non-Latin origin ). So I kindly ask you to make a forum out of this and see what people have to say, and also hopefully expose idiots like Raul to them. Thanking you from the whole Salsa dance community of London, Kind Regards" The following is an Extract taken from Que Pasa magazine, issue 28, March 2001. Editorial by Raul Leon Joya: "You must know that at the present time a lot of qualified professional teachers from Cuba and Puerto Rico are here in the UK, and they find it difficult to teach here because all the places already have one or two or three teachers. But the worst thing is that these venues have names of 'salsa' countries and hardly any of the teachers are Cuban/Puerto Rican.Instead people who are teaching in those venues are from countries that have no relevance to Latin Culture Tropical Dance music) and they often don't have the proper training. It's unfair that those people are countries find it difficult just to survive. It's a pity that most of the managers of these clubs also support this problem, because they just want to see the venue working and they don't care about the quality of the teaching. I want to give some examples from my personal experience. Before I came to the UK, I was learning English my whole life in different countries, from local teachers. After I came here, I discovered that I couldn't say hardly anything and realized that I had been wasting my time before. My English has improved since I arrived here and started learning from English people. The same thing applies to Salsa. If you want to learn salsa properly, I advise you to find the right people. That reminds me, if you go back through the history of jazz in the United States. Years ago when black people were restricted from performing on stage or in the movies, white people took their place with make up and supposedly authentic costumes and played music and danced as black people. In that time, black culture was stolen by the white people. The same thing is happening now. We call this piracy. I am sorry for some of my friends who read this and may be upset but as editor of this magazine, I feel it is an obligation to tell my readers what I believe is happening, on behalf of the teachers who are trying hard to survive in this country" Raul Leon Joya is not, nor ever has been, a London Cityguide Correspondent. He is not allowed to represent Salsaweb in any way. Salsaweb has no comment on what he has written, and although it is his right to freely write whatever he wants, I personally, do not agree with his beliefs. - Edie, The Salsa FREAK |
