2008 Woodie Awards
On The Beat goes grocery shopping with the salsa king of Omaha
On The Beat
Brent Crampton
"There's a song if you want to laugh, there's a song if you want to cry, there's a song if you want to cut your veins."
This is salsa music, according to Blandon Joiner, co-founder of Omaha-based Salserodalante Productions. And for Joiner, there's been a salsa track in the background of his life through most of the aforementioned actions, sans cutting the veins.
As I walked through the aisles of produce at Hy-Vee with Joiner and fellow founder of Salserodalante Productions, Jennifer Sibley, Joiner explained that he lives the life of a salsero, one who is an avid connoisseur and/or dancer of salsa. It's a lifestyle choice, and it's one he's overtly charismatic about.
"It's a way out of your problems and drama," Joiner said of salsa. "And it's not like a drug where you get f#@*ed up and when it's over, you want more so you can forget the shit again. Salsa-tells you to change your life."
And if salsa is Joiner's fix, he gets lifted on a regular basis.
With no doubt in his mind, Joiner admits that he and his counterpart, Sibley, have created the current salsa scene in Omaha. He gave Arthur's (a Latin music hot spot in Omaha, soon to close its doors) the music for its first Latin nights. In the past, Joiner and Sibley have hosted weekly private and public lessons at venues such as Espana, Bourbon Street, Arthur's, The Meeting Place and Jus Dance Studio. Joiner and Sibley pride themselves on being the first to promote a salsa night that played a majority of salsa music, as opposed to reggaeton, merengue, ranchero and cumbia.
"It wasn't just the dance," Joiner said. "I explained the culture; I sleep, eat and breathe the culture."
Well, according to the contents of his grocery cart, he ate eggs and hot peppers. And judging by his choice of the nightlife culture, he probably doesn't get much sleep either.
Switch scenes to Joiner and Sibley's kitchen, as if he were an encyclopedia "salsa-nnica." Joiner was dodging grease flying out of the pan of frying peppers while he named off the choral singers as well as the bongo, conga, bass guitar and piano players of the current song playing on the stereo.
He explained that the new generation of salsa musicians just aren't the same.
"The African drum is the root of the Latin music," Joiner said. "Most of the current salsa songs are revised and looped versions from songs that date back to the '50s through the '70s.
"Back then you could just play a song and their panties would just come down by themselves," Joiner said of old-school salsa's slick appeal toward women. "Now it's all about fame and money."
Coming from a purist standpoint, Joiner was initiated into salsa from his time with the Navy in Panama and Spain. While he went to high school at Northwest, his culture and geographic sabbatical shaped his lifestyle choice of a salsero, dancing up to seven nights a week. When his mother became sick in 2001, he moved back to Omaha.
"When I came here, I was depressed for the first year and I sat in my bed and cried," Joiner said, dissatisfied by the salsa scene here.
"There was no energy in it, and the clubs advertised salsa but wouldn't have known it if it came up and bit them in the ass," he said.
Sibley was also discouraged by the lack of a true salsa scene in Omaha, so she encouraged him to begin teaching salsa classes. Flash forward nearly five years to the present and you can currently find Joiner and Sibley at El Museo Latino on 24th and L Streets every Friday from 9 p.m. until 4 a.m. the next day. And indeed, you'll find them dancing well into the night.
Upon arriving there at 1:30 a.m. one Friday, I found a room full of movement. People from every age group and shade of Latin, South American and Spanish heritage were there. Admittedly, even though I wasn't the only white guy, it felt refreshing to be in Omaha and also be the minority in a group. Either way, I soon found that the basic premise here is that if you can salsa, then it's on. Even more so, if you're a short, stocky man but you can salsa, then you can dance with the tallest, most beautiful, shortest skirt-wearing women in the room. It's not like the high school prom wall flower contest; they just want to dance.
"That's the thing that's unique about salsa," Sibley said. "As we've traveled, we saw that salsa brings unity to everybody, people from Israel, Lebanon, France, England, Japan, Korea."
With percussion instruments and drums in the corner, Joiner DJ-ed the music while interweaving in dance with the guests, the tall ceiling and hardwood floors and the complimentary, alcohol-free refreshments, I realized that this was a hot and undiscovered after-hours party that I had stumbled upon. I also realized that if I slipped a flask into my back pocket and kept the pours under the table, no one seemed to mind. It was the first solid and consistent after-hours I've found in the area without the drive to Council Bluffs and without having to pay to see fake tits.
And through the acculturation process the two have indulged in, "the people that are receptive to it, it truly changes their lives," Sibley said.
Speaking of his experiences in teaching salsa, Joiner said, "When you have an energy, I can look at a woman and see that they are going through a transition in their life and then I touch them like this, and it's over!"
Joiner told me of one woman who was in an unhappy marriage with all the white picket fences. Living in a million-dollar house, having the husband with a successful job, she had what the American dream told her to have. But she had everything without the zest in life.
"The music helped her get in touch with herself," Joiner said. "The music helped her say, 'I can get out of this marriage and deal with the consequences because I have salsa.'"
"It's the one dance where I can touch a woman anywhere, and when the song is over she thanks you," Joiner said. "It's innocent. The woman can feel good, put on that dress she would never wear in public, and when that song is over, the high isn't, and you'll feel more in tune with yourself."
Joiner and Sibley are available for private and public lessons for all levels of dancers. You can find them every Friday night at El Museo Latino at 4701 S. 25th St., from 9 p.m. until 4 a.m. It's an all ages event with a $7 cover charge and a free salsa class at the beginning of the night. For more information on future events and private classes, visit salserodalante.com.