El Periódico

El Periodico de Ayer by Hector Lavoe

My first consciousness of salsa was watching my step-father sitting on the linoleum floor of the living room in the apartment we lived in Fillmore listening to Oscar de Leon. I was twelve years old. I remembered Oscar de Leon’s songs sounding too adult, too slow, and too narrative for me at the time. There was the Puerto Rican salsa that he played on weekends at home and then there was the Colombian salsa the aunts and uncles danced to at family parties: high heels, sweat, couples dancing in Marucha's carpeted living room or Mona’s second floor apartment while the little ones played Mario Brothers in the bedrooms, Vitamina dancing with the tias, and Mamita sitting in the kitchen table eating.

The irony of life is that it is through my son that I have begun to see salsa through very different lens, through a writer’s lens, to appreciate the narrative richness in the songs, little windows into stories of life. For me now, it is the storytelling element of salsa, most specifically the classic salsa, that as a writer I really appreciate. Little gems. It is now that I understand why perhaps my step-father enjoyed listening to salsa. Fast forward twenty years, and my son has the ear, the sensitivity for salsa. He loves Ismael Rivera and Hector Lavoe and can detect their voices in the supermarket or the colectivo. His childhood memories will be inundated with the sounds of classic salsa for sure. How did this happen?

El Payaso Porcelana

It was chance, coincidence, a lucky merging. I’m listening to Hector Lavoe’s Periodico de Ayer while I’m sweeping one afternoon and the narrative of this song conjured up in my mind the article I had read in El Colombiano of a man who works as a street clown in the streets of Medellin. It was as if I had seen the sparkle of a diamond on the kitchen floor, kneeing down and discovering the truth, disguised and hidden in the dust. That afternoon I sat at my computer to write the story of a son who discovers the whereabouts of his father, who he hasn’t seen since the age of seven, through an article in El Colombiano. Periodico de Ayer and the story of this man were the impetuses for my story.

Edith

Live Performance of Periodico de Ayer