One of the pleasures of living in Silicon Valley is seeing the interplay of many different cultures and watching how they mix and combine. A fascinating meld of art and culture has happened between Salsa and Indian Music. Giju John is a Silicon Valley engineer by day and salsa dancer and Indian music performer by night. I am learning salsa dancing myself, and when I saw this guy practice dancing (just practice, mind you), my jaw just dropped. More interestingly, he has put out an album of Indian music where he mixes salsa music with Indian pop. In this video from the album, he dances up a storm.
India has a number of salsa studios now. Another sign of the influence of salsa is that Jai Ho, the ending song from Slumdog Millionaire, has parts in Spanish. Did anyone else notice that?
You’ll notice from the video that lots of other kinds of Asian-Americans are into salsa dancing. I have seen Vietnamese-Americans fusing salsa dancing styles with their own Vietnamese music, and at salsa clubs, I have seen lots of Asian Americans enjoying themselves.
Salsa dancing is really a lot fun, and I recommend it highly. Not only is it enjoyable, but it’s great exercise too!
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3 Comments to “India Salsa Fusion”
THE_BANANA_REPUBLIC wrote:
Oh yeah, I saw this guy at a Hot Salsa Friday before. I hadn’t realized his night entertainment job is as big as it is.
When I saw him, his amateur team danced to a song he produced. After they performed, PB&G had him sing an a cappella of the song for us. It a cool, I guess… I came for salsa.
Anyway, there are indeed a great number of asian americans that go salsa dancing in south bay. Though when you’re hitting up the salsa clubs, they tend to be the elder crowd — I’m talking 30s. Vietnamese are really into cha-cha, so I suppose making the transition from cha-cha to salsa isn’t that great of a step.
You know where the real dance scene is at, though?: Swing. But that tends to be more based in deep SF than south bay, and you get more white people than asians in swing dancing. People are more sociable in the swing community. Swing is about having fun, and salsa is about being sensuous and secksay. Unless you’re pulling tricks in a salsa routine, you’ll get a greater workout from social swing dancing.
Posted on 14-Mar-09 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
Jeff wrote:
The elder crowd is their 30s? Gosh, I wonder what that would make me. You are right, salsa is not the hardest workout in the world, but it’s pretty good for us in the ancient crowd!
Sounds like I’ll have to learn swing some time soon. Thanks for the pointer.
Posted on 16-Mar-09 at 8:01 pm | Permalink
8Asians.com » Indian Music and Cha-cha-cha: More Latin-Indian Fusion from Giju John wrote:
[...] John, who has previously fused Indian music and Salsa dancing, was watching my salsa class just the other day. He was my salsa teacher’s teacher, and I hope my [...]
Posted on 22-Sep-09 at 6:01 am | Permalink
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