EXERPT | NYTimes July 23, 2009

THREE in the morning had come and gone on Sunday when the band went onstage, but the dance floor at the El Morocco club in Hamilton Heights had been packed for hours. As soon as La Banda Gorda, which had flown up from Santo Domingo for the show, broke into the telltale galloping rhythm of merengue, the crowd erupted with applause and joyous shouts and surged into motion.

There is an old and familiar lament one hears a lot in New York City, harking back to a supposed golden age of Latin music in the 1950s and ’60s, and it goes something like this: Things ain’t what they used to be. You can hardly find places to see good live performances of salsa, a genre that was practically invented in New York, much less other Latin styles, or so goes the complaint.

Well, yes and no, as the frenetic scene at this year-old club suggested. It’s true that clubs like the Palladium and El Corso, where Latin music used to be featured all week long, no longer exist. But with the hip-hop influenced reggaetón craze having clearly peaked, New York Latinos are again hungry to see live bands, especially those playing music that they can dance to, whether salsa, merengue, timba, rock en Español or cumbia. And in a throwback to the good old days, non-Latinos are also joining in, drawn by the free salsa dancing lessons that precede many shows.

“The scene hasn’t died out, it’s just changed,” said Eddie Batiz, a D.J. and promoter who runs the Cafe Remy in Brooklyn, which focuses on live salsa with a dash of merengue and bachata on weekends. “Reggaetón came and destroyed the salsa generation, but there was definitely an oversaturation, and now people want to get back to their roots and try to mix things up, which means there’s interest in everything from romantic salsa to hard-core mambo and cha-cha-cha.”

NY Times Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/arts/music/24latin.html