I grew up in a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood, where salsa and hiphop were the primary forms of dance and music. Whenever I visited my friends’ houses, there’d be some form of salsa or bachata music playing, and of course, when there’s music, there has to be dancing (not me, I can’t move my body to that music to save my life). Me, not being able to identify as Hispanic or Latino, never really felt excluded though. It was a music and dance that could be enjoyed by anyone. It was inclusive for anyone and everyone. Other than that, I didn’t know much about the history of salsa and other Latino music/dances. At the Museum of the City of New York, I learned that it wasn’t just Latin-American cultures infused into salsa; it was a mixture of Caribbean, African, and even European cultures.

If there was one thing I knew about salsa, it was that salsa is not calm and simple. It is loud and brash, and it gets in your face, and that was what I was greeted with at the museum. There was music on blast, videos, and artifacts, like Celia Cruz’s golden shoes and her shimmery dress, Tito Puente’s bright red suit. Salsa is not quiet; it’s loud, it gets in your face with the shiny, colorful suits. I knew what salsa was, a dance and a music, but I didn’t know the history of it. I learned the relevance of people like Celia Cruz and Tito Puente to people in the Harlem community. They gave these people inspiration and a voice in a time when their voices were silenced. People would just get together and dance and listen to salsa, and I think that’s a really beautiful thing, that everyone could be united by something so simple, even in such a troubling period of time. This exhibit made me more aware of the culture in the community that I still live in.

Aside from the salsa exhibit, one of my favorite exhibits was the current/modern activism exhibit. Considering how much history I saw on Harlem, and the discrimination the community faced, I didn’t expect any current events.

However, there was a Black Lives Matter exhibit that really drew me in. I thought it was really useful to have some stories of present-day discrimination to compare between the older movements, such as back in the 1970s. It shows that despite the time changes, prejudice and discrimination still exists in NYC, against the same groups and more. I also really enjoyed the interviews in the back with present-day activists, which happened to be young people, like myself.

Not only were there artifacts pertaining to the BLM movement, there were artifacts from the gay and sexual liberation movement (also some from the present-day). It was just interesting and eye-opening to see so much history in the city that I live in, history that I never bothered to learn about. I was also surprised to see so much variety of content. When I first arrived at the museum, I just expected to learn about salsa, but I left knowing more about the history of women’s suffrage, AIDS, activism in the Harlem community, and the importance of salsa to the African and Latin community.