Sound Taste

Latinas opened the door for gay marriage, Pt. 2

This week we found out New York has opened a back-door way to legalize gay marriage in the state. And once again, like I wrote about here, there's a courageous Latina setting precedent.

Gov. David Paterson's decision to have state agencies draw up rules consistent with accepting same-sex marriages performed in places where it is legal to do so (such as Canada, Massachusetts and, maybe soon, California) was based on a court case decided a few months back, Martinez v. Monroe County.

Rochester residents Patricia Martinez and Lisa Ann Golden won the right to have Martinez's health benefits as a community college administrator extended to her spouse, who she'd married in Canada in 2004. Not a shocker that health insurance has become important enough to warrant enduring a rough, invasive court proceeding.

The case was reported when the decision came down, and was clearly recognized as a precedent-setter. The news this week in the low-key directive drafted by the gov's legal counsel was that by asking state agencies to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally elsewhere, Paterson was institutionalizing a potentiality.

Let me be clear. I'm not a defender of the importance of marriage as a concept. After all, the institution was invented to control women and property (thanks, Engels!). But seeing families and couples denied rights automatically granted to any random married couple is just wrong.

[Pix of Patricia Martinez and Lisa Ann Golden via NYT]

Friday vallenato

June is accordion month, so get ready for posts full of squeezebox goodness throughout the month.

For starters, check this video preview of the Smithsonian doc "Accordion Kings: the Story of Colombian Vallenato Music" (sorry, embedding was not an option). The segment highlights Yemie Arrieta Ramos, a young girl (she looks no more than 9) who was the first woman ever to win the Valledupar Vallenato Kings Festival.

When she starts attending the Turco Gil Academy, which according to the clip, has taught some 2,000 kids traditional vallenato over the last two decades, her father tells her she's picked a "man's instrument" and has to forget she's a girl.

She says, "A woman does not have a man's ability." I winced a little at that, but waddayagonnado? At least they let her play, and she kicks ass.

She and her pint-size accompanists (including the smokin' Alejandro on percussion) totally win over the crowd, and it's really mesmerizing to see her zone out, leaning her cheek against the accordion, eyes closed.

If you're in DC June 6, you can catch a free screening of the doc. Otherwise, you can read a bit more about it here.

Also check this video of five-time Vallenato King Hugo Carlos Granado at last year's festival, singing "La puya rebelde."

Who's local? NYers and belonging

"No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge. That before the internet cafe plugged itself in, you got your shoes resoled in the mom-and-pop operation that used to be there. You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now." (Colson Whitehead, "City Limits," The Colossus of New York)

It's the eternal fight. Who belongs here? Who gets to claim New Yorker status? Who are the arrivistes and who are the natives?

My family's been here since 1959, I was born here, went to public school, have witnessed the city up close and personal for at least half of my life. I have no doubts about my New York-ness. But there are others who can also claim it.

When Whitehead's essay came out, it hit a chord with me and all my old New York friends. It was a point of connection between us native-born and those who had gone native. But it still required a price of entry. While Whitehead focuses on personal geographies, what is implied is a series of relationships, not just to sites, but to communities.

Which brings me to a couple of pieces that came out this week. David Gonzalez, the NY Times' BoogieRican conscience, wrote a post in the City Room blog about the unbearable whiteness (and occasional blackness) of the city's "Ask a Local" tourism campaign.

David has several beefs, but one is that of all the celebs featured in the ads, 80% are white and none are Latino, in a city that's currently 27% Latino. NYC&Co. said that Willie Colón will be in a future ad, as will America Ferrera (Mexican Ugly Betty is from Jackson Heights; Honduran America is from LA).

But the deeper issue is that the celebs featured, whether only nominal NYers (Jimmy Fallon?) or bona fide New Yorky people (Debbie Harry, born and raised in New Jersey), end up giving very Manhattan-below-96th St.-centric advice, as if there is nothing to see in the nabes where non-whites live.

This was one of the reasons I co-wrote Nueva York. I wanted others to come to my city and do the sort of tourism I do when I travel. Check out different nabes, different groups within a city, their clubs, their markets, their everyday lives. But NYC&Co. (which was supremely uninterested in our project) has no imagination.

Then there was the hanging-on-a-slim-thread cover story in this week's New York magazine, another retread of Brooklyn as the site of anxiety over who "belongs" more: the "brownstoners" or the "bitter renters." All assumed to have access to home ownership if only they tried hard enough. Public housing people (never mind any Section 8 or been-in-the-hood-before-it-was-desirable folks) are only background at best, a nuisance at worst.

It's one of my basic beefs about changes in NY chemistry. The city has always had ambitious young white things moving in among the native poor. But it used to be they had to learn to get along. What's new is that people with $3M homes think that somehow entitles them to more rights about the space than their poorer neighbors. Call it emotional eminent domain.

[pix of my high school, Newtown, in Elmhurst, via forgotten-ny.com; Screen cap of Debbie Harry "Just Ask the Locals" ad via NYC&Co.; illustration for "The What You Are Afraid Of" via NY Mag]

Jailhouse merengue

While in the clink last week, merengue de calle star Omega made good use of his time, writing a new song, "Dueño," which you can preview below in a bare-bones video filmed in the Najayo jail. (Thx to remolacha for highlighting the video.)

The song is a basic boast:

Dueño, el talento que no tiene nombre ni tiene horizonte
Sueño, mi música no tiene cola ni ruido de pistola
Aparecerán los que hablen mal de mí, pero yo soy pa tí
Ellos jugarán con lo más sagrado que yo tenga, te lo querrán quitar...

Basically: my talent has no limit, my music doesn't need gun sounds (gangsta posturing), people gossip about me, want to take away what most matters (but they won't succeed).

Love the minimal but clearly merengue de calle beats against the bench, the lazy but on-time choruses. Guess his success is not all due to production, after all. Also love how savvy it is about using the on-the-fly, lo-tech uses of YouTube (he starts out, "Let's fix this video, which is turning into a piece of crap, and do something to send to YouTube."

While serving a sentence for allegedly beating his wife, Omega also played a concert. Not quite Johnny Cash in San Quentin, but still in the tradition of jail time serving as a boost to an outlaw image. This fueled rumors that the jail time was a publicity stunt. Who knows.

Omega served only a week of his three-month prison sentence and was released on RD$1M (about US $29,000) bail yesterday after his wife dropped the charges.

[Najayo concert pix via diario libre]

To Boldly Go

Just as a friend thought enough of my post about the Cali Supremes decision on gay marriage and Latinos to re-post it in its entirety, I can't say that I can improve on mole333's post over at the fabulous Culture Kitchen. Nothing like the meeting of geekery and social justice.

Now that the California Supreme Court (all but ONE of whose judges were appointed by Republican Governors, mind you) has declared marriage equality Constituional, we can congratulate George Takei (better known as Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek) and Brad Altman for their upcoming marriage.

Photo from George Takei.com.

I should note that when non-controversial (which often means "safe-seeming to your Average American) do controversial things, it breaks barriers better than when controversial people do controversial things. The death of Rock Hudson from AIDS made it acceptable in America to die of AIDS. That may sound strange to many, but before Rock Hudson died of AIDS, I remember many people who died suddenly "after an illness" and no one would dare speak the name of the illness. It may have been Magic Johnson who made it okay to LIVE with AIDS in America, but Rock Hudson taught America to accept AIDS as something we didn't have to speak of in mere whispers.

Perhaps the marriage of likeable (and "safe-seeming to the average American") George Takei and his parnter of 21 years (longer term than the vast majority of "traditional" marriages) can break down barriers better than the marriage of someone like Ellen DeGeneres could.

Congratulations to George and Brad.

Congrats indeed. They're going early, but many are following.

No more stuff!

I saw this coming, and yet I wish that, for once, we had not followed the trend. There is now a site called Stuff Latin People Like. (The first post is dated April 4.)

You already know what this looks like. It's the same as Stuff White People Like and Stuff Black People Love (not to be confused with Stuff Educated Black People Like), except not even mildly funny (like I thought SWPL was, until I read Gary's spot-on critique here) and not even mildly telling about nonwhites' class anxieties (the way SEBPL is).

And what do we get for the wait? Novelas (#2) Pretend Relatives (#7) and Wal Mart (#15). These barely pass the Homer Simpson test (it's funny coz it's true) and would never get past the first go-around on those email chain letters (I still occasionally get the tried-and-true "you know you're Latino/Puerto Rican/Mexican/Dominican if..." lists, with proper local slang subbed in).

As Daniel Hernandez, among many others, said about SWPL, it was a list that had more to do with class/education/tribe than race/ethnicity.

The site seems to be suffering from the Guanabee syndrome: it must have seemed like a good idea late night and drunk, but the joke cannot be sustained past the first few entries. For satire done right, visit Ask a Mexican.

[image: SLPL banner]

In praise of concón

I was thinking about rising prices of rice, cataclysmic food shortages, and the wisdom of peasant cultures while eating some Thai sticky rice this weekend.

I love sticky rice (and mochi and bibimbop) and other toothsome chewy rice-based treats because they all remind me of concón. This is literally the rice that gets stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Rather than being a culinary disaster, concón is a delicacy in the DR (In PR it is too, called pegao). To the point that some cooks purposefully cook rice so that it creates concón. (I've never quite gotten the hang of this, but I think it involves extra oil and extra fire toward the end of the cooking process.)

Like any hyper-local delicacy, there are rules:

1) It's easiest to make this in those possibly harmful aluminum round-bottomed pans commonly called calderos and available in hardware stores in Latin nabes. Do not try making it with your automatic rice cooker.

2) While it should have some color, it should not be burnt (golden to caramel, not black).

3) Texture-wise, it should be chewy to crispy, but should not threaten to chip your fillings (although some masochistic friends love just that, fighting the rice to submission).

3) It should be served separately, not mixed in with the regular rice. All the better to savor.

4) The more you can scrape from the pan in a single piece, the better. Hence why the picture below, of a pot-shaped piece of concón, is so impressive.

It makes sense that concón would also be loved in Haiti, and I know that for me the only proper bibimbop is one that has rice stuck to the bottom of the pot it's served in, but I wonder how many other rice-eating peoples love that crunchy sticky treat.

Anyone?

UPDATE: In Cuban = raspa. In Korean = nurungji. In Catalán = soccarat. In Farsi = tahdig. See, I knew it!

[concón pix via remolacha]

Latinos opened the door for gay marriage

I have to admit, I only read the headlines in California's Supreme Court gay marriage decision this week.

So I did not notice the revealing tidbit that Gary Dauphin footnoted a couple of days ago: the Supremes' decision was largely based on the 1948 case Perez v. Sharp, which challenged interracial marriage bans way before Loving v. Virgina (1967) and involved a Mexican American woman and a Black man.

The reason the couple was denied a wedding license and the case went to court was that Andrea Perez was considered "white." Gary posted her picture. I'm re-posting it here. If she's white, I'm downright Aryan.

Like Mendez v. Westminster, the school desegregation case that predated Brown v. Board of Ed by almost a decade, Perez v. Sharp was also a key precedent-setter with Latino plaintiffs that crowbarred the door open to extend fundamental civil rights to others.

Gary argues that it's no coincidence that this case (I would argue both cases) took place in the other state I consider home, California. This supports Roberto Lovato's theory that California is ground zero for Latino-led radical social change in this country.

Yet another instance in which we are erased from the history of fighting for American civil rights, human rights. Been here all along, time to make sure others notice.

The other f'd up campaign for prez

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Friday video with a note on presidential elections that have been more tedious and annoying than the one in the U.S. Dominicans are voting today for prez, and you don't have to be a genius to guess that incumbent Leonel Fernandez will be re-elected.

At this time last year, the three major parties had spent RD$409M (about US$12M) -- by now, they've probably spent ten times that amount. Among the expenses? Ads with celebrity endorsers like Vin Diesel.

One of Leonel's big initiatives in this past term (aside from the metro for the misbegotten) has been making the DR a Hollywood-friendly location. He's taken a few trips to the Dream Factory with his wife to cozy up to movie execs, spending millions from the public till.

This "work," and the fact that a long list of celebs have getaways in Cap Cana and other tropical fortresses in the vicinity, has yielded a couple of shoots -- The Good Shepherd and Miami Vice.

Now where does the muscly ex-bouncer and living video game avatar fit into all this? According to a couple of reliable sources, Vin's bio-dad is some Dominican tiguere, and he spent some time there last year getting cozy with his padre patria. That may explain my unholy attraction to him.

Diesel ran some acting and directing classes last year (don't laugh), and has talked about opening up a film school there. (What Godardian or Almodovarian or Scorscesian insights into film Diesel might offer are still a bit of a mystery, but given the current quality of Dominican-made film, it can't possibly hurt).

All of this greased and facilitated by Hollywood-craving Leonel. So payback time came around, as it did for more unambiguously Dominican celebs like merengueros, bachateros & peloteros.

There's a series of 5 Diesel spots, with overlapping material. Most have amped-up behind-the-scenes action film footage and feature various versions of the following dialogue:

"Dominicanos, que tanto quiero, que lo bueno no cambia. Para mi gente, vota por Leonel, el presidente. Es p'alante que vamos" (the last is the campaign's slogan)

Not as cool as the Obama videos Gary Dauphin wrote about this week, but hey.

Listening to Vin, it appears he's just starting to learn Spanish, but already the tigueraje seems to be rubbing off.

Tony-torn

The Tony nominations announced on Tuesday have me in a pickle. I am, improbably, cheering for not one, but two musicals.

In the Heights amazingly received the most nominations of any of this year's contenders, 13 total. I wasn't as wowed by it as everyone else was, mostly because I like my entertainment a little darker.

But I know how rare it is for a Latino-made play about Latinos to make it on Broadway. It's only happened a handful of times before: Short Eyes (which won an Obie and was nominated for six Tonys), Zoot Suit, Freak (which lost the Tony to "Art" as best play in 1998).

In the Heights is bubbly, and carried by the lightness and bounce of Lin Manuel Miranda. The other actors are uniformly kinetic and sweet. And the songs are not what you'd hear in the Copa, but hey, this is musical theater. And I do appreciate the break this play represents from the rut of portraying Latinos as always already only being involved in drugs-prison-gangs. (Although the curmudgeon in me wonders if the appeal to whites isn't a hunger to see happy darkies.)

And then there's Passing Strange. I am still kicking myself for missing the original run at the Public Theater, but I was blown away when I saw it at the Belasco, which still felt as close to a cabaret as a biggish theater can. As I wrote about here, it hit a deep chord in me (and in a lot of my other artist/intellectual/bohemian friends) as an accurate portrayal of our journeys to the Real.

The two plays are head to head in every category inn which Passing Strange is nominated (it has a total of 7 nominations). I'm just hoping for some kind of Salomonic solution. I mean, their main competition is Xanadu and Cry-Baby (how in the hell did that wonderful pervert John Waters become a preferred Broadway musical source?).

[Lin Manuel pix via Moxie the Maven; Passing Strange pix via variety.com]