Esencial happening at the Blue Room this Friday is a community dance party highlighting Latin cultural roots through music. The show features local DJs spinning records backed by live percussion players and aims to connect community through shared love of music.
Growing up listening to various forms of Latin music, resident DJs Stephany Medina and Carlos Ortiz-Martinez started collecting records and had the desire to share those with people. This party is not only for those who grew with this music, but also those with a shared love and curiosity of it.
“We get a lot of salsa dancers and people from the dancing community,” Medina said. “Folks who may not necessarily have grown up listening to this music or culturally may not have been connected to it growing up, but have a curiosity for it or a liking for it and come to these parties and just enjoy themselves whether they’re dancing or not. Everyone feels some sort of resonance with the music and finds themselves enjoying it. Some of our friends even come to us like, ‘This reminds us of going to our families like Quinceañeras in our uncle’s backyard’ and feels like that level of nostalgia. It doesn’t necessarily feel like the downtown party or the club party. It just feels like that very familiar feeling of a house party that our whole families would get together and play all the music we love to listen to.”
“We want to bring different generations together,” Ortiz said. “The younger kids and the older that understand the classics with cumbia salsas and kids that want to know about that and kids that are into alternative, punk and metal. I grew up on that stuff, too, but I also love this salsa and cumbia stuff and I can live in both spaces and just bring in all those different types of mentalities together to enjoy the music. That’s a big mission for us. Merging these different types of people together to enjoy the space and not make it feel like it’s an exclusive thing or it’s like a selective thing or it’s, like, ‘Oh I don’t know how to dance salsa so why go to this thing?’ No, we do more than that. We try to push the boundary and try to fuse the different styles of classical music that we put in there to contemporary, electronic, danceable music just to get all types of people to enjoy the mix of what we’re trying to do.”
Additional event opportunities in the next week:
Tonight (Oct 1) with Samia at Brooklyn Bowl, The Rapture at Exit/In, and An Evening with Sunny War at City Winery. On Thursday night (Oct 2) Panchiko performs at Cannery Hall’s Mainstage and Djo performs at the Pinnacle. Friday night (Oct 3) Snooper performs at Eastside Bowl and WNXP Presents Cuco at Brooklyn Bowl. Saturday (Oct 4) Alex G is at the Ryman and Sunday night (Oct 5) Jasmine.4.T. is at the OG Basement.
