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By A.G. Quintero-Rivera

From the Introduction

In the 1970s, when everyone thought that Isadora Duncan had been completely forgotten in Puerto Rican culture, Puerto Rico's most important salsa composer (who is not a professional musician, but a mulatto postman), Catalino "Tito" Curet-Alonso, dedicated a song to the turn-of-the-century ballet dancer.

Through this homage to this revolutionary classical ballerina in a guaracha, a traditional popular dance and musical form in the Hispanic Caribbean, Curet-Alonso is making a statement about the broadly human character of some basic social values of the national alternative culture that his salsa represents. The defiant nature of Isadora's symbol is evident: she challenged established patterns both in her work (creation or performance) and in her personal life. The encounter of both these spheres of defiance has particular social importance, as their integration testifies to the capitalist alienation of life and work. In her art and her personal life, intimate feelings turn into public defiance as they clash with norms. And most important, her defiance was her triumph. Isadora Duncan advanced the aspirations of a counterculture in transformation by the very historical transcendence of her daring. Through her dancing legs and his love for daring Isadora, Curet-Alonso is praising liberty and spontaneity.

These values have not only been central themes of some of the most important and popular salsa lyrics, they are also elements of the musical structure of contemporary Puerto Rican popular music. This paper examines how Puerto Rican musical language expresses the basic values of an alternative culture and on a sociohistorical level tries to explain how these values came to integrate the musical language of the island.

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