From Ballrooms to Concert Halls, Mexico Kept This Cuban Style Alive Betto Arcos - NPR.org
go to original April 14, 2015

Arturo Márquez conducts the Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México in 2011. (Maria Luisa Severiano/La Jornada)

The Salón Los Angeles is the oldest dance hall in Mexico City. The classic 1930s ballroom is located in a working-class neighborhood near downtown, and every week, it sees dozens of well-dressed couples of all ages moving to an orchestra of saxophones, trumpets, trombones, clarinets and percussion instruments.

The music is called danzón, and it was born in Cuba in the late 1800s. By early in the next century, it had couples gliding in set patterns in a kind of formal square dance. It was huge. But, like popular music in every era, danzón was eventually replaced by more modern styles.

In Mexico, however, danzón is still a popular ballroom dance in cities across the country. Composer Arturo Márquez caught the danzón bug when he started going to a Mexico City dance hall in the early 1990s.

"And that's where I really learned — the way they play, the danzón sounds, the rhythms, the melodies, more or less the harmonies," Márquez says. "And especially the connection between the dance and the music, which is very strong. I think it's one of the dances that the dance, the music, really goes together, all the time. It's like a marriage."

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