Salsa

In the working-class city of Commerce, where cars speed past on highways and the Citadel Outlets tower over neighborhoods, there is a steakhouse named Stevens. By day, it’s a classic and charming old restaurant where working people go for quiet, hearty meals.

But every Sunday night, the outside world disappears.

As waiters whisk about in starched button ups, couples lead each other by the hand toward the dance floor in the restaurant’s ballroom, where Stevens’ tradition of Salsa Sundays has been bringing the community together for 73 years.

At 7 p.m. every Sunday, beginner lessons start at Stevens Steakhouse.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

An eight-piece band plays brass, electric guitar, bongos and timbales, filling the room with music as dancers twirl in a dizzying array. One attendee, 29-year-old Amy Hernandez, greets a few familiar faces before she steps onto the dance floor, spinning in confident steps with a wide smile on her face.

Hernandez is part of a revival that’s been getting younger people excited about salsa music — and flocking to Stevens. She grew up watching her father dance salsa, but started diving back into the genre on her own to find comfort during the L.A. wildfires earlier this year. She credits Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” for re-sparking her interest.

“It was very healing for me,” she says of the album, which blends old-school Puerto Rican boricua samples with Latin dance and reggaeton influences for an emotional imagining of Puerto Rican identity.

For decades, Stevens has brought friends, couples, and families together for live music and dance.

(Emil Ravelo/For The Times)

When college friends recommended Stevens as an affordable place to dance, Hernandez mentioned it in passing to her dad. “He laughed and said, ‘I remember that place. I used to dance there too,’” Hernandez says.

The increasingly mainstream artists of Latin fusion genre reggaeton are returning to tradition. Along with the music of Bad Bunny, who’s headlining the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, you can find classic salsa references in reggaeton star Rauw Alejandro’s latest album “Cosa Nuestra,” and in Colombian pop star Karol G’s multi-genre summer album “Tropicoqueta,” which will be at the center of her headlining Coachella set.

“You can feel the younger energy,” says longtime Stevens salsa instructor Jennifer Aguirre. “It makes me really happy to see a younger generation take on salsa. Because I was worried for a bit. I didn’t know how salsa is going to continue.”

Los Angeles has a unique relationship with salsa, the Afro-Caribbean dance born from Cuban mambo. In cities like Miami and New York, salsa arrived with Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants. Instead, L.A.’s salsa influence came from Golden Age Hollywood, where Latin dance in movies produced a singular, flashier Angeleno style, characterized by quick turns and theatrical movement, according to salsa historian Juliet McMains.

The 1990s were another high for the genre, when West Coast pioneers like the Vazquez brothers and their first-of-its-kind dance team Salsa Brava sparked a local dance craze. The Vazquezes introduced the “on-1” step and innovated a flashier, dramatic style of salsa in L.A. that brought crowds to competitions and congresses through the 2000s. Legendary late promoter Albert Torres founded the L.A. Salsa Congress in 1999, the first congress on the West Coast, drawing a worldwide audience for Angeleno salsa.

Opened in 1952 by Steven Filipan (and located on Stevens Place), Stevens in Commerce became a local hub for Latin music. “The interesting part was that the area wasn’t Latin at all,” says Jim Filipan, Steven’s grandson and now the third-generation owner of the restaurant. “My grandfather had a foresight that this genre would be the future.”

Jim recalls his childhood growing up in the restaurant. “We would have hundreds of people on Sundays,” he says. “The ballroom, the restaurant, everyone was dancing salsa, and it was incredible. My dad took over in the ‘70s, and I was running it with him in the ‘90s.”

Yet by the 2010s it was apparent that another genre was taking hold of the Latin dance scene: bachata, ushered in by smooth-singing New York stars like Prince Royce and Romeo Santos. Salsa quickly went from being considered hip to rather old-fashioned.

During a Stevens dance lesson, guests learn how to spin on the dance floor.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

Aguirre witnessed the genre lose interest firsthand. “It was like an immediate switch,” Aguirre says. “Salsa just wasn’t as popular anymore, and people would walk over to the other side of the restaurant to take the bachata lessons.”

The pandemic also dealt a large blow to local salsa clubs, as peers in the long-standing dance club industry fell to lower attendance rates and rising rent. And in the last year, two historic venues, the Conga Room and the Mayan, closed permanently.

Stevens almost had the same fate. The financial burdens during the pandemic made Jim consider closing for good. But he couldn’t help but consider the responsibility of his family’s legacy and the special place Stevens holds for local dancers.

“It’s very emotional for me because I have four generations in this restaurant, and now my daughter works here,” he says.

When Stevens reopened, the community came back in droves, ushering in a new era of excitement for salsa.

These days, at the beginning of every class, dance instructor Miguel “Miguelito” Aguirre announces the same rule.

“Forget about what happened today, forget about your week, forget about all the bad stuff. Leave it at the door,” Aguirre says. “It’s going to be better because we’re going to dance salsa.”

Dance instructor, Miguel Aguirre, right, mans the DJ booth alongside DJ Pechanga, another longtime employee of Stevens. Every weekend, the duo brings Latin music to the forefront of the space.

(Emil Ravelo/For The Times)

Aguirre has taught salsa at Stevens for 30 years. In many ways, the steakhouse has shaped his life. It’s where he discovered his love for teaching dance and much more.

“I started coming here in the ‘90s, sneaking in through the back door. I was a teenager, so not old enough to show my ID, but one day, Jim just said, ‘You guys cannot come in through the back anymore. You can come into the front,’” Aguirre says. “And then one day he said, ‘Hey, we are missing the instructors. They’re not coming in. Can you guys teach the class?’ And, I’m still here.”

Jennifer Aguirre, a fellow dance teacher at Stevens, is his wife. She met him one day at Stevens’ annual Halloween party.

“He asked me to join his class because they ‘needed more girls,’” Jennifer says, laughing.

Now Jennifer teaches the beginner’s class, while Miguel is on intermediate. But once 10 p.m. hits, it’s social dancing time. The whole floor comes together and a familiar community converges. If attendees are lucky, they might catch Jennifer and Miguel, a smooth-dancing duo, letting loose, stepping and dipping effortlessly.

On a recent Sunday night, the low-lighted ambience of the restaurant met the purple lights of the dance room, with people sitting all around for a peek at the moves on display. Buttery steaks and potatoes cooking in the kitchen tinged the air as the dance floor came alive with women spinning in dresses and men in shining shoes gliding to the rhythm of the music. Miguel Aguirre manned the DJ stand, asking two singles if they knew each other and encouraging them to dance.

Gregorio Sines was one of the solo dancers on the floor, swaying partners easily under Miguel’s encouragement. Years ago, his friend, who frequented Stevens, dragged Sines out to dance socials, telling him it would be the best way to meet people and open up.

As someone who began with anxiety to dance in front of others, Sines now performs in Stevens’ dance showcases. He says consistently returning to the steakhouse’s historic floor and immersing himself in the supportive community not only changed his dance game, but brought him out of his shell.

“I tell anyone, if you’re scared to dance, you just have to get out there,” Sines says. “There’s a community waiting for you.”

Eddie Palmieri, the Grammy-winning Nuyorican pianist, bandleader and composer who helped innovate Afro-Caribbean music in the States and transform the New York salsa scene, died on Wednesday. He was 88.

According to a post on his official Instagram, Palmieri passed away in his Hackensack, N.J., home. The New York Times confirmed via his youngest daughter, Gabriela Palmieri, that his death came after “an extended illness.”

Multiple celebrities chimed in to pay their respects, including Spike Lee, Ramon Rodriguez and representatives from Fania Records, the pioneering New York salsa label, also released a statement.

“[On Wednesday], Fania Records mourns the loss of the legendary Eddie Palmieri, one of the most innovative and unique artists in music history,” the statement said. Palmieri briefly recorded music with the label but also released music under Tico, Alegre, Concord Picante, RMM and Coco Records.

Others took to social media to mourn the loss, including David Sanchez, a Grammy-winning jazz tenor saxophonist from Puerto Rico, who uploaded a slideshow of photographs of the two. Sanchez recounted the time when his soprano saxophone was stolen — and Palmieri helped him pay for a new one. “Your being and your music will continue to live on in the hearts of many,” Sanchez wrote in the Instagram caption.

Palmieri’s contemporary Chuchito Valdes, a Grammy-winning Cuban pianist and bandleader, also chimed in with an Instagram post lamenting the loss: “A sad day for music. One of the greatest of all time is gone, an innovator. The man who revolutionized salsa and Latin jazz. My great friend.”

Born on Dec. 15, 1936, in East Harlem to Puerto Rican parents from Ponce, Palmieri was the younger brother of Charlie Palmieri, the late piano legend known as the “Giant of the Keyboards.”

The family later moved to the South Bronx, where they opened up a luncheonette called “Mambo”: a name chosen by young Eddie, who was enthralled by the Cuban dance hall rhythms. He often controlled the jukebox with blissful Latin jazz tunes by Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and Machito.

Palmieri was deeply influenced and inspired by his older brother, who was nine years his senior and introduced him to prominent big-band acts of the 1940s, like Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Woody Herman, all of whom seemed to dissolve by the end of World War II. Though Palmieri had an itch to lean into the timbales like Tito Puente, he would eventually follow in his brother’s footsteps and take piano lessons from Margaret Bonds, one of the most prominent African American concert pianists at the time.

Although he briefly joined his uncle’s orchestra, Chino y sus Almas Tropicales, as a timbal player, Palmieri rose to fame as a pianist, playing with various bands including the Eddie Forrester Orchestra, Johnny Segui and His Orchestra, and eventually Tito Rodriguez and His Orchestra, which was a main act at the Palladium Ballroom between 1958 to 1960.

“In the audience, you could have maybe a Marlon Brando, Kim Novak, all the Hollywood starlets because it was the height of the mambo,” said Palmieri in a 2013 interview with Jo Reed. “On Saturday, you had the blue-collar, mostly Puerto Rican. And then Sunday was black, Afro-American. It was intermingled or different nationalities that had nothing to do whether you were green, purple, white, we came to dance.”

But in 1961, Palmieri went on to start his own band, La Perfecta, an ironic title given its not-so-perfect setup. It formed as an eight-piece Cuban conjunto, which ditched the traditional jazzy saxophone. There were timbales, congas, bongos, bass, piano and vocals — but with a twist of its own kind: the inclusion of two trombones, played by Barry Rogers and Jose Rodriguez, instead of the costly four-set trumpets. Palmieri also added a whistling flute, played by George Castro, for a charanga edge (in the place of a traditional violin).

“La Perfecta changed everything in the history of our genre, in my opinion. Certainly in New York,” said Palmieri. “And then influenced the world, because after that all the pawn shops got rid of their trombones.”

His group helped usher in the iconic salsa genre with their first album, “Eddie Palmieri and His Conjunto ‘La Perfecta,’” dubbing him the nickname “Madman of salsa.” However, he was not too fond of the emerging term, which seemed to cram different styles like mambo, charanga, rumba, guaracha and danzón into one single category.

“Afro-Cuban is where we get the music,” explained Palmieri in a 2012 interview with the Smithsonian Oral History Project. “The influence of the Puerto Rican is the one [that] upheld the rhythmical patterns and the genre of Cuba. So then that becomes Afro-Caribbean.”

La Perfecta went on to release its most famed album, “Azúcar Pa’ Ti” in 1965. It included the song “Azúcar,” an eight-minute track that was later added to the National Recording Registry in 2009.

In 1976, Palmieri became the first to win a Grammy for the inaugural category of best Latin recording, for his album “Sun of Latin Music.” He holds a total of eight Grammy awards. In 2013, the National Endowment for the Arts honored him as a Jazz Master and the Latin Grammys granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

But Eddie Palmieri’s impact spanned beyond his own accomplishments. He was a mentor, a teacher and an advocate for Latin music and culture, which includes advocating twice for the inclusion of the Latin jazz album category in the Grammys — first in 1995, then again in 2012 after its removal.

Palmieri was predeceased by his wife of 58 years, Iraida Palmieri, who passed away in 2014 — and who he often referred to as “Mi Luz Mayor.” He is survived by his four daughters, Renee, Eydie, Ileana and Gabriela; his son, Edward Palmieri II; and four grandchildren.

This year promises to be one of the most exciting editions of the Latin Grammys.

As the Latin Recording Academy prepares to unveil the nominations for the award’s 26th edition on Sept. 17, the eligibility period — from June 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025 — includes a number of high-profile albums that not only contributed to the ongoing Latin music boom on a global level, but also pushed the movement forward with their radical choices and genre-defying sounds.

Now a vital part of the Latin pop DNA, the urbano genre continues to redefine and challenge itself, while the rootsy strains of música Mexicana have deservedly gained a privileged seat on the table like never before. The fields of folk, rock, electronica and tropical are still expanding, and artists such as Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro, Becky G, Fuerza Regida and Natalia Lafourcade are vying for awards with some of the most ambitious albums of their careers.

De Los assistant editor Suzy Exposito and contributing writer Ernesto Lechner discuss their predictions on the songs and albums that are most likely to be nominated. The following conversation has been edited for length.

Ernesto Lechner: This seems to be an easy year in terms of the two obvious candidates for Latin Gammy history. Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is the kind of album that defines not only the year it came out — 2025 — but also the entire decade. And Natalia Lafourcade’s mystically tinged “Cancionera” finds the perennial Grammy favorite at the apex of her craft. Going back to Benito’s masterpiece, its conceptual gravitas is almost grander than the songs themselves.

Suzy Exposito: I’m really gunning for Album of the Year for this one. The amount of thought and intention that he placed on this record. The cultural significance of the songs, not just in terms of the history of Puerto Rico, but the way in which he directly engages with the Caribbean diaspora at large through salsa.

E.L.: I love how lovingly he delves beyond salsa to also include plena. He goes back to Rafael Cortijo — the roots, the very essence of boricua culture. And the album has this Beatles-like quality where it’s incredibly commercial — a No. 1 record, the album that everybody is listening to — but there’s no compromise on the artistic front. It’s an ambitious, fully realized statement.

S.E.: Is any album by Benito just another Bad Bunny album? I don’t think he dabbles in filler the way other artists do.

E.L.: The photo of the plastic chairs on the cover could have been taken in the suburbs of Lima, or San Salvador, or Medellín. Benito makes such an inclusive, pan-Latin statement. Which brings me to nominate the title track, “Debí Tirar Mas Fotos,” as a perfect contender for Song of the Year.

S.E.: When I first heard it, I started to cry. It’s a very sentimental song. I was recently in Puerto Rico and went to a plena jam session. It was happening in the street, and you could see people of all ages playing together, singing traditional songs, drinks in hand. There was something really beautiful and timeless about that communal experience.

E.L.: A similar passion for music permeates Lafourcade’s “Cancionera.” Recorded live on analog tape, it has a pristine, wooden-floor kind of warmth. She embodies this mystical character, the cancionera, and it’s a very mature album. I love “Cocos en la Playa” — a frisky, beautiful tropical song that’s so lovely and authentic. For my money, it’s going to be a battle between those two albums in all the major categories.

S.E.: I feel that Natalia Lafourcade is the conservative choice at the Latin Gammys, and it feels bizarre to say it. This is a woman who was making pop-rock in the 2000s. She is a virtuosa, and a master of her craft, but her nomination is predictable because now she represents the gold standard for the Latin Academy.

E.L.: She’s definitely the safest choice between the two. Besides Benito and Natalia, there are a few albums that could very well appear in the major categories, and one of them is Cazzu’s “Latinaje.”

S.E.: That album is such a statement piece. I loved seeing Cazzu break away from the Latin trap sound that she defined and blending it with other things. She’s a great songwriter, and her transformation is fascinating. I think this is the year when many young people are going back to their roots, and then making something new out of it.

E.L.: I had a conversation with Cazzu a few months ago and told her that “Latinaje” made me feel vindicated. As a fellow Argentine, I’ve always felt that we’re an integral part of Latin America. She proved it with this beautiful love letter to so many essential genres. There’s salsa, merengue, South American folk, and “Dolce,” a gorgeous corrido tumbado about that infamous red dress that went viral. And she did it all so genuinely.

S.E.: It may be hard for her, because she came up as an MC. I wonder if the Latin Academy will know in what categories to place her, since this is such a multi-genre album. I mean, she’s an international girl.

E.L.: And of course, Rubén Blades has a new album out, and it’s beautiful as always. “Fotografías” is another sumptuous, big band salsa session. It combines new compositions with songs that Rubén had given to fellow Fania artists in the ‘70s, and now recorded them himself.

S.E.: That’s a great move on his part. “Hey, remember those songs? Yeah — I wrote them!” It sounds ridiculous to say that Rubén is another safe choice, but I can see him in all the big categories. Which brings me to another artist who made a salsa-influenced album: Rauw Alejandro and “Cosa Nuestra.”

E.L.: I love the Afro-Caribbean vibe on “Cosa Nuestra” and the silky duet with bachata star Romeo Santos on “Khé?” I feel this one has been overshadowed a little by Benito’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.” My favorite Rauw Alejandro album remains 2021’s “Vice Versa” with the awesome, ‘80s influenced mega-hit “Todo De Ti.”

S.E.: My favorite song on “Cosa Nuestra” is “Se Fue,” the duet with Laura Pausini, which is also like a moody ‘80s song. Raúl has made it a point to polish up his nostalgia for old forms of music. Michael Jackson is one of his most influential artists.

By the way, we should mention Fuerza Regida and their ninth studio album, “111XPANTIA.” They have never been nominated for a Latin Grammy, so I’m rooting for them because they have experimented in a really bold way. Their lead singer, Jesús Ortiz Paz, has shown a lot of intention behind his creative decisions beyond making the same corridos or mining from the same old ‘90s rappers. Their music is cheeky; sonically, it pushes boundaries.

E.L.: You’re never gonna have a bad time with this new wave of música Mexicana stars, considering the staggering melodic richness of their songs and the immediacy of the lyrics.

S.E.: On that note, I think it’s time for Ivan Cornejo to get a Latin Grammy nod for “Mirada” — the production has this ethereal quality that sounds so mature and progressive for the genre. I also want to applaud DannyLux for his ambitious “Leyenda,” which is a psychedelic take on sierreño music, à la George Harrison.

E.L.: What about Becky G? Last year I was asked to write about “Encuentros,” and I just had to surrender to the elegance of this pristine música Mexicana session. Her voice sounds huge on this record.

S.E.: I really hope they don’t silo her in the música Mexicana categories, because this is a very mature album for her. She grew up singing mariachi music with her family, so it’s a beautiful full circle moment for her.

E.L.: “Encuentros” would be a perfect Album of the Year candidate because it celebrates the music of her grandparents but at the same time transcends it. I love that Becky said she’s never looking back after recording her two traditional albums of rancheras and lush Mexican pop.

This brings me to a more general observation: I believe we’re experiencing an era of absolute splendor, and the Latin Grammys nominations are bound to reflect that. It’s like every single Latin American country has blossomed, wearing its most elegant clothes and throwing some amazing parties. The richness and breadth of the music being recorded throughout the continent is off the charts.

S.E.: I agree. Creatively, the last couple of years have been the most exciting for Latin music in a really long time. I think we’re going to remember the 2020s for the bold decade that it is.