Stories

For Chileans living abroad, music and dance have been a popular and effective way to reconnect to the country they left behind. As was explained by Alex Rojas, through his exploration of salsa dancing and music, he was able to reconnect to his Chileno identity and his Spanish mother-tongue. This is undoubtedly the case for many Chileans and other Latin Americans living away from their home countries.

“Latinos don’t like to count [when dancing]. They don’t want to dance like 1, 2, 3... 5, 6, 7... They just feel it. We feel the rhythm, we know it. We know our clave, we know our conga drum, we can feel the beat. But, [...] you need to have a measuring tool. You need to know how to time the music. That’s my Canadian side that I learned. And because of that, it just helped me to grasp that side easier than most Latinos that don’t take music classes.”