Salsa in Melbourne 1970 – 2008: An Introduction

Posted on May 23, 2016July 5, 2016 by admin

The Early Origins of Salsa in Melbourne

The 1980s were a decade which marked the arrival of salsa in Melbourne as an identifiable music ‘scene’. Yet there had existed an era when such popular cultural movements could not have been celebrated as they came to be, neither by those who had introduced them, nor by those who had adopted them.

A Restrictive Society

One obstacle to such movements came in the form of the Restrictive Immigration Policy. This ‘White Australia Policy’ had its origins in popular prejudices, as well as in ‘sophisticated’ scientific theories regarding racial difference.[1] Australia had sought to represent itself as isolationist and assimilationist, which produced an idea centres around a single, national culture; one centred on the norms of Anglo-Celtic customs. In the Australian Government’s desire to create an ethnically-homogenous society, it had excluded all other cultural identities which might have made a claim to being Australian.[2]

The Aim of these blog entries on Salsa and Latin music in Melbourne

Over the course of these blog entries on Salsa in Melbourne, we will explore the primary globalising processes which were to spell an end to the White Australia Policy, and which effectively allowed the emergence of certain imported forms of Latin popular music among the communities who brought them to new shores.

An exploration will also be made of the ways that the end of the policy created fertile grounds for cultural pluralism.

We will also examine the ways in which the late 1980s’ growing acceptance of a culturally-pluralistic attitude among many who did not identify as Latino arose simultaneously with a phase of globalisation characterised by intense change.

Finally, we will look at the post-Cold War era, one full of liberal trade and open markets. In this way, we will highlight the spreading of media from the United States and other countries wielding a popular cultural dominance in the form of ‘world music’ and ‘world beat’ in the global market, and the way it signalled the emergence of the salsa music scene in Melbourne.

The influence of these globally-marketed music styles, together with shifting attitudes towards plurality, would see that salsa would emerge alongside other styles of Latin music, effectively forming part of a generic Latin music scene.

Next up, a journey back into Australia’s regressive ideas about immigration, and the way that a shift in these ideas would pave the way for Latin music in the city of Melbourne.

Salsa in Melbourne

References

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How to Study Spanish pt 1: A Final Word on Materials & Some Fun Ways to Study Spanish

Posted on May 17, 2016June 25, 2016 by admin

Let’s start with a final note on materials and a brief look at some fun ways to study spanish. Go buy yourself some flash cards, which are essentially just pieces of cardboard which you write words on in order to memorise them (more on these and ways to use them in a later entry) as well as some post-it stamps. Ok, now go and label EVERYTHING in Spanish all over the house. Don’t just go for basic things like the dog or cat; label the door handle as well. Stick them in the car and garden. Make sure you can see out of the windscreen. This is not a fix-all solution to learning new words, but it will provide a nice ‘setting’ in which to study. So that’s pretty light and straight-forward isn’t it? See, not all materials need to be based around 1001 flesh-eating verbs, giant dictionaries, and grammar books which make you despair at the task ahead of you. Well, most of the time they do, but who said you can’t just chill out along the way (a bit of foreshadowing here…there will be an upcoming and in-depth blog post on this matter)? While you’re at it, crack open a bottle of wine or beer. Who cares anyway? Are you going to be tested on this stuff? Oh, you are?

You can’t study without wine.

This is one of the most important and overlooked aspects of language acquisition – a relaxed attitude and mind-set. So have a glass or five and get down to it.

What about films and other relaxing past times? Here are a few recommendations:

Drama

Amores perros (Love’s a Bitch) – Mexico 2005

María, llena de gracia eres (María Full of Grace) – USA /Colombia /Ecuador – 2004

El secreto de sus ojos (the Secret in their Eyes) – Argentina 2009

Al otro lado del río (The Motorcycle Diaries) – Argentina/USA etc. 2004

Machuca (same in English) – Chile 2004

Innocent Voices (Voces inocentes) – El Salvador 2004

Che parts 1-2 (Actually two films from the States by Steven Soderbergh, but they’re in Spanish) – USA /Spain /France 2008

Mar adentro (the Sea Inside) – Spain 2004

Machuca (2004)

Comedy

Y tu mamá también (And your Mum as well) – Mexico 2001

La mala educación – (Bad Education) – Spain 2004

Horror and Fantasy

El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Laberinth) – Mexico /Spain /USA 2006

Rec (Same in english. Just search for a copy with subs. It’s a zombie film, by the way) – Spain 2007

Rec 2 – Spain 2009

Rey de la montaña (King of the Hill) – Spain 2007

El día de la bestia (Day of the Beast. This film rocks! It’s a horror comedy about Satan and Capitalism) – Spain 1995

Tesis (Thesis) – Spain – 1996

Juan de los muertos (Juan of the dead. This is a comedy zombie film about Cuban society! Great, hey?) – Cuba 2011

fun ways to study spanish día de la bestia

El día de la bestia – Day of the Beast

Dubbed and Subtitled Films (yes, and very funny)

Desafío total /El vengador del futuro (Total Recall)

Depredador (Predator)

“Time to let old painless out of the bag!” Watching films with Spanish subtitles is a novel way of picking up the old expression.

We will return to fun ways to study Spanish at a later date. Next up, an examination of practical methods and techniques for studying. Also keep an eye out for part two of Cuisine and the Food-Savvy Traveller in Spain and Latin America in our parallel blog series on Spanish and Latin American Culture and Language.

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Spanish and Latin American Culture and Language

Posted on May 13, 2016June 11, 2016 by admin

Over the next few weeks we are going to be uploading several articles on Spanish and Latin American culture, which will include insights for the intrepid traveller. We’ll also include pieces on travel Spanish and how they relate to cultural interactions! First up is an article relating to the title of this blog post. Stay tuned for much more!

Spanish and Latin American culture: ceviche

Download the pdf version of cuisine & the food-savvy traveller in Spain & Latin America: Part 1

Cuisine & the Food-Savvy Traveller in Spain & Latin America: Part 1

Food in Spain has been influenced by a number of different peoples over the centuries. Perhaps the greatest early influence came from the Moors (an archaic term used to refer to Arabs, North Africans and other groups), who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711. One of their greatest legacies in cuisine is perhaps their light seasonings such as the quintessential saffron (azafrán), rice (arroz), both found in paella, as well as the introduction of fruits and nuts into meat and fish dishes such as conejo con salsa de almendras (rabbit with almond sauce). A lot of food in Spain and indeed other major parts of the world has been greatly influenced by ingredients from the Americas. Tomatoes, quinoa and cacao were all brought back from the New World and incorporated into Spanish, and indeed world cuisine. These classic world-famous staples require no examples!

A lot of food in Latin America has experienced a similar evolution. Indigenous people have lived in the Americas for 13,500 years – possibly a lot longer – and foods which they have cultivated and continue to cultivate form the basis for many dishes (indigenous and non-indigenous) in the region. Examples include the corn found in tortillas in Mexico and Central America, the plantain from the fried snack or accompaniment known as patacones or tostones found all over the Americas, and of course the humble potato (papa) and its million variants found in Peruvian dishes such as ceviche, a dish of raw fish marinated in lemon juice and papas a la huancaína, a potato-laden dish with a tasty sauce. Europeans arrived in the Americas from 1492 onwards, and they influenced a lot of the early forms of Latin American cuisine. For instance, in Mexico, the early European presence contributed a lot of cooking techniques such as frying. The new arrivals also introduced a number of ingredients to the continent, such as the onions found in ají, a Colombian hot sauce (as well as in countless other dishes), and various spices such as cumin (comino), which can be found in numerous Colombian and Mexican dishes. Finally, what summary of the history of Hispanic food would be complete without addressing the influence of contemporary western food on these diets? Fast food has influenced a range of foods in Latin America, from arroz con coca cola (rice with Coca Cola!) in Colombia, to the range of large multinational companies such as McDonald’s, and even smaller, local interpretations of typical fast food such as the Guatemalan-formed fried chicken restaurant, pollo campero, which can be found all over Latin America. So there you have it: who could imagine a Spanish paella without the Moor and New World-influenced rice, tomatoes or saffron? Or a Mexican chilli con carne without the indigenous influenced tortillas and the onions and spices of Europe and Africa? And who could imagine a plantain without the oil used to make a delicious patacón! Next up, traditional foods and customs in Spain and Latin America…

What are your experiences with Spanish and Latin American Culture and the food that it offers? What are your experiences with the cuisine and how it differed from country to country? Leave your comments below – we welcome your contributions!

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How to Study Spanish Part 1: A Continuation of the Materials

Posted on May 13, 2016June 15, 2016 by admin

The Importance of Physical and Online Materials

In the second entry on Spanish study methods, we looked at books. This third entry will focus on the importance of a dictionary, and we can’t stress enough the importance of it! Don’t buy one of those micro dictionaries unless you want to really fit it in your pocket. They are about as useless as they look. The advantage of a big dictionary is that there are expressions and idioms contained within, and for those who get good at Spanish, you may want to someday know the origin of certain words (which also helps with the skill of figuring out what words are without even looking at the dictionary!). You might want to see what a good bilingual Spanish dictionary looks like:

How to Study Spanish

Nothing beats the human mind for translation…at the present.

If you don’t want a paper dictionary, then find an online one. Word Reference Forums is excellent, and I much prefer it to any other non-human translation service! Why don’t non human translators work?

So how to study Spanish using Word Reference forums? Type in the word and the dictionary will open up. This is a great dictionary for single words, but what if you want something a bit more complicated? Type in a phrase and go to the bottom. No you’re at the ‘forum’ section of the site. This is a busy website and there are thousands of threads responding to questions regarding translation. You can almost be certain that if you’ve thought of a sentence, someone else has too. There is so much information, that there might be several threads on one expression. Open them all up and read the discussions. With the quantity of discussions going on about all sorts of everyday expressions, you can be sure to find the expressions you’re looking for. The only things this website tends not to pick up are very obscure expressions….but even then it’s quite good. Word Reference forums is the next best thing to a human translator, because you are effectively reading what people have written as opposed to a computer’s interpretation. If that doesn’t take your fancy and you’re filthy rich, you could also hire a full-time personal human translator.

Our final words on the materials involves looking at some of the fun types of things you can incorporate into a study program.

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How to Study Spanish Part 1: Books for Spanish Class & other Materials

Posted on May 10, 2016May 25, 2016 by admin

Following on from the introduction to learning a language, we’re going to go over some of the materials. Some of the most important tools are of course your books for Spanish class as well as additional supplementary books and materials. If you are already enrolled in a course, chances are you will have already been prescribed a book (or books), but what about your work outside of class time? One of the most important things to buy is an extra grammar book and an exercise book. You might be lucky enough to find one with both of these components, or you might have to buy them separately. How do you choose? Dos Mundos is pretty good. Try some other ones. Open them up and if they look like they will do the job then they probably will. Ideally, there will be answers in the back so you can check your work, although it’s no massive drama if there aren’t.

Books for Spanish class

How many books should you buy? Well, the simple answer is that you should be prepared to buy several over the course of your language-learning journey. Once you’ve finished one, you may as well start on another….and another….and so it continues. It’s unlikely that one book will get you to the level you ideally see yourself at when you can speak Spanish.

If there are two important messages that you should take from this blog entry, they are that while some books are better than others, the type of books that you have are not hugely important. The most important thing is that you spend less time thinking about which type of book to get, and more time on investing in time spent going over the exercises in the book. Additionally, one book will not solve all your problems. The process of working through the materials and then repeating again with different materials is one aspect of a positive and progressive attitude towards learning Spanish. Stay tuned for a further overview of some of the materials you can use to improve your language skills!

How to Learn Spanish: An Introduction to Study Methods

Posted on May 9, 2016June 10, 2016 by admin

How to learn Spanish? Let’s start by dispelling a myth – that you need to be in a Hispanic country to speak it. Anecdotally, I can say that this is not true, as I have met a number of people who can speak Spanish (far from perfectly, but they speak it nonetheless) and who have never set foot in a Spanish speaking country. Moreover, a number of these people (some of them have been my students) are not particularly good at languages, and didn’t even know what a verb was when they started. So there you have it. You have people who have never travelled to Spain or Latin America, and who are not linguistically inclined, but they can speak Spanish? What’s going on? Well, quite simply it’s all about enthusiasm and passion. I know it’s cliché, but if you try, eventually you will succeed. Fancy ‘immersion’ programs have their place, and being ‘over there’ is a definite advantage. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to do something like that? But more often than not, I feel that this attitude towards learning or making statements like ‘you have to be there to be able to really learn it’ are just easy ways out. It all really boils down to attitude, and I’ve seen it done over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with being honest and saying ‘I kinda want it but I’m not really that interested in learning another language’. We all have different reasons for (and levels of intended commitment) learning a language. I mean, I am currently making a mess of trying to learn German right now with the abysmal number of minutes per week I put into it. Still, there are so many people out there who continue to chant the mantra of ‘you have to be ‘over there’ to learn it!’ And I’m here to say that it doesn’t have to be that way.

How to learn Spanish

Over the next few weeks, we’ll have a look at the sorts of materials you’ll need to embark on your journey of how to learn Spanish. Once we’ve covered those bases, it’s on to the method employed by the successful student. Finally, we’ll wrap up by covering some general tips and thoughts on the issue as a whole. Next, we turn to making a schedule for your studying.

¡Hablamos!