[Music] [Music] hello welcome to this is your spotlight i am your host eurydice ramen today we're doing a very very early edition of this show and i'd like to bring on a very special guest who i've known for over for 15 years and he's been grinding he's been wheeling and dealing and traveling around the world so he just got back and he's doing so much for for those of you who don't know who he is you shall and you will his name is edwin welcome to the show edwin thank you so much for doing the
show so 15 years huh dang i remember when i met you back in 2007 when i just graduated city college that's right you were still dancing yeah that's right never stopped exactly so you started from the time i remember as far back as when you were in sasa mambo at ccny that's how far back i remember you it's awesome club yes and i remember you always used to like you know lead the charge and get everybody to be like come on no violence it's so simple you just do like this and it's like this like
this how did you um translate that college experience into what you're doing now i think that in a in a way we always kind of like the dominican community in city college we always have had a way of of making something happen you know like there was never a dull moment i think that that transition for me started from being like feeling empowered to to always create something like i remember being in salsa mumbo club at one point i was the president at one point i was just teaching at one point i was just like
promoting and i think that over the years like no matter where you find yourself in life you always have that that kind of courage to to create something and after saw some mambo club i think it started with my dance company creating my dance company then we started like performing um you know in the tri-state area then teaching in the tri-state area then little by little we started getting uh invited to teach you know in other cities and other states um and that's how we started learning about this whole world of of festivals and congresses
that happened worldwide um and then we finally started getting invited to like uh congresses around the world our first one i think was in canada edie which has been everywhere dang yeah i remember like i didn't know there was a bachata congress or a salsa congress and so you went and i was just like dang i feel like me too i also didn't know i also didn't know those things existed until we started meeting those people and i'm like wait what i can make money off of this exactly it's like yeah do this what get
the heck out of town sincerely it's so crazy right now and to be honest with you those experiences would you say help do better and what you're doing now or they just talk to how to travel and plan and just get better with time no for sure i think that all of those experiences definitely helped me help me get better and also i feel like i'm still discovering in the ways that those experience makes me like even more more qualified than i thought for doing what i what i'm doing now um because at first when
you're like doing these kind of things there's a lot of um there's a lot of doubts like wait really like i could do this like and the imposter syndrome takes over peta you know doing this i'm not very very experienced and then the more you realize the actual experience and the preparation that you did get you know from being in like city college and the dominican studies institute learning about your culture and things then you realize like wait a minute i'm more qualified than i thought and then when you meet peers like all of my
peers they were really the empowerment force because a lot of them were telling me like wow you know so many things that i never got to learn and like you should be doing this and you should be doing them like really and sometimes like we can tell ourselves how qualified we are for something but they say it doesn't like it doesn't really hit you until someone else tells you you know no but sometimes when you start something you don't know how far i'll take you and then when you do meet other people it's a nice
validation yeah it adds to it which is the beautiful part about you know what we do in you know whether it's dancing whether it's music whether it's television whether it's film whether it's even skit acting or even social media you know um things that we do here um it pushes you forward it it makes you think and then you're like you know what i can't cultivate this and be happy with what i do yeah and it might take a little bit to really for it to really hit you but it does it does really push
you forward yeah and that's the beauty of you know what we do in in the media especially we're trying to elevate the community and show you know we're just not about what you just saw on channel 41 it's like no we are more we do this we do that the thing is it's just that in our community we have to battle twice as hard to be twice as seen to go forward and it's really hard especially you know to be honest with you in the dominican community there are a lot of things that um [Music]
there's painters there's musicals there's dancers there's people that do stuff even um the following dancers you know have a hard time the only time they like say oh we have a folklore dance and you're like wow really so you know that that folklore group has been here since like 1985 or 1990 they've been here for a while no no no no no it's just you woke up and decided to be like oh see yeah all right so um for what you're doing now what has been um the funnest experience the craziest experience or an experience
that you're like you know what if i ever write a book this is what i'm going to put in the book wow craziest experience the craziest experience was probably when my when i took my dance team when they brought us to australia first of all like the organizers um you know they explained to us right off the bat hey look you know you and your partner are coming to this event we're going to hire you we're going to pay you this much we're going to cover all your expenses um and we already knew we didn't
want to go alone because like being in brazil like one i knew it was gonna be very memorable to bring the dance team so we had to do a bunch of fundraising and like just getting you know everything taken care of and once we got there i swear that was the craziest experience like everything from going to rio going to fortaleza um like the the experience is going down the streets this was like right after the world cup had um had been held there in in brazil and so you still have a lot of people
left you know in the streets uh a lot of crazy things were happening back then too but i feel like the craziest part was just being able to experience all that with people that you trust and people that you love so it made it that much more memorable in a way um as far as fun i would say the first or second time that i was in brazil with with my partner with my current partner dakota with our also with the dance team but um that was probably one of the most fun things i ever
remember because we didn't realize how popular we were until we got to brazil and we bought a newspaper and we were like wait what a newspaper in brazil's making a story about us and and just the way that people treated us there we felt like wow like we never really thought that we had an impact outside of the communities that we teach in the most but then the organizers explained it to us that you know we're very well known for our music for our dance videos on online and and what was so much fun about
that trip was getting to be in a culture that's so different from the typical dominican latino community just the people are just so laid back so chill everything's like don't worry you know and that made us more like i felt like because of the way that people were there we were not afraid to try anything you know we went to a lot of places that we never been to um and then something that i would want to have in a book russia oh my god russia or russia i was going to say china or russia
but russia for sure because that's the most distinct culture to my own that i've ever been you know teaching teaching in but funny funny enough the people in russia are very big lovers of dominican culture especially moscow and cuban culture they love cuban culture and dominican culture at least in the pocket communities so for us seeing all these russians because you know the impression that we have from the media of russian people is like very cold very dry russian smile no smile and when we were there it was a total opposite so this is when
i realized like you can't always believe everything that you just see about you know culture through right through tv you know and just being there was like very eye-opening um i think that all of those experiences i've been to russia four times now and every single one of those experiences i feel like i could write a book about you know oh wow so okay australia fun was brazil and the last two it was a tie-up between it was russia for sure and you want to mention china yeah shanghai that was another i think the ones
that really stood out for me in terms of like a book or something like that like being able to write something about were the two that was the the most different from my own cultures you know so i think shanghai for sure like in china and moscow did you ever encounter any type of um let's be frank um there are places and spaces that sometimes you know raise them exist did you ever encounter that oh yeah for sure maybe not at the same level that i've experienced in like the us or the colorism in the
caribbean but um in russia i would say it was a lot more curiosity racial curiosity i didn't necessarily feel like i was being treated differently because of my race but there was a lot of curiosity sometimes it got uncomfortable but not to the point where i was like you know feeling threatened or scared in china i think first of all i was very tall in china in a lot of the communities i went to and also being the darkest person um and i think people were just like very confused by me more more so than
anything i think there was just a lot of confusion like like everybody everybody who's dark skinned in in china i always feel like oh shaquille o'neal and i did feel that in china a little bit but um but i didn't necessarily feel like it was like the kind of racism where i'm being treated a certain way because of being different i think a lot of those those um experiences were more like okay who is this weird person why are you here you know you're so dark why are you dark where are you from i think
it was more curiosity than than being treated differently because of it right because the thing is is that for example um there even travel bloggers have for example like um there's one her name is onika she actually said that there's certain places um in the world that you visit that um that are not safe for a person of color right so the reason that's you know that prompted me to ask that question because you know you're providing something that they essentially need you know to expand their repertoire and things like that and you did say
yourself that you did experience some kind but um sometimes there's even microaggressions exactly i was just gonna say that um there could be mass uh microaggressions or or there might be other other things playing at a different level like for instance my dance partner and i we're very fortunate that we've been mostly working in communities that are already familiar with caribbean culture because that's what they bring us in to teach you know bachata merengue song you know all the caribbean arts so i feel like the people in these spaces are already aware of the differences
um but there might be you know undertones like racial undertones too like for instance um when we go to europe often time like in in sweden happens a little bit mostly in spain due to like the the view of spin towards the caribbean owner of colonialism and i feel like there might be this undertone of superiority like oh right these people are uneducated low iq they don't even speak spanish properly and le rome here comes this dark-skinned guy to try to tell us how to dance i feel like there there could be a little of
those kind of undertones but they won't be they won't be in your face they'll still be kind of like the sneaky racism this may be the way they talk or the admit their bodies or you know something like the body language oh yeah yeah i feel like the one that gets me the most is like some people have asked me like as a black you know identifying black person in america regardless of my caribbean you know roots as a black man in america like people ask me where have you experienced the worst kind of racism
and i say honestly even though racism is really bad here in the united states and in the in the you know western hemisphere in general i feel like i prefer the in your face racism right and the really sneaky racism that you know what i'm talking about like a really sneaky kind and i think the last three years you know especially after the last administration and and all of the things happening in media and in the world i feel like we finally gotten a sense of where a lot of people really are and how they
really feel and i prefer that prefer to know where where this is you know where is that rather than finding out through other ways and honestly like um and it's happening everywhere people don't want to talk about it but it is happening everywhere i don't know what happened but there's a certain empowerment that people feel and even even um when you work in the cultural sector like for example as i do um there's been times that people tell me you know people who are not non-latino are you know europeans like for example like um spaniards
when they do come into the museum for example um they do tell me oh give me a castano and i'm like okay you gotta say like you're surprised right and then um for example i had that happen then another person told me um yeah when i tried to speak italian oh bravo i'm like oh thanks okay i think it's just that the assumptions yeah exactly and then um after that which other one was it um [Music] oh oh like oh you're so knowledgeable oh you're so informative oh my gosh you must really like what you
do how did you drown why is that even so surprising right like how did you learn all this oh wow did you have to take a specialized program for that [Music] and then um there's a guy who's into like arms specialists or whatever and um we were talking about it and he was super hyped about it which was kind of cool but i i i feel like me being there where i am i break you know stereotypes little by little by doing what i do you you burst everybody's bubble like oh wait oh you thought
and i'm imagining like the the experiences of being a woman in in media and then on top of that like whatever you do in your community like how how easy is it for people to like not take it seriously you know like you experience that exact forever until you finally realize like exactly it's like so difficult so so difficult because the thing is it's just for now we um being a woman in the media is unfortunately you put yourself in the front line to be objectified whether you like it or not or not like i've
had people tell me oh you have a tv show though the one that we get the most when we're traveling internationally is um also so mundo what's your real job [Music] it's true and it's like why do you want to diminish what the hell i do exactly really why where do you have the ball the gall the moxie the nerve to like really just no just because your whack ass sorry to say it that way that's exactly your white ass can't travel and you can't do what i'm doing why are you trying to like i
think a lot of times it's just the their projections you know and and exactly their own insecurities and their own shortcomings and and and i've learned to be okay with that because because sometimes it takes watching someone do more than what other people could do with less than what they had you know yes i'm actually a firm believer in that to be honest with you i really am it's like i'm doing something that i know good heck well that a lot of people wish they could do so um all right i know at one point
you were a teacher for um for education right yeah i still am yeah so explain to me how is it um different like uh what do you take from your traveling in the world and how do you incorporate it were you doing the education aspect well um so i'm going on to 14 i think 14 years with the department of education of new york um and my work for them has evolved over the years i feel like now i'm in a more um kind of like a contractor um where i'm able to like work for
the doe when i'm not traveling abroad kind of like a per diem teacher where i get to choose the days i work um but what i take from i think honestly if i would say if i would tell people out there who are you know doing what i'm doing like teaching music and dance abroad and like traveling around the world the one thing that prepared me the most was the doe i was working with the doa getting you know getting my college degree in music education and and learning to teach i think is what uh
sometimes sets us apart from a lot of other of our peers is the fact that some of them might be professional dancers but maybe didn't have the experience to learn how to teach people um so i feel like that has solidified our kind of like our our work in the in the that's kind of like what sets us apart and what solidifies our ability to do this work um so i always bring that wherever i go um all the teacher training or the professional development um curriculum development which is what i was what i specialized
in making curriculum to teach people from different cultures uh differentiated learning um multiple learning styles inquiry based which is i think all of the kind of things that the dance world probably hadn't experienced um before a lot of our peers um so now we get to bring that out there and then what i get to bring back to my school when i'm working with my kids it's just all the culture enrichment you know i feel like yeah my kids are like living vicariously through us you know like through our experiences as since they're they're learning
to become world citizens now and they haven't traveled yet we get to share all these experiences when i every time i go to another country i'm always telling my third grade and fourth grade students about it and they're like oh my god i want to go there like oh wow you went to that place oh wow that must have been so cool and it's just like so enriching to see their faces knowing about all of these things you know and also when i get to see their parents too because i do a lot of activities
like mommy and me daddy and me family day where the parents are involved with what they're learning you'd be surprised kids need that they need that reinforcement and things like that and honestly i love new york city but there are there are some spaces and places that are just like not kid-friendly no not at all it's like uh once a child gets to the age of their teenage years i feel like there's such a disconnect they hardly have anything for the teenagers like where where people like kids teenagers like where i would go like for
instance in washington highs growing up in washington heights we had high bridge play center and j hood like these places where you can go and do activities play sports you know break dance do art stuff and i feel like in the last seven or eight years a lot of those programs just literally disappeared from our communities oh absolutely yeah and there's been a lot of cuts to like music education and arts education and it's really sad because you don't know what a difference would make if you you know really force the kid i think the
one thing they are pushing for a lot is um like uh syp uh summer education summer employment use program you know summer use yeah which is fine it's good for the kids to be employed and to make their own money and to become a member of society you know more infused yeah but there's also there's also a big a thin line because i used to be part of these programs as well and um we have so many different programs funded by the by the by the government um and or dycd like all these programs like
after school summer program and youth uh employment programs you also run the risk that we become so work oriented that you also lose a little bit of your childhood you a little bit of your youth and i always put myself in the shoes of okay toto program imagine that i didn't have those because i was a b-boy i was break dancing in in hybrids and playing sports there imagine and whatever peers doing you know and that's the thing like i don't know we got to work out the unaffordable it does good and it does bad
you know no this is true i feel like we just need more options for our youth you know more more stuff more things for them to choose from yeah i think if you did like a survey of um kids from a certain age you might get some very interesting answers and maybe cultivate something that they feel they could be a part of and and it's good when it's good and then it's so so what it says so all right so let's see you travel around the world you you teach kids and what what else am
i missing out come on come on you got to give me something um i don't know but i feel like oh maybe i haven't talked about content like what i do when i'm traveling like you know i'm focusing on dominican arts of course um the history and culture of dominican culture but also related culture so i speak a lot about the greater antilles you know jamaica the connection between jamaican music and uh puerto rican and dominican music like hereton dembo where all that stuff comes from um cuban culture the joruba traditions yoruba culture um you
know santeria the orishas and all these things because i we do a lot of like work surrounding cuban culture as well because of sun and bolero uh so we try to always keep everything in there because i i always say like you can teach people whatever everything and let them decide what they like rather than oh i'm not going to teach you this because of ooh this is a taboo and this is a no-no no we give everybody everything you know and and you know we keep everything very fairly um you know safe for the
the culture safe for the age levels that we're teaching and sometimes we are teaching kids you know especially when working working in washington heights the hope organization is doing um something washington heights tomorrow where we're doing like a fun family day you know for kids parents and i'm going to be teaching merengue bachata there with some instruments so that's going to be pretty cool nice so uh for those of you checking this uh broadcast out there's going to be an event tomorrow in washington heights edward is going to be there and it's going to be
family so bring your kids bring your kids it's the end of summer so folks yes it is virgo season i know yeah and then i'll also send you like some info about the other cool events that we do for families all of these things actually the ones that we do in the city they're all free on september 10th we have an amazing event where i'm hosting a live bachata band and i'm teaching with a live band so how cool is that to enjoy that for free is that the one ever bank state park uh this
one's in vancouver oh yeah and it's free everybody is in the vancouverland park area yeah above 215. come on down there the funny thing is like a lot of these events are free for the audience and like you know a lot of them like they they invite me to do it either they pay me or volunteer and i do it anyways because there's like one way to give back you know i'm traveling around the world and i'm making good money with all the travel so why you know why not do something in our neighborhoods in
our communities for these kids you know and the families so so tomorrow let's see it is august 27th at what time does the event begin so it's like a full day of fun um and the the name of the organization is called the hope organization they have a facebook organization and they're always doing these kind of really cool events like fundraising they literally just did a fundraiser um where people from the community got involved and even staples donated like backpacks school supplies and i was just like mesmerized by how our community can come together to
help kids in need you know all right so i'm posting this up on all three sites so uh washington heights exactly where 168. so this one the hope organization they put it um hope organization so etaba said in you know in 175th street whether the united palace for the street vendors right right oh so it's going to be between united palace the supermarket okay exactly yama plaza de las americas okay plaza las americas 175th noon to four be there it's family day get yourself out there if you ain't got nothing to do on a saturday
you get us a lead and you're in the heights let's go see it so edwin thank you so much for your time and all your efforts and everything you do so um definitely look him up and he's on all the social media platforms check out what he do yeah definitely you know um anybody who's interested in like you know learning more about what we do we're finding us info for everybody so it's art a r e i t o arts and uh check out their calendar of events and everything that they do you won't be
disappointed i know i'm not thank you so much thank you for having me and thank you for having this space you know i hope that more and more people can find about you know you know space and that you can find even more amazing artists out there who are doing amazing things out there who probably just don't get the spotlight so i'm really happy that you're doing this exactly so thank you so much and stay safe and thank you everybody who's watched on epic productions on youtube thank you for those watching at yuri moment at
twitch and this is your spotlight tv show on facebook thank you and have a great one bye
