Buenas. ¿Todo bien?
If I am any one thing, it is creative. Whether writing, singing, marketing, designing, photographing, dancing, or just having fun with friends; I am a storyteller.
My first mentor, Mrs. Gunn, taught me to write in high school. My second mentor, Ash Jain, taught me that marketing is always having an answer. I learned that lesson myself doing beauty photography backstage at New York Fashion Week. To create a world of beauty, tell a story.
Lately friends have been mesmerized by my stories. Watching them respond made me realize that my own story is kind of marvelous.
I have a story that will make you believe in God.”
Yann Martel, “The Life of Pi” (2012) 🇪🇸🇨🇦
My dance partner said she was attracted to my spirituality. “Ay bendito,” I didn’t ask for this. Many artists say they didn’t chose this life, but rather this life chose them. That’s what happened to me, and it keeps happening. When I questioned a spiritual mentor about the strange and wonderful things that happen to me, she said it’s probably been happening to you your entire life. Oh. Ya. Wow! But why me?
I think I have a simple, boring life, but my old friends think it’s wild. I’m a culture writer who works hard like a New Yorker, but in beautiful places. I write about Latin culture for the big New York theaters, but from the road in the Latin world because every Latin country is different, and the only way to understand is to live in country with the people. I have learned so much that I could never see looking out a window in New York City. I have become the road itself. Soy calle.
Some of my stories are so fantastic as to seem unbelievable, but I am not a fiction writer. I was trained to observe and document what is there as a technical writer. I grew into an advertising copywriter and creative director.
My friends say I’m labioso, a big talker. I stretch the truth, the way a rapper stretches words, or an editor makes an interview flow, but my story is all true ~ to the limits of my understanding. Some of it goes beyond my understanding.
It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination.”
Gabriel García Márquez interview (1981)
My story transformed when I got on the road around the Caribbean. Maybe I’m crazy. Okay. Now what? But most people who really are crazy, don’t think they are. This could all be my imagination, or it could be a poetic documentation of reality. Anyway, this is my story. (Some names are changed to respect the past.) Paz e Amor!
Keith Widyolar, Editor-in-Chief
New York Latin Culture Magazine
California Boy of the 1970s
I’m an American from Los Angeles who came of age in the 1970s. My first home was in Boyle Heights, the Latino and Black neighborhood at the center of Los Angeles. The band Black Eyed Peas are from there.
I was raised in Chinatown because though my father is Thai, our paternal line is Chinese.
My Dad chose where to live because it had to be close to Chinatown. We used to eat in the same restaurant every night, pay by the month, and the waiter and cook would babysit me while my parents went to the theater to watch old Chinese kung fu movies.
So my earliest memories are of a Chinese restaurant, but also of Olvera Street, a historic alley that was turned into a Mexican shopping street in the 1930s.
My parents never told me this, but we lived across the street from East LA. I found out when I got lost once, got off the freeway, and recognized my old neighborhood.
My mother always says I was the best Mexican Hat dancer in the 2nd grade. I remember the smell of leather sandals, the colors of Mexican dresses and papel picado, and the mouth-watering fried taquitos. I was fascinated by Mexican jumping beans. One of my most treasured toys was a Mexican charro marionette.
I used to hate Chinese food, but now I love it. I cook Chinese and Mexican at home.
Thailand
My father was a Chinese Parsi Indian Thai. Between the ages of 7 and 11, I spent every school vacation in Bangkok. From the age of 7, I started flying around the world alone. Living in Bangkok gave me a unique perspective.
Most of the world is poor, but it’s not their fault
I learned that the poor often have richer lives than the wealthy.
Religion is all the same
- Dad, what is that? / It’s a spirit house.
- What’s it for? / The people believe god is in the trees, the flowers, the river, and everything, so they pray to everything.
- But isn’t there only one god? / It’s all the same thing.
My father’s wisdom enables me to flow with any and all religions, including none at all. May you be blessed in whatever way that makes sense to you.
New York City
“If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere …”
I was brought to New York City during the Dot.com boom. I was the only one of 300 tech workers to move from Los Angeles to New York.
I took a tech company public on the NASDAQ stock exchange as Director of Investor and Public Relations. That was quite a ride. New York was very different then.
One day, the CFO of that company called me up saying he had another project for me. We built Wubba in to the world’s #2 brand of dog toys and were purchased by the #1 brand. Now it’s Kong Wubba.
I started taking pictures and ended up shooting fashion at New York Fashion Week, São Paulo Fashion Week, and in Berlin for legendary fashion photographer David LaChapelle. My work has been published in Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Visionaire, Paper Magazine, New York Times, and many international publications.
La Candelaria
I had a Colombian family for almost a decade in New York. Marian apparitions seem silly until you see one yourself. One day my Colombian girlfriend said the Virgin was in the back yard. I went to look and sure enough, there she was on the rock face of the back wall. The entire family saw her. She was dressed like a queen.
My girlfriend said she was a Spanish Virgin and I should write about Spain. After a few days, she vanished.
I didn’t think much about it, until one day I saw a photo of La Virgen de Candelaria, the patron saint of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and patroness of the African Diaspora. I was shocked because she was exactly the Virgin who appeared on our back wall. Her message wasn’t to write about Spain, it was to write about Mother Africa.
Brazil
Tudo bem?
I went to São Paulo to photograph São Paulo Fashion Week for my friend Geova the Brazilian fashion designer in the East Village. There I got to interview Washington Olivetto. The adman is one of the most famous people in Brazil.
Two Brazilian girls talking
is all the music that I need
for I’m a drunken sailor
in a sea of Portuguese.
Keith Widyolar
The Brazilians taught me that to live, all we need is the sun, the beach, and our friends …
Argentina
Tango, Tango, Tango en la viruta de la diosa …
I got into Argentine tango because I was looking for love. It’s one of the things that changed my life. I ended up promoting the New York Tango Festival. Both my New York tango teacher, and a best friend told me that I don’t belong in New York, I’m more Latin. I don’t know why they said that because I didn’t know anything about the Latin world at the time. Even though I grew up with Mexican American kids in Los Angeles, my concept of Latin at the time was the Cuban entertainer Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo in “I Love Lucy.” I was so ignorant.
When the 2008 Financial Crisis hit, I closed my studio and moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I thought I would dance for a while and come back to New York when the crisis resolved. I did eventually come back, but I was not the same person any more.
The first time I went to Argentina, Suki Schorer, the former New York City Ballet prima ballerina, and leading expert in Balanchine technique came along. At her birthday party, in walked Claude Murga, who enjoyed her first New York hot dog with me. Claude was a member of Argentina’s Ministry of Culture. She was the teacher of Argentine diplomats, and became my main tango teacher. I have a Buenos Aires tango embrace thanks to Claude.
The second time I went to Argentina, I had a photo exhibition at Salon Canning, one of the famous milongas. At the closing party, Claudio Segovia, producer of the seminal tango show, “Tango Argentino” joined us.
A Portuguese French tango dancer invited me to Paris for a couple of weeks, so I went.
France
I really learned to dance tango in the milongas of Paris. My style is an unusual mix of the Tango Salon of Buenos Aires, and the Tango Stage style of Paris. My master teacher in Argentina is recognized as a master of both styles.
In France, I learned that culture is worth fighting for. I launched Tango Beat, which became the world’s most popular tango magazine. We covered milongas in Buenos Aires, New York and Paris; and tango festivals around the world. Follow your heart to the Tango Beat ®
Colombia
While visiting New York City, I invited a petite dancer to tango because she reminded me of Suki who is very petite. We had one of those unforgettable connections. I gave her my card and she started stalking me on social media. When I came back to New York, she invited me to perform with her in Vermont, and a great love was born. She was a well-trained classical ballet dancer. My style is well-suited to ballerinas, and we were a great tango couple. So I had a Colombian family in New York for eight years. I really loved my stepson. Things started out great, almost magical. I moved heaven and earth to be with her, but over time she became more and more abusive, and ultimately violent. I would call help for her, and she would lie and say I did something terrible. I learned to never accept violence in my relationships. I also learned that crazy people will tell you exactly how they are crazy by blaming you for their own craziness. It was a hard lesson. She is still stalking me more than half a decade later.
We finally broke up on our first trip to Colombia. It was bizarre because we were on a two-week tour with the 1% of the 1% of Colombia that ended at the home of a former president of Colombia. We broke up on the second day of the trip. This was the first poem that I wrote in Spanish without writing in English first and translating it.
Las Piedras de El Camino (For X)
Ahora estoy escribiendo mis palabras en piedra, las piedras de el camino. Ellos son las lágrimas de Bochica y la Virgen, la Virgen del amor.
Mi amor, el amor de mi vida, nuestra historia ha terminado, pero ahora vives en todas de mis palabras. Ahora mis palabras son mios, como mi corazón era tuyas antes.
Ahora, mi corazón descansa en una lluvia de lágrimas en un rincón andino, Barichara a la Piedra. Es el pueblo Colombiano más hermoso, donde crecen los grandes árboles entre las piedras del amor, las piedras de el camino.
Adiós amor. Tu escritor.
Keith Widyolar, Barichara de las piedras, 9/9/18
Cuban Yoruba New York
The call of the drum. La llamada de los tambores.
“She’s out of her mind. I don’t know what to do. / Just come over.”
~ ~ ~
- Why do I keep running into you? / I don’t know. I’m a Cuban actress.
- Oh. The world’s best Cuban rumbero is playing in Harlem tonight. / I love rumba.
- He’s babalawo. / So am I.
- Who has your head? / Yemayá.
“Yemayá, Yemayá, o-o-o, Yemayá … Aguanile …”
Puerto Rico
Con Santa Barbara a mi lado, abran paso: rumba, bomba, plena, salsa.
~ ~ ~
“Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Do you really believe you were kidnapped by aliens? / Absolutely.” 🤣🤣🤣
~ ~ ~
Happy to be in Puerto Rico, I asked the Yoruba mother goddess, “Yemayá, esperando aqui?” (Yemayá, should I stay here?) Since she is the goddess of the sea, I went to the ocean to receive her answer. As I ran down the beach, I was thinking that I wanted to get healthy again.
The instant I touched the water, I went down. The image of a shark biting my leg off flashed in my brain. I crawled out of the water and two guys helped me off the beach.
I thought I had a cramp, but had torn my Achilles tendon and couldn’t walk for almost a year. I took Yemayá’s answer as a no, and moved to Old San Juan. But it turned out her answer was yes. She kept me in Puerto Rico to get healthy and receive the blessings of the island of enchantment and it’s people. It was a great blessing.
I spoke to my Cuban mentor.
- That was kind of weird. What happened?
- “You’re not Yemayá. You’re Eleguá.”
At the time I didn’t know who Eleguá was. He is the Yoruba messenger of God, and opens or closes the roads on your life’s journey. He is a clown who makes people laugh and brings people together. When I moved to the Caribbean, I became funny in Spanish. I was never funny before. Many salsa songs start with the Diana, “E-le-le, le-le-le,” a call to Eleguá to open a connection with the divine because we are going to dance, and dance is how we pray.
Jíbaro soy. Camino soy. Elegúa soy. Soy calle. Pa’ que tú lo sepa’. I love to dance with Atabey / Oyá. She is the wind itself.
In Puerto Rico, I studied bomba with Héctor “Coco” Barez, the former Calle 13 percussionist, plena with Emanuel Santana of Plena Libre, and salsa with world champions at a school in Llorens Torres, a community where even native Puerto Ricans are afraid to go. I never had any trouble. I never met Tito Matos, the contemporary godfather of plena, but studied in his school and played on one of his panderetas.
I named my bomba drum Oshún to protect me from bad women. Her color is yellow. I now live in a town whose color is yellow.
Dominican Republic
Capotillo 42, dembow, bachata, merengue, kompa, Yowa, La Altagracia …
I’ll always be an American from California, Bangkok, and New York, but I am a little of all the countries and people who embraced me on life’s journey.
It used to take forever
to get to Disneyland
but now I wake up in the kingdom
every day.
And that’s what I have to say about me.
“Kíko” Keith Widyolar