ABSTRACT
In narrating the development of a local salsa music scene in London, this chapter focuses on the construction of Latin identities across salsa clubs. Salsa clubs are approached not as contained and bounded sites for social interaction, but in relation to broader spatial practices and power relations that play an important part in the construction and embodiment of particular Latin identities. This approach is an attempt to move beyond research on dance clubs that has tended to focus on audiences as subcultures and the production of the event. Although these perspectives are useful for exploring how salsa is appropriated so as to communicate Latin identities, and how audiences participate in the production of a music event along with various music industy interests, they provide little possibility for exploring the processes through which salsa comes to be present in London. They neglect how practices within the clubs are constituted out of wider social processes and relations of power.
