Puerto Rican music in New York is given center stage in Ruth Glasser's original and lucid study. Exploring the relationship between the social history and forms of cultural expression of Puerto Ricans, she focuses on the years between the two world wars. Her material integrates the experiences of the mostly working-class Puerto Rican musicians who struggled to make a living during this period with those of their compatriots and the other ethnic groups with whom they shared the cultural landscape.

Through recorded songs and live performances, Puerto Rican musicians were important representatives for the national consciousness of their compatriots on both sides of the ocean. Yet they also played with African-American and white jazz bands, Filipino or Italian-American orchestras, and with other Latinos. Glasser provides an understanding of the way musical subcultures could exist side by side or even as a part of the mainstream, and she demonstrates the complexities of cultural nationalism and cultural authenticity within the very practical realm of commercial music.

Illuminating a neglected epoch of Puerto Rican life in America, Glasser shows how ethnic groups settling in the United States had choices that extended beyond either maintenance of their homeland traditions or assimilation into the dominant culture. Her knowledge of musical styles and performance enriches her analysis, and a discography offers a helpful addition to the text.

Ruth Glasser is a public historian and part-time Lecturer in American Studies at Yale University.

"Though at one level this is a social history that rescues Puerto Rican music from musty layers of misinterpretation and scholarly neglect, at another it is an exploration of the agents and the contexts of national and ethnic redefinition. . . . The lesson so wonderfully conveyed is that it is hopeless to search for absolute cultural moorings in societies born under the sign of massive international movements of people and capital. . . . An indispensable source for Puerto Rican studies and a distinguished contribution to the North American scholarship on race, ethnicity, and immigration."—Contemporary Sociology

"This book joins the ‘must see’ list of exciting new historical work on Latin American music and identity. . . . A successful combination of theoretical sophistication and empirical research that will hopefully find many imitators among students of Latin American popular culture."—John Charles Chasteen, Latin American Studies

"With brilliant insight, Ruth Glasser recalls a golden age of Puerto Rican music in New York City that threads through the lives of long forgotten musicians and their songs. . . . [The story is] told with such fascinating detail that it hooks you on the richness of the subject’s evolution. . . . A new perspective on the evolution of genres like Salsa and Latin jazz in New York City."—Jesse Varela, Latin Beat Magazine

"An interesting and informative book about a neglected area of North American ethnic history. . . . Both a valuable introduction to a complex subject and a challenging interpretation of it."—Reid Badger, American Historical Review