Conclusion
For Bobby Sanabria music was all around growing up, whether through neighborhood concerts featuring famous musicians, at family parties, or on the streets after dinner. Bobby’s story in the South Bronx, like so many others, remind us that narratives are intertwined and interdependent. Watching Tito Puente perform in the Melrose Projects inspired Bobby to pursue a career as a professional musician; representing a key moment in Bobby’s life in which the legacy of Afro-Cuban rhythms helped shaped his aspirations. Bobby’s interview offers a warning to residents of the South Bronx and the public at large but his words also reflect a sense of hope. The stories of the South Bronx may be at risk for displacement as they have been in the past whether as a result of social unrest and detrimental public policy; however, Bobby, and many others, are making sure that community ties are sustained and nurtured “through the strongest thing that we have, which is our culture.” Throughout periods of social unrest, political and fiscal turmoil, and racial tensions Sanabria attributes the community’s survival to the intricate and enchanting musical culture that flourished in the South Bronx, including the captivating sounds of jazz musicians, boleros, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and drums playing in neighborhood parks, among so many others. Despite reflecting on the South Bronx through a sense of loss, Sanabria holds on to a sentiment inspired by the words of jazz musician, Dizzy Gillespie - while the musical culture of the South Bronx may be surviving on a thread, “as long as there’s one Puerto Rican, Cuban, you know with an album in their house of salsa, the music still is alive in some way.” For Sanabria and so many others, music was and continues to be a source of survival because “the pulse of New York City is latin music.”