Recognizing and Appreciating People, inspired by Michael Jackson’s death
She looked me up and down, thought for a few seconds and said, “OK.” As we were dancing, she suddenly stopped, looked at me and clapped her hands several times, imitating the clave beat. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I knew enough by looking at the expression on her face that she didn’t like my dancing. I interrupted her clapping, thanked her and walked out.
That night changed my life, made a promise to myself, that no woman would ever embarass me like that again. I thought of befriending some people at salsa classes, got their email addresses and phone…I told them, I will be sending them a weekly salsa updates - Salsagang was born. The main idea of the group was to have fun dancing at the clubs together.
2 years later, Salsagang.com grew. On my birthday, the original members of Salsagang (there were 9 of them) gave me a small statue with an imprint saying, “the best president.”
It is one thing to be recognized by certain people in a community, but it’s another to be truly recognized by your peers, the very same people that had been there with you from the beginning. It is much more meaningful. I was touched and I never forgotten it to this day. This was 15 years ago.
This inspired and made me started recognizing and appreciating people for their contributions to the dance community, after all, no one else were recognizing them. The dance scene is so selfish and territorial that nobody would give a sh*t.
Salsagang has given numerous Award of Recognition over the years and I am happy to this day that such appreciation made an impact to the awardee and to me personally.
Recently, certain celebrities passed away, Michael Jackson, particularly. There were many celebrities that died over the years, but the passing of MJ truly made me sad.
In a way, it was kinda uplifting to see people appreciating and remembering the legend. Then I got sadder and ask myself a question, “Why is it that people begin to appreciate, give praise, give tribute to a dead person?” “Where are the praises and appreciation when the person was still alive and aware enough to feel such gesture?”
3 days ago, I was watching an interview of Al Sharpton by CNN recently about MJ, he was asked on how he was feeling of MJ’s death, he responded by saying, “It’s a good thing that people are now coming out appreciating the king of pop, but he’s dead. Where were they when he was still alive?”
This year at the SF Bachata Festival, we have the night of awards by Salsagang.com. It has now become a tradition on my events such as the festival in Reno and now in SF.
We are giving awards of recognition to 10 people this year and I am very excited. My criteria in giving such awards is not because the recipient has been doing a certain service or a certain job for a long time, longevity has nothing to do with it, but rather very simple, the recipient made a difference, directly and indirectly, changing a community and most importantly, changing someone elses life.
In the past, we have given recognition to Ricardo Sanchez, Michelle Castro, Luis Santiago, Luis Torres. Armando Tam, Jorge Elizondo, Diana, Mr Maracas, BB of Salsa Reno and others ( i can’t remember all of them)
Giving award of recognition to these special people always bring me back to my early days in Salsagang. These people are our colleagues, they are our peers and they deserve to be recognized by the same people they work with.
Going back to Michael Jackson…i do hope that we all realize - the best thing to tell people you appreciate and admire them is when they’re still alive and can actually utter words such as “thank you.”
