There's a sound the coquí frogs make at night in Puerto Rico, a small, insistent, two-note call that fills the whole jungle after dark. It was one of my first memories of the island. I was a kid, playing in the backyard of a family friend's house, and I swear I saw a giant plant-shaped man moving in the dark. To this day I don't know if it was real or imagined. But that's Puerto Rico to me. Magic, music, family and the feeling that anything could happen.
Awilda Velazquez-Warfield & Wallace Warfield
My mother was first generation New Yorican, her parents having migrated from the island in the 1920’s. My father was Black American. Together they gave me a love for music: jazz, classical, salsa, the call-and-response rhythms my dad taught me to hear as African before they were ever called Latin. My mother used to pull me out of school for last-minute flights to the island because "the deal was too good to pass up." Teachers would ask if there was a wedding, a funeral. There wasn't. She just needed her happy place. I understand that now more than ever. It's why every time I bring women to Puerto Rico, I'm bringing them somewhere that has always brought me back to myself.