Salsa music was a part of Gia Fu’s life even before she really knew what it was.
“Somehow this style of music traveled to my part of the world in Hong Kong, and before I heard my first salsa song, it was already in my life with the cha-cha-chá and mambo without me knowing that I actually grew up with it,” Fu said in a recent video interview.
The Hong Kong-born salsa DJ, music producer, and cultural researcher said that her mother was a social dance instructor, and she became familiar with it through her mom, who used to dance to the music as well. While salsa and other Afro-Latin music may sound foreign in a place like Hong Kong, it is embedded in the region, and even used as background music in TV advertisements.
“There was a salsa song that was on one of the most popular Hong Kong TV commercials,” Fu said. “It’s a Cuban song, and it shows how we influence each other and how beautiful it is for Latin American and Hispanic cultures to influence cultures globally.”
Fu went on a deep dive to learn everything she could about salsa, mambo, cha-cha-chá and Afro-Latin music. Through her research and rare collections of salsa vinyls, she has made a name for herself in the genre. She’s performed at Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Rauw Alejandro’s album release parties for his fifth album and salsa ode “Cosa Nuestra,” and as the opener for Marc Anthony’s Viviendo Tour in Miami.
In 2021, she collaborated with Grammy-nominated artist Angel Meléndez to produce the salsa album “Big Band Máquina,” and became the first Asian woman to tour as a Latin music DJ. Now Fu is set to spin some of her records in a set at the Head In The Clouds Music & Arts Festival at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Saturday, Aug. 8.
“My goal is to make at least 10 to 20 people move their body,” she said. “I don’t care about the crowd size. If I can make some people dance, I will be happy.”
Fu’s Latin-based musical style stands out on the 88rising event bill that includes global superstars from the Asian diaspora such as Katseye, XG, Dabin.kr and others. While she is from Hong Kong, her performances mostly specialize in curating Afro-Latin music and salsa rarities via her vinyl collection.
Fu’s spiral into salsa happened at 16, when she heard Roberto Roena’s “Que Se Sepa” during a breakdance battle. In that enchanting moment, she decided to dedicate herself to learning everything about the music and culture.
She began taking Spanish lessons, and a few years later she traveled to Greece, where she met a Puerto Rican man who taught her and the rest of the guests at the hostel they were staying at how to dance to salsa. Fu had understood what the music was but had never been taught the proper technique back home. She picked it up rather quickly thanks to her traditional Chinese dance background.
Her new friend encouraged her to keep learning how to dance, but when she went back home, she had trouble finding the style he had taught her. So Fu decided it was time to really get serious about her commitment and applied to the University of Hong Kong, where she majored in Hispanic and Spanish Studies.
“I got into the university because my Spanish scores were so high. I failed all the other tests, even in Chinese,” Fu said. “My Spanish got really good because I listened to salsa every day.”
The university’s curriculum was mostly taught by professors from Spain and focused on the cultures of different Latin American countries. For her senior thesis, she was given the choice of writing about literature or film, so she opted to focus on Cuban film, specifically the music and score as a way to connect her passion to the project.
During her college days, Fu began DJing and would fly to Cuba to get better salsa lessons. When she was back at home, she’d often find herself in arguments with promoters who billed their events as “tropical” and asked her to perform.
“I used to hate the idea of them marketing tropical music as a general term for Latin music,” Fu said. “I used to argue with the promoters and tell them that’s not how to promote the party. I’d tell them to do a better job of making sure people knew exactly what they were asking and talking about.”
When she graduated, she didn’t know what she was going to do with her degree, so she took a job at the Colombian Consulate in Hong Kong, but it wasn’t exciting enough. Fu wound up being a social media coordinator for Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, and to prepare for the job, she rewatched all of his films. Something that surprised her in the process was how much Latin and Afro-Latin music was included in his movies.
“I realized this music has always been in the DNA of the cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai,” Fu said. “When there was the Palladium mambo era in New York, there was The Paramount (a ballroom dance hall) in Shanghai that was happening at the same time. I realized how all this music traveled to Asia, and it was fascinating. So I started researching more.”
She said she appreciates how resilient salsa has been, particularly in difficult times, citing examples of how the music flourished in New York during the struggle for social justice for Puerto Ricans and Cuban immigrants in the ’60s and ’70s.
Fu’s research informs how she prepares for her sets, starting with inquiring about the crowds and demographics, the artists she’ll be performing alongside, and searching for salsa produced in the region for the show. For her, it’s a matter of respecting a culture from an outsider perspective.
“As a foreign person performing from another culture, there is a very thin line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, which is the respect and time you put into it,” she said.
Her research and education also granted Fu an understanding of how Afro-Latin music intersects with her own regional background. She found that when cha-cha-chá and mambo were being popularized around the world in the ’40s and ’50s. The music reached Hong Kong thanks in part to globalization and the region being a port where Navy ships stopped.
Fu wanted to find a balance in representing Afro-Latin music and her native land, but there weren’t many examples, other than some cover songs here and there. Her findings on how Afro-Latin artists were influenced by Asian ones weren’t too promising either, with some examples such as El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico’s “Ojos Chinos,” meaning Chinese eyes in Spanish, containing racist stereotypes.
Head in the Clouds announces set times, food lineup for Pasadena festival
She decided to create something of her own to bridge that gap between both cultures and produced “Canton Mambo.” The song and broader project fuse salsa rhythms with the guzheng, a traditional Chinese plucked zither, and are similarly named, much like Latin jazz musicians such as Tito Puente, who combined Asian regions with his song title, “Hong Kong Mambo.”
Fu’s song title was named after the Hong Kong region, Canton, the iconic club Canton Disco, and was influenced by the Chinese laborers in the 19th century who were from Canton and were trafficked as indentured laborers to work under harsh, exploitative conditions in countries like Cuba and Peru, or on projects like railroads in the United States.
She said her followers have been asking when she plans to release more songs for the project, and she teased that she is recording more music leading into August. She’s currently on an artist visa that expires soon and living between Chicago and New York, while trying to figure out where to call home after being the first of her family to leave Hong Kong.
“Even though I am really passionate and dedicated my life’s work to Afro-Latin music, I don’t want to forget my roots because that’s how my family raised me,” she said. “I am fortunate to come from a family of women artists across many industries. My grandma used to be an actress and passed away earlier this year, and she would always tell me not to forget my roots. In Chinese, roots also means the roots of your passion.
She told me that before I go on stage, I should always put my hand here on my heart and ask, ‘What are your roots?’ ‘Why are you doing this?’ With that, you find that reason again, and then you go on stage, and you do the performance, and your audience can feel that, and that’s why they dance.”
Head in the Clouds
When: 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8.
Where: Brookside at the Rose Bowl, 1133 Rosemont Ave., Pasadena.
Tickets: General admission passes start at $179, VIP passes start at $329, and 1999 Club passes are $479. Prices include all service fees and taxes and are available for purchase at la.hitcfestival.com.