Here's Futuro Senior Producer and hardcore Ricky Martin fan, Jeannie Montalvo, who was growing up in Georgia when this song came out.

God, I just remember that song, like, blew my mind, 'cause I was discovering my Latinidad also as a teenager, having grow up in the most non-Latino place on the planet, and God, that song just meant everything to me.

I asked Futuro Senior Producer and Ricky Martin loyal fan, Jeannie Montalvo, again to describe what it was like watching this on TV.

Like, I lit- I remember standing in my living room, watching as these, like, [tambourine music] estos tambores, like, came down the aisles at the gringo Grammys.

This was before the Latin Grammys, the last year before the Latin Grammys were inaugurated, and, like, people were so excited.

Here's Futuro Senior Producer and hardcore Ricky Martin fan, Jeannie Montalvo, who was growing up in Georgia when this song came out.

God, I just remember that song, like, blew my mind, 'cause I was discovering my Latinidad also as a teenager, having grown up in the most non-Latino place on the planet.

And God, that song just meant everything to me.

I asked Futuro Senior Producer and Ricky Martin loyal fan, Jeannie Montalvo, again to describe what it was like watching this on TV.

Like, I lit- I remember standing in my living room, watching as these, like, estos tambores, like, came down the aisles at the gringo Grammys.

This was before the Latin Grammys, the last year before the Latin Grammys were inaugurated.

And, like, people were so excited.

Jeannie, what did you think, what do you think is missing from the conversation about the history of salsa?

That's an excellent question.

I think there's been a lot of different versions of the salsa story.

I mean, salsa in general, it has African rhythms.

There was Cu- Cuban song.

There's all this, like, where did it start? Where did it come from? And salsa itself was something that was fused here in the city, right? Like, the rhythms, they're all, you have them in Puerto Rico, you have them in Cuba, you have them all over the diaspora.

But then this version, these fusions that started to happen here because there was a Cuban, there was a Dominican, there was a Jewish guy-

[laughs]

Fania All Stars

...

the kind of Motown of salsa, and how New York City was kind of a breeding ground for that.

I did my, um, thesis in Afro-Cuban Latin jazz recording, so I feel like I've been living this [laughs] for at least 15 years, really digging and researching.

So to get to kind of like culminate it in this podcast was really exciting.

When we finally got the green light and the funding to do it, it was a really exciting moment for both of us, and for everyone at Futuro.

[laughs] I love it.

You send emails to like celebrities, it's like it feels like it goes to a black hole.