Feature Piece on Latin American Dance and Music in Helsinki

The fall of 2018 I worked intensively on a big feature piece about Latin American Dances and Music in Helsinki.

Although the interviews were carried out during August, September and October of 2018, the idea for this piece came several years ago.

In 2013 I had just come home from a trip to Cuba were I fell in love with the atmosphere at a salsa party. I was invited to a salsa party in Helsinki and inspired from my recent trip to Cuba I thought I’d check it out. I remember the feeling of disbelief – can this really be Finland? I felt I had been transported back to the Caribbean. Instinctively I felt a feature piece about this underground salsa scene in Finland would make a great story – a story that should be told not only in words, but also in video and photography.

I didn’t get round to writing the piece back then. Instead it got to grow for five years, which was a great decision. During these five years the salsa scene – and the whole Latin American dance and music scene for that matter – grew exponentially in Helsinki.

I conducted tens of interviews with experts and enthusiasts and visited several different types of events, truly immersing myself in the Latin American scene in Helsinki. This resulted in two feature pieces published as an 8-page spread in the printed edition of the Swedish-language newspaper HBL, online versions of the two stories and several videos.

Click here to read about the Latin American Dance scene in Helsinki.

Click here to read about the Latin American Music scene in Helsinki.