Kiara Alegría Hudes

You're in a different part of town now.

This is called El Barrio.

This is where the Puerto Ricans live.

An invisible border.

And you could feel them.

It's like a little air pressure change.

And I found that that segregation happened.

which I was very hip to as a kid, you can see it plainly, it kind of had some silver linings and it had some real problems to it.

For me, the silver lining was that it created this kind of closed ecosystem and incubator of brilliant culture.

So you go into North Philly and

And the dancing is the best you're going to find in Philadelphia.

The music is blasted and it's some of the best music the Americas have produced.

This is golden age salsa.

Play me a kind of music.

That with more sophistication and joy weaves together our nation's history.

It doesn't exist.

Like this to me is pinnacle music, mountaintop music.

So this kind of cultural innovation.

Also, I found on the blocks in North Philly.

There was a savviness about body diversity that really countered the popular culture.