Rosie Perez narrates a podcast history of salsa music in New York

Rosie Perez narrates Our Thing: The Birth of Salsa in Nueva York, a Futuro Media podcast series that debuted on 26 May 2026 and traces how salsa moved from the Caribbean to New York and took on a sound of its own there.

The series opens in 1964 with the rise of Fania Records, the label often described as the Motown of salsa, and the roster it built: Celia Cruz, Willie Colon, Hector LaVoe, Ruben Blades, Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri. Rare interviews with surviving figures from that period were promised as part of the run.

Perez, a Nuyorican actor and dancer, is a pointed choice of narrator. The series covers the social and cultural conditions behind the genre's surge in the city, not just the records, and then carries the thread forward to the present.

The timing was not accidental. Salsa had been having a moment, helped by Bad Bunny's album Debi Tirar Mas Fotos and its salsa-leaning tracks Baile Inolvidable and Nuevayol, the second of those a direct nod to the city where the genre took root. The series follows that line up to the Super Bowl stage and to charting acts including Karol G, Rauw Alejandro and Nathy Peluso.

Futuro has done this before. Five years earlier, Futuro Studios worked with Spotify on Loud: The History of Reggaeton, narrated by Ivy Queen, which followed that genre's route from Jamaica to Panama to New York to Puerto Rico and then out to Colombia and the world.

More of our coverage of the artists in that lineage sits on the latin hub, including Bad Bunny's court win over the reggaeton dembow rhythm and Karol G's seventh album.