The Grupo Folklorico y Experimental Nuevayorquino was, if there is one, the embodiment of the musical collapse of diasporic experience. Led by Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, already by then a hero of Afro-Cuban music; and by Manny Oquendo, and the González brothers, all coming from Eddie Palmieri’s orchestra “La Perfecta”, the band formed as a supergroup. Their experiment results in the deconstruction of salsa and its reconstruction into a claim for the roots of the past which defamiliarized the musical present of the 1970s (and of today), inventing its own future.

“Se me olvidó (que te olvidé)”, their most famous song, takes a piece from Mexican composer Lolita de la Colina and Africanizes it, bringing the melody to the terrain of Yoruba chants while creating a brilliant polyrhythmic tension by means of percussion and violin.