Nashville Salsa Meetup: Balboa's brain/love child

International Man of Mystery.  Global Guru of Business. Enigma of Energy.  Goodwill Ambassador of All Things Salsa.

Perhaps Carey James Balboa is best described by the words of another Renaissance Man, English poet Francis Bacon: “If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins them.”

As one who calls himself “an island person,” and says his Colombian friends tease him about identifying more with their culture than his Memphis roots, Balboa has channeled his passion for the Latin lifestyle to unify, promote, and empower Music City’s growing global scene.  Balboa’s Brain Child, the Nashville Salsa Meetup or ¡Diablos Que Bailan! (Devils that Dance) is 385 salseros strong and open to all who want to find fun in an ethnically eclectic group.  He says the "only rule of membership is to respect each other."

It all began as what Balboa calls a “salsa flash mob” patterned after the European craze of spontaneous social gatherings.  “We started as a salsa dancing street gang.  Without knives,” he adds with his signature wry humor and wide grin.  Armed with his portable sound system, a cooler of ice water, folding chairs and extra pairs of dance shoes, he summons friends via text messaging to vacant parking lots and rooftops for nights of Latin dance.  “It’s an awesome vibe.  People walk up and ask what we’re doing.  We invite everyone to join.”

As a DJ in Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, and the US, his world music has moved people from Roxy’s, Club Med, and Bogota’s Da Garage to Nashville’s private parties, Kazu and Bar Twenty 3.  And while obviously a huge supporter of local Latin clubs like Ibiza and Cielo listed weekly on the Meetup site, he offers a breath of fresh air—literally—for those who sometimes want to trade the club atmosphere and its mix of music for pure salsa in the shadow of the Bellsouth building.  

But as much as Balboa is about spontaneity (one of the questions on the Salsa Meetup.com website asks if new members want to be alerted to impromptu, clandestine dance locations), he’s a savvy businessman.  He noticed the need in 2007 to organize the already growing Latin dance group and found Meetup.com to be the vehicle to do it.   The Manifesto of New York-basked Meetup, the largest networking site for local groups in over 3600 cities across the globe, states: “Groups have a history of making history. People unite, motivate, activate and mobilize. Let's use the Internet to get people off the Internet.  Let's meet in real time, in real places, and make a real difference.”

Mixing Balboa’s passion for the world’s music  with his profession of serving people  (he's a technology consultant for clients looking to build their brands) would have been enough to make the Nashville Salsa Meetup a success.  But perhaps what makes Balboa even more valuable to Music City is his personality which led to his mission for the Meetup: "to foster a sense of community."  A lot like the quietly cool, unassuming Mac Guy on the “Get a Mac” commercials, Carey James, an Apple specialist, is sometimes misunderstood.  At my first Meetup in March of 2008, I mistook him for a photographer more comfortable behind the lens than mingling with the dancers at Kazu.  It was Pablo Bodini and Jonathan Blanco, front men and co- organizers of the group, who led me to the dance floor.  Four days later at my first Meetup house party, I learned that Carey was, in fact, the organizer. By my third function we danced at another house party, but I didn't see him again for months.

Balboa admits he’s been MIA a lot over the past year.  His choosing to fade into the background and work behind the scenes explains why his celebrity clients hire him to protect their privacy from stalkers and hackers.  And then there’s the fact that Balboa has traveled to South America ten times over the past twelve months, spending most of his time with soul mates in Bogota.  But while his goals include “getting to Argentina” and eventually moving to his beloved Colombia where he’s warmed by the tropical climate and closer to his adopted parents, his longings for the future don’t cloud his vision of what’s needed in the Salsa Meetup in Nashville here and now.  

He credits Bodini and Blanco for growing the group’s size substantially over the past year.  To help with the numbers, he has added dance instructors Alethea Kelly, Gaston Vidarte, and  Nate Bell as co-organizers.  His goal of building community among members includes promoting openness among Latin businesses:  “We’ve reached a point where two or more salsa events are happening on the same nights.  It’s up to the members to choose which venue they will attend.  I encourage in Nashville what I see in Bogota: a community of clubs that support each other and the salsa scene rather than compete for customers.  Or like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where business owners/employees know you will go from one place to the next but focus on welcoming you to the party.”  Apparently he's right that growing pains are a good thing.  Just last Friday night some dancers did First Shift at Cielo’s Salsa Fridays  and then slid on over to Mad Donna’s Salsa Bash for Round Two.  

Sometimes it seems Balboa’s loss is Nashville’s gain.  His longing for the tropics and people he loves overseas must make his transitioning back to Tennessee—especially in the cold of winter--challenging.  Like Carey, I’ve fallen in love with a foreign culture—first in Italy and now in Nashville.  I’ve experienced the paradox and melancholy that can come from feeling more at home abroad than in my birthplace.  But choosing to bloom where he’s planted—at least for now--this creative and kind soul with a keen business sense  set the Nashville Salsa Meetup  in motion and continues to push it to the next level.  His "next big thing" is a trip to Cali, Colombia, the Capital of Salsa, but this time... we're all invited.  For details, see the link below.

Whether surfing the coast of South America or helping professionals ride the wave of technology, whether silently photographing the beauties of the rain forest or playing tour guide through the hottest South American salsa clubs, Carey James has made a big splash with the ¡Diablos Que Bailan! and continues to prove that still waters run deep...and sometimes they dance in the moonlight.