Fresa Salvaje is more than a series of parties or concerts, creators Dulce Pinzon and Aldo Sanchez are quick to point out. Fresa Salvaje is an experience. Guanabee recently sat down with the two Mexican transplants to discuss music, life beyond Brooklyn (spoiler: there isn’t any) and why you don’t have to sell your ass out to do what you love.

Guanabee:What is Fresa Salvaje?
Fresa Salvaje: It’s a whole experience. It’s a party with Latino music — music that isn’t mainstream reggaeton or salsa — that also includes visual elements, like photo projections and art. It’s a way of doing away with stereotypes about Latino music and what Latinos like while promoting art and really good bands people might not have heard about, and just letting people have a good time

Guanabee: How did this whole experience first start out?
Fresa Salvaje: Dulce was living in Williamsburg, Aldo was visiting from San Francisco and, because all the Latino clubs and venues or “Latino nights” were all about salsa or bachata or Shakira, and not stuff we could really like or get into, we decided to throw a party for ourselves and our friends. So we got a space, told people through word of mouth and flyers. Dulce is a visual artist and Aldo is an independent curator, so we were able to invite a lot of people who were interested and worked in the arts. We also invited people we knew who worked in local places like La Esquina or Bonita Café: cooks, dishwashers. They were the ones who got everyone dancing. So it was good to have a mix of different Latinos from different classes that maybe wouldn’t have participated in social activities together otherwise. At first, we played a lot of retro things, alternative music from the 80s that people recognized and loved but hadn’t heard in a really long time. It was something no one else was doing.

Guanabee: (Unlike in Brooklyn a lot of the U.S., different classes don’t hang out in Latin America and we’ve heard from many Latin American immigrants that this is one thing they find cool about parties in New York.) You didn’t so much create a market as cater to one that existed but was being ignored.
Fresa Salvaje: Exactly.

Guanabee: So “Fresa” isn’t meant to imply its only for a certain social class? Is it meant ironically?
Fresa Salvaje: No, not at all. Everyone can come and enjoy our events. There’s still a mix of different classes that come and have fun.

Guanabee: Communists. So what is it that you’d like all these different sorts of people to get from your events?
Fresa Salvaje: We want them to have a good time! We want them to dance, to gain exposure to underground bands or Latin American bands that aren’t as big in the United States. We try to have our events function on many levels: music, visuals. Sometimes we even have a taco cart set up in the venue or we have a piñata so people can enjoy our events on that level, too. We try and think of everything.

Guanabee: It seems, then, that your events are primarily catered towards Mexican-Americans.
Fresa Salvaje: No, not Mexican-Americans. Mexicans, sure. We get a lot of international students from Latin America, for instance. Not just Mexico, but Argentina, Venezuela. But not really a lot of gringos. There were maybe, like, four gringos at that first party.

Guanabee: They had probably lost their way heading to a Yo La Tengo show. You mentioned party-goers (experiencers?) from all different places coming to and enjoying your events. Would you ever host a gig someplace other than Brooklyn? Like maybe Miami or LA?
Fresa Salvaje: We’ve done stuff at the Delancey, down on the Lower East Side. And sometimes we’ll host parties in Mexico City; we did one event in Chicago. But we live in Brooklyn, so it’s convenient for us to hold our events there. After all, this is really mostly something we do for us and for our friends. It’s like our gift to them.

Guanabee: Home is where the Brooklyn Lager is, after all. So are there cities other than New York that you find really cool or interesting?
Fresa Salvaje: We mostly travel between here and Mexico City.

Guanabee: Yeah, we really see no reason to go anywhere else either. Except maybe Queens. Moving on: In an interview with the NY Daily News, Dulce was quoted as saying that Fresa Salvaje was more about “curating a scene” than “throwing a party.” Is this the major difference between what Fresa Salvaje does as opposed to Nacotheque, which also throws, uh, “alternatino” parties?
Fresa Salvaje: Yes. We think, even though obviously there’s going to be some overlap, that Nacotheque does their own thing, and we also do our own thing. For one, their crowd is younger. Hipsters. Our crowd is typically older, into retro stuff and into the arts. It’s music, yes, but it’s also more. That’s why it takes us several months to plan an event, whereas Nacotheque parties happen more frequently. We have day jobs. Nacotheque is their job. This isn’t something we do for money, we do it, as we said, as a gift. It takes a lot of time to make all those different elements come together.

Guanabee: Focusing on the music, though, what kind of bands should our readers be keeping tabs on?
Fresa Salvaje: Well, we only really play bands we love. Like whatever’s in our iPods. We don’t look at TV or magazines or websites to try and find “the next big thing.” It’s all stuff we hear about through word of mouth or that’s recommended to us. So we’re never going to compromise and collaborate with someone for money or publicity if we don’t love them. We don’t want to owe anyone anything - we just want to play really, really good music. That’s another reason our events take a long time to put together - it takes a while to schedule bands based in Latin America and pay for their plane tickets and performance fees and all that. So we’re actually really excited for the bands that are going to be playing at our show at Studio B this Friday. One band, “Kumbia Queers,” joined the line-up at the last minute because they happened to be in New York. Its a group of gay girls who play really awesome cumbia mixed with eletronic music. Everyone is going to be dancing. We also have “Afrodita,” “DJ Lasser Gun #1” and “Sonido Changorama.” It’ll be the first Latin-themed event to ever happen at Studio B.

It’s going to be amazing.

…And we agree that it probably won’t totally suck. Which is why we want you to join us in mutual drunken yelling this Friday, July 11th at Fresa Salvaje’s & Paraguero’s Official Afterparty for “Celebrate Brooklyn.”

10 p.m.
Studio B
259 Banker Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn)
$10 cover, 21+ to enter