Music can be what you throw on while you’re getting ready with your friends, a hazy background track when you’re dancing in the club, or whatever’s paying on the radio when you forget your headphones on the bus. But to many, music is so much more than that. It represents history, culture, and connection. It’s a way to feel close to home even when you’re far away, or to find connection with others. For the growing Latin diaspora in Cork, that connection can be found at the Fiesta Latina nights which run every Friday and Saturday night in the Crane Lane and Bodega.

Fiesta Latina was started by DJ Wil Ros after he moved to Cork 23 years ago from Nicaragua to study in the Crawford. Alongside painting and sculpting, he was already producing music, and he felt it was a natural progression for him to begin DJing. When he arrived in Cork, he decided to start renting a studio and putting on small Latin parties for people.

“Where I’m from, we have music all the time. You’re at home, you dance with your mom, you’re in the kitchen, you’re dancing all the time. And when I came here, when we were in town, we didn’t have any reggaeton, merengue, any Latin music that we liked. So, I decided to DJ”

However, putting on Latin music nights in Cork wasn’t that easy 20 years ago. When he felt ready to move out of the studio and expand the party to the public, he faced challenges. “People hated it. At the beginning, we had to pay bars for us to play there and then we had to charge entrance to make it back. Sometimes we did but not always.”

Now Wil Ros says the response is much more positive, everybody wants him to host Latin nights. He spoke about how most bars in Cork have asked him to play there, but he has refused out of loyalty to the venues who were open to him from the start. “I have to stick to the people who were there from the beginning.” The Bodega caters to a slightly younger crowd, while the nights in Crane Lane have been extremely popular with local Latin dancers. There is a school in Cork City which teaches different styles of Latin dance, and so people come to Fiesta Latina to practice their salsa or bachata skills in a fun environment.

After spending years building up a following in Cork, he took a leap of faith 3 years ago that paid off. “3 years before covid, I was working, and I decided to leave on a Friday. I was like, I’m done, I’m not coming back. And then luckily the next day they called me to start doing the party.” It was slow the first month, but by the third there was a queue outside and people being turned away.

At the Fiesta Latina nights, you can hear a variety of Latin music styles, including bachata, salsa, merengue, reggaeton, and blends of trap and rap. “I love to get a lot of people dancing. When it’s a big crowd and you work for it and you’re doing the marketing, and then you see everybody coming and it’s full, I think okay this is nice, it’s a good feeling.” And that’s certainly Wil Ros’s specialty. On a Saturday night the Bodega is packed, it’s a struggle to get across the room. Everywhere you look people are dancing, singing, laughing, and immersing themselves in this pocket of Latin culture in Cork.

Wil Ros reflects that the crowd that attends his parties change all the time as people move away from Cork to return home, and new people arrive. But regardless of these fluctuations, the community remains. “There’s a lot of Latin people here, and when you share the Spanish language with people, you join together.”.