Dembow and Defiance: The Story of 42nd Street (EXCLUSIVE)

In partnership with

In the Dominican Republic, a 600-meter stretch called 42nd Street pulses with music, struggle and survival. To outsiders, it’s a place synonymous with drug trafficking and danger. But beneath the headlines lie a deeper truth — one where adversity and art are inseparable, cause and effect in a relentless cycle.

With 42ND STREET, which premiered last weekend at SXSW, director, José María Cabral pulls back the curtain on Capotillo — the birthplace of dembow — revealing a world that thrives in defiance of its reputation.

“There’s a lot of people who think it’s only drugs and it’s only Narco traffic and violence and danger — and yes, of course there is, like anywhere else in the world — but there’s also a lot of people,” Cabral told me. “People who are actually making art, struggling.”

Like any disenfranchised community forced to live among poverty and brutality, the resilient people on 42nd Street have to find a hustle, but what really stands out is how dembow isn’t just created here. Rather, it’s lived.

“La diligencia (the hustle) — it’s about finding your pan de cada dia (daily bread),” Cabral said. “We have to have empathy for those people who are trying to make a life, create art, provide for their families, living in a very hostile environment and still trying to cope with what’s the right thing to do.”

Really, for an hour and a half, the viewer teleports to Capotillo, feeling the exhaustion of its struggling mothers, the tenacity of its community leaders and the desperation of the ones who have lost themselves in the teteo.

The neighborhood’s tradition of epic block parties (teteos) have been around for some time, but COVID-19’s quarantine was the catalyst for this lifestyle. With an allergy to restraint and the urge to commune and dance, 42nd Street found itself full of outdoor parties, where it would be less dangerous to catch the virus. But this risk wasn’t the price of partying. It’s about liberation.

“And of course, when the parties started there, then the repression came, like ‘No, you can’t do this,’” Cabral said. “So then came the fight of the parties, or the police authority.”

And that’s where the conflict begins. Throughout history, Latino communities have turned oppression into cultural movements. In Capotillo, where outsiders see a haven for crime, drugs and violence, 42ND STREET highlights an unseen side — where art is a survival tool.

As the film’s narrator puts it, “Here we all use our guile to sing a song that can help us survive.”

Demonstrated by 42nd Street local legend, Natasha Dancer, one popular hustle is dance — she and her crew cruise down the teteos. But what really sets her apart? La Baile de la Giellette (Razor Dance).

Receive Honest News Today

Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.

Sign up today!

Since the streets aren’t particularly safe at night, more so for women, Natasha left the house with a blade around her tongue — and again, survival and dance blended.

“I started dancing with the blade in my mouth here, in Capotillo,” her character said in the film. “But I never did it in front of a camera until a girl in my dance crew known as ‘La Funky’ appeared in a friend’s video and it went viral. I showed a versatility in my mouth that no one else had. And that’s when I went viral internationally, because people wanted to come and see me do it.”

Like hip-hop, reggaeton and EDM, counter-culture genres are often criminalized before becoming cultural phenomenons — dembow is no different.

“What the people of 42nd Street really want is to be seen, to be able to do their own music,” Cabral said. “They’re doing dembow, they’re doing reggaeton. But I think it’s a response to always being invisible, always being labeled as something.”

Now, consider these genres — they predominantly rely on technology. And artists in Capotillo didn’t have access to Hollywood record labels. But what was available to them? A computer, a couple of microphones and — thanks to social media — the entire world.

“Dembow is creativity. Creativity is about adding to a narrative, about saying ‘yes, and’ or ‘yes, and what if.’ It’s about expanding and exploring, innovation and pushing a medium to its maximum expression and I think that’s what happens here,” Ricardo, a character in the film, said. “It’s a different business model from how urban music and dembow is distributed — there’s no record company dictating what to record and what to play. They’ll record it, and if you like it and it’s played, they play it over and over again. It’s a different way of creating music that empowers the section of the population to create what they want.”

Some might judge the culture that surrounds dembow with the same misconceptions that plague Capotillo — like its drug usage. In one way that drugs and dembow intercept is La Baile de la Mueca (Grimaces Dance) — a dance invented by “The Mocho,” who Natasha describes as “a doper that was always buzzed.”

“At first, kids used to make fun of him,” she said. “It looked ridicule. But somehow, he hit the nail on the head by making fun of himself in a way that was sort of self-bullying. After that, when someone wanted to say they were buzzed, they started doing the same faces he did. Soon after that, here in Capotillo, people started dancing like him even if they were sober.”

And that’s just it — some 42nd Street dancers roll down the teteos like "a dopehead zombie,” and what was once an element of a culture, judged even by those in it, become a cultural phenomenon in music and dance internationally — starting with one kid in Capotillo.

A 42nd Street resident turned to Cabral and his camera and said, “I heard there was a movie being filmed around here. I thought it was a zombie movie.”

Then again, the community’s emphasis on self-governance is palpable. Those who see “zombie truchos” (dopehead zombies) dancing into the night, Natasha spinning her razor blade around her tongue and police officers trying to shut down music with brute force, might not believe this standard — but it’s true.

In one scene, a resident shows Cabral a wall, decorated with writing. “This is 42nd Street’s commandments,” he said. “The first is respect, brother. We’re all looking for affection. If I respect you, you have to pay it forward. On Sundays, the teteos wrap up at 4 a.m.. This is because kids go to school — that’s the concession we make to be on good terms with the community.

At the bottom of the wall, a parting message: “Come in with a good vibe, you go out with a better vibe.”

“I was there,” Cabral told me. “It’s over-packed, there’s the temperature, there’s the police brutality. You feel the fragility of life when you’re there. Sometimes you don’t know if you’re going to survive ‘til tomorrow, and you can feel that.”

True, 42nd Street sees prostitution, scamming, violence and drug trafficking — but it also inspires music, dance, loyalty and resilience. In fact, they don’t just co-exist, they’re co-developed.

“Is this what you’re after?” Demetal, a local artist, producer and legend, asked Cabral in the film. “The movie is the real life that we live every day.”

And though Capotillo is an incredibly unique community and culture, the film reminds us of struggles in neighborhoods across the United States — even within pockets of your own barrio.

The reality is, latinos have long used art as a lifeline — from the structures of the Aztec tribes to the chicanos customizing lowriders. Capotillo mirrors the movements of disenfranchised hispanic peoples worldwide, just with a unique touch.

That said, 42ND STREET isn’t just a documentary about another marginalized neighborhood — it’s about a place where hardship doesn’t just coexist with creativity — it fuels it.

“In my days, we let our bullets do our bidding,” the film narrates. “But now, things are different. We use the camera as the new bullet.”