By Paul Dudley
Gustavo Clark was six years old when he first walked into a Panama City nightclub. Children were admitted in the afternoons, and little Gustavo always came and danced to the melodies and percussion of the Latin big bands as they played their matinee shows. From the beginning, he was in love with the music.

Parents shooed their kids away at six o'clock, but the music followed Gustavo home. He could hear it from his third-floor apartment, and it was with him as he climbed into bed. "There was a club two blocks away," Clark said during a recent Salsa night at Misty's bar in Bellevue. "I would hear the music in my sleep from some of the best Latin musicians in the world - Ismael Rivera and Cortijo, Johnny Pacheco. All those guys from the Fania All Stars were there."

Thirty-one years later, Clark still hears the music. He's been hearing, announcing, promoting and spinning Latin music in Seattle ever since he arrived from his native Panama in 1970. Now most know Clark, 48, as "D.J. Gustavo", or "El General," a nickname his friends gave him, suggesting he take over Panama after the fall of General Manuel Noriega. "No," he told them. "I think I'll just take over Seattle." Perhaps those who have heard Clark's voice as a D.J. and Latin music promoter for the past three decades would say he has succeeded.

As a child, Latin music was all things to Clark, even a sort of living. He started making money dancing in the side-street bars off Central Avenue in Panama City when he was eight. His salary was only nickels and dimes, but it was as much as his friends earned shining shoes or hawking newspapers.
"I had to sneak into the bars to dance," he said. "The American soldiers that were always kind of hanging around would give me tips. We didn't have much money in my family, but there was music everywhere."

Clark grew to young manhood amidst Latin music. He graduated from matinees to open air concerts where he danced among crowds of as many as 20,000. The music's constant presence was as much a part of his life as breathing, and he thought a life of Panamanian nights and living Latin music would be his forever. But that was not to be. Ironically, it was his enthusiasm for that very lifestyle that took him away from Panama.

Clark's mother thought he spent too much time at play and brought him to Seattle when he was 17, thinking the change in geography would help him focus on his education. The culture shock was like a punch in the stomach. The dance clubs were no longer open to him. The music he loved was no longer in the air, and he felt confused as a young black Latino in the United States, he said. He refused to be limited by any of the labels he saw on the census forms.

"I'm from Panama," he said. "On applications, I was always 'other.'"

It was his Panamanian heritage and the music he had known since childhood that gave him direction. While studying education the University of Washington, he threw weekend Latin music parties at the house where he was renting a room. Clark played the records he brought from Panama and gave dance lessons. He charged a modest dollar at the door, and the parties became popular enough to pay his rent.
In the early '80s, he heard a club called Tijuana Tilly's was looking for a D.J., so he showed up at the door. "I volunteered with my scratched records and cassettes," he said. It turned out to be the first of many jobs he would have in front of a microphone.

He's watched the Seattle scene change and grow. Back when Pioneer Square's Fenix Underground was the Hollywood Underground, he took his music and dance steps there as a D.J. and teacher. Some of the clubs where he played and danced, like La Casita in Edmonds and The Number One Son's under the Alaska Way viaduct, don't even exist anymore.
"Now that club is a Godfather's Pizza, I think," Clark said, thinking back and laughing.

Clark's radiant, announcer's voice has energized crowds in nearly every Latin dance club in the city, and he's hosted countless concerts and contests. Many can spot Clark with their eyes closed. His voice is all it takes.
Seattle D.J. and songwriter Carlos Rodriguez, a native of Cuba, said it's Clark's voice that sets him apart. "It's natural," he said.

"Natural" and "authentic" are words Clark uses to describe his style as a D.J. and promoter. The music must be pure, and the energy must be high, just like it was among the crowds of dancers he remembers from Panama.
"I like to put on a show, like a live band with recorded music. I like people to get their hands up in the air," he said.

He teaches dance the same way. Zeb Cobbs has been one of Clark's students for about a year. He said he got hooked on Latin music and dance because of Clark's teaching. Cobbs and fellow student Shiva Mudaliar said, to them, Clark represents Latin music.

"He's such a positive influence," Cobbs said. "I don't think Salsa would survive here without him."

Clark would love nothing more than to see Latin music thrive in Seattle and the Northwest. He plans to promote larger dance clubs and a greater appreciation for cumbia, merengue and bachata.

Although he spends two months a year in Panama visiting friends and family, he will always return to help Latin music rise to the passionate grandeur he remembers from his youth.

"I want to be right here," he said after greeting a group of dancers who stopped by to shake hands and say hello at his table at Misty's. "I want to play the music that I lived. I have a saying: I don't have blood in my veins. What runs in my veins is salsa."