The first salsa band to ever play at a presidential inauguration featured a future congressman standing at the timbales.
In 2013, Maxwell Frost was a teenage timbalero whose high school band was picked to perform in President Obama's inaugural parade. More than 13 years later, the Florida representative returned to the district with his 10-piece salsa band, Orquestra Yeya, for the annual gala afterparty of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI).
In a rare occurrence for Washington D.C., the congressman taking the stage wasn’t the frontman. He wasn’t even the band’s only percussionist. For Orquestra Yeya, Representative Maxwell Frost is the heartbeat.
He clacks his drumsticks together to count time from the shallow steel drums standing at the center of the stage. He rotates with other band members across congas, bongos, and cowbell, creating an “engine room” who together drive the rhythm responsibility of a typical drummer.
“ That's also part of the reason I love salsa music," the Florida democrat said in an interview with El Tiempo Latino. “Not to get too deep about it, but I also come from movement building work and organizing, which is also based out of ‘out of many one'."
When Frost says that “Salsa music is movement music," he clarifies that the meaning goes deeper than the afterparty dance floor. But as the gala-goers clapped their hands and twirled their partners to the beat of the same 1-2 that the congressman was cueing on his timbales, both the literal and figurative meanings were in motion.
Drumming for a salsa band is a lesson in movement building. And this drummer knows that the best movements, like the best salsa bands, work best when people work together.
Orquestra Yeya is made up of multigenerational alumni from Osceola County School for the Arts in Kissimmee, Florida. They make up a 15 year span of graduating classes, a fact they realize through some playful teasing and a few rounds of “what year did you graduate?” before they went on stage.
Some of the members, like bassist David Chico, have been in a number of bands with Representative Frost over the years, long before he’d represent Florida’s 10th district on Capitol Hill. They’ve played together since they were teenagers, as Chico added that his history with “Max” was part of what allowed him to trust him as a band leader.
“We literally met through music," said Chico.
Though their early salsa days took them everywhere from Kissimmee to Washington, the audience member who mattered most was often sitting back in a rocking chair in Florida. Her name was Zenaida, Frost's grandmother, who he lovingly knew as “Yeya” and who would later become the namesake for the Orquestra.
“Yeya” had come to Florida from Cuba on the Freedom Flights, the massive airlifts of the 60s and 70s that brought thousands of Cuban exiles to the US. The migration story is inseparable from that of the history of salsa itself, and from Frost’s own definition of the genre as “movement music."
“These things have always been intertwined throughout history," said Frost. “Music and arts have always been highly political, especially if you're Latino, especially if you're Black."
Still, the band members said they felt a purpose in playing political events. “We bring the spice that everyone wants," said Chico, as multiple members mentioned the “universal language” that is spoken through their salsa.
“People want to move, you know?” said Chico. “You can’t not be happy listening to salsa."
The 2026 CHCI conference and gala celebrated "Presence, Persistence and Power", a testament to the past, present, and future of Latino contributions to the United States according to organization CEO Marco Davis. In an interview with El Tiempo Latino, he said that theme was inseparable from CHCI’s efforts to spotlight arts and culture, including its decision to platform Orquestra Yeya at the afterparty.
“I think it's fitting in many ways that we're having representation of that kind of music at the conference because it's yet another way in which we demonstrate our presence and our persistence and even our growing powers," said Davis.
According to CHCI, their gala is the largest formal gala for the latino community in the country, the Latino “quintessential, must-attend event of the year” per Davis. But this year, questions and criticism from members of the congress surrounding one of CHCI's potential sponsors loomed over the gathering.
Reporting from Migrant Insider revealed that Palantir, a data analytics company with over a decade collaborating on federal deportation efforts, was to contribute $25,000 as a CHCI gala sponsor. Representative Frost, along with many other democrats in the Hispanic Caucus, had openly denounced the tech organization and its collaborations with ICE, and said news of the sponsorship was “a surprise to many of us."
“We reached out and said Palantir is a horrible company that is complicit in the terrorizing of our communities through ICE," said Frost. “No matter how much money they’re donating to CHCI, it needs to be refunded, and there can be no partnership."
Marco Davis’ interview with El Tiempo Latino took place before the Migrant Insider story was released. He did not reply to multiple requests to respond to the quotes from Representative Frost.
During Orquestra Yeya’s performance, Frost was joined on stage by Representatives Darren Soto (D-FL) and Nydia Velasquez (D-NY), CHCI Board Chair and Lifetime Achievement Honoree, respectively. Soto strummed guitar with members of the Orquestra as an opening act, while Velázquez read Bad Bunny’s powerful tribute to his Puerto Rican pride that he monologues before “La Mudanza.”
Both Soto and Velasquez were key characters in the Migrant Insider scoops of the week, and, alongside Frost, were among the representatives who called for the sponsorship to be immediately returned. On September 15, the organization announced it had “ended its relationship with Palantir Technologies."
“I’m happy that was made public and we were able to organize around it," said Frost. “We were listened to, and they refunded it immediately."
A politician's integrity to truly participate in arts and culture is, according to Frost, something an audience can instantly recognize.
"When politicians use the arts for personal political purposes, they aim to use the culture rather than be a part of the culture," Frost explained. "There's a difference between those two things, and I think people can see the difference."
It’s a difficult balancing act that the congressman himself has had to navigate in his advocacy, “a fine line” between his lives in politics and the arts. Still, he’s made music a major legislative priority throughout his time in Congress, partly for reasons he describes as “self preservation."
“ Self-care is also about including the things you love in the work that you do, and that's what allows you to continue to do it for such long periods of time," said Frost. “It’s out of self preservation that I do a lot of artistic stuff within my political work, because it helps me, I’m excited about it, and it’s a big part of who I am in my soul."
Whether fighting for artists on Capitol Hill or drumming on the timbales with Orquestra Yeya, Frost is “animated and irrepressible", just as he was in his first DC performance 13 years ago. In the audience, the dancers seemed just as fueled as he is by beat that they were hearing.
“There’s a lot we’re fighting for in this country right now, and I think it’s really important to have time to be with your friends, with your family, and dance salsa,” Frost said. “It’s my favorite music to play.”
Disclaimer: Fabianna Rincón is a CHCI alumni. The reporter participated in the Fall 2024 Congressional Internship Program.
