The Embrace Massó International Music Festival started three years ago as a way for Embrace Boston and José Massó’s ¡Con Salsa! to celebrate Latino culture and ring in National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15 to Oct. 15) in Boston.

This past Saturday’s event also marked the 51st anniversary of Massó’s ¡Con Salsa! on 90.9 WBUR, which airs every Saturday. Massó himself said Embrace Founder and fellow Hyde Parker Dr. Imari Paris Jeffries first came to him with the idea of a music festival three years ago, and it’s been a big hit ever since.

“This was his brainchild,” Massó said.

Massó said he thought Jeffries wanted to talk about the Embrace monument – https://gvimes.link/embrcmon – and that was true. But Jeffries also wanted to celebrate Massó’s show, which was coming up on 50 years on the air.

“I was like, ‘You’ve got to be joking,’” Massó said. “I was humbled that they would think of me in that manner.”

The day also saw the Drum Major for Justice Award given to Yvette Modestin, a Dorchester native, Panamanian National, and the Founder of the Encuentro Diaspora Afro organization.

“She’s a poet, she’s an activist, and historically we have awarded national artists – like for our first year we awarded Eddie Palmieri,” Jeffries said. “But we wanted this year to be a local artist that we could lift up and celebrate. To be able to do so was phenomenal, and we were humbled in the process.”

Massó said Palmieri was pretty meaningful for him, as he booked him for his first live show back in 1975. He said Palmieri, like everybody, was aging and he wanted to make sure he could “give him his flower” while he could.

“I wanted it to be a bookend, so that if this was his last concert in Boston, I wanted to be part of that as well,” he said.

This year’s headliner was El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, which recently had a big resurgence after the group’s 1975 hit, Un verano en Nueva York, was sampled in NUEVAYoL, the opening title on Bad Bunny’s 2025 album Debí TiRAR MáS FOToS (I Should Have Taken More Photos).

“Elders will say, ‘Oh yeah that’s El Gran Combo’ and they’d listen to it again and again,” Massó said.

Massó said the group’s founder, Rafael Ithier, passed away in 2025, and he was sad they couldn’t get them before that, but he was honored to be able to give him his flowers this year.

“I didn’t get to give him his flowers while he was alive, but we knew we were going to have the band this year,” he said.

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As part of that, Massó and Jeffries both said they wanted to make the festival more intimate. Jeffries said this year also marked the purchase of two properties for Embrace to call home in Downtown Crossing, so they moved the event to West Street, instead of hosting it on the Boston Common.

“Moving the event to Downtown Crossing was a way for us to be a part of our city center,” he said. “We wanted to do it as a way to be a good neighbor here. We bought two buildings in Downtown Crossing, and we want to be a part of the revitalization of our city center, and there’s no better way to do that than have thousands of people dance right here in the center of our capital.”

And Massó said he and Jeffries wanted to use the space in Downtown Crossing to replicate the Puerto Rican Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián (nicknamed La SanSe).

“That’s a street in old San Juan where for 60 years, every January, they close down street traffic in Old San Juan for three days,” Massó said. “Every plaza in Old San Juan features music all day long into the evening. And at night, the big plaza near Ballajá, has the big time headliners. They’ve brought some of the biggest headliners in the world… We wanted to give a taste of that this year and having LEla Gran Combo was the icing on the cake.”

Massó said, however, that the celebration wasn’t without difficulty. He said since last year, they’ve had to organize contingencies for possible raids, arrests or interference from federal agencies. He said they did a lot of the leg work last year, and so this year was a bit easier.

“We worked with both city and state public security organizations, state police, city police, all the surrounding colleges and universities in the area – Emerson in particular – and we worked with all the social service agencies that provided information for the public,” he said. “And nonprofit, pro-bono legal organizations as well. So, we were ready and had a contingency plan in case anything happened, i.e. ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) or anybody who wanted to disrupt it by just coming down to the park. So, we were cognizant of that last year, and same thing for this year. We had the plan already in place, and so if anything happenedhappened, we could mobilize the people we needed to mobilize to make sure everybody was safe and people felt comfortable.”

“And they did,” he said. “I will tell you, the amount of love, sense of pride and acknowledgment that what we were doing was historical to be there in that space and that moment for the first time ever..… There was a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood from those who showed up; Latinos, non-Latinos, people from out of state, multiple generations of people, grandparents... we saw little kids on parents’ shoulders, people playing dominos... we saw the flags waving, people dancing, and all the beautiful things that make this what it is.”

Jeffries said this year the organizing was a bit easier, and they had a lot of help from the local business booster organization.

“It wasn’t stressful, because the team, Embrace, and our partners at the Downtown Business Alliance – they handled it amazingly,” he said. “There were between 8,000 to 12,000 people who came out throughout the day, and it was just love, dancing, all ages, from kids on parents’ shoulders to older adults, multi-cultural, multi-racial, dancing, eating and just having a good time.”

Jeffries said they have some lag time now for the next upcoming signature event, Embrace Honors MLK, which is coming up in January. Go to EmbraceBoston.org for more information.