Salsa

 

(säl'sə, sôl'–) , American popular music developed largely in New York City during the 1970s; its name is derived from the Spanish word for hot sauce. It is a mixture of various elements: rhumba, mambo, chacha, and other Latin dance forms; Afro-Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latin American strains; rock music; and jazz. During the 1980s the style also became popular in Miami as well as in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Colombia. Salsa is chiefly performed, and often simultaneously danced, by singers, percussionists, keyboardists, brass players, and guitarists. Prominent salsa musicians include bandleaders Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri; singers Celia Cruz, Rubén Blades, La India, and Marc Anthony; and such instrumentalists as Ray Barretto, Willie Colon, Johnny Pacheco, and Bobby Valentin.

Bibliography

See Salsa: Latin Pop Music in the Cities (video, 1988); C. Gerard, Salsa!: the Rhythm of Latin Music (1989); R. Figueroa, Salsa and Related Genres: A Bibliographical Guide (1992); V. Boggs, Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City (1992).

Salsa
Stylistic origins:	Primarily Cuban son, mambo, rumba and Puerto Rican music
Cultural origins:	1960s and 70s New York City Latin melting pot
Typical instruments:	pianos, conga, trumpet, trombone, bass guitar, claves, cowbell, timbales, guitar
Mainstream popularity:	Very popular in Latin America, and Moderate in the United States
Derivative forms:	Timba
Salsa erótica - Salsa gorda - Salsa romántica
Fusion genres
Charanga-vallenata - Mereng-house - Salsa-merengue - Songo-salsa - rock-salsa - vallenato-salsa- Salsaton
Regional scenes
Colombia - Cuba - Japan - Mexico - Panama - Puerto Rico - United States - Venezuela
Other topics
Salsa dancing - Musicians

Salsa music or "salsa" is a Latin music generic/umbrella term developed in New York City specifically during the 1970s that was used to describe mainly Afro-Cuban popular Latin dance music generally utilizing rhythms from Cuba, particularly son and guaracha. On occasion salsa bands will play other genres, such as son montuno, guaguancó, bolero, danzón, plena, bomba, cumbia and others. Bands have historically played entire songs in these genres or in some instances shift into these genres for a few bars for rhythmic variation. However, typically salsa songs most approximate the Cuban guaracha genre in terms of structure and tempo.

Salsa songs are generally not played exactly, note for note, as a traditional Cuban guaracha. This is because of the music's evolution. Essentially, Cuban music in the form of son and guaracha genres began reaching the United States as early as the late 1920s, though Don Azpiazu's band, with Antonio Machín as lead singer, is credited by some authors with introducing Cuban music to the United States with the song El manicero. In New York, Latino immigrants from Cuba and Puerto Rico began playing this music. That particular phenomenon is responsible for the development of salsa. Basically, this community began playing Cuban music and continued to do so, adopting songs and genres as these were created in Cuba. For example, during the 1940s Pérez Prado popularized the mambo and soon the New York musicians were playing it. These musicians also began playing chachachá after Cuban violinist created the genre in 1949 with the song La engañadora.

What happened was that the New York musicians conserved the basic structure of these Cuban dance genres while adding their own elaborations. Innovators in this regard include Tito Puente, born in 1923 in Harlem to Puerto Rican parents; "Pin" Madera, a saxophonist and arranger for the Machito band; René Hernández, pianist and arranger for the Machito bands; José Curbelo, pianist and bandleader; and other key figures. The recordings of these musicians during the 1940s reveal a new , more expansive approach to harmony than what many Cuban bands played at the time. The changes were significant but not so much that it could be argued that New York musicians of the era were playing a different kind of music than bands in Cuba. That is because the basic song structure and patterns played on the percussion instruments, along with general horn voicings, were all broadly similar. The difference lay in how the musicians in New York interpreted the same rhythms as musicians based in Cuba. That particular New York interpretation or approach would later be called salsa. Despite several authors claiming that salsa is some kind of amalgamation of rock, Cuban music, plena from Puerto Rico, Brazilian music and who knows what else, this is simply not the case. Listening to the music will reveal that. Marc Anthony's album Contra la corriente, for example, a popular salsa album, does not have rock phrases worked in. It does not have bossa nova figures nor plena nor cumbia nor any of the genres certain people cite as being part of salsa. Structurally, the songs are those of guarachas and they have the faster tempos of a guaracha. That said, their sound is far from traditional. The horn voicings are modern, keyboards add to the harmonic layers: this is not by any means traditional guaracha as played, for example, by singer Beny Moré or the Buena Vista Social Club. It very much reflects the sound and approach of New York-based Latin musicians, a sound which has become highly stylized and developed since the 1930s.

Salsa is essentially Cuban in stylistic origin,^[1] though it is also a hybrid of Puerto Rican and other Latin styles mixed with pop, jazz, rock, and R&B.^[2] Salsa is the primary music played at Latin dance clubs and is the "essential pulse of Latin music", according to author Ed Morales,^[3] while music author Peter Manuel called it the "most popular dance (music) among Puerto Rican and Cuban communities, (and in) Central and South America", and "one of the most dynamic and significant pan-American musical phenomena of the 1970s and 1980s".^[4] Modern salsa remains a dance-oriented genre and is closely associated with a style of salsa dancing.

The word salsa

Salsa means sauce in the Spanish language, and carries connotations of the spiciness in some Latin and Caribbean cuisine.^[5] More recently, salsa acquired a musical meaning in both English and Spanish. In this sense, salsa has been described as a word with "vivid associations, but no absolute definitions, a tag that encompasses a rainbow assortment of Latin rhythms and styles, taking on a different hue wherever you stand in the Spanish-speaking world".^[6] The precise scope of salsa is highly debatable.^[7] Cuban immigrants and Puerto Rican migrants in New York have used the term analogously to swing or soul, which refer to a quality of emotionally and culturally genuine music in the African American community. In this usage salsa connotes a frenzied, "spicy" and wild musical experience that draws upon or reflects elements of Latin culture, regardless of the specific style.^[8]

Various music writers and historians have traced the use of salsa to different periods of the 20th century. World music author Sue Steward has claimed that salsa originated as a "cry of appreciation for a particularly piquant or flashy solo". She cites the first use in this manner to a Venezuelan radio DJ named Phidias Danilo Escalona;^[9] Max Salazar traced the word back to the early 1930s, when Ignacio Piñerio composed "Échale Salsita", a dance song protesting tasteless food.^[10] Though Salazar describes this song as the origin of salsa meaning "danceable Latin music", author Ed Morales has described the usage in the same song as a cry from Piñeiro to his band, telling them to increase the tempo to "put the dancers into high gear". Morales claims that later in the 1930s, vocalist Beny Moré would shout salsa during a performance "to acknowledge a musical moment's heat, to express a kind of cultural nationalist sloganeering [and to celebrate the] 'hotness' or 'spiciness' of Latin American cultures".^[11] [Note: Morales is wrong and cannot cite any recordings in which Moré did this because there are none. As anyone who has listened to Moré can tell you, the singer favored making amusing sounds similar to birdcalls or would exclaim other phrases during songs, such as "Dale azúcar," "Ah-ja" and others. Morales should listen to Beny Moré albums before making such statements.]

Some people object to the term salsa on the basis that it is vague or misleading; for example, the style of musicians such as Tito Puente evolved several decades before salsa was a recognized genre, leading Puente to once claim that "the only salsa I know comes in a bottle. I play Cuban music". Because salsa can refer to numerous styles of Cuban music such as, son, son montuno, rumba, guaguanco, cha cha cha, guaracha, danzon, bolero, conga, Cuban jazz/Cuban big band, mambo, etc, or even Puerto Rico's bomba and plena genres. Johnny Pacheco Dominican musician and founder of New York's based Fania Records in an interview referred to the word "salsa" as a marketing term designed to superficially categorize this music in a way that appeals to non-aficionados and foreign audiences.^[12] For a time the communist state controlled media of Cuba officially claimed that the term salsa music was a euphemism for authentic Cuban music stolen by American imperialists, though the media has since abandoned this theory.^[13]

Some doubt that the term salsa has any precise and unambiguous meaning. Peter Manuel describes salsa as "at once (both) a modern marketing concept and the cultural voice of a new generation", representative of a "crystallization of a Latino identity in New York in the early 1960s". Manuel also recognizes the commercial and cultural dichotomy to salsa, noting that the term's broad use for many styles of Latin pop music has served the development of "pan-Latin solidarity", while also noting that the "recycling of Cuban music under an artificial, obscurantist label is but one more example of North American exploitation and commodification of third world primary products; for Latinos, salsa bridges the gap between "tradition and modernity, between the impoverished homeland and the dominant United States, between street life and the chic night club, and between grassroots culture and the corporate media".^[14]

The singer Willie Colón once claimed that salsa is merely "a concept", as opposed to a definite style or rhythm. Some musicians are doubtful that the term salsa has any useful meaning at all, with the bandleader Machito claiming that salsa was more or less what he had been playing for forty years before the style was invented, while Tito Puente once responded to a question about salsa by saying "I'm a musician, not a cook" (referring to salsa's original use to mean sauce). Celia Cruz, a well-known salsa singer, has said, "salsa is Cuban music with another name. It's mambo, cha cha chá, rumba, son ... all the Cuban rhythms under one name".^[15] In contrast, Ed Morales cites the use of salsa for a specific style to a New York-based editor and graphic designer named Izzy Sanabria. Morales also [erroneously] mentions an early use of the term by Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco by saying that Pacheco released a 1962 album called Salsa Na' Ma, which Morales translates as "it just needs a little salsa, or spice".^[11] Morales, however, is wrong: "Salsa Na'Ma is an album by pianist Charlie Palmieri and was released in 1965, not 1962.

Characteristics

At its root, however, salsa is a mixture of Spanish and African music, filtered through the music histories of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and adapted by Latin jazz and Latin popular musicians for Latino populations with diverse musical tastes.^[6] The basic structure of a salsa song is based on the Cuban guaracha, beginning with a simple melody and followed by a montuno section in which the singers improvise in a call and response pattern. Morales cites the Venezuelan scholar César Miguel Rondón, in El Libro de la Salsa, as noting that Eddie Palmieri's arrangement of the trombone in a way that they always sounded sour, with a peculiarly aggressive harshness; Leymarie, pg. 268 cites the same work and says that Rondón stressed that salsa's trademark horn is the stalwart trombone, which carries the melody or plays counterpoint behind the singer. Peter Manuel notes how New York and Puerto Rican salsa differs from the 1950s Cuban "son" in various ways, such as the greater use of timbales and trombones, the occasional use of Puerto Rican elements like the declamatory exclamation le-lo-lai, its frequent lyrics about barrio life in New York and elsewhere, the "smooth" sound of the salsa romántica style that emerged in the 1980s, and salsa's role as a soundscape for the Latino identity movement of the 1970s.^[16]

Songs and instrumentation

Salsa bands play a wide variety of songs, including pieces based on plenas and bombas, cumbia, vallenato and merengue; most songs, however, are modern versions of the Cuban son. Like the son, salsa songs begin with a songlike section followed by a montuno break with call-and-response vocals, instrumental breaks and jazzy solos.^[17] In the United States, the music of a salsa club is a mix of salsa, merengue, cha-cha-cha and bachata, whether sourced from a live band or a DJ. Some salsa clubs also add reggaeton to the mix due to its popularity with youth.

The most important instrumentation in salsa is the percussion, which is played by a wide variety of instruments, including claves, cowbells, timbales and conga.^[18] Apart from percussion, other core instruments are the trumpets, trombones, and bass, usually an electric baby bass.. Other melodic instruments are commonly used as accompaniment, such as a guitar, the piano, and many others, all depending on the performing artists. [The tres guitar was used in a particular style of band known as a conjunto but that format is nearly extinct and it is indeed a rarity to find a band that uses a tres.] Bands typically consist of up to a dozen people, one of whom serves as band leader, directing the music as it is played. Two to four players generally specialize in horns, while there are generally one or two choral singers and players of the bongo, conga, bass guitar, piano and timbales. The maracas, clave or güiro may also be played, typically by a vocalist. The bongocero will usually switch to a kind of bell called a campana (or bongo bell) for the montuno section of a song. Horns are typically either two trumpets or four trumpets or, most commonly, two trumpets with at least one saxophone or trombone.^[19]

Salsa essentially remains a form of dance music; thus, many songs have little in the way of lyrics beyond exhortations to dance or other simple words. Modern pop-salsa is often romántica, defined partially by the sentimental, lovelorn lyrics, or erótica, defined largely by the sexually explicit lyrics. Salsa also has a long tradition of lyrical experimentation, with singer-songwriters like Rubén Blades using incisive lyrics about everything from imperialism to disarmament and environmentalism.^[20] Vocalists are expected to be able to improvise during verses and instrumental solos. References to Afro-Catholic religions, such as Santería, are also a major part of salsa's lyrics throughout Latin America, even among those artists who are not themselves practitioners of any Afro-Catholic religion.^[21]

Rhythm

Salsa music traditionally utilizes a 4/4 time signature. Musicians play recurring rhythmic accompaniments often in groups of eight beats (two measures of four quarter notes), while melodic phrases span eight or sixteen beats, with entire stanzas spanning thirty-two beats.

While percussion instruments layer several different rhythmic patterns simultaneously, the clave rhythm is the foundation of salsa; all salsa music and dance is governed by the clave rhythm. The most common clave rhythm in salsa is the so-called son clave, which is eight beats long and can be played either in 2-3 or 3-2 style.

The 2-3 clave        The 3-2 clave
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.     1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.
..*.*...*..*..*.     *..*..*...*.*...

Even when the clave rhythm is not played by its own, it functions as a basis for the instrumentalists and singers to use as a common rhythmic ground for their own musical phrases. The instrumentalists emphasize the differences of the two halves of the eight-beat clave rhythm; for example, in an eight-beat-long phrase used in a 2-3 clave context, the first half of the phrase is given more straight notes that are played directly on beat, while the second half instead contains notes with longer durations and with a more off-beat feeling. This emphasizes that the first four beats of the 2-3 son clave contain two "short" strikes that are directly on beat, while the last four beats contain three "long" clave strikes with the second strike placed offbeat between beats two and three. Salsa songs commonly start with one clave and then switch to the reverse partway through the song, without restarting the clave rhythm; instead, the rhythm is shifted four beats using breaks and stop-time.

Percussion instruments have standard patterns that reoccur in most salsa music with only slight variations. For example, this is a common rhythmic pattern called the cáscara based on the 2-3 clave, and is played on the shells of the timbales during the verses and less energetic parts of a song:

Timbales cáscara rhythm in 2-3 clave
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.   (beats)
*.*.**.**.**.*.*   (* = cáscara strikes)

During the chorus and solo parts, the timbalero often switches to the following rhythm, which is normally played on a cowbell (the mambo bell) mounted on the timbales set:

Timbales mambo bell rhythm in 2-3 clave
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.   (beats)
+.*.+++*.++*+.+*   (+/* = weak/accented cowbell strikes)

The timbales pattern above is often accompanied by a handheld cowbell (the bongo bell) also played during the chorus but by another person, using this simpler rhythm:

Handheld bongo bell rhythm in 2-3 clave
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.   (beats)
+.*.+.**+.**+.**   (+/* = low/high-pitched cowbell strikes)

The piano has many roles in salsa, being an important solo instrument and providing harmony, rhythm and sometimes even the lead melody. During the montuno section, in which the singers and chorus engage in a call and response pattern of singing, the piano player plays a repeating ostinato figure known as a guajeo or tumbao which serves as a backbone for the rhythm section. The piano always respects the clave. The montuno patterns have many variations, but are basically highly syncopated two-bar vamps made to match the clave. For example:

Piano montuño rhythm in 2-3 clave
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.   (beats)
*.**.*.*.*.*.*.*   (* = key strikes)

The bass pattern often follows a distinct salsa rhythm pattern known as the tumbao which alternates between the fifth and the root of a chord. One side of the tumbao will be in near unison with the clave, while the other side is syncopated against the clave:

Bass tumbao rhythm
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.   (beats)
...5..8....5..1.   (5 = fifth of chord, 8 = high octave of chord, 1 = low octave of chord)

Lyricism

Salsa lyrics range from simple dance numbers with little lyrical innovation and sentimental romantic songs to risqué and politically radical lyrics. Music author Isabelle Leymarie notes that salsa performers typically used to incorporate machoistic bravado (guapería) in their lyrics, in a manner reminiscent of calypso and samba, a theme she ascribes to the performers' "humble backgrounds" and subsequent need to compensate for their origins. Leymarie claims that salsa is "essentially virile, an affirmation of the Latin man's pride and identity". As an extension of salsa's macho stance, manly taunts and challenges (desafio) are also a traditional part of salsa.^[22]

Politically and socially activist composers have been a part of salsa but generally songs have focused on telling stories about everyday situations and cultural events. Since the mid-1980s, however, the large majority of salsa songs are about romantic relationships.

History

In the 1930s, '40s and '50s, Cuban music within Cuba was evolving into new styles derived primarily from son and rumba, while the Cubans in New York, living among many Latinos from Puerto Rico and elsewhere, began playing their own distinctive styles, influenced most importantly by African American music.^[3] Their music included son and guarachas, as well as tango, bolero and danza, with prominent influences from jazz.^[23] While the New York scene continued evolving, Cuban popular music, especially mambo, became very famous across the United States. Following this was a series of other genres of Cuban music, which especially affected the Latin scene in New York. Many Latin musicians in New York were Puerto Rican, and it was these performers who innovated the style now known as salsa music, based largely off Cuban and Puerto Rican music.^[24]

Salsa evolved steadily from the 1930s, reflecting Cuban traditional influences and also the personal innovations of the artists in New York that played it, becoming a style or approach that was significantly different from that employed in Cuba to play the same basic rhythms. By the turn of the century, salsa was one of the major fields of popular music in the world, and salsa stars were international celebrities.

Origins

Salsa's roots can be traced back to the African ancestors that were brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish as slaves. Salsa's most direct antecedent is the Cuban guaracha genre, which itself is a combination of African and European influences. But other genres have been part of the salsa repertoire: son montuno, bolero, danzón, bomba and others, and prior to the late 1970s and early 1980s, figured prominently in recordings. Since that time a more generic rhythm is played and it can be characterized as a highly stylized guaracha. Large son bands were very popular in Cuba beginning in the 1930s; these were largely septetos and sextetos, and they quickly spread to the United States.^[25] In the 1940s Cuban dance bands grew much larger, becoming mambo and charanga orchestras led by bandleaders like Arsenio Rodriguez and Felix Chappotin. In New York City in the '50s, the centers for mambo in the United States included the [[Palladium Ballroom and the PArk Palace Ballroom, among others. The most popular artists at that time were known as "The Big Three": Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez. New York began developing its own Cuban-derived sound, spurred by large-scale Latino immigration, the rise of local record labels due to the early 1940s musicians strike and the spread of the jukebox industry, and the craze for big band dance music.^[26]

Mambo was very jazz-influenced, and it was the mambo big bands that kept alive the large jazz band tradition, while the mainstream current of jazz was moving on to the smaller bands of the bebop era. Throughout the 1950s Latin dance music, such as mambo, rumba and chachachá, was mainstream popular music in the United States and Europe. The '50s also saw a decline in popularity for mambo big bands, followed by the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which greatly inhibited contact between New York and Cuba. The result was a scene more dominated by Puerto Ricans than Cubans.

1960s

The Latin music scene of early 1960s New York was dominated by bands led by musicians such as Ray Barretto and Eddie Palmieri, whose style was influenced by imported Cuban fads such as pachanga and charanga; after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, however, Cuban-American contact declined precipitously, and Puerto Ricans became a larger part of the New York Latin music scene. During this time a hybrid Nuyorican cultural identity emerged, primarily Puerto Rican but influenced by many Latin cultures as well as the close contact with African Americans.^[27]

The growth of modern salsa, however, is said to have begun in the streets of New York in the late 1960s. By this time Latin pop was no longer a major force in American music, having lost ground to doo wop, R&B and rock and roll; there were a few youth fads for Latin dances, such as the soul and mambo fusion boogaloo, but Latin music ceased to be a major part of American popular music.^[28] Few Latin record labels had any significant distribution, the two exceptions being Tico and Alegre. Though East Harlem had long been a center for Latin music in New York, during the 1960s many of the venues there shut down, and Brooklyn Heights' Saint George Hotel became "salsa's first stronghold". Performers there included Joe Bataan and the Lebron Brothers.^[29]

The late 1960s also saw white youth joining a counterculture heavily associated with political activism, while black youth formed radical organizations like the Black Panthers. Inspired by these movements, Latinos in New York formed the Young Lords, rejected assimilation and "made the barrio a cauldron of militant assertiveness and artistic creativity". The musical aspect of this social change was based on the Cuban son, which had long been the favored musical form for urbanites in both Puerto Rico and New York.^[30] By the early 1970s, salsa's center moved to Manhattan and the Cheetah, where promoter Ralph Mercado introduced many future stars to an ever-growing and diverse crowd of Latino audiences.^[29]

The Manhattan-based recording company, Fania Records, introduced many of the first-generation salsa singers and musicians to the world. Founded by Dominican flautist and band-leader Johnny Pacheco and impresario Jerry Masucci, Fania's illustrious career began with Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe's El Malo in 1967. This was followed by a series of updated son montuno and plena tunes that evolved into modern salsa by 1973. Pacheco put together a team that included percussionist Louie Ramirez, bassist Bobby Valentin and arranger Larry Harlow. The Fania team released a string of successful singles, mostly son and plena, performing live after forming the Fania All Stars in 1971; just two years later, the All Stars sold out Yankee Stadium.^[31] One of their 1971 performances at the Cheetah nightclub, was a historic concert that drew several thousand people and helped to spark a salsa boom.^[29]

Salsa quickly spread outside of New York City, to Miami, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Colombia. The city of Cali, Colombia became that country's major center for salsa in the late 1960s, when salsa became a major part of the local Feria de la Caña de Azúcar. Salsa also established itself in Guayaquil, Caracas and Panama City.^[32]

1970s

From New York, salsa quickly expanded to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and other Latin countries, while the new style became a symbol of "pride and cultural identity" for Latinos, especially Puerto Ricans.^[33] The number of salsa bands, both in New York and elsewhere, increased dramatically in the 70s, as did salsa-oriented radio stations and record labels.^[34] Popular performers like Eddie Palmieri and Celia Cruz adapted to the salsa format, joined by more authentically traditional singers like Willie Colón and Rubén Blades.^[35] Colón and Blades worked together for much of the 1970s and '80s, becoming some of the most critically and popularly acclaimed salsa performers in the world. Their lyricism set them apart from others; Blades became a "mouthpiece for oppressed Latin America", while Colón composed "potent", "socio-political vignettes". Their 1978 album Siembra was, at that time, the best-selling Latin album in history.^[36]

The 1970s saw a number of musical innovations among salsa musicians. Legendary bandleader Willie Colón introduced the cuatro, a rural Puerto Rican guitar, as well as jazz, rock, and Panamanian and Brazilian music.^[37] Larry Harlow, the arranger for Fania Records, modernized salsa by adding an electric piano. By the end of the decade, Fania Records' longtime leadership of salsa was weakened by the arrival of the labels TH-Rodven and RMM. Salsa had come to be perceived as "contaminated by fusion and disco", and took elements from disparate styles like go go, while many young Latinos turned to hip hop, techno or other styles.^[38] Salsa began spreading throughout Latin America in the 1970s, especially to Colombia, where a new generation of performers began to combine salsa with elements of cumbia and vallenato; this fusion tradition can be traced back to the 1960s work of Peregoya y su Combo Vacano. However, it was Joe Arroyo and La Verdad, his band, that popularized Colombian salsa beginning in the 1980s.^[39]

1980s

The 1980s were a time of diversification, as popular salsa evolved into sweet and smooth salsa romántica, also called salsa monga, with lyrics dwelling on love and romance, and its more explicit cousin, salsa erótica. Salsa romántica can be traced back to Noches Calientes, a 1984 album by singer José Alberto with producer Louie Ramirez. A wave of romántica singers, mostly Puerto Rican, found wide audiences with a new style characterized by romantic lyrics, an emphasis on the melody over rhythm, and use of percussion breaks and chord changes.^[40] However, salsa lost some popularity among many Latino youth, who were drawn to American rock in large numbers, while the popularization of Dominican merengue further sapped the audience among Latinos in both New York and Puerto Rico.^[41] The 1980s also saw salsa expand to Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Europe and Japan, and diversify into many new styles.

In the 1980s some performers experimented with combining elements of salsa with hip hop music, while the producer and pianist Sergio George helped to revive salsa's commercial success. He created a sound based on prominent trombones and rootsy, mambo-inspired style. He worked with the Japanese salsa band Orquesta de la Luz, and developed a studio orchestra that included Victor Manuelle, Celia Cruz, José Alberto, La India, Tito Puente and Marc Anthony. The Colombian singer Joe Arroyo first rose to fame in the 1970s, but became a renowned exponent of Colombian salsa in the 1980s. Arroyo worked for many years with the Colombian arranger Fruko and his band Los Tesos.^[42]

1990s to the present

In the 1990s Cuban salsa became more prominent, especially a distinct subgenre called timba. Using the complex songo rhythm, bands like NG La Banda, Charanga Habanera, and Los Van Van developed timba, along with related styles like songo-salsa, which featured swift Spanish rapping. The use of rapping in popular songo-salsa was appropriated by Sergio George, beginning with his work with the trio Dark Latin Groove, which "breathed the fire of songo rhythms and the energy of rap and soul into salsa".^[43]

Salsa remained a major part of Colombian music through the 1990s, producing popular bands like Sonora Carruseles, while the singer Carlos Vives created his own style that fuses salsa with vallenato and rock. Vives' popularization of vallenato-salsa led to the accordion-led vallenato style being used by mainstream pop stars like Gloria Estefan. The city of Cali, in Colombia, has come to call itself the "salsa capital of the world", having produced such groups as Orquesta Guayacan and Grupo Niche.^[44]

Salsa has registered a steady growth and now dominates the airwaves in many countries in Latin America. In addition, several Latino artists, including Rey Ruiz, Marc Anthony, and most famously, the Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan, have had success as crossovers, penetrating the Anglo-American pop market with Latin-tinged hits, usually sung in English.^[45] Jerry Rivera's Cuenta Conmigo ('Count on Me') became the most-sold salsa album in history.^[46]

The most recent innovations in the genre include hybrids like salsa-merengue and salsaton, alongside salsa dura (also called salsa gorda), a reference to the classic hard hitting salsa of the 70s. Since the mid-1990s African artists have also been very active through the super-group Africando, where African and New York musicians mix with leading African singers such as Bambino Diabate, Ricardo Lemvo, Ismael Lo and Salif Keita. Salsa is only one of many Latin genres to have traveled back and influenced West African music.^[45]

Related Genres

Precursors

Son

Son montuno

Rumba

Guaracha

Guajira

Guaguancó

Charanga

Plena

Bomba

Mambo

Cha cha cha

Pachanga

Descarga

Watusi

Boogaloo

Subgenres

Salsa dura

Salsa romántica

Succesors

Timba

Vallenato-salsa

Salsatón

References

Notes

Further reading

• Aparicio, Frances R. (1998). Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Purto Rican Cultures. Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press. 
• (Spanish) Arteaga, José (1990). La Salsa, 2nd revised edition, Bogotá: Intermedio Editores. 
• (Spanish) Baéz, Juan Carlos (1989). El vínculo es la salsa. Caracas: Fondo Editorial Tropykos. 
• (1991) in Boggs, Vernon W. (ed.): Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 
• Gerard, Charley (1989). Salsa! The Rhythm of Latin Music. Crown Point, Indiana: White Cliffs. 
• Loza, Steven (1999). Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music. Urbana: University of Illinois }ress. 
• (1991) in Manuel, Peter (ed.): Essays on Cuban Music: North American and Cuban Perspectives. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. 
• Marre, Jeremy (1985). Beats of the Heart: Popular Music of the World. New York: Pantheon. 
• Mauleón, Rebeca (1993). Salsa: Guidebook for Piano and Ensemble. Petaluma, California: Sher Music Co.. 
• Roberts, John Storm (1972). Black Music of Two Worlds. New York: Praeger. 
• Roberts, John Storm (1979). The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. 
• (Spanish) Rondón, Cesar Miguel (1980). El libro de la salsa: crónica de la música del Caribe urbano. Caracas: Editorial Arte. 
• (Spanish) Santana, Sergio (1992). ¿Que es la salsa? Buscando la melodía. Medellín: Ediciones Salsa y Cultura. 
• (2002) in Waxer, Lisa (ed.): Situating Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meanings in Latin Popular Music. Routledge. 

External links

• Bollywood Dance, Party Dances, Jive, Salsa, Dance from basic to Advanced, Dance for kids and Adults, Dance workshops, dance programme, dance events
• Online magazine dedicated to Latin music, dance, and culture
• General resource for Salsa music and dance
• Information, charts, sound files, and club guides
• Online salsa magazine featuring news, reviews, video, etc
• Salsa music at Salsa Wiki (hosted by Wikia)

Donate to Wikimedia