Salsa Music

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by David B. Wilson

Easily the most successful form of music named for a condiment, salsa transcended its humble beginnings as a marketing hook to become a powerful influence on music and culture worldwide. A blend of African rhythms and European harmony born in Cuba and developed in New York City, salsa is a truly international music encapsulating the Latin American experience--and you can dance to it.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, Spanish settlers brought Africans to Cuba to work as slaves, mostly on sugar and tobacco plantations. Afro-Cuban music developed out of traditional West African musical forms, replicated on homemade or Spanish instruments. Some elements stemming from African religious practice, including call-and-response singing and polyrhythms, remain dominant features of Afro-Cuban music to this day, and santera, a typically Cuban blend of African religions and Catholicism, is still a popular musical topic. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Afro-Cuban music had taken three main forms: son, a popular dance music with three contrasting rhythms; rumba, informal street music, enthusiastic and improvised, typically just percussion and vocals; and danzn, derived from European dance forms, spotlighting piano and flute. All three forms are distinguished by their use of the clave, a two-measure, five-beat syncopated rhythm played on small wooden sticks called claves. The music's impact was first felt outside the island beginning in the 1930s, when rhumba (an Americanization of rumba) and mambo (an evolution of danzn) music began to be played by dance bands in the United States, and soon after, jazz pioneer Dizzy Gillespie incorporated Cuban elements into be-bop, a combination Gillespie called "Cubop."

But by the early 1960s, rhumba and mambo had become pass in the United States, at least among those who considered themselves too hip for the likes of Ricky Ricardo. At the same time, many of Cuba's biggest talents moved to New York City, fleeing their country's Communist revolution--most notably Celia Cruz. These artists combined with young, predominantly Puerto Rican, New Yorkers to breathe new life into the city's Latin dance scene, dropping the traditional violins in favor of blaring, often dazzling, horn arrangements. Pianist and bandleader Eddie Palmieri was the first to bring the complex mozambique rhythm--developed in Cuba by Pello el Afrokn--to New York; he was also the foremost of a new generation of jazz-trained pianists, bringing a new harmonic complexity to the music. By the late 1960s, Fania Records, a label owned by Jerry Masucci, had signed most of the rising stars of the new Afro-Cuban music. It is unknown who first applied the word "salsa" to this genre, but Masucci and Fania's musical director Johnny Pacheco relentlessly promoted the use of the term. Many older Latin musicians and fans still bristle at the name, feeling that their cultural heritage is being reduced to tomato sauce. But the name caught on, and is now used--if grudgingly--by nearly all participants.

Almost immediately, sales of salsa records went through the roof, and in the early 1970s there were a wealth of successful bands, making up in energy and swing what they lacked in technical polish and production values: Palmieri, Cruz, Joe Bataan, Ray Barretto, Larry Harlow, Johnny Coln, and most importantly, trombonist Willie Coln (no relation to Johnny). Raised in the Bronx, Willie cut his first record, Guisando (1969), in his late teens, and soon established a reputation as salsa's bad boy and biggest hitmaker. His main vocalist in the 1970s was Hector LaVoe, who moved beyond familiar romantic themes to depict the often harsh reality of New York's barrios on such songs as "Piraa," "Barrunto," and "Te Conozco." Coln refused to be limited to Masucci's vision, and he soon expanded his musical palette to include traditional Puerto Rican rhythms--bomba and plena--and Brazilian styles. Of the 1940s and 1950s generation of bandleaders, only the seemingly ageless percussion master Tito Puente remained prominent. Salsa's lyrics have been justly criticized for sexist content, and from the beginning there have been very few female singers--and next to no writers or arrangers--in the form. Central to Masucci's marketing plan was the idea of advertising salsa as a completely new style, and to this end he downplayed the music's Cuban origins, though nearly everything Fania released--aside from merengue, which came from the Dominican Republic--was Afro-Cuban in character. Partly because of sour United States-Cuba relations, Masucci did not credit Cuban composers on Fania records, even when the majority of an album's tracks were covers of Cuban songs.

In the late 1970s, Panamanian-born Rubn Blades brought a new level of lyrical sophistication to salsa. Both his love songs and his devastating political critiques borrowed the imagery and nuance of Latin American protest music (nueva cancin, called nueva trova in Cuba) but brought them to a larger audience by blending them with driving dance rhythms. Blades came to prominence as vocalist and main songwriter for Willie Coln, and their collaboration Siembra (1976) is the best selling and probably the most critically praised salsa album of all time; Blades reached his solo peak a few years later with Buscando Amrica (1984) and Escenas (1985). Thanks in part to his fluency in English, Blades made friends with many rock stars: his 1988 English-language release Nothing but the Truth features Sting, Lou Reed, and Elvis Costello, and he also recorded with Joe Jackson and Jackson Browne. In the early 1990s Blades became better known for his character roles in Hollywood films, and in 1994 he put both entertainment careers on hold in favor of an unsuccessful run for president of Panama.

Unlike, say, reggae, salsa was never incorporated into mainstream music in the United States, perhaps because of the language barrier. Even amateur ethnologists Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel ignored the genre: it was at once too close to home, and too far away. Although some New York pop artists, including Janis Ian and Patti LaBelle, recorded salsa tunes, such efforts were few, and no one--traditionalist or imitator--ever hit the Top 40 with a salsa. The best illustration of salsa's failure to cross over to English-speaking markets is that the Puerto Rican act best known to the United States public is not El Gran Combo or Willie Coln, but Menudo: a prefab pretty-boy group with about as much connection to Afro-Cuban rhythms as the Osmonds.

By the late 1980s, Nuyorican youth were buying more high energy dance music than salsa. Many of the old guard had retired or faded into obscurity (Harlow, Barretto) while those who remained had trouble getting their records played (Willie Coln). A film--Salsa! (1988)--starring former Menudo vocalist Robby Rosa bombed. The singers who flourished in this environment were those with the least penchant for innovation, the slickest production, and absolutely no political message: for example, Jerry Rivera and Tito Nieves, "the Pavarotti of Salsa." Though salsa was still popular throughout Latin America, as exemplified by Colombia's Grupo Niche and Venezuela's Oscar D'Len, the music was stagnating in New York City, where the new hitmakers were lightweight "Latin hip-hop" acts like Expos, Sweet Sensation, and Brenda K. Starr. These artists relied on static, pre-programmed beats and breathy, high-pitched vocals--the antithesis of salsa.