Salsa (music)

Salsa music is a style of Latin American music. Because most of the basic musical components predate the labeling of salsa, there have been many controversies regarding its origin. Most songs considered as salsa are primarily based on son montuno, with elements of mambo, Latin jazz, bomba, plena and guaracha. All of these elements are adapted to fit the basic son montuno template when performed within the context of salsa.

Originally the name salsa was used to label commercially several styles of Latin dance music, but nowadays it is considered a musical style on its own and one of the staples of Latin American culture.

The first self-identified salsa bands were predominantly assembled by Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians in New York City in the '70s. The music style was based on the late son montuno of Arsenio Rodríguez, Conjunto Chappottín and Roberto Faz. These musicians included Celia Cruz, Willie Colón , Rubén Blades, Johnny Pacheco, Machito and Héctor Lavoe.
During the same period a parallel modernization of Cuban son was being developed by Los Van Van, Irakere, NG La Banda, Charanga Habanera and other artists in Cuba under the name of songo and timba, styles that at present are also labelled as salsa. Though limited by an embargo, the continuous cultural exchange between salsa-related musicians inside and outside of Cuba is undeniable.Unterberger, p. 50

Origins of the term Salsa

The word ''Salsa'' means sauce in the Spanish language. The origin of the connection of this word to a style of music is disputed by various music writers and historians.

The musicologist Max Salazar believes the origin of the connection lies in 1930 when Ignacio Piñeiro composed the song ''Échale salsita'' (Put some sauce in it). The phrase is seen as a cry from Piñeiro to his band, telling them to increase the tempo to "put the dancers into high gear".Morales 2003, p. 56
In the mid-1940s, Cuban Cheo Marquetti emigrated to Mexico. Back in Cuba, influenced by spicy food salsas, he named his group Conjunto Los Salseros, with whom he recorded a couple of albums for the Panart and Egrem labels.
Later on, while based in Mexico City, the musician Beny Moré would shout ''salsa'' during a performance to acknowledge a musical moment's heat, making a connection with the hot salsa (sauce) made in the country.
Manuel 1990, "salsa is to Latinos as 'soul' is to blacks; salsa—literally, 'hot sauce'"

Puerto Rican music promoter Izzy Sanabria claims he was the first to use the word salsa to denote a music genre.

In 1973, I hosted the television show ''Salsa'' which was the first reference to this particular music as ''salsa''. I was using he term''salsa'', but the music wasn't defined by that. The music was still defined as Latin music. And that was a very, very broad category, because it even includes mariachi music. It includes everything. So salsa defined this particular type of music ... It's a name that everyone could pronounce.

Sanabria's ''Latin New York'' magazine was an English language publication. Consequently, his promoted events were covered in ''The New York Times'', as well as ''Time'' and ''Newsweek'' magazines. Sanabria confessed the term salsa was not developed by musicians: "Musicians were busy creating the music but played no role in promoting the name salsa."Izzy Sanabria 2005
For this reason the use of the term salsa has been controversial among musicians. Some have praised its unification element. Celia Cruz said, "Salsa is Cuban music with another name. It's mambo, chachachá, rumba, son ... all the Cuban rhythms under one name."Steward 2000, p. 488. Willie Colón described salsa not as a precise musical style but a power to unite in the broadest terms: "Salsa was the force that united diverse Latino and other non-Latino racial and ethnic groups ...Salsa is the harmonic sum of all Latin culture ".
On the other hand, even some New York based artists were originally against the commercialization of music under that name; Machito said: "There's nothing new about salsa, it is just the same old music that was played in Cuba for over fifty years." Similarly, Tito Puente stated: "The only salsa I know is sold in a bottle called ketchup. I play Cuban music."
Cuban musicologist Mayra Martínez wrote that "the term salsa obscured the Cuban base, the music's history or part of its history in Cuba. And salsa was a way to do this so that Jerry Masucci, Fania and other record companies, like CBS, could have a hegemony on the music and keep the Cuban musicians from spreading their music abroad." Izzy Sanabria responded that Martínez was likely giving an accurate Cuban viewpoint, "but salsa was not planned that way".Boggs 1992, p. 189

The marketing potential from the name was so big, that eventually both Machito, Puente and even musicians in Cuba embraced the term as a financial necessity.Mauleón 1999, p. 80

Instrumentation

The instrumentation in salsa bands is mostly based on the son montuno ensemble developed by Arsenio Rodriguez, who added a horn section, as well as tumbadoras (congas) to the traditional Son cubano ensemble; which typically contained bongos, bass, tres, one trumpet, smaller hand-held percussion instruments (like claves, güiro, or maracas) usually played by the singers, and sometimes a piano. Machito's band was the first to experiment with the timbales. These three drums (bongos, congas and timbales) became the standard percussion instruments in most salsa bands and function in similar ways to a traditional drum ensemble. The timbales play the bell pattern, the congas play the supportive drum part, and the bongos improvise, simulating a lead drum. The improvised variations of the bongos are executed within the context of a repetitive marcha, known as the ''martillo'' ('hammer'), and do not constitute a solo. The bongos play primarily during the verses and the piano solos. When the song transitions into the montuno section, the bongo player picks up a large hand held cowbell called the bongo bell. Often the ''bongocero'' plays the bell more during a piece, than the actual bongos. The interlocking counterpoint of the timbale bell and bongo bell provides a propelling force during the montuno. The maracas and güiro sound a steady flow of regular pulses (subdivisions) and are ordinarily clave-neutral.

Nonetheless, some bands instead follow the Charanga format, which consists of a string section (of violins, viola, and cello), tumbadoras (congas), timbales, bass, flute, claves and güiro. Bongos are not typically used in charanga bands. Típica 73, Orquesta Broadway, Orquesta Revé and Orquesta Ritmo Oriental where popular Salsa bands with charanga instrumentation. Johnny Pacheco, Charlie Palmieri, Mongo Santamaría and Ray Barretto also experimented with this format.

Throughout its 50 years of life, Los Van Van have always experimented with both types of ensembles. The first 15 years the band was a pure charanga, but later a trombone section was added. Nowadays the band could be considered a hybrid.

Musical structure

Most salsa compositions follow the basic son montuno model based on a clave rhythm and composed of a verse section, followed by a coro-pregón (call-and-response) chorus section known as the montuno. The verse section can be short, or expanded to feature the lead vocalist and/or carefully crafted melodies with clever rhythmic devices. Once the montuno section begins, it usually continues until the end of the song. The tempo may gradually increase during the montuno in order to build excitement. The montuno section can be divided into various sub-sections sometimes referred to as ''mambo'', ''diablo'', ''moña'', and ''especial''.

History

1930s and 1940s: Origins in Cuba

Many musicologists find many of the components of salsa music in the Son Montuno of several artists of the 30s and 40s like Arsenio Rodríguez, Conjunto Chappottín (Arsenio's former band now led by Félix Chappottín and featuring Luis "Lilí" Martínez Griñán) and Roberto Faz. Salsa musician Eddie Palmieri once said "When you talk about our music, you talk about before, or after, Arsenio.....Lilí Martínez was my mentor". Several songs of Arsenio's band, like ''Fuego en el 23'', ''El Divorcio'', ''Hacheros pa' un palo'', ''Bruca maniguá'', ''No me llores'' and ''El reloj de Pastora'' were later covered by many salsa bands (like Sonora Ponceña and Johnny Pacheco).

On the other hand, a different style, Mambo, was developed by Cachao, Beny Moré and Dámaso Pérez Prado. Moré and Pérez Prado moved to Mexico City where the music was played by Mexican big band wind orchestras.

1950s-1960s: Cuban music in New York City

During the 1950s, New York became a hotspot of Mambo with musicians like the aforementioned Pérez Prado, Luciano "Chano" Pozo, Mongo Santamaría, Machito and Tito Puente. The highly popular Palladium Ballroom was the epicenter of mambo in New York.

Ethnomusicologist Ed Morales notes that the interaction of Afro-Cuban and jazz music in New York was crucial to the innovation of both forms of music. Musicians who would become great innovators of mambo, like Mario Bauzá and Chano Pozo, began their careers in New York working in close conjunction with some of the biggest names in jazz, like Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others. Morales noted that: "The interconnection between North American jazz and Afro-Cuban music was taken for granted, and the stage was set for the emergence of mambo music in New York, where music fans were becoming accustomed to innovation." He later notes that Mambo helped pave the way for the widespread acceptance of salsa years later.

Another popular style was chachacha, which originated in the Charanga bands in Cuba. By the early 1960s, there were several charanga bands in New York led by musicians (like Johnny Pacheco, Charlie Palmieri, Mongo Santamaría and Ray Barretto) who would later become salsa stars.

In 1952, Arsenio Rodríguez moved for a short period to New York City taking with him his modern son montuno. During that period his success was limited (NYC was more interested in Mambo), but his guajeos (who influenced the musicians he shared the stage with, such as Chano Pozo, Machito, and Mario Bauzá), together with the piano tumbaos of Lilí Martínez, the trumpet of Félix Chappottín and the rhythmic lead vocals of Roberto Faz would become very relevant in the region a decade later.Waxer 2002, pp. 91–94

In 1966, the Palladium closed because it lost its liquor license.Steward, Sue 1999. ''Salsa: the musical heartbeat of Latin America''. Thames & Hudson, London. p. 60 The mambo faded away, as new hybrid styles such as boogaloo, the jala-jala and the shing-a-ling had brief but important success. Elements of boogaloo can be heard in some songs of Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Machito and even Arsenio Rodríguez. Nonetheless, Puente later recounted: "It stunk ... I recorded it to keep up with the times. Popular Boogaloo songs include "Bang Bang" by the Joe Cuba Sextet and "I Like It Like That" by Pete Rodríguez and His Orchestra.

During the late 1960s, the Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco and Italian-American businessman Jerry Masucci founded the recording company Fania Records. They introduced many of the artists that would later be identified with the salsa movement, including Willie Colón, Celia Cruz, Larry Harlow, Ray Barretto, Héctor Lavoe and Ismael Miranda. Fania's first record album was "Cañonazo", recorded and released in 1964. It was panned by music critics as 10 of the 11 songs were covers of previously recorded tunes by such Cuban artists as Sonora Matancera, Chappottín y Sus Estrellas and Conjunto Estrellas de Chocolate. Pacheco put together a team that included percussionist Louie Ramírez, bassist Bobby Valentín and arranger Larry Harlow to form the Fania All-Stars in 1968. Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican band La Sonora Ponceña recorded two albums named after songs of Arsenio Rodriguez (''Hachero pa' un palo'' and ''Fuego en el 23'').

1970s: Songo in Cuba, salsa in NYC

The 1970s was witness to two parallel modernizations of the Cuban son in Havana and in New York. During this period the term salsa was introduced in New York, and songo was developed in Havana.

The band Los Van Van, led by the bassist Juan Formell, started developing songo in the late 1960s. Songo incorporated rhythmic elements from folkloric rumba as well as funk and rock to the traditional son. With the arrival of the drummer Changuito/mambo-based structure.

Songo integrated several elements of North American styles like jazz, rock and funk in many different ways than mainstream salsa. Whereas salsa would superimpose elements of another genre in the bridge of a song, the songo was considered a rhythmic and harmonic hybrid (particularly regarding funk and clave-based Cuban elements). The music analyst Kevin Moore stated: "The harmonies, never before heard in Cuban music, were clearly borrowed from North American pop ndshattered the formulaic limitations on harmony to which Cuban popular music had faithfully adhered for so long." During the same period, Cuban super group Irakere fused bebop and funk with batá drums and other Afro-Cuban folkloric elements; Orquesta Ritmo Oriental created a new highly syncopated, rumba-influenced son in the charanga ensemble; and Elio Revé developed changüí.

On the other hand, New York saw in the 1970s the first use of the term salsa to commercialize several styles of Latin dance music. However, several musicians believe that salsa took on a life of its own, organically evolving into an authentic pan-Latin American cultural identity. Music professor and salsa trombonist Christopher Washburne wrote:

This pan-Latino association of salsa stems from what Félix Padilla labels a 'Latinizing' process that occurred in the 1960s and was consciously marketed by Fania Records: 'To Fania, the Latinizing of salsa came to mean homogenizing the product, presenting an all-embracing Puerto Rican, Pan-American or Latino sound with which the people from all of Latin America and Spanish-speaking communities in the United States could identify and purchase.' Motivated primarily by economic factors, Fania's push for countries throughout Latin America to embrace salsa did result in an expanded market. But in addition, throughout the 1970s, salsa groups from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, among other Latin American nations, emerged, composing and performing music that related to their own specific cultural experiences and affiliations, which posited salsa as a cultural identity marker for those nations as well.

In 1971, the Fania All-Stars sold out Yankee Stadium.Steward 2000, pp. 488–489 By the early 1970s, the music's center moved to Manhattan and the Cheetah, where promoter Ralph Mercado introduced many future Puerto Rican salsa stars to an ever-growing and diverse crowd of Latino audiences. The 1970s also brought new semi-known Salsa bands from New York City, bands such as Ángel Canales, Andy Harlow, Chino Rodríguez y su Consagracion (Chino Rodríguez was one of the first Chinese Puerto Rican artists that caught the eye of Fania Record's owner Jerry Masucci and later became the booking agent for many of the Fania artists.), Wayne Gorbea, Ernie Agusto y la Conspiración, Orchestra Ray Jay, Orchestra Fuego, and Orchestra Cimarron, among other bands that were performing in the Salsa market on the East Coast.

Celia Cruz, who had had a successful career in Cuba with Sonora Matancera, was able to transition into the salsa movement, eventually becoming known as ''the Queen of Salsa''.

Larry Harlow stretched out from the typical salsa record formula with his opera ''Hommy'' (1973), inspired by The Who's Tommy album, and also released his critically acclaimed ''La Raza Latina, a Salsa Suite''.

In 1975, Roger Dawson created the "Sunday Salsa Show" over WRVR FM, which became one of the highest-rated radio shows in the New York market with a reported audience of over a quarter of a million listeners every Sunday (per Arbitron Radio Ratings). Ironically, although New York's Hispanic population at that time was over two million, there had been no commercial Hispanic FM. Given his jazz and salsa conga playing experience and knowledge (working as a sideman with such bands as salsa's Frankie Dante's Orquesta Flamboyán and jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp), Dawson also created the long-running "Salsa Meets Jazz" weekly concert series at the Village Gate jazz club where jazz musicians would sit in with an established salsa band, for example Dexter Gordon jamming with the Machito band. Dawson helped to broaden New York's salsa audience and introduced new artists such as the bilingual Ángel Canales who were not given play on the Hispanic AM stations of that time. His show won several awards from the readers of Latin New York magazine, Izzy Sanabria's ''Salsa Magazine'' at that time and ran until late 1980 when Viacom changed the format of WRVR to country music.

Despite an openness to experimentation and a willingness to absorb non-Cuban influences, such as jazz, rock, bomba and plena, and already existing mambo-jazz, the percentage of salsa compositions based in non-Cuban genres during this period in New York is quite low, and, contrary to songo, salsa remained consistently wedded to older Cuban templates. Some believe the pan-Latin Americanism of salsa was found in its cultural milieu, more than its musical structure.

An exception of this is probably found in the work of Eddie Palmieri and Manny Oquendo, who were considered more adventurous than the highly produced Fania records artists. The two bands incorporated less superficially jazz elements as well as the contemporary Mozambique (music). They were known for its virtuous trombone soloists like Barry Rogers (and other "Anglo" jazz musicians who had mastered the style). Andy González, a bass player who performed with Palmieri and Oquendo recounts: "We were into improvising ... doing that thing Miles Davis was doing — playing themes and just improvising on the themes of songs, and we never stopped playing through the whole set." Andy and his brother Jerry González started showing up in the DownBeat Reader's Poll, and caught the attention of jazz critics.

1980s: Salsa expansion in Latin America and the birth of timba

During the 1980s, several Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico and Panama, began producing their own salsa music. Two of the biggest stars from this period are Oscar D'León from Venezuela and Joe Arroyo from Colombia. Other popular acts are Fruko y sus Tesos, Grupo Niche and Rubén Blades (now as a soloist).

During this period Cuba received international salsa musicians for the first time.

Venezuelan salsa star Oscar D'León's 1983 tour of Cuba is mentioned prominently by every Cuban I've ever interviewed on the subject. Rubén Blades' album ''Siembra'' was heard everywhere on the island throughout the mid-80s and has been quoted extensively in the guías and coros of everyone from Van Van's Mayito Rivera (who quotes lades''Plástico' in his guías on the 1997 classic ''Llévala a tu vacilón''), to El Médico de la Salsa (quoting another major hook from 'Plástico'—'se ven en la cara, se ven en la cara, nunca en el corazón'—in his final masterpiece before leaving Cuba, ''Diós sabe'').

Prior to D'León's performance, many Cuban musicians rejected the salsa movement, considering it a bad imitation of Cuban music. Some people say that D'León's performance gave momentum to a "salsa craze" that brought back some of the older templates and motivated the development of timba.

Before the birth of timba, Cuban dance music lived a period of high experimentation among several bands like the charangas: Los Van Van, Orquesta Ritmo Oriental, and Orquesta Revé; the conjuntos: Adalberto Alvarez y Son 14, Conjunto Rumbavana and Orquesta Maravillas de Florida; and the jazz band Irakere.

Timba was created by musicians of Irakere who later formed NG La Banda under the direction of Jose Luis "El Tosco" Cortez. Many timba songs are more related to main-stream salsa than its Cuban predecessors earlier in the decade. For example, the song "La expresiva" (of NG La Banda) uses typical salsa timba/bongo bell combinations. The tumbadoras (congas) play elaborate variations on the son montuno-based tumbao, rather than in the songo style. For this reason some Cuban musicians of this period like Manolito y su Trabuco, Orquesta Sublime, and Irakere referred to this late-80s sound as ''salsa cubana'', a term which for the first time, included Cuban music as a part of salsa movement. In the mid-1990s California-based Bembé Records released CDs by several Cuban bands, as part of their ''salsa cubana series''.

Nonetheless, this style included several innovations. The bass tumbaos were busier and more complex than tumbaos typically heard in NY salsa. Some guajeos were inspired by the "harmonic displacement" technique of the Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Curiously, it was in Cuba where hip hop and salsa first began to meet. For example, many breakdown sections in NG La Banda's album ''En la calle'' are a combination of guaguancó and hip hop rhythms.

During this period, Cuban musicians had more of an impact on jazz than salsa in the United States. Even though the Mariel boatlift took hundreds of Cuban musicians to the US, many of them were astonished to hear what sounded to them like Cuban music from the 1950s. Cuban conguero Daniel Ponce summarized this sentiment: "When the Cubans arrived in New York, they all said 'Yuk! This is old music.' The music and the feelings and arrangements aven'tchanged." Nonetheless, there was an awareness of the modern Cuban styles in the US. Tito Puente recorded the Irakere composition "Bacalao con pan" (1980), and Rubén Blades covered Los Van Van's "Muevete" (1985). While the Puerto Rican bands Batacumbele (featuring a young Giovanni Hidalgo) and Zaperoko fully embraced songo music under the mentorship of Changuito

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