Salsa

by Read Listen Learn

Salsa

The Latin neighbourhoods of New York have always been known for their street life. In the summer months, people sit on the steps in front of their houses, just ‘hanging out’. At the weekend, whole streets may become spontaneous parties, with neighbours selling fried food to the crowd and big speakers brought out onto the streets. In the late 1960s, the scene was especially hot. There was a new kind of music being played, and the music was coming right out of New York, not Cuba or Puerto Rico.

It was dance music, and the youngsters were creating new steps and moves for it every weekend. Though this new music was not really Puerto Rican, it was New York’s Puerto Rican community who were the biggest fans. But, it was also popular throughout the city’s Hispanic neighbourhoods. It was starting to pick up some fans in the Black areas as well. Some of the players were White American professional musicians too. But why was a U.S. city like New York the birthplace of a new Latin music and dance craze?

To answer that question, we need to go back a few decades to the 1940s. It was in that decade that Cuban big band music became a standard feature of New York nightlife. Partly, this was because of the special Cuban talent for making fast and exciting new dance rhythms with an African beat. For Americans from the Eastern U.S., this was one of the many attractions of a short beach holiday in Cuba. In the long, tropical evenings, they would dance to Cuba’s beautiful beats. When they came back, like any holiday-maker, they would feel nostalgic about those holiday nights and, then, they could go and see one of the many Cuban bands with a regular ‘spot’ at one of the bigger dancehalls in New York.

In the 1950s, Latin and Cuban dance rhythms grew in popularity with many white youngsters dancing ‘Mambo’ or ‘Cha-cha-cha’. In the early Sixties, some of these sounds started to be successful on the commercial music charts; like the 1962 hit ‘Watermelon Man’ by Herbie Hancock and Mongo Santamaria – a Black American musician and a Black Hispanic singer.

However, back in Cuba, the source of all this music, big changes were taking place. In January, 1959, a guerrilla army, led by Fidel Castro, took the Cuban capital, La Havana, and set up a new and radical government to replace the pro-American dictator who had run Cuba for Washington. The Americans were not happy about the removal of the obedient Fulgencio Bautista and so they decided to blockade Cuba, not allowing people or goods to enter or leave the island because, the Americans said, Castro was a Communist in league with the Russian Soviets.

This was a heavy blow to the Cuban economy, especially because the blockade was still in place till very recently. In the short term, it also hit the music scene in New York, where the flow of Cuban musicians, bands and records suddenly dried up. It was left to New York’s Hispanic community, mostly Puerto Ricans, to keep the party going. More and more non-Cuban musicians joined the existing bands or formed new groups. Sometimes, American or European musicians, black and white, were brought in on the basis of their musical talent rather than their experience in Cuban big band music.

What started to happen next is called ‘fusion’. Because of the blockade on Cuba, band leaders and music producers had been forced to cross racial lines, lines very tightly drawn in a city like New York, made up of ethnic ghettos. And, of course, each newcomer brought something of their own musical culture to the mix. The Puerto Ricans injected some ‘Bomba’, the rhythm of their island. The Black musicians added touches of Rhythm and Blues. White musicians brought a Rock and Roll feel.

By the late 1960s, this new music was being called ‘Salsa’ (‘hot-sauce’); and, while some said it was just Cuban rhythm and didn’t need a new name, others pointed out just how many distinct features the new salsa sound had developed. Features like the frequent ‘horn stabs’ punctuating the rhythm, itself a particular kind of ‘four-four’ beat.

Salsa really matured in the 1970s, still called the ‘Golden Age of Salsa’. Large musical collectives formed that were different from most First World pop groups because they had many members who would sometimes play and sometimes not. Bands like ‘Fania All Stars’ had three or four famous singers who would sing the songs they were best at. Hector Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano and Celia Cruz were some of the better-known vocalists. This band structure of many members and floating singers was a direct legacy of the Havana and New York big band culture of the 1940s.

At first, Salsa had a reputation as left-wing music. It was seen as the music of the Cuban Revolution and, so, communist. Its basic identity was non-white and working class, and many of the words to the songs were very political. But, as the music moved into the 1970s, it softened its political edge and branched into a number of different ‘schools’ or kinds. Also, different salsa centres formed in the Americas. New York and Miami are the two U.S. schools or styles with Costa Rica the dominant one in Central America and the Western Caribbean. There is also the whole sub-culture of Salsa dancing where, at international competitions, many different styles and steps can be seen.

The music was soon noticed around the world and became particularly popular in many parts of Africa, where the rhythms had come from originally. However, it is the dancing of Salsa that has most helped to take it all over the world, far beyond the Latin communities of the Americas.

During the mid-1960s, young men and women in the First World suddenly stopped dancing together in pairs to strict tempo music. It appeared to be part of a wider social revolution that happened in that decade. This didn’t touch the Hispanic world, however, where everyone continued to dance in a formal way. By the late 1980s, many people in the First World were ready to get back to pair-dancing with its greater physical challenges, tight cooperation between man and woman and, at least when dancing to fast and furious Salsa, more physical exercise. For many of the new enthusiasts in London or South Africa, it was also exciting and romantic to dance Salsa.

Clubs began to open and classes were offered everywhere from church halls to university campuses. Many pop, rock and reggae groups brought out a Salsa song for fun, or included Salsa influences in their music. Others started projects cooperating with famous Salsa musicians.

What had started on the street corners of Jackson Heights and the Bronx in New York had developed and grown into a mature, world-class style of music, loved and recognised around the globe.