History of Salsa

History of Salsa

In the forties, the son was the most famous dance music among the masses of Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Puerto Ricans who immigrated to New York during this stage, and that in the fifties were consolidated and a community-carried the gender, a component that is critical to the future development of Latin dance music, whose high point took place in the central stage of the century, with so-called "era of the mambo". This was a predominantly instrumental style, popular in both Havana and New York Cubans and Puerto Ricans by interpreters who led big bands, and which happened soon after, the cha-cha-cha. Undoubtedly, the fifties was mostly the dynamic period for the development of Cuban dance music (Boggs, 1991).

The word "salsa" was first used in the sixties in Puerto Rico and between Latin musicians settled in New York and other U.S. cities. During these years it caught between the members of the New York Latino community desire increasingly involved in political activity in the country, spread the pretense of improving the social conditions of life, while increasingly claimed identity itself in the cultural field (Waxer, 2002).

The newly formed record label Fania-the hallmark of the sauce and a key reference in the matter, then began to organize a series of concerts to promote young interpreters of Cuban rhythms. In the early seventies it had managed to popularize the term to refer to the type of music that performed and produced in New York by Latino immigrants,that impossible to understand without taking into account the contribution of forms and rhythms of the Caribbean area.

Immediately, gender was associated with the political turmoil of the time. In August 1971 there was a meeting of all the stars of the seal at the Cheetah Club in New York, owned by Ralph Mercado, manager of the company. The event has been considered, often, the official date of the birth of the sauce. From that memorable quotes arise, besides the concert, numerous albums and a film, Our Latin Thing ("Our Latin Thing"), who triumphed in the entire Latin American context. Five years later, Fania signed a distribution agreement with the CBS Company, launched in an attempt to conquer the English speaking market. Top leaders of bands like Willie Colon, Ruben Blades, Johnny Pacheco, Ray Barretto and Eddie Palmieri became the soul of a musical movement that, besides being a vehicle of expression of Latino pride, was identified with the proposals and mobilization drive countries of the Caribbean area and settled among Latino communities in the eastern United States (Boggs, 1991).

While New York had served as the commercial center of the sauce, there was always competition from some Latin American countries; in the central stage of the seventies the genre had become popular in the musical language dominant in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean with emerging centers such as Venezuela and Colombia, whose fame rivaled salseros sets with New York (Waxer, 2002).

In the following decade, the concept of salsa as ...