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Salsa music: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Salsa music
The word salsa means sauce in the Spanish language, yet it became the name of a global musical phenomenon that united diverse Latino and non-Latino groups under a single banner. The connection between this culinary term and a musical style traces back to 1930 when Ignacio Piñeiro composed the song Échale salsita, which translates to Put some sauce in it. Piñeiro used the phrase as a cry to his band, instructing them to increase the tempo to put the dancers into high gear. By the mid-1940s, Cuban musician Cheo Marquetti emigrated to Mexico and named his group Conjunto Los Salseros, while Beny Moré would shout salsa during performances to acknowledge a musical moment's heat. The term gained commercial traction in 1973 when Puerto Rican music promoter Izzy Sanabria hosted the first television show titled Salsa, using the word to denote a specific music genre rather than the broad category of Latin music. Sanabria's Latin New York magazine, an English-language publication, legitimized the genre in the eyes of North American media, with The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek covering his events. Despite the marketing potential, many musicians initially resisted the label. Machito stated there was nothing new about salsa, calling it the same old music played in Cuba for over fifty years, while Tito Puente famously declared that the only salsa he knew was sold in a bottle called ketchup. Eventually, financial necessity forced even the most resistant artists to embrace the term, with Machito winning a Grammy Award in 1983 for Best Latin Recording for his Salsa Big Band.
The Architecture Of Sound
The instrumentation in salsa bands is mostly based on the son montuno ensemble developed by Arsenio Rodríguez, who added a horn section and tumbadoras, or conga drums, to the traditional Son cubano ensemble. These three drums, bongos, congas, and timbales, became the standard percussion instruments in most salsa bands, functioning 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 or hammer, and do not constitute a solo. The bongos play primarily during the verses and the piano solos, but when the song transitions into the montuno section, the bongo player picks up a large hand-held cowbell called the bongo bell. The interlocking counterpoint of the timbale bell and bongo bell provides a propelling force during the montuno. Some bands instead follow the Charanga format, which consists of a string section of violins, viola, and cello, tumbadoras, timbales, bass, flute, claves, and güiro, with bongos not typically used. In the 1960s, Eddie Palmieri decided to replace the violins with two trombones for a heavier sound, a move that influenced the evolution of the genre. Latin big bands in the 1950s and 1960s included a brass section of trumpets and saxes, and throughout its 50 years of life, Los Van Van have always experimented with both types of ensembles, eventually becoming a hybrid.
The word salsa means sauce in the Spanish language and became the name of a global musical phenomenon. The connection traces back to 1930 when Ignacio Piñeiro composed the song Échale salsita to instruct his band to increase the tempo.
Who founded Fania Records and when did they introduce salsa artists?
Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci founded the recording company Fania Records in the late 1960s. They introduced many artists later identified with the salsa movement including Willie Colón, Celia Cruz, and Héctor Lavoe.
What instruments form the standard percussion section in salsa bands?
The standard percussion instruments in most salsa bands are bongos, congas, and timbales. These three drums function in similar ways to a traditional drum ensemble with the timbales playing the bell pattern and the congas playing the supportive drum part.
When did the Fania All-Stars sell out Yankee Stadium?
The Fania All-Stars sold out Yankee Stadium in 1971. This event marked a pivotal moment in the genre's history and helped legitimize the music in North American media.
Which Cuban band developed the songo rhythm in the late 1960s?
The band Los Van Van led by 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.
When did Los Van Van win their first Grammy Award for Best Salsa Album?
Los Van Van were awarded the first ever Grammy Award for Best Salsa Album in 2000. This win cemented the genre's global legacy and recognized the band's long history of experimentation with different ensembles.
The key instrument that provides the core groove of a salsa song is the clave, often played with two wooden sticks that are hit together. Every instrument in a salsa band is either playing with the clave or playing independent of the clave rhythm. For salsa, there are four types of clave rhythms, the 3-2 and 2-3 Son claves being the most important, and the 3-2 and 2-3 Rumba claves. Most salsa music is played with one of the son claves, though a rumba clave is occasionally used, especially during rumba sections of some songs. The chord beat, often played on cowbell, emphasizes the odd-numbered counts of salsa, while the tumbao rhythm, often played on congas, emphasizes the off-beats. The tumbao rhythm is helpful for learning to dance contra-tiempo, or On2, where the beats 2 and 6 are emphasized. The Montuno rhythm is a rhythm that is often played with a piano, looping over the 8 counts to help find the direction of the music. Most salsa compositions follow the basic son montuno model based on the Afro-Cuban clave rhythm and composed of a verse section, followed by a coro-pregón, or call-and-response chorus section known as the montuno. The verse section can be short, or expanded to feature the lead vocalist and carefully crafted melodies with clever rhythmic devices. Once the montuno section begins, it usually continues until the end of the song, with the tempo gradually increasing during the montuno to build excitement. The montuno section can be divided into various sub-sections sometimes referred to as mambo, diablo, moña, and especial.
The New York Revolution
During the 1950s, New York became a hotspot of Mambo with musicians like Dámaso Pérez Prado, Luciano Chano Pozo, Mongo Santamaría, Machito, and Tito Puente. The highly popular Palladium Ballroom was the epicenter of mambo in New York, where the interaction of Afro-Cuban and jazz music was crucial to the innovation of both forms. 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. In 1952, Arsenio Rodríguez moved for a short period to New York City taking with him his modern son montuno, and his guajeos would become very relevant in the region a decade later. In 1966, the Palladium closed because it lost its liquor license, and the mambo faded away, as new hybrid styles such as boogaloo, the jala-jala, and the shing-a-ling had brief but important success. 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, and 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. In 1971, the Fania All-Stars sold out Yankee Stadium, marking a pivotal moment in the genre's history.
The Cuban Counterpoint
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, several new rhythms were introduced and the style had a more significant departure from the son montuno/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. During the same period, Cuban super group Irakere fused bebop and funk with batá drums and other Afro-Cuban folkloric elements. In 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. 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 to El Médico de la Salsa. Prior to D'León's performance, many Cuban musicians rejected the salsa movement, considering it a bad imitation of Cuban music, but D'León's performance gave momentum to a salsa craze that brought back some of the older templates and motivated the development of timba.
The Global Salsa
Cuban music has been popular in sub-Saharan Africa since the mid twentieth century. To the Africans, clave-based Cuban popular music sounded both familiar and exotic. Beginning in the 1940s, Afro-Cuban son groups such as Septeto Habanero and Trio Matamoros gained widespread popularity in the Congo region as a result of airplay over Radio Congo Belge, a powerful radio station based in Léopoldville. A proliferation of music clubs, recording studios, and concert appearances of Cuban bands in Léopoldville spurred on the Cuban music trend during the late 1940s and 1950s. Congolese bands started doing Cuban covers and singing the lyrics phonetically. Soon, they were creating their own original Cuban-like compositions, with lyrics sung in French or Lingala, a lingua franca of the western Congo region. The Africans adapted guajeos to electric guitars, and gave them their own regional flavor. The guitar-based music gradually spread out from the Congo, increasingly taking on local sensibilities. This process eventually resulted in the establishment of several different distinct regional genres, such as soukous. The largest wave of Cuban-based music to hit Africa was in the form of salsa. In 1974 the Fania All Stars performed in Zaire, known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa, at the 80,000-seat Stadu du Hai in Kinshasa. This was captured on film and released as Live In Africa, also known as Salsa Madness in the UK. The Zairean appearance occurred at a music festival held in conjunction with the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman heavyweight title fight. Local genres were already well established by this time, yet salsa caught on in many African countries, especially in the Senegambia and Mali. The Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab plays in a basic salsa style with congas and timbales, but with the addition of Wolof and Mandinka instruments and lyrics. 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.
The Voice Of The People
Salsa lyrics range from simple dance numbers and sentimental romantic songs to risque and politically radical subject matter. Music author Isabelle Leymarie notes that salsa performers often incorporate machoistic bravado, or guapería, in their lyrics, in a manner reminiscent of calypso and samba. Salsa lyrics often quote from traditional Cuban sones and rumbas, and sometimes there are references to Afro-Cuban religions, such as Santeria, even by artists who are not themselves practitioners of the faith. Celia Cruz, for instance, was not an adherent of Santeria, yet she referred to the goddess Yemaya in her performances. Salsa lyrics also exhibit Puerto Rican influences, with Hector LaVoe, who sang with Willie Colón for nearly a decade, using typical Puerto Rican phrasing in his singing. It is not uncommon now to hear the Puerto Rican declamatory exclamation le-lo-lai in salsa. Politically and socially activist composers have long been an important part of salsa, and some of their works, like Eddie Palmieri's La libertad lógico, became Latin, and especially Puerto Rican anthems. The Panamanian singer Ruben Blades in particular is well known for his socially-conscious and incisive salsa lyrics about everything from imperialism to disarmament and environmentalism, which have resonated with audiences throughout Latin America. Many salsa songs contain a nationalist theme, centered around a sense of pride in black Latino identity, and may be in Spanish, English, or a mixture of the two called Spanglish. In the 1990s, pop salsa emerged in the US, with Sergio George producing several albums that mixed salsa with contemporary pop styles with Puerto Rican artists like Tito Nieves, La India, and Marc Anthony. George also produced the Japanese salsa band Orquesta de la Luz, and Brenda K. Starr, Son By Four, Víctor Manuelle, and the Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan enjoyed crossover success within the Anglo-American pop market with their Latin-influenced hits, usually sung in English.
The Modern Fusion
During the late 00s and the 10s, some timba bands created new hybrids of salsa, timba, hip hop, and reggaeton. A few years later the Cuban reggaeton band Gente de Zona and Marc Anthony produced the timba-reggaeton international mega-hit La Gozadera, reaching over a billion views in YouTube. The style known as Cubaton, that was also popular during this period, was mostly based on reggaeton with only some hints of salsa or timba. In Cuba, what came to be known as the timba explosion began with the debut album of La Charanga Habanera, Me Sube La Fiebre, in 1992. Like NG La Banda, Charanga Habanera used several new techniques like gear changes and song-specific tumbaos, but their musical style was drastically different and it kept changing and evolving with each album. Manolín El Médico de la salsa, an amateur songwriter discovered and named by El Tosco at med school, was another superstar of the period. Manolín's creative team included several arrangers, including Luis Bu and Chaka Nápoles. As influential as Manolín was from a strictly musical point of view, his charisma, popularity, and unprecedented earning power had an even more seismic impact, causing a level of excitement among musicians that had not been seen since the 1950s. In Colombia, salsa remained a popular style of music producing popular bands like Sonora Carruseles, Carlos Vives, Orquesta Guayacan, Grupo Niche, Kike Santander, and Julian Collazos. The city of Cali became known as Colombia's capital of salsa. In Venezuela, Cabijazz was playing a unique modern blend of timba-like salsa with a strong jazz influence. The 1990s was marked by pop salsa in the US, and the timba explosion in Cuba, with Cuban timba musicians and New York salsa musicians having positive and creative exchanges over the years, though the two genres remained somewhat separated, appealing to different audiences. Nonetheless, in 2000 Los Van Van were awarded the first ever Grammy Award for Best Salsa Album, cementing the genre's global legacy.