Salsa You Don’t Eat, But Listen To

Salsa You Don’t Eat, But Listen To

Many people have heard the term salsa (Spanish for sauce) used to describe a style of popular music in Spanish. As a musical style, salsa is really hard to define because it’s very broad in scope. To say that salsa is a mixture of African and Spanish music doesn’t really mean much to the uninitiated, who usually think of any type of music with some Spanish flavor as salsa. (Sorry, the Miami Sound Machine doesn’t play salsa.)

Salsa was developed during the early 60s and by Latin musicians (mostly Puerto Ricans) who adapted traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms into a “brassier” sound with jazz-style soloing and improvisation. The most important instrumentation in salsa is the rhythm section, which consists of a bass guitar (acoustic or electric) and percussion instruments like the clave (sticks), cowbells, timbales (snare drums played with sticks) and congas (African drums). The brass section consists of trumpets and/or trombones. Wind instruments like saxophones or flutes are sometimes included. Finally, the piano plays both rhythm and melodic parts.

There are some interesting facts about salsa unknown by many.

• Although salsa is essentially a dance-oriented genre and many songs have little in the way of lyrics, it also has a long tradition of experimenting with lyrics. In fact, old-school singers were expected to be able to improvise verses around the song’s theme using a predetermined rhyme scheme.


• Few people know that the birth place of salsa is not Latin America, but New York City, the experimental music center of the world, at that time.


• There were several non-Latin musicians who played an integral part in the development of salsa. For instance, Barry Rogers—the most influential trombone player in salsa history (and the single reason why I picked up the instrument as a young boy)—and Larry Harlow—one among the best piano players and an authority in Afro-Cuban music—were two Jewish kids from the Bronx and Brooklyn, respectively. Larry’s brother Andy was an excellent flutist and Louis Kahn a great violinist.

And now for the grand finale, here’s the obligatory multimedia sample of a quintessential salsa song: “Vamonos pa’l monte” (Let’s go to the mountains), performed by the Fania All Stars.