Title: Latin American music and dance
Headings: Latin American music and dance
Latin American music and dance
Amerindian Background
Iberian Influences
African Influences
Impact on World Musics
Art Musics
World music: Chronology

Content: As with the earlier  mambo, salsa was influenced by jazz harmony and  arranging. It developed its most distinctive form in New  York in the early 1970s. Salsa (Spanish for "hot sauce") is a style of  popular music that emerged from New York City's Hispanic  community during the mid-1970s, developing from a blend  of Afro-Cuban and Puerto Rican music with rock and jazz. Its roots are in the Latin dance music of the  1940s--which used trumpets, flutes, and voices--and the  dance rhythms of the 1950s that have had varying degrees  of popularity since then--the rhumba, mambo, and chacha. The electric guitar, along with electronic techniques,  has been added from rock, along with the instrumentation  and improvisational skills of jazz. Salsa musicians include performers such as Cuban singer  Celia Cruz and bandleader Tito Puente, whose careers  predate salsa, as well as younger musicians including  bandleader Eddie Palmieri, trombonist Willie Colon, flute  player Johnny Pacheco, and percussionist Ray Barretto. Salsa has spread to Hispanic communities throughout the  United States. It has influenced both rock and jazz, and  the Latin rhythms and percussion instruments can now be  heard throughout rock and dance music. However, salsa is  still primarily sung in Spanish, and very few performers  have crossed over to reach the same kind of success  singing in English. Bibliography: