Title: Salsa music
Headings: Salsa music
Salsa music
2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Musical genres, styles, eras and events
The word salsa
Characteristics
Songs and instrumentation
Rhythm
Lyricism
History
Origins
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s to the present

Content: World music author Sue Steward has claimed that salsa was originally used in music as a "cry of appreciation for a particularly piquant or flashy solo". She cites the first use in this manner to a Venezuelan radio DJ named Phidias Danilo Escalona; Max Salazar traced the word back to the early 1930s, when Ignacio Piñerio composed "Échale Salsita", a dance song protesting tasteless food. Though Salazar describes this song as the origin of salsa meaning "danceable Latin music", author Ed Morales has described the usage in the same song as a cry from Piñeiro to his band, telling them to increase the tempo to "put the dancers into high gear". Morales claims that later in the 1930s, vocalist Beny Moré would shout salsa during a performance "to acknowledge a musical moment's heat, to express a kind of cultural nationalist sloganeering [and to celebrate the] 'hotness' or 'spiciness' of Latin American cultures". Some people object to the term salsa on the basis that it is vague or misleading; for example, the style of musicians such as Tito Puente evolved several decades before salsa was a recognized genre, leading Puente to once claim that "the only salsa I know comes in a bottle. I play Cuban music". Because salsa can refer to numerous styles of music, some observers perceive the word as a marketing term designed to superficially categorize music in a way that appeals to non-aficionados. For a time the Cuban state media officially claimed that the term salsa music was a euphemism for authentic Cuban music stolen by American imperialists, though the media has since abandoned this theory.