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: Some musicians are doubtful that the term salsa has any useful meaning at all, with the bandleader Machito claiming that salsa was more or less what he had been playing for forty years before the style was invented, while Tito Puente once responded to a question about salsa by saying "I'm a musician, not a cook" (referring to salsa' s original use to mean sauce ). Celia Cruz, a well-known salsa singer, has said, " [s]alsa is Cuban music with another name. It's mambo, chachachá, rumba, son ... all the Cuban rhythms under one name". Music writer Peter Manuel claims that salsa came to describe a specific style of music in the mid-1970s "when a group of New York-based Latin musicians began overhauling the classic big-band arrangements popular since the mambo era of the 1940s and '50s", and that the term was "popularized" in the late 1960s by a Venezuelan radio station and Jerry Masucci of Fania Records. In contrast, Ed Morales cites the use of salsa for a specific style to a New York-based editor and graphic designer named Izzy Sanabria. Morales also mentions an early use of the term by Johnny Pacheco, a Dominican performer who released a 1962 album called Salsa Na' Ma, which Morales translates as "it just needs a little salsa, or spice". Characteristics
Though the term salsa music is not necessarily precise in scope, most authors use the term to refer specifically to a style created in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Author Ed Morales has said the obvious, most common perception of salsa is an "extravagant, clave-driven, Afro-Cuban-derived songs anchored by piano, horns, and rhythm section and sung by a velvety voiced crooner in a sharkskin suit". A trombone, sometimes considered a defining characteristic of salsa
At its root, however, salsa is a mixture of Spanish and African music, filtered through the music histories of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and adapted by Latin jazz and Latin popular musicians for Latino populations with diverse musical tastes. The basic structure of a salsa song is based on the Cuban son, beginning with a simple melody and followed by a coro section in which the performers improvise.