Salsa today is recognized universally as the music and dance of Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Wherever latinos live across the world - be it in Colombia, New York, London or Japan – their music and dance is the passionate pulse at the heart of their culture and daily lives.

However, in 2005, salsa has become more than just a Latino affair. It is now truly a global phenomenon, a world-music genre that covers five continents. The main driving forces behind the salsa’s breakout from Spanish-speaking constituency have been the arrival of ‘world music’ in the 1980s and the huge interest and growth in salsa dancing over the last two decades.

The genre had already started to find a non-Spanish speaking and international audience in the 1970s, when the word’ salsa first became used as a music industry marketing term for all latin music-but more of that latter. The rise of salsa dancing has been the powerful engine which drove salsa to find its global audience. Nowadays, you can walk into a salsa club in Tokyo, Jerusalem, Cape Town or London and find amazing local dancers, many of whom don’t even speak Spanish.Truly a remarkable situation, but all the more proof of salsa’s addictive nature and universal attraction.

Salsa History

Salsa’s roots are in the Cuban Son, a fusion of Spanish harmonies and melodies with African rhythms which evolved at turn of the twentieth century in the island’s eastern province of Oriente.

It developed into the sound and style we know today, however, in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. Cuba had led the Latin music world for many decades in the twentieth century, regularly exporting the latest and most popular styles, rhythms and dances across the globe- son, rumba, guaracha, charanga, manbo, conga, cha-cha-cha. The island also featured many fine virtuoso and innovative musicians and composers, as well as the best bands and arrangers.

After Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959 Cuba became embroiled in ideological conflict with the USA, who imposed a stifling political, cultural and trade embargo on its tiny Caribbean neighbour. Thus new music and the top Cuban bands were denied access to the ever-growing market for Latin American music in the USA and elsewhere, and Latin musicians from the USA were banned from visiting the island. The healthy two-way cultural exchange that been a major driving force in promoting Latin and Cuban music internationally suddenly stopped.

The focal point of Latin music thus shifted to New York City, where many expatriate Latino musicians, particulary Puerto Ricans, kept Cuban music alive, and the melting pot of the Big Apple- with its influences of jazz, soul, funk and rock- new elements were added to the classic son style. By 1971, this music was no longer being called son, but had acquired the name ‘salsa’.

Salsa in Spanish literally means ‘sauce’ and was regularly used by latin musicians and singers to hype a song, soloist or live concert, being a metaphor for ‘hot’ or ‘tasty’. Listen to classic recordings from the 1960s and you hear singers shout ‘salsa!’ as the brass section riffs behind a trumpet soloist or a conga drummers cuts loose with a fiery percussion discussion.

Who adapted the word ‘salsa’ to become the musical genre most associated with Latin America, or when it happened, are both often debate amongst experts and aficionados. Conventional wisdom seems to point towards the two co-owners of the mighty Fania Records, Jerry Massuci and musician Johnny Pacheco.

Along with New York Puerto Rican journalist/graphic designer and Fania’s PR wizard Izzy Sanabria, they adopted the term around 1970 as they began to promote their music to a broader audience through recordings, documentaries and concerts by their supergroup the Fania Allstars. Sanabria had used the word ‘salsa’ to describe this new urban Latin music when writing many of the Fania records sleevenotes and also in his columns for the magazine Latin New York.

Simply, it was the right word, in the right place, at the right time! A brilliant marketing coup. Now, one simple word make up of five letters, which looked fantastic in print and was easy to pronounce for non-Spanish-speakers could pull together all the different musical genres, styles, dances and all regional variations under one roof. Just as soul, funk, country, jazz, blues and rock had their own sections in record stores, now salsa would represent all Latin music in the racks.

As salsa began to reach a wider international audience, it was only a matter of time before people buying the music would want to learn to dance the traditional ‘casino’ couples style that accompanied it. Salsa classes became the norm, first in New York and the USA, and then spreading like a wildfire across the globe.

Everywhere there were expatriate Latinos, salsa clubs would spring up and classes would be taught, often by Cuban, Colombian, Peruvian, Puerto Rican, teachers. And now today, there are thousands of salsa dance classes around the world, and even more people dancing to the music, week in, week out, The whole world is dancing, but now it’s to the clave beat!