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Salsa Dance
Salsa is a Latin dance form with origins from the Cuban son (circa 1920s) and Afro-Cuban dance (specifically Afro-Cuban rumba).[citation needed] It is generally associated with the salsa music style, although it may be danced under other types of Latin music.[citation needed]
Salsa is normally a partner dance, although there are forms such as a line dance form “Salsa suelta“,[1] where the dancers dance individually and a round dance form “Rueda de casino” where multiple couples exchange partners in a circle. Salsa can be improvised or performed with a set routine.
Salsa is a popular social dance throughout Latin America as well as in North America, Europe, Australia, and some countries in Asia and the Middle East.
Salsa Music
Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music. Originally, Salsa was not a rhythm in its own right, but a name given in the 1970s to various Cuban-derived genres, such as Son, Mambo and Son Montuno.
Regarding the genre’s origin, Johnny Pacheco,[3] creator of the Fania All-stars, who “brought salsa to New York“[4] (of which some members include: Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Willie Colón, Larry Harlow, Johnny Pacheco, Roberto Roena, Bobby Valentín), explained[5] that “..salsa is and always had been Cuban Music.”
Popular across Latin America and North America, salsa incorporates multiple styles and variations. Most specifically, however, salsa refers to a brand developed in the 1960s and ’70s by Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants to the New York City area, and its later stylistic descendants including 1980s salsa romantica and other sub-genres. It is not a rhythm in its own right, as musical scoresheets still maintain specific Latin rhythms. The style is now practiced throughout Latin America, and abroad. Salsa derives from the Cuban son and mambo, as the music foundation is based on the Son clave rhythm. The terms Latin Jazz and salsa are sometimes used interchangeably; many musicians are considered a part of either (like Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto among others), or both, fields, especially performers from prior to the 1970s.[6]
Salsa is essentially Cuban in stylistic origin,[7][8][9] though it also has styles mixed with pop, jazz, rock, and R&B.[10] Salsa is the primary music played at Latin dance clubs and is the “essential pulse of [Latin] music”, according to Ed Morales,[11] while music author Peter Manuel called it the “most popular dance (music) among Puerto Rican and Cuban communities, (and in) Central and South America”, and “one of the most dynamic and significant pan-American musical phenomena of the 1970s and 1980s”.[12] Modern salsa remains a dance-oriented genre and is closely associated with a style of salsa dancing.