The Third Case of the Salsa Roots

Salsa music continues to have an amazing run, as musical genres go. Even durable, flexible genres such as jazz and rock are thought to have a sustained run for no longer than 20 or 30 years before restlessness sets in and innovators try to push boundaries and refresh the genre.

Not so salsa.

Salsa has endured largely unchanged since its birth on New York dancefloors back in the 1970s; and it shows no sign of letting up. The factor that holds this music in place is the pure joy of salsa dancing. To be fair, good salsa dancing is probably the most exciting and enjoyable form of pair dancing in the history of the world. Audiences continue to demand a steady diet of salsa-friendly tempo for dancing (punctuated, occasionally, with a merengue or bolero interlude). There may be no more durable genre in the pantheon of 20th century music.

The musical roots of salsa are not hard to hear: in Cuban son, the guitar strums a cord to open the musical phrase, which is picked up by the claves. Beginning in the 1930s, Cuban music began allowing the bass to open the musical phrase (although it should be noted that when that convention was invented these musicians would not have acknowledged that as the "one," since their rhythmic forms were based on the clave rather than counted bars and measures). Today that hard bass line on the "one" is a trigger mechanism for salsa dancers, keeping the pulse of the dance. This musical convention of dropping a hard bass note on the one was appropriated from Latin music to give more danceability and sensuality to US musical genres such as funk.