Salsa is an Afro-Cuban music. Music in the Caribbean is a blend of African, Spanish, and to a lesser extent, French, English and Dutch musical traditions. It emerged in the 16th century with the arrival of the African slaves to the area. Cuba is the heartland and the most prolific source of Afro Caribbean music, being itself the biggest of islands in the Caribbean sea. Apart from the rhythm and percussion instruments, it has also inherited the call-and-response singing pattern from Africa. The black slaves brought to Cuba and their descendents were the creators of the Afro-Cuban rhythms that gave birth to Salsa. They needed the music to alleviate their sufferings, to dance away their brutal fate; music was their most effective therapy. 

At around the turn of the century authentic Cuban music came into being. No longer black nor white, these new genres of music were black-and white, Afro-Cuban. They owe their lyrical form and harmony to the Spanish, and the vital heart-beat to the rhythms brought from Africa. Together with a wide variety of genres, the forerunner of Salsa, el Son cubano, was born. El Son cubano was once prohibited by the government in the 1920s, on supposedly "moral" grounds. But no Cuban could resist the infectious rhythm; and very soon even the whole world was dancing to Afro-Cuban music: rumba, mambo and cha-cha-cha. 

From the 1920's Cuban rhythms began to expand abroad, mainly to the U.S. Jazz greats such as Jelly Roll Morton and Dizzy Gillespie used Cuban rhythms to enrich their music. Later on Mambo was born in the 1940's and became a craze in the 1950's only to be superceded by another new rhythm Cha Cha Cha. In Cuba the Afro-Cuban music, at first prohibited by the government and snubbed by the higher society, made its way from the countryside, the dockyards and the backstreets to the saloon. Superb musicians and singers appeared, among those Benny More, Arsenio Rodriguez, plus the legendary Cuban orchestra, La Sonora Matancera, with Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa, as its lead singer. Salsa emerged in the 1960's in New York. Arising from Afro-Cuban Son, Montuno, Guaguanco and Guaracha, blending with Puerto Rican Plena and Bomba and North American jazz, to produce its distinctive sound. The rise of salsa is usually attributed to the break in political and economic ties between the U.S. and Cuba. The Puerto Rican immigrants longing for their Caribbean roots and the stranding of Cubans in the U.S. created a climate of self reliance when all ties with Cuba were severed. They continued to make Afro-Cuban music but somehow adapted it to the metropolitan life-style, that is, frustration, violence and broken dreams of poor immigrants confined to black boroughs such as Harlem. In a way Salsa is an eclectic mix, a fusion of various Caribbean styles. Unlike SON that has its origins in rural areas, Salsa is an urban music with a stronger brass sound and faster beat. Salsa incorporated Son's traditional instrumentation but added others such as piano, trombon etc.A modern Salsa band features at least eight to 12 performers including the vocalists and a brass section of trumpets and trombones. Salsa grew in stature gaining full acceptance after the release of Jerry Masucci's film Salsa (1973) which featured a Fania-All-Stars concert in New York. 

Eventually, in the 1960s with the arrival of rock music and the total blockade against Cuba, the Cuban dances faded, and some of the Cuban dance rhythms were appropriated into standardized, manual-taught ballroom dances. (On the way cha-cha-cha lost one of the 3 chas.) The authentic salsa is not a ballroom dance. The musicians have kept it a very spontaneous and intricate music; the dancing is too spicy, lively and tasteful for monotonous formal routines. 

Salsa music can be quite slow, or very fast, or with changes of rhythm within one song. It can be joyful, joking, romantic or sorrowful. A Salsa song opens with an instrumental introduction, then the lead vocalist sings a written text. At the middle section there are instrumental improvisations, either on piano, brass or percussion. This mid-section is called descarga or mambo. It leads to the second half of a Salsa, called montuno, which is the call-and-response between the lead-vocalist and the choir. The lead singer improvises, and the choir answers. Sometimes an instrumental improvisation replaces the lead vocalist, or the response is not sung but played by instruments. All this is usually done with Latin spontaneity, intuition and sabor, which is good taste. Dancers react to all this accordingly. They start the song with an easy, relaxed pace, and with the increasing intensity during the mambo and montuno the dancers loosen themselves. It isn't necessary to dance acrobatically. Doing all kinds of turns does not necessarily mean that one is a good dancer. Most native dancers do not bother with the turns, often just dancing with their partners, body to body, moving their hips and feet in unison and with feeling. 

Salsa, in its music, has always had a highly elaborated complexity in the orchestral instrumentation, polyrhythmic percussion and lyrical improvisation. Often the lyrics reach sublimation. Love, or the most common fact, is always told with street maliciousness together with impressive orchestration. Here is one example of such street malice in the song called "El negrito" played by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico: 

Ay
If a black man was to steal, a chicken to throw into the pot,
to make for himself a stew;
and when the stew was cooked,
a white man comes along
does a naughty trick, eats the stew and even steals the pot! 

And listen: afterwards the white man claims the chicken,
reports the black man and they frame him,
take him to court and put him in real trouble,
and the poor black even has to pay the pot! 

They say that the kids from the East want to fatten up,
while the ones from the West are put on diet.
Ay, this damned justice, listen to this cry:
because justice feeds on crime. 

Chorus:
This world isn't for one to stay
but there isn't a better place to flee to.

When you see a black man dining alongside a white man
either it is the white who owes it to the black
or it is to the black that the food belongs. 

So many go to jail for stealing a chicken,
and there are those who steal the whole farm
and there's no way they'd get caught. 

They send me to the moon, they say my visa is good there
but Sir no, I wouldn't dare-for there ain't no woman! 

But even with all the evilness, let me remind you
there isn't a better world
so we better just conform ourselves to it.

(translation by Marta Landazabal)