Portal:Latin America/Featured article/Week 25, 2006

Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly Caribbean and Latin genre that is popular across Latin America and among Latinos abroad. Salsa incorporates multiple styles and variations; the term can be used to describe most any form of popular Cuban-derived genre, such as chachachá and mambo. Most specifically, however, salsa refers to a particular style developed by the 1960s and '70s Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants to the New York City area, and stylistic descendants like 1980s salsa romantica. The style is now practiced throughout Latin America, and abroad; in some countries it may be referred to as m&uacute;sica tropical. Salsa's closest relatives are Cuban mambo and the son orchestras of the early 20th century, as well as Latin jazz. The terms Latin jazz and salsa are sometimes used interchangeably; many musicians are considered a part of either, or both, fields, especially performers from prior to the 1970s.

Salsa is essentially Cuban in stylistic origin, though it is also a hybrid of various Latin styles mixed with pop, jazz, rock, and R&B. Morales claims that many Afro-Cuban purists continue to claim that salsa is a mere variation on Cuba's musical heritage (but) the hybridizing experience the music went through in New York from the 1920s on incorporated influences from many different branches of the Latin American tradition, and later from jazz, R&B, and even rock. Morales' essential claim is confirmed by Unterberger's and Steward's analysis. Salsa is the primary music played at Latin dance clubs and is the "essential pulse of Latin music", according to author Ed Morales, 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". Modern salsa remains a dance-oriented genre and is closely associated with a style of salsa dancing.