=Causeway Performing Arts=
Salsa
(Area of Study 3)
Salsa is Latin American dance music which blends the Son style from Cuba with elements of jazz.
Salsa grew out of Son...
The Spanish colonised Cuba and brought African slaves to work there on the sugar plantations. Over the
years, music from two cultures combined to make a dance style called Son.
Traditional Son music has:
1.
A basic repeated rhythm pattern called a Clave (pronounced CLAH-VEY) played by hitting two sticks
called claves (pronounced CLAYVES) together.
2.
More repeated rhythm patterns played on percussion instruments like the maracas and the bongos.
These parts are often syncopated and from complicated cross rhythms and polyrhythms against the
clave part.
3.
The melody is played by brass instruments like trumpets.
4.
Call and response between the lead singer (called the sonero) and the chorus (the choro).
5.
Son music is meant for people to dance to. Most lyrics are simple or about the dancers but when the
singers get a chance to improvise, they can say about anything they feel like.
... and big-band jazz
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Salsa music grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in New York, in the city’s Latin American community. Salsa
means sauce in Spanish - it is meant to be spicy music.
Taking the basic structure of song, salsa bands out of the harsher rats based arrangements and bigband jazz. The trombone was a big focus.
Salsa also took inspiration from Puerto Rico, Brazilian and African music.
Big names in the rise of salsa music include the Puerto Rican - American trombonist, singer and
producer Willy Colon, and the Cuban - American singer Celia Cruz.
Salsa soon became popular throughout Latin America and beyond.
The clave is the key to any salsa tune
The clave is the basic rhythm of a piece of salsa music. The most common salsa rhythm is the son clave. The
son clave rhythm has a group of three notes and group of two. It goes like this...
This one is a 3 - 2 clave
This one is a 2 - 3 clave
1.
A piece of salsa music doesn’t use the same clave all the time - it might switch to a different clave
halfway through.
2.
3.
The piece always stays in ò time signature.
All the other parts fit round the instruments playing the clave.
=Causeway Performing Arts=
Find yourself a salsa tune on the computer - there’s plenty on musicdepartment.info, and see if you can pick
out these features...
The salsa band combines the song and big-band instruments
A traditional son band has six instruments: guitar, string bass, bongos, maracas, claves and the tres, which is
a bit like a guitar. These instruments combined with big-band brass instruments like trombones and
trumpets to form the salsa band.
These are the main sections in the
modern salsa band:
VOCALS
There are soneros (le
ad singers) and the ch
oro (the chorus)
S
ORN
H
r
o
E
IN
L
FRONT
trumpets or
Trombones,
STRINGS and PIANO
usually play
saxophones
A
bass guitar, a tres or
the tune.
Spanish guitar and
piano provide an
accompaniment
to the brass
section.
RHYTHM SECTION
Latin American instruments
like congas, timbale,
bongos, maracas, a guiro
and a standard drum kit are
used.
Guiro
Maracas
Bongos
Some musicians use rapping, samples and synthesisers to transform traditional salsa into clubmusic. This
modern interpretation of salsa music is called salsaton.
A salsa tune has three main sections
There are three main chunks in a salsa tune. The three different chunks can appear in any order, and they
can all be used more than once.
1.
In the verse you hear the main tune, usually song by the Sonero or played by an instrumentalist.
2.
The montuno is a kind of chorus where the sonero or lead instrumentalist improvises and the choro or
other instrumentalists answer.
3.
You’ll also hear a break between choruses, called the mambo, with the new musical material. It is often
played by the horn section.
4.
You’re also like to hear an introduction and an ending.
5.
There could also be a ‘break’ - a bit where the main tune stops and just the rhythm section plays.
Here is a fairly typical salsa structure:
Verse
break
Intro
Montuno
Mambo
Montuno
Ending