How Did The Musical Characteristics Of Sasa Change Since Its Beginning

The History of Salsa

Grant Lee

Advisor: Mr. Gillespie

Research Question:

How did the musical characteristics of Salsa change since it’s beginning?

Since its humble beginnings, salsa has been quickly becoming a global sensation. At the beginning, Salsa was not the most popular genre of music because there were many other dominant genres in Latin America that shadowed salsa. As time progressed and multiple talented artists refined the music, it began gaining recognition by the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution of salsa from its beginning.

By the 1940’s, the United States had recovered from the Great Depression, and the Great War had finally ended. Although the war had finally come to an end, communism still existed and many Cubans that were able to escape and remained in the United States. At the time, the hub of all multicultural events resided in the United States. Before the term “Salsa” ever

existed, there were many Cuban style dances that helped plant the seeds of Salsa. About 10 years after the ending of the war, three main popular bands gave recognition to the small genre. Originally, these large mambo bands made use of the traditional salsa percussion section that is often composed of cowbells, erikundis (shaken instrument much like maracas), batas (double headed drums), shakers, congas (dual single headed barrel like drums), cajons (six-sided, box-shaped drum that is played by slapping a side of the cube), and guiros. Along with the traditional percussion section was the either horn-based conjunto or string-based conjunto that was typically accompanied by a piano. During the pre-salsa era, Machito and his Afro-Cubans made extreme development to the Latin music genre through his collaboration with many jazz musicians who helped fuse the two genres to create Latin Jazz. In comparison to salsa originally, one of his great works, “Tanga”, portrays the influence of jazz into the Latin music genre. The guajeo of the piano accompaniment begins to emphasize the “blue notes”:

Traditionally Salsa tended to play the guajeo as an arpeggio that was mostly major, but in the case of “Tanga”, Machito fuses the jazz block notes and blue notes to give the Salsa piece a “jazzy” tune.

Another innovation Machito contributed to the Salsa community was the significance of the instrumentation. Traditionally, Salsa had often emphasized the main lead singer and the vocal parts to Salsa, but due to the use of newer instrumentation of the use of congas, bongos, and timbales there was a need to create a triumvirate between these three instruments, which led to the basis of most Salsa music. With the triumvirate of the three percussion instruments, the horns also adapted the same rhythmic vocabulary present throughout the percussion section. Lastly, Machito further developed the clave rhythm that is prevalent throughout the Salsa culture. In his music, Machito developed the 3-2 and 2-3 clave rhythm. At the beginning of each chord progression in his music was always instigated by the clave

rhythm:

Furthermore, the jazz influence is present when he implements s the 2-2 cut-time rhythm. As observed in Salsa past the 1950’s, the influence of both jazz and Machito leaves an influence throughout the evolution of Salsa.
10 years after Machito, Mongo Santamaría rose to fame. Through the influence of Machito and his emphasis on the instrumental parts of music, Santamaría was able to debut with his talent as a conguero (congo player). Santamaría further rose to fame through his collaboration with Herbie Hancock. In similarity to Machito, Santamaría also collaborated with great jazz musicians. The legacies of Santamaría’s innovations are present in some of his greatest masterpieces. In his piece Mi Guaguanacó (1959), the prevalent motif of sixteenth rhythm with the bongos distinguishes Santamaría from his contemporaries at the time:
Furthermore, Santamaría made contributions to the implementation of the congos. In his piece Afro Blue, Santamaría truly features his talent as a congo genius. Along with more modern jazz instrumentation such as the saxophone, Santamaría exhibits the congos and further develops the role of the instrument. The opening to the piece is based on the traditional African 3:2 hemiola (cross-rhythm). The magic of the beat is then accompanied by a jazzy bass passage featuring 6 cross-beats each measure of 12-8:
The featured ostinato bass line shows the syncopation and jazz influence in the music. Furthermore, through this synchronization of the two instruments also shows the influence from Machito’s emphasis on instrumentation present in most of his pieces.
Another musician during the 1960s that helped bring recognition to the boogaloo movement was Ray Barretto