Salsa Music Style

Essay 4 Salsa is an example of a fusion of traditional cultures from Cuba and Puerto Rico, but was american born. Salsa was also unique because of its status as a global sensation. Its different iterations and styles were heard all across the world especially in the United States. Just because of its popular status as a musical style did not mean that Cubans embraced the new found fame from their beloved music style, actually quite the opposite. The music style of Salsa and it's, now, new found connections strained the two countries economically, politically and socially.

Salsa is a music style which was born, not from Cuba, but from new york city. It pulls from a large group of music styles from several separate countries. It was born

This fusion is what made salsa a more viable music option in the United States. Most salsa musicians immigrated from Cuba, The Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.

The fact that Salsa is primarily a Cuban style with a slight bit of american influence is where the problems arise. Many exclaimed that salsa is a new music style when it most definitely wasn’t. Cuban born salsa musician named Machito was famous for saying, "There's nothing new about salsa, it is just the same old music that was played in Cuba for over fifty years.”. This music genre was definitely troubling to many people, even the name of the genre people found controversial. Robin Moore writes that the name “Salsa” was internally nefarious, and used to disenfranchise its roots, “Cristóbal Díaz Ayala believes that the term salsa was consciously adopted as a means of obscuring the roots of the music, but not for political reasons. Rather, adopting it allowed artists and producers to avoid references to Cuba during a politically volatile period and to sell their music to a broader sector of the public. “Earlier they used the term ‘Cuban music,’ but [after 1959] Cuba turned into an ugly

The appropriation and monetary gain the US received from producing and airing Samba music it is clear the United States was wrong. No matter how much the creators of the word Samba deny that the word was not created to cover up and disenfranchise the music style it still did. Yes, the music style became an international sensation, but it did not give the Cubans the credit it deserved. The US did the easy part by slightly differentiating it from Cuban Salsa by adding Jazz, Funk or R&B. There was definitely many controversies surrounding the music genre from a political, cultural, and economic standpoint. It is great to see that after the thawing of the cold war and the increased diplomatic and cultural ties were apparent that the countries and their artists finally started to settle down, mingle and give Cuba the credit that it deserved. In the end it turned out the way it was supposed to, but that does not stop us from remembering the dark