What is Salsa?
The Cuban band leader and composer, Dámaso Pérez Prado, known as the King of Mambo, once stated that there was no such thing as Salsa. Famed Cuban percussionist, Tito Puete, who perhaps ironically starred with the quintessential group of early Salsa musicians, Fania All Stars, not only agreed with Pérez Prado, stating that the only salsa he knew was sold in a bottle called ketchup, he further added: “Yo toco música cubana” [What I play is Cuban music.]” [1]
Although closely associated to Cuban son, in fact, claimed by many to be one and the same, Salsa is also claimed by Puerto Ricans as their own. In fact they presented a concert in Expo 92 in Seville, Spain titled “Puerto Rico es Salsa [Puerto Rico is Salsa].”[2] Personally, I agree with accomplished Nuyorican musician, Willie Colón, in that, historically speaking, Salsa as we know it today emerged in the U.S. in the 1970s. Colón considers Salsa to be “una suma armónica de toda la cultura latina reunida en Nueva York [a harmonic sum of all Latin culture that meets in New York].”[3] It is undeniable, however, that regardless of its heritage and birthplace Salsa has long been a global/transnational phenomenon.
In her book, Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures, Frances R. Aparicio states that because of its semantic polyvalence contingent on the cultural context in which it is listened to, produced, and performed, this particular music, fluid in its social values and cultural meanings, [Salsa] eludes a fixed definition” (66). Furthermore, she argues that it is precisely the plurality of ideologies, discourses, locations, and concepts of Salsa which enhance its value as “as metaphor for national identity, difference, hybridity, and oppositionality” (68). Aparicio also claims that Salsa exists simultaneously in two conflicting realities: as a central aspect of Puerto Rican society, and as a marginalized cultural Other in the United States. Thus, she suggest that need “for a postmodern approach to understanding current forms of Afro-Caribbean music, that is, an analysis that considers Salsa in its ideological plurality: as national discourse, as international mass culture, and a continuing double-edged value as culturally appropriated musical form in the United States” (61).
Although I acknowledge these issues, in order to limit the scope of exploring a phenomenon as broad as Salsa, this essay is not concerned with finding the authentic national origins of Salsa; tracing its history and key players; or dissecting the appropriation or colonialist othering of Salsa in the first-world mainstream discourse. Instead I have chosen to work within the following definition of Salsa (spelled with a capital letter, precisely to differentiate it from the sauce): “a syncretic cultural expression” of the urban working-class, “central to Latina/o urban communities in the United States and across Latin America” (Aparicio 68). I will mostly concern myself with exploring Salsa as Rubén Blades defines it: “un folclor urbano a nivel internacional [urban folklore at the international level]” (as cited in Aparicio 65).
As a feminist cultural scholar, I am interested in the gender, race, and class issues present in the historical development and present circumstances of the genre. As a Latina immigrant in the U.S.,I am also concerned with the role Salsa plays in the U.S. “as a Pan-Latino expression of cultural hybridity and resistance” (Aparicio 66), and as a source of connection with immigrants’ cultural heritage. For example, Aparicio cites in her book a Puerto Rican immigrant in Michigan who states: “the music reminds me of Puerto Rico.” The author adds: “These phrases ,most revealing of the multisensorial associations that the act of listening provokes … stand as a compelling testimony to the role of Salsa music as a bridge between a trans- or dislocated present and a past home … the sense of familiarity that these formulas evoke for colonized peoples, such as Puerto Ricans and Latinas/os in the United States” (91)
Aparicio reflects on the past and present sociocultural and political context of Salsa in the U.S. and abroad when she states that it:
“becomes a metaphor for race, class, and gender conflicts within the diverse Puerto Rican communities (the island and the diasporas), as well as across Latin America, the United States, and the international scene. While Salsa has been identified as the music of the urban, working-class black and mulatto sectors in Puerto and historically rejected as such by the upper classes on the island, in the United States it has functioned as a cohesive force among latinos in general, syncretizing, in fact, an array of Latin American musical styles into its repertoire.” (66)
Salsa as Pan-Latin Urban Folklore
According to Aparicio, the fact that Salsa originated in the 1970s in New York, is “evidence that it was a social result of the gradual industrialization and migratory movements from rural areas to urban centers that have characterized many Latin American countries through the second half of the twentieth century … Historically, then, Salsa is the music of the immigrant and the urban working class” (81). As César Miguel Rondón has documented, Salsa also functioned as the music of the urban poor all over the Caribbean, including islands such as Puerto Rico and Cuba, but also the mainland countries that surround it, such as Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela (as cited in Aparicio 81).
Thus, Salsa lyrics, from the 1970s to the present, have often included political commentary and dealt with urban social issues, including street violence, as attested by many famous songs immortalized by Héctor Lavoe, Willie Colón, and Rubén Blades, such as Calle Luna Calle Sol, Pedro Navaja, Buscando América, Decisiones, and Plástico . Aparicio states that “while much commercialized Salsa repertoire has been influenced by the romantic ballad since the 1980s, the most important salseros – El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Willie Colón , Rubén Blades, Celia Cruz, Ismael Rivera, Ismael Miranda, Cheo Feliciano, Ray Barretto, Héctor Lavoe – have consistently responded to historical events and social issues that affect Latina/o communities” (82). She argues that these artists speak to “the collective realities of Latina/os in the United States and Latin America,” despite their ideological differences. “Their songs,” as she states “ether address race, gender, and class conflicts or reaffirm cultural practices usually marginalized, such as santería and other African-based traditions.” (82)
Salsa and Caribbean Cultural Identity
In Listening to Salsa, Aparicio highlights a number of Salsa music elements identified with Latino cultural heritage and values. For example, she cites Angel Quintero Rivera’s allusions that the jamming-improvisational style sessions or sections typical of Salsa performances known as descargas “may be constructed as an instance of freedom … virtuosity, and creativity.”[4] She also points out that “the perception that many cultural outsiders have of this type of music – that it is primitive, loud, chaotic, and subversive – constitute historical repetitions of the same vestigial fears expressed b the Spanish colonial government about the performance on drums by African slaves in Cuba” (83-4).
Another example, is the section of Salsa songs in which the singer improvises within a call-and-response structure with the chorus, known as soneo. Aparicio equates its loose improvisational format with freedom and spontaneity. She also points out that the call-and-response structure “is a trait that represents continuity with older forms of Afro-Caribbean musical folklore and with West African music.” Perhaps, more importantly, the chorus section “allows Salsa music to articulate a collective voice … and to establish a dialogic texture.” Finally, she points out that the singer improvises on the theme of the song by creating “new utterances” and also rearticulating “phrases from others songs or various traditions.” Thus, “the singer opens up a sonorous space of freedom, improvisation, and innovation, clinging simultaneously to musical tradition and reaffirming collective memory” (84).
Finally, Aparicio points out to the “polyrhythmic basis of Afro-Caribbean music embodied in the clave – a rhythmic pattern of 3-2 or 2-3 set against a 4-beat measure and performed by the clave sticks” as an “equally oppositional and dialogic element in Salsa” (89). She concludes then that the call-and-response structure, the intertextuality of improvised lyrics, they polyrhythmic nature, and the performance of Salsa, “constitute the material embodiment of a plural, nonindividualist (read anticapitalist), yet free site of artistic expression, a multivocal locus, musically speaking” (91).
I would like to add that such an collectivist, pluralistic, and spontaneous nature is not only characteristic of Salsa music, but of many other aspects and expressions of Latin cultures and communities. Perhaps because of this, Salsa has managed to construct for itself a niche of Pan-Latin identity that cuts across national, class, gender, and race boundaries in Latin-America and the Latin diaspora like no other musical form or cultural expression. As such, it was unavoidable for Salsa to become an anchor to the homeland and symbol of Latin identity for Latino/as who have migrated to the U.S. and other first world countries. This shared nostalgic connection to music as cultural heritage is perhaps best identified by the internationally famous song Mi Tierra, from Gloria Stefan’s first all Spanish CD, of the same title, in which she states she “hears the drums” of the beloved homeland she left behinds and misses painfully.
Race and Class Issues
As we have seen has been the case for many other Latin music genres, the Afro-Puerto Rican plena and bomba, which largely influenced the development of Salsa, were “by the turn of the century … historically and discursively marginalized, erased, and dismissed as música de negros (music of Blacks),” in a process that negated “the racial hybridity of the Puerto Rican people as well as the basic processes from which its transcultural manifestations emerge” ( Aparicio 27). Nowadays, however, Salsa has been accepted by the Puerto Rican, and other Latin-American, upper class and dominant sectors as a valid musical style representative of national/ethnic culture. Aparicio argues that this is due largely ot the globalization and international popularity of Salsa. She states that it was only embraced locally after it had acquired “visibility – audibility, we may say – among European audiences.” “This reception, a posteriori,” she points out, “signals a colonialist structure of cultural circulation: the music is produced locally yet remains in the margins; then it is exported and mainstreamed by foreign audiences, to return with the endorsement of others. Like the transatlantic circulation of the tango and the analogous development, Salsa music has been mainstreamed in Puerto Rico because of its newly found international westernized legitimacy.” (73-4)
Aparicio also points out that the process that has popularized and validated Salsa at home and abroad, has also often tried to “whiten” it. For example, she explains how it has been sometimes recontextualized as concert music, “to be only listened to, unidirectionally consumed as another commodity.” However, she argues that the danceability of Salsa as a social festive encounter has prevailed. As “Salsa concertgoes will notice,” she states “whenever a Latina/o audience is present, there I dancing in the aisles and in any available open space within the confines of the theater or auditorium” (97). Nonetheless, in the constant tension between what is considered classical and what is considered popular music, Salsa has yet to earn a respected position for its own musical value. As Aparicio affirms:
“music educators have generally focused and trained students to read music, insisting that such training is the only valid method for becoming a musician, but improvisational skills also require training and practice. This ‘differential’ expertise, rarely valued and in fact repressed in conservatories and music programs, requires a different kind of training based on practice ,ear, pitch, acuity in rhythm, and most important, a true sense of dialogue with other members of the group. A collective sound emerges from the dialectic balance of improvisatory freedom and formulaic entrenchment.” (84-5)
Mass Media and Authenticity
Many argue that Salsa emerged as a commercialized and diluted version of authentic Caribbean musical forms. Aparicio argues that “the tensions between hegemony and resistance in Salsa music stem basically from its modes of production and dissemination. For better or for worse and unlike its folkloric antecedents transmitted orally, Salsa, like all contemporary popular music, is as part of mass culture” (92).She continues,“Salsa … brings to the foreground issues of cultural authenticity … rejected by … scholars … For years, the metropolis has critiqued the nationalism emerging from the colonized countries, yet it simultaneously appropriates these very nationalist-informed expressions” (114). The entire issue, however, is based on a failed logic that opposes authenticity/national folklore to commercialism/mass culture.
As Aparicio states, “to reify Salsa music as merely a victim or object of hegemony is virtually to preempt its powers for creativity, cultural resistance and reaffirmation, and possibly social change. And to sort Salsa music as either ‘commercial’ or ‘sociopolitical’ is, again, another reifying practice that takes into account only the moment of initial production or the isolated text and that fails to consider listening practices and the larger sociopolitical context within which ha musical performance is embedded” (93). Salsa musicians, Aparicio affirms, have “reappropriated the tools of the master – technology – to reaffirm the musical and cultural presence of the marginalized.” “Indeed, to speak about technology and about media only as hegemony,” she continues, “… is to miss the strategic appropriations of that media by marginalized sectors, a process that historically has led to innovation and experimentation and to new traditions” (34).
Conclusion
Salsa, as the heir to previously repressed Afro-Caribbean musical genres, and the cultural torch of contemporary urban Latino/as in their home countries or abroad, presents and represents political issues, cultural values, and social realities. In its multiple forms and contexts, it becomes, as Aparicio so eloquently explores in her book, “the cultural locus through which gender politics, sexuality, and cultural identity are continuously defined and redefined, contested, negotiated, and ultimately, even internalized” (238).
Tito Puente is Puerto Rican, hence he didn't play Cuban music. He may call what he played Cuban music, but his style was not what a Cuban would play.
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