By Valentina Cerquera
Songs from Willie Colón’s El Gran Varón (1989) to Bad Bunny’s NUEVAYoL (2025) have played a significant role in the lives of many Latinos. They are a representation of a diverse history and culture. These songs, backed up by trumpets and timbales, manage to transgress differences in generations and nationalities, which is often a difficult task. It is a common experience within Latino households not to be woken up by the sun on a Saturday morning, but rather by undistinguishable upbeat songs. Though this may be a memory that causes laughter and joy, it could be argued that the experience harks to remembrance of an incredibly diverse history and culture. The Latino Diaspora is spread worldwide, with many living in the United States, a setting in which a substantial amount of this history takes place. The origin of Salsa is a story of migrants who carried their ancestral culture within them, ensuring that Latinos had a platform for cultural expression.
Photo of Fania Records artists. Credit: https://fania.com/artist/fania-all-stars/
The Salsa genre, coined in New York City in the 1960s, is a mixture of many different genres native to South America such as mambo, guaracha etc. These genres came about as a fusion of Afro-rhythms that were found along places where there had been slave ports during the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. These rhythms met with both the musical tradition of the indigenous people as well as the colonisers. Therefore, since the beginning, it can be seen how Salsa was a representation of a long history of both forced and willing migration. The mixture of these rhythms represented the integration of various social and racial groups throughout the Americas, forming what it is today the Latino culture.
The epicentre of the proliferation of Salsa was Cuba, with its cultural situation being as stated above. Son Cubano, a genre of infusions, was the distinctive inspiration for Salsa as it provided the instruments often used as well as the call-and-response structure. Interestingly, its popularisation first arrived within the United States rather than the rest of South America.
Post 1960s, Latino migration to the United States started to rapidly increase. The US became an attractive candidate due to the idea of the ‘American Dream’ and obtainable citizenships through the somewhat lenient policies, especially when Latin America was facing political and economic turmoil. As with any migrant, there was a strong push to preserve one’s own culture to express and maintain self-identity. Moreover, a way to maintain your identity is to be with like-minded individuals who may share your values, and that is why so many migrants end up in the same neighbourhoods where other migrant groups resided too. This way, the Latino swing met other genres such as Jazz and funk.
Fania Records, founded by Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci, was one of the founding fathers of salsa. The recording studio invested a lot in talented singers who are now legendary icons such as Hector Lavoe.
Salsa began to gain exponential popularity within Latin America, but interestingly not in the United States. Though salsa was born in New York, it remained linked to the Latino community. Many historians argue that, in a way, it showed resistance to the United States’ cultural homogeny.
As salsa stood as a symbol of a cultural identity, it also developed into a vehicle to deliver political and social messages. There were conscientious decisions on what was being produced by many artists, understanding that their music had an impact which they positively utilised.
What we can learn from salsa is that there are many ways in which migrants are able to keep and nurture their culture, but most importantly, that many beautiful and meaningful projects can come from the infusion of different places and people. There is always value in keeping our cultures alive.
Sources:
Quintero-Rivera, Ángel G., and George Leddy. “Cultural Struggles for Hegemony: Salsa, Migration, and Globalization.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 38, no. 2, 2011, pp. 58–70.
https://fania.com/history/
Fernandez, Raul A. “The Salsa Concept.” From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2006, pp. 13–21.
Valentina Cerquera is a History student at King’s College London. Her writing covers social and political history.
