Salsa (Spanish for “sauce”) is a collective name for Latin American dance music that took shape in the 1960s–70s among the Latino community of New York, chiefly on the basis of the Cuban son and other Caribbean rhythms.
Its heart is a complex, multilayered percussion (congas, bongos, timbales, claves), over which sound bright brass riffs, the piano “montuno,” and ardent call-and-response vocals. Salsa is above all music for dance, full of heat, sensuality, and irrepressible energy. It became a musical symbol of the entire Latin American world and spread across the planet. The genre's legends are Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, and the Fania All-Stars. Salsa is the quintessence of Caribbean joie de vivre embodied in rhythm.
