The History of Salsa Dancing Part 1 - African Origins

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Salsa is a internationally popular dance style that has it's roots in Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean and North America. The Word Salsa translates as the world for sauce and also can-notes a spicy flavor hence the sensual aesthetic of the dance.

The origins of salsa start in cuba when African rhythms came to the new world through slave trade in the form of the rumba. The sounds of these ancient times were used to call forth various Gods. Slaves were forced to convert to Christianity but managed to preserve their heritage by using code words to refer to their own Gods. In Cuba, African drum rhythms blended with the cuban official music and dance of Danzon. A style known as the Cuban son emerged and we now start to hear the claves play a central part of afro-cuban music.

Radio Broadcasting came to Cuba in 1922 along with Americans seeking to escape prohibition laws. This exposed a large population of westerners to cuban son and for the first time, afro-carribean music became popular in america. Renamed the Rumba, the music and dancing begin to appear in American salons in the 1930s and is still a popular style today among ballroom dancers. The rumba in many ways looks like a slower version of salsa. It's got some of the footwork elements, the cuban hip motion, and arm styling.

Even with the Danzon (which has its origins in English social dancing), you can see the beginnings of the basic back and forward break of the basic time step.

In the early 1900s a cuban composer named Orestes Lopez wrote a Danzon piece called Mambo. In 1943, a famous band leader and a friend of Lopez named Perez Prado began to call his own brand of music "Mambo" meaning "conversation with the Gods". The African influence is clear from the name. Perez's Mambo was a more upbeat version of the Cuban music that contained big brass and drum sound to it. The story goes that he came up with a dance to go with his Mambo music and introduced the Mambo dance at La Tropicana night-club in Havana in the year 1943. Prado Perez took tour in the United states in 1951 and Mambo became a craze and Perez became known as the famed Mambo King.