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Subject: Salsaro or Salsera ?
From: andy
Date: Friday 20th December 2002, 1:40 pm

Whilst I totally agree with most of your comments about the music picked by a lot of so-called DJ's and about the fact that many teachers do not understand the idea of trying to interpret the music or, if they do, they don't chose to teach their students to do it, I can't really say that I'd go along with your "you have to be a big fan of and collector of music from a specific era/group of artists to be a true salsero (with or without the capital S)".

Many (possibly most) of us are dancers primarily, obviously we have a liking for the music otherwise we wouldn't dance to it. What we want are tracks that are good to dance to, when they were recorded and who by is a secondary consideration.

Not that I have any objection to anyone who wants to collect/listen to/or even dance to particular music - it's a free world after all.

But doing so doesn't somehow make you "better" or "more important" or even "the only true salsa fan", it just means that you like that particular music and collect it.

I go to as many Salsa events as anybody and there are tracks that will get me on the floor for certain when they are played, but that's because the track is good to dance to, not because it's been recorded by a particular artist.

"Good to dance to" would generally mean that it has an interesting rythmic structure which I can respond to in my dancing.

At least some salsa tracks are simply constant wall of rythym with little variation. I will dance to those too, but I don't regard them as being particularly good dance tracks.

Actually I often don't know the names of the tracks being played or the artists performing them, that's because I'm neither a DJ nor particularly a collector of any kind of music. I think that applies to a lot of people and maybe most. And I doubt it makes any difference whether they are from a Latino or non-latino background ethnically.

Oh and historically Salsa was always commercial (in fact pretty much all dance of any type was/is commercially motivated, certainly from the 1800's on) - the musicians wanted to be paid to perform it and the teachers to be paid to teach it. It's just that salsa's become much bigger in the last few years and there is more money to be made at the moment.

   
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