Can someone please confirm or correct me on the spelling and gender of: Salsera - female salsa dancer Salsaro - male salsa dancer Thanks

• Salsaro or Salsera ?   SalsaJester (Michael)   Tuesday 17th December 2002, 3:15 pm
  • Salsaro or Salsera ?   Dave G   Tuesday 17th December 2002, 6:14 pm
    • Salsaro or Salsera ?   SalsaJester (Michael)   Friday 20th December 2002, 11:10 am
    • Salsaro or Salsera ?   andy   Wednesday 18th December 2002, 12:24 pm
      • Salsaro or Salsera ?   Dave G   Wednesday 18th December 2002, 3:18 pm
        • Salsaro or Salsera ?   andy   Friday 20th December 2002, 1:12 pm
        • Salsaro or Salsera ?   the_bishop (Billy Bob)   Wednesday 18th December 2002, 6:18 pm
          • Salsaro or Salsera ?   sweavo (Steve Carter)   Tuesday 11th February 2003, 6:08 pm
            • Salsaro or Salsera ?   Dave G   Wednesday 12th February 2003, 5:26 pm
            • Salsaro or Salsera ?   Nickylg (Nicky Lloyd Greame)   Tuesday 11th February 2003, 6:36 pm
  • Salsaro or Salsera ?   Cosilongo (Matthew Cooke)   Tuesday 17th December 2002, 3:19 pm
    • Salsaro or Salsera ?   DJ ARA (Ara-k)   Wednesday 18th December 2002, 11:35 pm
      • Salsaro or Salsera ?   andy   Friday 20th December 2002, 1:40 pm
        • Salsaro or Salsera ?   Dave G   Friday 20th December 2002, 2:22 pm
          • Salsaro or Salsera ?   andy   Friday 20th December 2002, 6:57 pm
            • Salsaro or Salsera ?   Dave G   Friday 27th December 2002, 4:07 pm
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Salsero and Salsera  BEGIN QUOTE  Can someone please confirm or correct me on the spelling and gender of: Salsera - female salsa dancer Salsaro - male salsa dancer Thanks  END QUOTE

Salsera is female Salsero is male Works on pretty much anything Children - nin~o / nin~a Boy/girlfriend - novio / novia Congo player - conguero / conguera Peoples' names - Mario / Maria dG  BEGIN QUOTE  Can someone please confirm or correct me on the spelling and gender of: Salsera - female salsa dancer Salsaro - male salsa dancer Thanks  END QUOTE

Though I have the sneaking suspicion that using the term "Salsero/a" to describe a Salsa dancer is an entirely English (or American English) invention and I doubt you'd find it in too many Spanish dictionaries, somehow  BEGIN QUOTE  Salsera is female Salsero is male Works on pretty much anything Children - nin~o / nin~a Boy/girlfriend - novio / novia Congo player - conguero / conguera Peoples' names - Mario / Maria dG  END QUOTE

BEGIN QUOTE  Though I have the sneaking suspicion that using the term "Salsero/a" to describe a Salsa dancer is an entirely English (or American English) invention  END QUOTE  Surely that's an "American Spanish invention"?  BEGIN QUOTE  and I doubt you'd find it in too many Spanish dictionaries, somehow  END QUOTE  I doubt that you'd find "Salsa" meaning a type of music in too many Spanish dictionaries either! It will usually be translated as gravy or sauce. But if you accept that Salsa is a valid word for a specific form of dance, then -ero and -era are sensible suffices to use to describe practitioners of that dance. Just as baker is panadero (from "pan" meaning "bread"), butcher is carnicero (from "carne" meaning "meat") and chef is cocinero (from "cocina" for "kitchen"). Also, just because it's not in a dictionary doesn't mean it's not a valid word. It's in common usage in Spanish (which it clearly is as you can see if you do a search for salsero in Google - you will see a load of spanish sites using the word). There are plenty of english words which aren't in the dictionary, but are in common usage. dG

doesn't that make a salsero a suace maker then?

In many latin countries salsero or salsera means more than just someone who dances salsa. A person claiming to be a salsero has to like the right kind of salsa music ie. Salsa from the 1960's and 1970's and the best of hard salsa from the 70's onwards. He or she will have at least a fair knowledge of the history of this music and will have quite a good collection of GOOD salsa music(originals not pirates). His or her dancing ability may be somewhere in between fair and fantastic. If I meet a person who says he is a salsero and his favorite artists are Jerry Rivera and Marc Anthony, then I know that he is not. It is as simple as that. It will not matter if he is a salsa dance teacher (which he should not be if he is not a Salsero), or that he can throw his partner in the air and catch her while doing a backflip. The term salsero has generally used to describe people who dance salsa and all I am saying is that this is not strictly correct. There are problems in the salsa scene today because there are not enough real salseros in the business today. Examples include DJ´s who massacre the dancefloor with salsa romantica and merengues and other not so complementary rhythms,and dance teachers who do not understand the music to which their students are supposed to learn to dance to - how many times have I seen so called salsa professors turning their partners like mad to mid tempo Papo Lucca piano grooves. Don't bother asking them who Papo Lucca is either, because most of them will think that he is someone who lives in the Vatican. Unfortunately this is as true in London as it is here in Rio and I suspect in good many salsa cities throughout the world, mainly because of the dark side of commercialization as opposed to the good side that made the salsa boom possible in the first place. Maybe to make things simple, we should refer to the real salseros as Salseros and the rest as just salseros. Regards from Rio DJ ARA salsainrio.com

Thank You

BEGIN QUOTE  Surely that's an "American Spanish invention"?  END QUOTE  Uh yes, I guess you are right  BEGIN QUOTE  But if you accept that Salsa is a valid word for a specific form of dance, then -ero and -era are sensible suffices to use to describe practitioners of that dance. Just as baker is panadero (from "pan" meaning "bread"), butcher is carnicero (from "carne" meaning "meat") and chef is cocinero (from "cocina" for "kitchen").  END QUOTE  Well, what I meant by that is that I think you will find most language theorists object to the practise of taking any old noun and turning it into an adjective by sticking an adjective type end on it. But I was trying to be that serious about it either!

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.

Most of the top Salsa dancers that I know of (like the people at Skegness, Milton, Ismael, Mario B, Frankie) have an amazing knowledge of Salsa music. Admittedly, to be an average dancer, it's probably enough that you just turn up to a club and dance to the tracks you like. However, to be above average, you have to start taking some interest in the music and a natural consequence of that is that you start to know the names of tracks and artists. dG

Depends what you mean by that. If you are going to teach and/or dj (and pretty much all teachers dj, even if it's only for their own classes) then you need to know a fair amount about the music to do that and pretty much all the really top level dancers teach/dj. However there are a lot of people (and I'd count myself amongst that) who are reasonably good dancers (better than the overall average) who choose not to teach/dj and who, like myself, don't wish to become experts on Salsa music beyond knowing what sorts of thing I like to dance too. Part of the art of dancing socially is to be able to improvise to what the music is doing, after all, and there's a big difference between doing that and dancing something that you know will fit becuase you know the track intimately. The latter may be better for show dancing or competitions, but that's not what I do.

BEGIN QUOTE  However there are a lot of people (and I'd count myself amongst that) who are reasonably good dancers (better than the overall average) who choose not to teach/dj and who, like myself, don't wish to become experts on Salsa music beyond knowing what sorts of thing I like to dance too. Part of the art of dancing socially is to be able to improvise to what the music is doing, after all, and there's a big difference between doing that and dancing something that you know will fit becuase you know the track intimately. The latter may be better for show dancing or competitions, but that's not what I do.  END QUOTE  That's a strange argument to me. You seem to be saying that you become a better dancer by knowing less about the music. It seems obvious to me that the more you know about the music, the better dancer you will be. By knowing about the structure of Salsa, you can improvise to fit music that you do NOT know, because you understand what it will do not because you know the track intimately but because you understand how Salsa works. By knowing how certain bands play, you can improvise to tracks by that band without having heard them before. By knowing the difference between New York or Cuban or Colombian Salsa, you can improvise to music of that sort you've never heard before. dG

BEGIN QUOTE  doesn't that make a salsero a suace maker then?  END QUOTE  Or just a saucer? I did a websearch today for "history of mambo" and found this www.centralhome.com/ballroomcountry/mambo.htm which suggests to me that Salsa is a name that came about in new york.

BEGIN QUOTE  Or just a saucer? I did a websearch today for "history of mambo" and found this www.centralhome.com/ballroomcountry/mambo.htm which suggests to me that Salsa is a name that came about in new york.  END QUOTE  I also started looking into the history of salsa last week - research for a workshop I was asked to take in a school.... and to be honest I ended up being more confused than ever.... I honestly believe that the history of salsa is always going to be in dispute - however I personally beleive that salsa is we know it today is largely to be credited to New York. Another interesting site you may want to look at is www.musicofpuertorico.com anch check out salsa/mambo under Music genres..... All very interesting reading... but must admit i don't really care where it comes from as long as it continues... and there's always a dance floor full of salsa dancers having fun!!

BEGIN QUOTE  which suggests to me that Salsa is a name that came about in new york.  END QUOTE  It is. Salsa is a term used in New York in the 70's (?) by labels like Fania. It was really a re-branding exercise, to say to people that there is a new thing called "Salsa" which is completely different from that "Mambo" thing your parents used to dance to. dG