About Puerto Rico & the Caribbean

Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly Caribbean rhythm that is popular in many Latino countries. The word is the same as the salsa meaning sauce. Who applied this name to the music and dance and why remains unclear, but all agree that the name fits, metaphorically referring the music and dance being "saucy" and "tasty". However, the term has been used by Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants in New York analogously to swing (Jones and Kantonen, 1999).

Salsa incoporates multiple styles and variations; the term can be used to describe most any form of the popular Cuban-derived musical genres (like chachachá and mambo). One particular style was developed by mid-1970s groups of New York City-area Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants to the United States, and stylistic descendants like 1980s salsa romantica.

The güiro is undoubtedly native to the island. It is a hollowed gourd with ridges cut into one side. A wire fork is rhythmically dragged over the ridges to produce an unusual percussion sound. It has found its way into many forms of Latin music.

The Spanish guitar with six strings underwent several changes on the island, owing the lack of native materials and craftsmen to produce authentic instruments. Of the derivatives, namely the requinto, bordonua, tiple, cuatro and tres, only the cuatro and the tres are used with any frequency today. The cuatro has five double strings and produces a unique, rather hollow sound. (A linguistic note: cuatro means "fourth" and refers to the tuning of strings which are a half octave (a fourth) apart.) The tres has three double strings and has a simlar sound to the cuatro.

From Africa came the tambou, a hollowed out tree trunk covered with a taut animal skin, and the maraca, which is a gourd filled with pebbles or dried beans and shaken to produce rolling sound.