Maria's Music Blog

History and Origins  Salsa is a hybrid musical genre based on Afro-Cuban music that also incorporates different elements from various Latin American Styles. It started developing in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s but it was not until the 1960s that this genre of music received its official name. In the 1970s this genre became more popular along with the spread of Hispanic Cultural Identity. The word “Salsa” means “sauce” in English and is usually a mixture of ingredients made to flavor the food, which in some type of way has similarities to this musical genre, since this genre is a mixture of different elements. This genre of music is strongly influenced by Cuban Culture and also incorporates a lot of elements from Puerto Rican Culture. At the same time Jazz and Rock also played an important role in the creation of this unique genre. This genre has a lot of diversity because styles such as: Bolero, Rhumba, Mambo, Cha-Cha-Cha composed and contributed to what today we know ...

  It is no secret that in the past, men were usually in charge of playing the music and women were in charge of the dances and keeping them company. This is something that we can see in most cultures, which is really interesting because even though we are so different, we speak different languages and have different traditions; this dynamic of gender and music is present in a lot of cultures.  This is also something we can see in the Colombian culture, in which if we look back years ago, we can see how the musical groups were mostly composed of men. Today, I’m going to talk about a specific genre of music that is really popular in the Colombian Caribbean and in which we can still see how the majority of people who are part of this musical genre are men. This genre is called Vallenato and if I’m honest this is one of my favorite musical genres of my country. I love that the music in this genre is very cheerful, transmits a lot of feelings and is very traditional.  Below I’...