If you have read some of my previous posts, you may have noticed that I have subtly dropped the phrase “American salsa dancing” here and there when referring to L.A. or N.Y. styles of salsa dancing. You may have noticed that I don’t call it “Latin salsa dancing,” or “Latin dance.” There is a reason for that, and this reason will be the topic of this piece.
The thesis of this piece is quite simple: salsa dancing, as it is being spread across the world, is not a “Latin dance,” as many would call it or have you believe. Indeed, salsa dance, as we know it, is actually an American (United States) dance.
Okay. So before you shout, “Blasphemy!” (maybe you already did) hear me out; keep reading. You might learn a thing or two.
Now, usually, when people tell their friends that they dance salsa, in the event that their friends do not know what salsa dancing is, the explanation that follows is usually that salsa is a “Latin dance.” Other times, if people dance more than one dance—let us say, salsa, merengue, and bachata—they say to their friends that they dance salsa and other Latin dances, therefore including salsa in the repertoire of “Latin dances.”
Little do these people know, when they say this to their friends, that salsa dancing really doesn’t qualify as a “Latin dance”—at least not when it comes to the salsa dancing to which they are referring.
I remember the first time I told this to someone, about four years ago; to this day, her reaction has left me pondering about how something so obvious could be so inconceivable to some people. I guess this is why I am writing this piece: I want to make sure that I state the obvious.
Anyway, here is the story. I was at this restaurant which had a “Latin Night” on Saturdays, and after a couple of dances I headed for the bar to grab a drink. A Puerto Rican lady whom I knew came up to me and told that she wished she could dance salsa like I did. I thanked her for the compliment, but told her that I did not dance salsa; that I danced casino (correcting that common mistake is like reflex for me now). I knew she was Puerto Rican, so I asked her if she had not learned how to dance salsa in Puerto Rico. She responded that she had, with her family, but she wanted to learn more, so she was taking classes at this dance academy. The day before she had gone for the second time. I knew the dance academy she was talking about, and it specialized in L.A. style salsa, so I told her, “That’s cool. But I’m sure that’s quite different from what you danced in Puerto Rico.” She looked at me, confused, and asked, “What do you mean?” It was my turn to look confused. I said, “Well, I mean that you are learning an American dance. You know, L.A. style. Los Angeles style. That stuff´s from here, the United States.”
When I told her this, she gave me this look of realization, of something clicking in her brain. I could almost see a shining light bulb atop her head.
We talked for a while more, in which I encouraged her to reminisce about how she used to dance in Puerto Rico. I found out that she was not a social dancer, in the sense that we think about social dancers—you know, going to socials and clubs all the time and dancing as much as you can. Rather, she would dance very basic stuff which she would mimic from what the other members of her family would do when they would gather for a party or some other form of social celebration. So, of course, with this very minimal knowledge of what she had done before, I could see how it could be difficult for her to distinguish between how she had danced in Puerto Rico and what the L.A.-style dance academy taught her in the two beginner lessons she had attended. Essentially, she didn’t have the necessary knowledge to tease apart the difference.
Now, she did not have that level of knowledge, but if you are reading my blog, chances are you do. So, let me give you an idea of how Puerto Ricans dance salsa. Take a look at this video (fast forward to 1:15 to see the actual dancing):
This is a great video, in my opinion, for a couple of reasons: a) this is clearly a Puerto Rican celebration happening, so culturally it is very appropriate; and b) it shows you how Puerto Ricans really dance salsa (I’m talking about the common people who live there and learned to dance in the island, not about the stuff you see Puerto Ricans performers do on stage or the workshops you get at salsa congresses from Puerto Ricans; those have either been heavily influenced by American salsa dancing, or are specifically catering to an American salsa dancer).
As you can see, this is very different from the salsa dancing that you know (L.A., N.Y styles). Very, very different. Of course, they all share the same basic step footwork because that comes from the Cuban dance of son. But other than that, these are very different dances. To prove it, watch a couple of minutes of this video, which shows a couple dancing L.A. style salsa. You will not even have to watch past the first minute to know the dances do not look alike.
Now, I began with Puerto Rico for obvious reasons. Puerto Ricans play a major role in any history of salsa music article or book written out there; therefore, in the effort to search for the “Latin” in salsa dancing, going to Puerto Rico first seemed logical.
The next logical step would be to go to Cuba, because Cuba is the other country which usually makes an appearance in the salsa narrative. Now, I have dedicated a whole blog post to explaining that in Cuba what is danced is not salsa, but rather casino (Read it here.). So I recommend reading that piece for a more in-depth explanation. Therefore, because in Cuba people do not dance salsa, and what they dance—casino—does not look like American salsa, we have to go look for the “Latin” in salsa dancing somewhere else.
Let us go to Colombia, then. Colombia is the other country that usually gets thrown into the mix. Before writing this piece, I did a quick Google search about the history of salsa dancing, and found that Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Colombia seemed to be the only ones with “styles” of dancing salsa worthy enough of mentioning, besides the United States.
So let us talk about Colombians. Now, when it comes to Colombia, people seem to think that Colombians all dance salsa the same way. Therefore, when people mention “Colombian style salsa,” what they are envisioning in their heads is the crazy-fast footwork that the people from Cali (Colombian city) have become known for. But that is just for Cali. I have talked to many other Colombians who have told me that salsa is danced differently across different cities. But again, the “Cali-style” is what people know. So let us watch a video of that, and compare it to the American salsa video above.
Are there similarities? Sure. You may find some. But they are not the same dance, structurally speaking. Indeed, the Colombians definitively do not dance on the slot, like you are taught to do in the United States or anywhere else in Europe that this “Latin” dance is taught. In fact, this looks a lot more like casino than it does American salsa.
So. We cannot find the “Latin” in salsa dancing in Colombia, either.
So where the heck is the “Latin”?
I say, the “Latin” in salsa dancing is all in the fantasy you have been sold. Salsa dancing, as you know it, is not a dance that belongs anywhere in Latin America. And why should it? Even the names of the styles that you know how to dance explicitly tell you that they are not from Latin America. These styles were created in Los Angeles and New York. In short, in the United States.
This is the point I want to drive home. Now, with this I am not saying that salsa dancing in Latin America does not exist. Clearly, it does, as we have seen in the videos I have shown you. However, the way that salsa is danced in Latin America is definitively very far off the way it is danced in the United States and around the world. And again, the reason for that is that salsa dancing, as you know it, is an American dance.
I keep saying “salsa dancing, as you know it.” With this I am assuming that what you know how to dance is one the two most popular ways of dancing salsa, the Los Angeles style, or the New York style, because chances are that that was what you were taught. And chances are, as well, that you were taught that this was a “Latin” dance.
The word “Latin” specifically relates to the “peoples or countries of Latin America” (Merriam-Webster). In this sense, many could argue that salsa is a “Latin” dance because the people who began dancing it in the United States were Latinos or of Latin-decent. I mean, you just have to look at the names of the people often credited with the creation of these styles in the United States: Alex Da Silva, Liz Lira, Francisco Vazquez, Eddie Torres, Pedro Aguilar (“Cuban Pete”), just to name a few. I would agree with you and state that, in that sense and that sense alone, that is where you can find the “Latin” in salsa dancing. But again, the “Latin” in salsa dancing, as you know it, should not be seen as a product of any one Latin American country which was brought to the United States and taught here in the exact same way it was danced there.
Salsa, as you know it, is a phenomenon of the United States. That’s why, to me, calling salsa a “Latin” dance, when you are referring to the Los Angeles and New York styles, does not really complete the picture of what it actually is. Indeed, the American side and contribution to salsa dancing has been greatly underplayed in order to create a fantasy buttressed on the false exoticism of a “Latin” dance that sounds highly appealing to an American and European public. But salsa dancing, as you know it, is American even more than it is “Latin.” I mean, besides the point of it having been developed here, the similarities with other American dances like west coast swing are simply astonishing. Let us take a look:
In this west coast swing video, you can really see where salsa dancing borrows its structure from and many of its concepts. Heck, even some of the turn patterns are exactly the same. The one major difference is the footwork, yet even then there is no denying that the video that you just saw has more in common with what you know as salsa dancing than with any other of the videos from any other of the Latin American countries.
So, with all this said, let us go back to the title of this blog post: Is salsa really a “Latin” dance? The answer is: No. Salsa is an American dance, with American dance concepts, which caters to an American audience, and later would cater to Europe and other parts of the world, spreading the American version. The people who aided in its development, in their majority, were Latinos or of Latin-descent, but they were not replicating something that they saw in any one country in Latin America. They were creating something new; something intrinsically American.
Some people would argue that salsa dancing, as you know it, is Latin because when they go to some of the Latin American countries, they see people dancing the same way they dance in the States. It is true that this happens. However, this is not due to the dance having been developed there, but rather it has to do more with the effects of globalization. The United States is such a powerful country when it comes to getting its products out into the world, that it is no surprise that you see American salsa danced not only in Latin America, but also all around the world, in the same way that you would see a MacDonald’s in Venezuela, a Starbucks in Colombia, and Coca-Cola products, well, pretty much everywhere. Yet the fact that they are there does not make them “Latin.”
A parallel could be made with the dance of bachata. In the United States, the dance of bachata has been changed and modified so much from how it is actually danced in the Dominican Republic—where it comes from—that now you are starting to see instructors making the point of explicitly advertising for their classes as “Dominican bachata” to make clear that their classes will focus on a more culturally-faithful instruction of this Dominican social dance, rather than the American version of bachata, a fantasy version of this dance which many people have taken as the real thing and only recently have begun to realize that it has very little to do with actual bachata. The thing that saddens me, when I see instructors calling it “Dominican bachata”, is that when that happens it sounds like they are teaching some sort of rip-off of the “real” bachata (the one taught in the United States and, because of the American marketing power, spread around the globe), when theirs is the real one.
And that is what I am trying to say: let us not confuse the expression “Latin dance” that is used to refer to an American fantasy that seeks to exoticize and objectify Latin American culture by making fantasy products of easy consumption for the American public (in this case salsa, in its American styles), with actual dances from Latin America like tango, merengue, casino, diablada, joropo, cumbia, and others.
Salsa, as you know it either in its Los Angeles or New York styles, is an American dance, not a Latin one. I hope that has now become as obvious to you as it has been to me for years.
Son y Casino 
Another great read! In my discoveries in the past few years of Casino and it’s history there were thoughts in the back of my mind of LA and NY styles and what they truly were. You just clarified them here for me. I anxiously wait for each of your articles to read and then spread the word. This one here is probably the most important one thats oblivious to a lot of uneducated dancers!
I’m getting more and more educated… Love this post!
So, you’re saying that Latin means “not-USA.” Hmmm…
Texas Swing is from Texas? Texas was part of Mexico, the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. The U.S. has the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world.
Casinos and the show dances of Havana were made to entertain English-speaking North American casino customers. These are not “pure” folk dances, and if you’re speaking of Rumba or Tumba Frances, you could just as easily say these were “corruptions” of the West African or Spanish or French dances from which they came.
Cultural purity is not real. There’s a reason why cities like Miami, Liverpool, New Orleans, Rio & New York come up with stuff that makes the world get up and dance. The reason is IMMIGRATION, and the “impure mixing” that comes with it.
Here are true stories that are much more interesting than myths of purity:
Mariachi owes German Texans for the Oom-pah.
The Blues owes Scottish Highland church music for the blues scale.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo owes Dutch church choirs.
Chicken Tikka Masala was invented in England.
Jamaican Ska owes Motown.
Tap owes Ireland and Africa and maybe even China.
If Brazilians had not felt entitled to “culturally appropriate” American jazz, we would never have gotten Bossa Nova. That’s the way culture grows. Like Hip-hop, you “sample” [or steal] someone else’s stuff and make something amazing and new from it. My friend here in Miami just taught a class with Bachata turns in a “Cuban” Rueda. It was fun! And because it’s Miami, there were no Culture Police to shut it down.
It looks likes you’re mad because of what the article is saying, yet all your examples strengthen the article’s arguments. Indeed, be it ska, mariachi, or blues, ALL of this have claimed to have originated not where their influences are, but rather where they were actually developed. No one says Bossa Nova is American because it owes musically to jazz.
And that’s EXACTLY what this article is saying: U.S. salsa in its N.Y. and L.A. styles, is a U.S. dance because of where it was created, not because of its influences.
I really don’t know where you’re getting this “culture police” from. You’re practically saying the same thing I am, if you actually read the article and not some comments that your friends make on FB.
Interestingly, this reply introduces a number of interesting concepts, potentially worth taking seriously. Unfortunately, however, despite its intellectualoid pretensions, it provides little in the way of definition and contextualisation for these concepts and the claims it makes based on them. By way of example, think of:
1- Cultural fluidity/mixity/purity: anthropologists, linguists, and other social scientists have been closely studying contact, borrowing, esoterogeny -the conscious obscuring of owe’s one linguistic-cultural practices as a mark of identity in opposition to other groups- and its complementary exoterogeny -the maximal fluidity and openness of the code in multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic settings, as well as a number of other related relevant phenomena. We (I am a descriptive field linguist specialising in language diversity, language diversification and language change with the necessary secondary cognitive, anthropological, evolutionary interests) have some preliminary idea of how cultural codification, inheritance and change come about. And, spoiler alert, there is no one single defined set of parameters than can be applied across the board, but rather both extreme cases of hybridisation and of purity are robustly documented. So your first claim, namely that everything is by necessity a mix , is not exactly supported in the existing science. Furthermore, the more or less explicit claim that cultural products are more perfect, better or advanced (“that’s the way culture grows”) is also not entirely supported in the available empirical data. Some of the most complex and innovative structures in structural grammar arise from the exact opposite scenario, namely, through esoterogeny, that is the accelerated and intense quest to make one’s own code as inaccessible and different from all the surrounding codes of neighbouring (speech) communities. This includes everything from actively discarding linguistic material that resembles that of other tribes (even if it is actually historically inherited and not borrowed), through to condemning, minimising or downright eliminating borrowing as a practice, all the way to overusing material that is particularly inaccessible to outsiders, and creating new obscure structural patterns only accessible to the in-group. This is a phenomenon vastly documented in various regions of the world, such as Austronesian Pacific islands, Papua New Guinea rainforests or the mountainous regions of South East Asia, where I am active as a researcher. Sometimes an esoterogenic situation/community can be projected to have been stable as such for thousands of years, beyond the point where reconstruction is scientifically possible, meaning that as far as we know they could have switched to esoterogeny very early on in evolutionary timeline, or have been esoterogenic right from the outset, in any case, the fact of the matter is that cultural esoterogeny (which comes close to your “purity” but without the moral overtones of that word) is as far as we know a stance that’s both perfectly plausible in human societies and perfectly viable. Now, the complementary/opposite phenomenon exists as well, namely a maximally fluid and open stance towards borrowing and mixity, but it goes a good way to show that your faith in mixity is not grounded in actual empirical data.
Cultural appropriation: This is a tremendously interesting AND controversial construct, used more by social change activists and policy makers than by scientists. However, it seems to have some explanatory power when rightly contextualised. And the contextualisation that you have failed to make is that surrounding socioeconomic POWER. USA is the most powerful society in the world, which among many other things means that it’s social agents, individually and/or systemically/collectively, have the power to exert a larger influence on other societies/cultures than the combined “third world” and “emerging” nations possess. This is amply documented, in cross-cultural psychology, sociology of advertising, and economics. An example of this, is a suggestive study by Canadian cultural psychologists and economists which shows that a US entrepreneur is around 300 times more likely to succeed financially than an Indian entrepreneur under EQUAL technical expertise. The huge difference is usually explained in terms of socioeconomic priming biases that are infinitely schewed in favour of anything stemming from the USA. Another obvious example, now in the realm of music is USA POP music. I once read, don’t remember the source, that any given USA produced pop-song is around 10000 more likely to expand and reach popularity anywhere else in the world, than an average POP song from a third-world nation, and around 100000 times more likely than a song from a local music tradition endogenous to that place. Albeit some people would entertain the ilusion that there is anything intrinsic to POP that makes it more appealing to the human species, socioeconomic theorists, discourse analysts and other scientist have providing enormously more convincing explanatory models in terms of socioeconomic POWER of influence. Stated in evolutionary terms: you dont enjoy listening to pop because it is good music, it is made into good music because you listen to it, all the time, everywhere, almost without having a choice to the contrary (I was particularly struck when in the middle of the rainforests of the Morehead district of Papua New Guinea some Rihanna song began playing from the single old radio available in many miles).
Now, cultural appropriation plays within this larger context, and it is by definition flowing in the direction of the more powerful/influential onto the less powerful/influential. Since this is getting long as it is I’ll just state my claim without any further scientific considerations: cultural appropriation has happened when the USA entertainment sector has got to define for Latin Americans what their music is to be called, how it is to be danced and interpreted culturally, and has in the process stripped Latin Americans not only of the power to define for themselves what their musicological and ethnochoreographic traditions should be like, but also, CRUCIALLY, of the power to market them as for-profit commodities. I should stress in this respect that although there are reasons to believe that for-profit commodification of cultural/symbolic practices can have an overall detrimental effect on the cultural bearers, and push for structural changes in the cultural practice -turned cultural product- that respond not to internal symbolic pressures but to external demmands of the market, it is CRUCIAL to understand that this is in any case a decision to be made by the cultural bearers. The USA and SALSA effectively deprived Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia and more broadly Latin America, of the possibility to make this choice for themselves, forcing them to either join the US created market or give up all hope of ever having any voice to be heard in the world at large.
Related to this of course, finally, is the fact that people from Hispanoamérica or Brasil and Creole Caribbean Islands for that matter, have been extensively documented to be under enourmous socioeconomic pressure to relinquish structural aspects of their birth/descent culture that are partly or totally incompatible with the mainstream USA societie´s expectations. I recently reviewed a book (Kim Potowski, Cambridge University Press) on Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in the USA undergoing such structural pressures in their linguistic, cultural and identificational practices. Thinking of the USA as a part of Latin America glosses over the fact that Latin-Americans are subject to these forces that shape and reshape their cultural behaviour in what is CRUCIALLY, an UNEQUAL, UNBALANCED relation of power to the USA (white, protestant, moralist, enlightenment/rationalism-grounded, etc) mainstream society, and that thus their behaviour is neither freely willed, autonomous, nor decidedly grounded on the cultural universe they stem from.
To sum up, if you want to bring up interesting concepts you should be aware of the responsibility to do justice to the bulk of research by people who devote their lives to objective, in-depth research of those concepts.
More on this, potentially in a better, more readable format and with implications for Cuban dance and musical culture in a post that I will send Daybert to see if it matches the overall outline of this blog.
love it….the west coast swing looks alot like the hustle also, right…..I think the hustle has alot of influnce ny salsa….
As usual, it’s a case of commercialization messing up history and culture.
What they made up in the US, both “salsa” and “bachata” has nothing to do with what salsa, bachata or other Latin American \ Caribbean dances are.
This is the big mess… salsa comes from the Caribbean and Latin America, and is danced very differently from what some Americans made up to sell to their ignorant audiences, as this wonderful article very well states, explains and demonstrates.
From what I know, back in the 70’s, when they started using “Salsa” as an umbrella term, it was pretty much used for anything and everything that Latinos \ people from the Caribbean used to dance to the variety of genres “crowded” under this term.
Naturally, it included Son Montuno, Guaguanco-Son, Mambo, but also sometimes such distinct genres as Bomba, Bolero and Cumbia.
Dance-wise, it included all of what these people used to dance to this music, which most of the time was technically very simple (no long turn patterns), musical, and free in nature and displacement, with small steps either in place or in a circle.
If you look at ordinary Cubans, Colombians or Puertoricans dancing, especially those over 40, you will see a rather good representation of what they used to dance in New York during the 1970’s.
You can also look up videos from the Fania concerts in the streets of the barrios from that time, and you will see people dancing very simple, rhythmic and free things which can easily be traced back to Son.
Here are a few good examples.
1. social dancers from Puertorico dancing (sorry for the low video quality):
2. professional dancer social dancing (roughly until the 4th minute; then the guy recording moves to other couples):
3. how they used to dance in New York in the 50’s and 60’s:
4. Colombians dancing salsa (these 2 look like pros):
5. a clip of a dance teacher who has been teaching on the west coast since the 1940’s (!!!), teaching “Puertorican Salsa”:
6. another example fro the teacher at 4. :
The whole “linear” thing happened sometime later, during the late 70’s and 80’s, when Latinos and white Americans dancing American couple dances of the Swing family started hanging out at the side by side at the same venues.
There’s even a story about a famous move in LA dancing called “la copa”, which got its name from a dance club popular during the 70’s where swing and Latin dancers used to dance in 2 rooms sharing a wall, and with time started “migrating” from one room to the other.
The move came from swing, but became popular among some of the Latino dancers, which incorporated it into their dancing.
Later, during the 90’s, the same thing happened once more and on a much grander scale, when the Vazquez brothers made up a “LA style”, a swing \ hustle based stage dance using stuff they saw in nearby Hollywood and Mexican cinema.
This dance was very dominant at the 1997 (first) international salsa congress, and has been spreading like a plague ever since.
So, to sum it up, what lots of people call “salsa” nowadays is actually mostly made up from moves coming from various American dances of the Swing family, being danced to “Salsa” music.
Real “salsa” is from Puerto Rico, Colombia and other Caribbean & South America countries (because this is what people used to dance during the early 1970’s when the term “salsa” was first used to describe musical and dance styles), and has nothing to do with American dances, swing or otherwise.
The whole “mess” is possible as both “salsa” and “swing” music are in 4/4 time, so you can do steps from swing to “salsa” music and still be on beat (and vice versa).
As shown in the article, one can easily compare “west coast swing” moves, turn pattern and structure with their “LA styles” counterparts, and the similarities will become quite apparent.
I even remember some LA dancing friends of mine going to “west coast swing” lessons, and finding out that they know many of the moves taught there.
Also, one can notice that a lot of the motions and “lady styling” used by LA dancers is very similar to what one sees performed by swing dancers.
Pleasure to read ! Thanks ! I had the feeling the something is not quite latin in salsa…now i know.
El primer video de bailarines de Puerto Rico ya no se puede visionar.
Hey, It definitely is fairly good and informative post here. Great to establish your website.
I adore salsa dance..!!
For the new dancer wanting to learn to dance for the first time, Salsa is a great choice. The most popular of the partner dances, it is very welcoming to beginning dancers with plenty of resources available as well.
Did you read the article? It doesn’t appear that you did. It seems like you’re just here to promote your school.
Fascinating, the video of West Coast Swing. I always wondered where NY and LA styles came from. However, this blending of American with Cuban is hardly new. If the mix of LA and NY Salsa is predominantly non-Latin, Casino itself, at it’s inception incorporated much influence of Jive, transmitted apparently in large part by visiting US sailors having fun on shore leave. Casino, then, is not entirely Cuban or Latin. Unless I missed it, I think this fact is omitted from your article on the origins of Casino.
Curiously, perhaps you can shed light on it, in the ballroom world of which I know nothing except that I don’t belong in it, Jive is considered a “Latin” dance too. Anyone?
Think of it this way, yes salsa in the U.S. incorporated/borrowed from other dances, but what happened with salsa in the U.S. didn’t happen anywhere but in the U.S. That’s why salsa dancing, as you know it in its NY and LA styles, cannot be Latin American. (Of course there is salsa dancing that IS Latin American, but that’s not the salsa dancing I’m referring to here.)
On this topic, you might find what I wrote for this other blog helpful:
http://latindancecommunity.com/how-latin-is-the-dance-of-salsa-part-i/
Likewise, while casino may have incorporated elements of foreign dances, no other country mixed these elements together to form casino. It only happened in Cuba, and the end result didn’t look like what had been there before; hence, casino in Cuban.
Are you possibly a bit culturally insecure?
There’s the possibility that you’re calling someone “culturally insecure” (whatever that means to you) because you’re culturally insecure yourself and don’t know how to process what you read.
I’m going to be traveling to Chile, Peru, Columbia, Mexico City, and Spain in 2019. I’ve been salsa/Latin dancing off and on in Oregon for over 15 years. My salsa/Latin Dance partner that I’ve done most of this dancing with and who taught me is from Mexico (though due to illness, he is no longer able to dance). Sometimes I feel like a beginner when dancing with someone else, depending on their style and rhythm. I was excited when I heard about my travel itinerary because I pictured all the Latin dancing I’d be doing, and that I should brush up on my dancing skills before departure. Reading your article, it makes me worried I’d be spending a lot of time practicing the wrong form of salsa – although I consider myself a good follow and can pick up differences somewhat quickly. I usually try to catch free lessons at a social club, but wouldn’t be opposed to formal dance instruction. Do they teach TRUE Latin dance anywhere, or what should I look for or pay attention to when looking for true Latin dance classes/teachings? Any other advice? Thank you.
This is a great article, even if it barely begins to scratch the surface of a hugely complex and multilayered historical and anthropological process (not that I have any particular or better insight myself), it does so in an incredibly insightful, critical and easy to follow way.
It seems to me that the Salsa phenomenon, as it relates both to structural features of dance and music and to their coupling with socioeconomic factors, such as global spread, insidiously opaque narrative framing and legitimation discourses surrounding the origins, nature and uses of Salsa, the exotism-oriented consumption and public perceptions, the highly structured commercial market for Salsa, crucially moving millions of dollars flowing into the USA and more recently also Europe, rather than into Latin America, the sense of inferiority and subservience on the part of the original cultural bearers who end up -consciously or otherwise- doing the “dirty work” of acknowledging and legitimating Salsa (or Bachata), learning what they come to perceive as superior, better structured and more useful “versions” and give up on their own “version”… etc… etc… etc… It seems to me that this is a prime example of neocolonialism, and a brilliant, genius one at that! and I am not saying a “textbook example” because I am yet to meet critical discourse analysts, social theorists or colonialism researchers who have actually both devoted a minimum of attention to Salsa (or global market of consumption dancing, more broadly) and pursued the to me very obvious connections and trails of reasoning you have laid out in this article.
It is truly a shame you are retired, I would really enjoy more of you.
Manu
Thank you for your comments, they give a very interesting glimpse on the scientific side of these discussions.
And yeah, your neocolonialism mention is spot on. I come to the discussion mostly from the Kizomba / Afro-Caribbean side, where the process is younger but seemingly faster, and it’s as fascinating as is depressing.
By the way, the circularity of the process reminds me of how the myth of Zen in archery started in Germany but circled back into Japan!
Interesting article, and interesting points. To me it really seems to be a matter of perspective, as in what defines a dance, place of origin or its roots.
What do you think of a compromise, to call salsa a “latino-western”dance, in relation to rumba and orishas being called “Afro-cuban”. Because, as you agreed, salsa was developed by latino immigrants and, more importantly, for latino immigrants (I’m really talking about NY style here, as LA came much later).
Also, I believe that you can’t separate a dance from the music it is danced to, and salsa music is a fusion of Cuban and Puerto Rican styles (mainly son), and western styles (mainly jazz). So on that regard the term “latino-western” might actually fit.
The big irony is that there’s nothing “Latin” about Latin America, but that social construct doesn’t bother you in the least. I’m not gonna go into the history of the term, it’s just a social construct. So in the end, you’re willing to accept one social construct (i.e. “Latin America”), but not another.
You have to be trolling. I mean, ANY denomination of a part of the world is a social construct. We made it up. But I’m curious, why do you say there’s nothing “Latin” about “Latin America”? (And please don’t tell me that people there don’t speak Latin, so it cannot be Latin America.)
It’s a good point. Defining a massive geographical area as “Latin” on the basis, I assume, of its common Spanish colonial past and more or less common use of the Castilian language is used to railroad a whole load of prejudices through critical analysis which are used to suit various and often conflicting political needs. These include the “pan-Latin nationalism” which animated early Salsa and a strand of contemporary middle class politics, the derisory anglo-saxon conception of banana republics, and a whole lot in between.
If the idea of nationhood is found wanting of much genuine social substance beyond the need for the exploiters to co-opt those they exploit to their side, how much more so the “Latinness” of such an ethnically and culturally diverse continent?
A lot to unpack there. First, your assumption of defining a geographical area as “Latin” as having to do with a Spanish colonial past is wrong. Latin America is a geo-linguistic term that extends beyond the colonies of Spain. Yes, the term is buttressed in colonization, for Latin America is the part of the Americans that were colonized by people who spoke Latin-derived languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese). So let’s start there.
Now, if you read the article with fidelity, you must have noticed that put “Latin” in quotes a lot. And that the whole point of the article is to question the objectification of Latin American cultural practices (ie. dances) through the very use of the word “Latin”–which carries all that baggage you described.
And of course, the “Latinness” of the continent is found wanting, when considered. That is the whole point of the article: Latin American dances have been reduced to stereotypes for the consumption of the foreigner.
Exactly, “we made it up”. Just like “Latin Dance” is a made-up term, so it’s all moot. You started with the premise that there’s nothing “Latin” about Salsa, as if “Latin America” was a legitimate, authentic concept. The original premise is false because there’s nothing “Latin” about Latin America either. It’s a made-up term that conflates 33 countries in one region of the world into a homogenous “Latin America”, which really doesn’t mean anything aside from a geographical reference. The same with “Latin dance”, it’s a made-up term, yet you argue against it from the perspective that “Latin America” is a legitimate term to begin with, so it shouldn’t be called “Latin dance”. If it was created by American “Latinos” who descended from the geographical region of “Latin America”, as you conceded, doesn’t that qualify it enough to be categorized under the social construct of “Latin” dance?
If your beef with this is that “Latin America” as a term should not exist because it does not really encompass the diversity of the continent, I understand that. No one in Colombia, Perú, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, etc… calls themselves “Latin American”–outside of certain context in which there is interaction with people of other countries.
That does not mean the term does not exist, or that it is not used. The reality is that the term “Latin America” is very much used by well, Latin Americans. Just for starters, google “Congreso latinoamericano…” and you will see a plethora of results. The term IS used in the region by people of the region. It’s been accepted and adopted for certain purposes, mainly the idea of sharing knowledge and cooperation between countries. So, yes, Latin America IS a legitimate term, even used in pop culture, such as Calle 13’s “Latinoamérica”.
To your last point, descendants of Latin Americans had a part in the creation of salsa on 1, and salsa on 2. But so did US people, if you care to read the history of these dances. https://golatindance.com/how-latin-is-the-dance-of-salsa-part-i/