to carry the end pin of the double bass while the groups walk about). All of the
instrumentalists are expected to sing, with the size of the group varying from
half a dozen to as many as two dozen musicians. In concert, the rondallistas
may stroll out on stage, and they may even have some choreography of dance
steps prepared for their selections. The repertoire of the modern urban rondalla
includes favorite regional songs as well as popular love ballads drawn from the
bolero repertoire.
348 | Rumba
Further Reading
Morán Saus, Antonio Luis, José Manuel García Lagos, and Emigdio Cano Gómez.
Cancionero de estudiantes de la tuna: el cantar estudiantil de la Edad Media al siglo
XX. 1st. ed. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca: Diputación Provincial de
Cuenca, 2003.
George Torres
Rumba
Rumba is a folkloric percussive dance music originating mostly in Havana and
Matanzas, though it is now practiced throughout Cuba and abroad. In English-
speaking countries, it has historically been confused with Cuban son and anglicized
by adding an h to the spelling (see rhumba ). Since its beginnings during the end of the 19th century, rumba has had a great influence in popular Latin American music
and has been carried worldwide by Cuban immigrants, especially to North America
where it has been taken up by other nationalities. Originally for spontaneous com-
munity entertainment, it is now also performed by groups of professional rumberos
and heard on studio recordings.
The word rumba does not necessarily carry one specific musical connotation. It
could be used to refer to any jubilant music making, though it is usually associated
with working-class Afro-Cubans and drumming. Early popular uses of the term
can be found in mid-1800s performances of zarzuelas (light operas), though these
probably sounded unlike what is now called rumba.
Today’s rumba was mostly influenced by African drumming traditions and coros
de clave, large popular choral groups accompanied by Cuban instruments. These
came from similar Spanish groups but, by the end of the 19th century, they often used
Afro-Cuban instruments and became known as coros de guaguancó. These groups
included two song leaders, a large chorus, tacked-head drums or cajónes (box drums),
viola (a stringless American banjo), occasionally marimbula , and small percussion such as claves . As the popularity of these groups declined during the early 20th century, smaller groups with fewer singers emerged resembling today’s rumba groups.
Today, a number of drumming and dance styles exist that can be considered
rumba. These include secular styles such as guaguancó, yambú, columbia, jiribilla,
and newer forms such as batarumba and guarapachangeo. During the last half of
the 20th century, rumba esthetics have also contributed to emerging religious prac-
tices such as rumba de santo and cajón pa ’ los muertos. All of these styles have grown out of the multiethnic and multireligious Afro-Cuban experience of postslavery Cuba, especially in predominantly poor, black neighborhoods.
Musically, all rumba styles share a nasal vocal quality, call-and-response sing-
ing, and the presence of at least three distinct drum parts. There are commonly three
Rumba
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349
tumbadoras , given various names based on their role in the ensemble. The largest
and lowest-pitched drum, called salidor or llamador, plays a specific rhythm and
converses with the medium-sized drum called tres dos, tres golpes, or segundo.
There is also a small, high-pitch solo drum usually known as quinto. Other percus-
sion instruments include claves, chekeré, and guagua (two sticks that embellish the clave rhythm on a woodblock, piece of bamboo, or the side of a drum).
Rumba, especially in studio recordings, is usually in three sections. The first sec-
tion, known as the diana, is an improvised syllabic exploration of the scale. The
second section, known as the inspiración or canto, is a text sometimes based on the
poetic décima structure. The third section, called the estribillo , montuno , or coro , uses leader group alternation between the lead singer and chorus. It is during this
section that the dancers are usually featured.
The three most common styles of rumba today all appeared by the final decades
of the 1800s. The yambú, considered to be the oldest of these three main styles, is
usually played on cajónes and has a slow tempo that allows the dancers to mimic
the movements of the elderly. The fastest of these main styles is the columbia, which
was likely influenced by the music of the Abakuá society due to its 12/8 meter and
solo male dancing. By far, the most popular type of rumba is the guaguancó. It has
a medium to fast tempo and its dance, unlike the other two forms, is characterized
by the vacunao (vaccination), a symbolic gesture of sexual pursuit from the male
dancer towards his female partner.
Folkloric rumba was first recorded during the mid-20th century and grew in pop-
ularity until reaching a plateau during the 1990s. This helped the success of groups
such as Los Muñequitos, Grupo Afrocuba, Yoruba Andabo, Los Papines, and Clave
y Guaguancó. It also increasingly influenced other popular Cuban and Latin Ameri-
can musical genres. Artists such as Ignacio Piñeiro, Beny Moré, Orquesta Aragón,
Machito, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Los Van Van, and Irakere, among oth-
ers, have based pieces on rumba.
Further Reading
Esquenazi Pérez, Martha. Del Areito y Otros Sones. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubana, 2001.
Moore, Robin. “The Commercial Rumba: Afrocuban Arts as International Popular Cul-
ture.” Latin American Music Review 16, no. 2 (1995): 165–98.
Nolan Warden
S
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia is an island in the Caribbean between the Caribbean Sea and North
Atlantic Ocean, north of Trinidad and Tobago. The population of Saint Lucia is
82.5 percent black, 11.9 percent mixed, and 2.4 percent East Indian. Throughout
its history, Saint Lucia has changed hands at least seven times between the English
and the French resulting in a mixture of cultural influences on Saint Lucian music
from both England and France, as well as the West African slave population. The
popular music of Saint Lucia is also strongly affected by the neighboring countries
in the Caribbean due to the shared French Creole language.
While there are many different types of folkloric music in Saint Lucia performed
for all different religious practices and cultural events, calypso is at the forefront
of Saint Lucian popular music. It has been popular throughout the country since
the 1940s and it is through calypso (and later soca ) that Saint Lucians make their social commentary. New calypsos are composed for Carnival each year and, as a
result, calypso represents an ongoing narrative on the lifestyle in Saint Lucia. While
American rock, jazz , reggae, and zouk are heard throughout Saint Lucia, calypso and soca are still by far the most popular genres of music spread throughout the
country by local radio stations.
Further Reading
Guilbault, Jocelyn. “St. Lucia.” In The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 2:
South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean , edited by
Dale A. Olsen and
Daniel E. Sheehy, 942–51. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
Tracy McFarlan
Salsa
Salsa is a popular Latin dance music, which blends a wide variety of Latin Ameri-
can popular and folkloric forms (the music of Cuba being the most pronounced)
with influences from jazz and American popular music. The accompanying dance
is highly stylized and features couples executing fluid and intricate steps. Salsa
developed in the Latino barrios (inner city neighborhoods) of New York City in
the 1960s and 1970s, cultivated and performed mostly by Nuyoricans (Puerto Ri-
cans born and raised in New York City). However, its international appeal spread
351
352 | Salsa
quickly spawning a number of vi-
brant local scenes, most notably in
Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama,
and Venezuela, and later in, Japan,
in parts of Africa, and throughout
Europe.
Salsa
(literally meaning
sauce in Spanish) was a marketing
label popularized by Fania Records
in the 1970s, serving as an umbrella
term for a diverse set of musical
practices. This culinary metaphor
was not foreign to Latin music per-
formance and had played a role as
a performative exclamation and es-
thetic trope for quite some time.
Cuban musicians in the first half
of the 20th century used the phrase
toca con salsa! as a bandstand in-
terjection, meaning “swing it.” The
title of Cuban composer Ignacio
Piñeiro’s famous son “Echale Sal-
Salsa music star Ruben Blades plays the mara-
sita” (“put a little sauce in it”), writ-
cas with his band “Los Seis del Solar” in San
ten in 1933, aptly captures this type
Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2009. (AP/Wide World
Photos)
of usage. Most likely, salsa as a ge-
neric label stems from Venezuelan
disc jockey Phidias Danilo Escalona, who launched a show in 1966 entitled “La
hora del sabor, la salsa y el bembé” (“the hour of flavor, salsa and party”) playing
a variety of modern Latin dance musics.
Salsa, as a musical style, is rather easy to delineate since its performance prac-
tice is fairly standardized and has been rather stable since the 1970s. The instru-
mentation is derived from earlier Cuban ensembles and typically includes three to
four percussionists (playing congas , bongos , timbals , a variety of cowbells, and hand percussion, such as maracas , güiro , and/or claves ), a bass player, a pianist/
keyboardist, two to six brass and wind instrumentalists, and a number of vocal-
ists. With a few notable exceptions, salsa songs are sung in Spanish and the lyrics
include a wide range of topics, such as love and romance, incitations of cultural
pride, social commentary, and allegoric stories. There is no typical vocal type or
quality preferred in salsa. However, stemming from older Cuban styles, high, tenor-
ranged male voices with a nasal timbre still predominate. With the growing influ-
ence of popular music styles among younger salsa singers in the 1990s, many have
emerged with a smoother, less nasal, pop-oriented crooning style. The basic formal
structure of salsa arrangements is most often based on the bipartite form used in
Salsa | 353
son , a Cuban genre popular throughout the middle of the 20th century where a main
theme, which has a predetermined length, is followed by an open-ended improvisa-
tory section known as the montuno . Montunos employ call and response structures in which a lead singer improvises and alternates with a precomposed chorus. The
montuno’s most identifiable feature is a repetitive harmonic and rhythmic vamp.
Several contrasting instrumental sections will interrupt this open-ended section.
The first, derived from one of salsa’s stylistic antecedents, is a precomposed section
called the mambo. The mambo is often characterized by heightened intensity and sound, where intricate and virtuosic horn writing is featured. Additional instrumental sections, called moñas (literally meaning hair curl), follow and are collectively
improvised by the horn section.
All musical and dance components in salsa performance are rhythmically or-
ganized by clave (literally meaning key, clef, or keystone), a rhythmic concept
and organizing principle associated with Afro-Cuban musical traditions. In Latin
music terminology, the word clave refers not only to an instrument (two wooden
sticks), but also to the specific rhythmic patterns played on them and the underlying
rules that govern these patterns. In performance, the clave may be overtly played or
Cruz, Celia
Known as “The Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz (1925–2003) was one of the
greatest female singers in the history of Afro-Cuban music. Cruz, a versa-
tile artist, mastered many Afro-Caribbean music genres, drawing fans of all
ages. Cruz recorded more than 60 albums, 23 of which sold more than half a
million copies. All of her music was performed in Spanish. Growing up in Ha-
vana, Cuba, Cruz enjoyed singing and decided to pursue a singing career after
winning a radio contest. In 1950 Cruz became lead singer of the orchestra La
Sonora Matancera, performed with the group for 15 years, and toured around
the world. In 1965, she launched a solo career with a band formed by Tito
Puente. Although she recorded many albums during the late 1960s, Cruz
did not garner large audiences in the United States until the salsa boom that
emerged in the 1970s. During her career she collaborated with famous mu-
sicians like Johnny Pacheco, Willie Colón, Sonora Ponceña, and the Fania All
Stars. Cruz won seven Grammys, a Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement Award,
and two honorary doctorate degrees.
Further Reading
Márceles Daconte, Eduardo. Azúcar!: The Biography of Celia Cruz. New York:
Reed Press, 2004.
Erin Stapleton-Corcoran
354 | Salsa
simply implied by the other instrumental parts. If adhered to in a competent fashion
and felt collectively by all participants, the clave provides the rhythmic momentum,
drive, and swing in salsa.
The emergence of salsa stemmed from the vibrant Latino communities that set-
tled in East Harlem and by the effects the civil rights movement of the 1960s had
on those communities. Many Latinos adopted similar modes of protest and orga-
nization spawning an unprecedented political fervor. A collective of young and in-
novative musicians began experimenting by combining traditional and folk musics
with popular music and jazz, aiming to produce a uniquely Latino mode of musi-
cal expression that captured the sentiment of the times. The founding of Fania Re-
cords in 1964 by Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci was key in transforming this
new music into a commercially viable commodity. Their efforts resulted in salsa
becoming an international phenomenon with the music being widely associated,
especially with respect to barrio culture in New York City, with Latino essence in a
way that is analogous to the word “soul” as a description for black American essence.
The groups they produced
included Bobby Valentín, Larry Harlow, Willie Colón,
Hector Lavoe, Ruben Blades, Ismael Miranda, among others, and their produc-
tions featured a raw and driving urban street sound that later became known as salsa
dura (hard salsa ). The establishment of the Fania All-Stars in 1971, a collection of
musicians consisting of bandleaders signed to Fania and highly regarded musicians,
enabled the label to showcase all of their talent internationally while portraying a
unified family of salseros. This notion of family extended beyond the musicians and
was marketed to the communities to which they targeted their sales. This strategy
capitalized on the newfound cultural pride being incited within Latino neighbor-
hoods, as well as the calls for a unified Latino consciousness by these new political
movements. Fania deliberately constructed salsa as an exclusively Latino cultural
expression, a discourse that reverberated through the barrios swiftly transforming
the fledgling company into an economic powerhouse.
In 1979 Fania closed, setting the stage for the emergence of a new salsa sound
that would predominate through the end of the 20th century. In 1982 and 1983,
Louie Ramírez teamed up with Isidro Infante to coproduce two recordings for K-tel
Records, known as Noche Caliente that featured four up-and-coming salsa singers
(José Alberto, Tito Allen, Johnny Rivera, and Ray De La Paz) singing popular Latin
ballads in a salsa format. The arrangements toned down the hard-driving sounds
associated with Fania and instead, featured milder and more tranquil sounds with
highly polished, pop-influenced studio productions. The lyrics centered on topics
of love and avoided images of barrio life and political issues. Moreover, borrow-
ing from pop music, an artist’s visual and sexual image became increasingly more
important than his/her musical prowess. Record companies sought young, pre-
dominantly white or light-skinned, male singers with sex appeal. The words used
to distinguish this style, salsa - sensual, salsa - erótica, and salsa-romántica reflected
Salsa | 355
both the content of lyrics as well as images used to market these artists. A group of
Puerto Rican singers, including Tito Rojas, Frankie Ruíz, Eddie Santiago, and Lalo
Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 60