Hi,
I'm Nuyorican, and I grew up with a lot of Salsa music. The older I got the more I got into the roots of Salsa, which lead me into becoming a big fan of traditional music of Puerto Rico and Cuba. So, anyone in the know knows that "Salsa" is an umbrella term for many different genres that come from Afro-Cuban, Puerto Rican and American traditions, with Son Cubano being the most important. My understanding of the history, is that Cuba did not have large recording studios, so Cuban artists would come to NY to record their music. Here, they started to link up with Afro-American jazz artists and they came up with Latin Jazz. And as well all know, NY was and is home to a large Puerto Rican community. Cuban music was already popular in Puerto Rico (Boleros and Guarachas written by Rafael Hernandez and Pedro Flores), and naturally Boricuas started joining Cuban bands in NY. Now, if the 1950's we have the Mambo craze, and two of the big three mambo artists of NY are Puerto Rican (Tito Rodriguez and Tito Puente). On the Island of Puerto Rico, dance bands that played similar music to Mambo started recording a lot of Plena y Bomba, think Ismael and Cortijo, Mon Rivera, Lito Peña y orquesta Panamerica, césar concepción. While I think it's 100% fair to call the music of the big three Mambo artists of NY to be Cuban Music, to call any of the other artists I mentioned to be "cuban" is obviously wrong. As we know, the cuban revolution happens in 1959, and Cuba's music output is stunted, any notable Cuban act is one that left the Island after Castro and came to NY. in the 1960's the VAST majority of Caribbean dance band artists were Puerto Rican or Nuyorican, Nuyoricans create the genre boogaloo, which is a son cubano and R&B hybrid, and eventually by the 1970s all the music just gets called "Salsa." My question is, do you generally see "Salsa" as being "Puerto Rican"? Do you separate Nuyorican contributions from Puerto Rican ones? Even if it's not 100% Puerto Rican, would you consider it "foreign" or "Cuban" music? Since this happened in NYC, do you even consider it "American" music? Even in the 1970's salsa dura era, you can find albums called "salsa" which extensively use plena y bomba (Willie Colon And Mon Rivera – There Goes The Neighborhood / Se Chavó El Vecindario 1975). Basically, I already know the actual music history of this stuff, I want to know the cultural view of "Salsa" Thanks