Salsa Music - Issues of Identity and Ownership

Issues of Identity and Ownership

There is considerable controversy surrounding the term salsa and the idea that it is its own distinct genre. Several New York musicians who had already been performing Cuban dance music for decades when salsa was popularized initially scoffed at the term. For example, Cuban-born Machito declared: "There's nothing new about salsa, it is just the same old music that was played in Cuba for over fifty years." Similarly, New York native Tito Puente stated: "The only salsa I know is sold in a bottle called ketchup. I play Cuban music." Eventually though, both Machito and Puente embraced the term as a financial necessity.

The salsa conflict can be summarized as a disagreement between those who do not recognize salsa as anything other than Cuban music with another name, and those who strongly identify with salsa as a music and culture distinct from its Cuban counterpart.

The concept of salsa music which began as a marketing ploy created by Izzy Sanabria was successfully exploited by Fania Records, then eventually took on a life of its own, organically evolving into an authentic pan-Latin American cultural identity. Music professor and salsa trombonist Christopher Washburne writes:

"This pan-Latino association of salsa stems from what Felix Padilla labels a 'Latinizing' process that occurred in the 1960s and was consciously marketed by Fania Records: 'To Fania, the Latinizing of salsa came to mean homogenizing the product, presenting an all-embracing Pan-American or Latino sound with which the people from all of Latin America and Spanish-speaking communities in the United States could identity and purchase.' Motivated primarily by economic factors, Fania's push for countries throughout Latin America to embrace salsa did result in an expanded market. But in addition, throughout the 1970s, salsa groups from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, among other Latin American nations, emerged, composing and performing music that related to their own specific cultural experiences and affiliations, which posited salsa as a cultural identity marker for those nations as well."

The Cuban origins of the music do not conveniently fit into the pan-Latino narrative. Many leading salsa artists have described salsa in broad and inclusive, but vague terms, making no mention of the music's Cuban foundation. For example, Johnny Pacheco has consistently articulated a vision of salsa as a broad, multi-ethnic movement: "Salsa was, and still is, a Caribbean musical movement." Similarly, Willie Colón sees the scope of salsa's power to unite in the broadest terms: "Salsa was the force that united diverse Latino and other non-Latino racial and ethnic groups... It is a concept. An open, ever-evolving musical, cultural, socio-political concept." Rubén Blades' definition of salsa is also inclusive: "Salsa music is urban folklore at the international level." In the pivotal documentary movie Salsa: Latin Pop Music in Cities (1979), the history of salsa is explained as a mixing of African, Caribbean, and New York cultures and musics, with no mention of Cuba. In one scene, the Afro-Cuban folkloric genres of batá and rumba are shown being performed in Puerto Rico, implying that they originated there.

In advancing the concept of salsa as a musical "sauce", containing many different ingredients from various cultures mixed together, some point to the occasional use of non-Cuban forms in salsa, such as the Puerto Rican bomba. The percentage of salsa compositions based in non-Cuban genres is low though, and despite an openness to experimentation and a willingness to absorb non-Cuban influences, salsa has remained consistently wedded to its Cuban templates. The pan-Latin Americanism of salsa is found in its cultural milieu, more than its musical structure. Today, competing nationalities claim ownership of the music, as there are musicians in New York City, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Venezuela, who claim salsa was invented in their country.

The salsa controversy is also closely tied to the decades-long estrangement between the governments of the United States and Cuba, and the United States embargo against Cuba. Radio stations in the United States would get bomb threats (presumably from Cuban exiles) for playing Cuban records over the air. Homegrown salsa on the other hand, was embraced. For a time the Cuban state media officially claimed that the term salsa music was a euphemism for authentic Cuban music stolen by American imperialists, though the media has since abandoned this theory.

Mayra Martinez, a Cuban musicologist, writes that "the term salsa was used to obscure the Cuban base, the music's history or part of its history in Cuba. And salsa was a way to do this so that Jerry Masucci, Fania and other record companies, like CBS, could have a hegemony on the music and keep the Cuban musicians from spreading their music abroad." Izzy Sanabria responds that Martinez was likely giving an accurate Cuban viewpoint, "but salsa was not planned that way."