Talk:Salsa (dance)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dance Portal
Salsa (dance) is within the scope of WikiProject Dance, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Dance and Dance-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Please rate this article, and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

Contents

[edit] Some Reading For Future Contributors

I think the number of explanations of steps on this single page should be kept to a minimum. We also REALLY REALLY NEED references to written material! Even if you can watch http://www.amazon.com/Our-Latin-Thing-Nuestra-Costa/dp/B0003053FY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-0821636-5320614?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1179340857&sr=8-1 and put some stuff on here attributed to that movie, it's all a triumph of fact over hearsay!


As a Colombian, I feel offended that this section has a little paragraph dedicated to a music that, i really hate to say it, is currently bigger in Colombia than Cuba. If someone gets a chance please include the current information on guys like Son De Cali, Joe Arroyo, Fruko y Sus Tesos, when was the last time anybody danced to a Celia Cruz song in the modern Latin dance scene? And I honestly feel that Salsa should be seperated from Ballroom Salsa, in Latin America we don't acccept that as a form of actual Salsa. It should have its own article.

[edit] Origin of Term

Bold text As far as I know the name of Salsa does did not originate as an allusion to being "tasty" but because the music is a mix of different styles, like son, etc. Get-back-world-respect 17:18, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Not what I heard. I heard it was coined to mean "spicy" and was popularised by a New York DJ. Sweavo 09:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
In any case I have greatly reduced the info on the origin of the term here, and refer instead to Salsa (music) which is an excellent article, well cited.

[edit] Rueda Glossary

I created a wikibook for rueda commands. I did not take the time to do it all in english, but the german version is more advanced. Get-back-world-respect 11:37, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with styles and negative comments

I have a lot of problems with this page, it used to be much better. The part about Colombian style is gone, which is a very distinctive style, widely danced, breaks on 3, circular, and noted for using syncopations (a little 2 step that shifts the basic by 2 beats) as a fundamental move. The list of influences at the beginning is also problematic. Salsa is an african music and dance, fundamentally, but not directly from africa. The common steps is hard to understand unless you dance salsa, and doesnt represent what is common to most dancers. The styles section is messy in other ways, spending a lot of time and a lot of headings on 1 vs 2. There are a lot of negative comments which really arent necessary, like how LA style is just hollywood flash (with an unattributed quote no less, very unprofessional). There are other aspects of salsa dancing that would be cool to put in this article: cities where salsa is really popular, dance etiquette, dress, competitions, performance, related styles (danced at salsa parties) like cha cha cha and merengue, closed versus open position, and even salsa in movies especially the most famous "salsa" from the 70s. Mjolsnes 17:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

i agree.....how could they take off the Colombian style... it is easily the most entertaining to watch and is very different from the others
I've tidied up some of the bias in LA and NYC sections. They sounded like they were written by a New Yorker who'd just split up with someone from LA! I like the sound of sections on dress, attitude, etc; but wonder just how much of that stuff can be backed up by references!


[edit] Corections to "Steps that influenced salsa"

in the paragraph that started with

"History
Salsa music is a fusion of traditional African and Cuban and other Latin-American rhythms ..."

Corections:

  • Lucumi (i erased it, lucumis where a tribe from Africa, not a dance or music style)
  • Yambu (erased, yambu is a style of rumba, so just mentioning rumba covers yambu guaguanco and columbia)
  • Palo Montel (its called Palo Monte)
  • Cha (is called Cha cha cha)

I did not change it, but i would like an explanation about how ABAKUA has influenced salsa dancing? Cause i cannot see it. There are cubans who dance abakua and put it into their salsadancing, i would call that "doing abakua steps to salsa music", not "salsa is influenced by abakua".

Lautaro Mail Me!

Bailattelo.Com


[edit] new york style

Isn't it the case, that New York Style is also danced 1-2-3 5-6-7, but has the break step on 2 and 6 (as opposed to "start on 2" which suggests that the step is shifted by one beat)? --Seefeld 10:17, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There are three or four distinct ways of dancing "on 2". The phrase "on 2" simply means that the break step falls on the second or sixth beat, and says nothing about the fall of the other dance steps. Might have to make this article my first re-write.--James barton 23:10, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

(Note: a user suggested removal of the article on New York Salsa. That article is gone so I removed this comment. The following was posted as a response to the comment, and I preserve it as a record of an attitude to be borne in mind when editing the main page.) Sweavo 09:41, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Not only the New York version on the history of Salsa is completely off reality, but it is also a distorted one. Those Latinos in the New York area are so narrow mainded that they actually xdvcxvzdfbgvzfxbzCuba. I've heard some of those people saying that Karate was invented in New York. The fact that many things in the universe use Nw York as the market test, does not mean that New York is the city of all inventions.
What I do know is that the stiff spinning of New York Salsa dancers constitutes a laughing matter for people in Havana. When those people visit Havana to exhibit their dancing styles there, we tell them that they are the best, but soon as they leave, we have tales for laughs for several weeks. All we want is for them to go to Havana and spend their money! So shake off that arrogance New York Latino, you don't really know how to dance!

[edit] 4 beats vs 8 beats

I disagree with the 3rd paragraph that states that Salsa is danced to 8-beat music. Almost 100% of the time salsa music will have 4 beats per measure. And the dancer completes one instance of the pattern in one measure. If you count the "off-beats" you get 8 beats. Also, a little further on it says that ... hmmm ... you may be right... ah never mind. Think about it for a bit.

In purely the musical field, Cuban and North American musical conventions diverge on whether the clave cycle goes over one or two 4-beat bars. However, convention in the English-speaking salsa world is to count 1 to 8 over the basic step, which is 1 cycle of the clave, or two cycles of the tumbao. Convention in the English-speaking world is that the tumbao is one bar long. So the question of whether the music is 4 or 8 beats is ambiguous, but thankfully also irrelevant. The salsa basic is danced over 8 counts regardless. Does that sound about right? Sweavo 09:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] music versus dance

one thing that gets everyone confused is that "beat" is not really a precise term. Trained musicians use terms like measure, quarter-note, etc. Primitive drummers tend to learn by ear and don't use any standard terminology. Modern conga drummers use the term half-beat to refer to striking the drum. There are 8 half-beats in the 4 quarter-note measure, and two measures per phrase, which means there are 16 half-beats per phrase. The clave hits on half-beats 1..4..7...11.13..., where half-beats are numbers from 1 to 16. (Drummers don't usually number half-beats, I'm doing it here for clarity.) The word beat used by listeners, including the musicians listening to what they are playing, refers to how the ear combines all the sounds and try to make some sort of rhythmic ordering from them. Generally, the deepest and loudest instrument drives the beat. Either the congo drums, or a bass drum, or an acoustic or electric string bass. The clave is (at least originally) played by high-pitched sticks and hence cannot drive beat. Clave is important in timing because high-pitched sounds are clear and precise and cut through all the other sound distinctly, whereas deep sounds are very imprecise. Anyway, the ear generally tries to sort the sounds into an alternating pattern of strong and weak beats, and then to group by 3 or 4. 3 is waltz and not relevant here. If the first beat is strong, then the rhythm is normal, otherwise it is syncopated. But what is the first beat, since rhythm is repeating? What is the starting point of a circle? We need a point of reference. That point of reference is the melody, since melody tends to naturally order itself in such a way that our ear perceives a starting point. Just as in speaking, our ear can perceive the start of a sentence. So what happens is that the ear picks up the melody and says this is beat 1 of a 4 beat measure, and then we can decide whether this beat of the rhythm is stressed or not. If stressed, then we should break there. Otherwise, we should wait for beat 2, since it will feel more normal to break on a stressed beat.

But what if the person doing all this doesn't have a musician's ear? Then instead of listending to the melody to find a point of reference for beat 1, they listen instead to the rhythm and when they hear a stressed beat, they say that's beat 1, when in fact it is beat 2.

If you're still confused, then ask a musician whether Cuban music is syncopated or not? If so, then the stressed beat must be beat 2, because that is what syncopated means. If you still think beat 1 is the stressed beat after being told that the music is syncopated, then it means you don't know how to listen to determine where beat 1 begins.

Bottom line for dancers. Break on the first stressed beat, which is what feels right to most people for most salsa music, and you'll be doing the right thing.

"That point of reference is the melody, since melody tends to naturally order itself in such a way that our ear perceives a starting point. Just as in speaking, our ear can perceive the start of a sentence." Really? Actually I think the reference point is the loudest beat of a measure or phrase (i.e. the part of the waveform containing most physical energy). Loudness is what accents are all about. So instead of looking for "deepness" or "drumminess" shouldn't we wait for the loudest beat of a song? Why worry so much "syncopated"? Mostly original mambo is syncopated and there are only very few of them in heavy rotation. So shouldn't we worry more about offbeat which offers us multiple starting points within one measure and enables us to perform all kinds of breaks: on-one, on-two, on-three, on-five, on-six?
"Bottom line for dancers. Break on the first stressed beat, which is what feels right to most people for most salsa music, and you'll be doing the right thing." Many people do that. They break on three. Or on five. Yes, they caught a stressed beat but they neither got a first nor a syncopated beat but a totally different one. Count three has more importance in samba rhythms, beat five is subordinated to beat one within a phrase. And then there are songs which force us to sometimes break on one and sometimes on five because they have uneven numbers of measures within their structural parts (verse, chorus etc.) und thus seem to change clave from 2-3 to 3-2 or the other way round.
This "bottom line" works okay in many cases as a rule of thumb but to really understand what you're doing there seems to be no substitution for knowing the real structure of the song on basis of phrases. I'm with German wikipedia but feel free to post in English: Thetawave.

[edit] Picture

The picture doesn't show neither fun nor passion of the dance. The guy looks on the floor, the girl looks frightened rather than sexy. Let's search more. Mikkalai 08:31, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Help yourself to any picture from my webpage: Bailattelo.Com
Lautaro.

[edit] What happened to Izzy Sanabria?

He published Latin NY magazine and was instrumental in popularizing the term "salsa."

tell us more! I moved the "origin of term" to the salsa (music) talk page, but any info that can be traced into real documents is like gold dust around here! Sweavo 09:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cuban Salsa

Just a comment on the part of the article which describes Cuban salsa, it says that Cubans dance on the one but this is incorrect. First of all Cubans do not think of dancing in terms of breaking on the 1 or 2, rather they think in terms such as dancing a tiempo (with time) or dancing contra tiempo (against time). With faster music such as timba Cuban style dancers tend to dance a tiempo which means they will break on a downbeat such as the 1. With son and slower Cuban salsa Cuban style dancers tend to prefer dancing contra tiempo which means they will break on an up beat which may be the 2 but more typically is the 8 in traditional son style dancing. Mateo H

Cuban style dancers also quite ofter break on 3, which I think should be reflected in the article. John P
 : I think it's important to include this information. Got references?

[edit] What happened to Francisco Vasquez?

You mentioned the brothers but seemed to leave out the lead brother, Francisco. Your facts seemed very vague about LA Style. Why not just contact one of them to get the rundown?

Well volunteered! Be sure and get the interview published someplace! Wikipedia discourages "original research" and prefers to cite documentary evidence! Sweavo 14:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links cleanup

I removed a number of links that were either obvious link-spam, information specific to one location only, or links that gave little or no additional information beyond promoting a product or service.

Links that promote salsa in a specific area would be better in a directory like the open directory.

If you believe that your link was wrongly removed, please post a comment to the discussion page. Zugvogel 12:02, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Zugvogel, I believe *learning2dance.com salsa basic dance lesson is a page that shows the salsa basic in its most basic form. It is a short video that is very beneficial to many people who are interested in salsa. It shows the very basic video of salsa steps in a format that is very easy to follow for many people. The video is free for anyone to see. Please look at the video first before removing it and consider the benefit of it. Thanks. Bootovr

I just tried to view the video and was required to subscribe. I don't think the link belongs on wikipedia. Sweavo 17:46, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] El Picao dance : Looked like vandalism

This looked like vandalism to me. Apologies if my undo was premature. [1]

--Otheus 14:23, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bad Primary Picture

We really need to get a better picture than what's currently the top-most picture... Can someone upload an action photo that shows a woman in a spin or something? Plakskull 23:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neck drop

The photograph on the page that says is a neck drop is actually not. An actual neck drop would be the lady bent over backwards with the man using his hand to support her by the back of her neck. I will try to find a photo of an actual neck drop as soon as I can. Cgonsalves 15:44, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of "legal" (possible) move combinations.

Can someone make a list of legal move combinations? Like this:
Legal moves after "Basic" move:

  1. Cross body lead
  2. Basic
  3. Leader turns follower into a right turn

Legal moves after "Cross body lead" move:

  1. Basic
  2. Cross body lead with right turn

..and so on. That way I could memorize what moves are possible to do after each particular move. Then I could choose from memory one of the legal alternatives and not risk getting tangled up just because I accidentally chose an illegal (impossible) following move. When I learn this well I will have learned how to improvise instead of just repeating the same memorized 30 second sequence over and over again. If anyone can make such a list, please start by making a list for the LA style. That would make me and a lot of women very happy. Tommy 13:35, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

No one has commented this suggestion. Is it ok if I started writing such a section? I don't want to create it only to have it deleted by someone else. Any suggestions as to what name I should give the section? Or maybe I should create a new page? What should the page be called? Tommy 13:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
There's no comments because it's a strange question. Any move can follow any move. It's a question of ability and of taste as to what move is "right" or "wrong". Sweavo 14:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
If there were an accepted list published by a respected salsa organization, we could create a separate article called List of salsa moves or something like that, but as far as I know there is no such list. Sweavo is right; salsa moves are often created or modified by the individual dancer; there is no "syllabus" like in the official ballroom dances. As for improving your dancing, Tommy, I recommend that you just practice more. The more you dance, the more natural it will become to combine different moves. Try different things with partners you are comfortable with (who won't get mad if you mess something up), and just keep practicing. Soon, going from move to move will be second nature. --Spangineerws (háblame) 14:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mayan Competition under LA Style

I removed the entire paragraph about this as it was clearly biased and making unsubstantiated claims. A particular salsa competition doesn't really make sense to be in this entry anyway. If someone wants to make a separate entry for the Mayan that's fine, but it shouldn't be here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.215.129.46 (talk) 14:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] what about the bolero??

you need more information on the bolero... because no one's going to come on if there isnt information about every type of salsa dance they need.... including.... me.... so update it OR ELSE I WONT COME ON ANY MORE... AND I WILL TELL EVERYONE... AND I CAN'T STRESS ENOUGH ABOUT HOW MUCH I NEED THE BOLERO INFORMATION... I NEED TO STUDY IT AND I CANT BECAUSE THIS IS THE ONLY WEBSITE I TRUST.. BUT I CANT IF THERE ISNT INFORMATION THAT I NEED!!!!!








HELP ME OR ELSE!!!! ( YOUR WILL LOOSE TONS OF COSTEMERS!!!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.31.77 (talk) 23:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)