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All About Latin Dances
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Latin Rhythms What is...?
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The name "salsa" correctly describes the flavour of this dance: hot! Danced correctly, there's a lot of shaking, shimmying, and hip action going on. Don't be deterred—you can learn how to achieve all of this action. The basic step of salsa can be accomplished with less than 10 minutes of practice.Origins: The Latin music we hear today has its origins in Cuba where the blending of African drum rhythms and Spanish guitar evolved into a variety of Latin American music: Son, Danzón, the rhythms of Carnival, Cha cha cha, Mambo, Salsa.....even Tango came out of Cuba. During the war in Cuba in 1898 US Soldiers got a taste for Cuban music. Later, during Prohibition in the USA, Americans went to Cuba where drinking alcohol was legal and they became infected with the Latin rhythms. As early as 1909 radio recordings came out of Cuba. In 1932 American Radio came to Cuba to record Orquesta Anacoana. This amazing all-female orchestra consisted of 10 sisters. They were the first females in Cuba to openly play percussion, horns and other instruments. Locked in the house for days at a time during the war, they had nothing to do but practice. This group evolved into one of Cuba's leading orchestras and one of the first to get top billing in New York. One sister, Graciela, went on to become the lead singer for Machito's orchestra. It wasn't long before musicians in the USA began incorporating Latin rhythms into their own music. In 1900, W.C. Handy visited Cuba and began our legacy of Latin jazz here in the USA. Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie "Bird" Parker, Stan Getz and Cal Tjader have all followed the tradition by blending and evolving Latin jazz. Gillespie added a Cuban drummer named Chano Pozo to his band in 1938 and they began to compose together. Even the less esoteric forms of music in the USA have sampled Latin rhythms and incorporated them with great success. Sam Cooke, The Diamonds, Johnny Otis, Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley and Nat King Cole all helped popularize Latin music with hits containing elements from Cuban music. Gloria Estefan is one of the most well-known contemporary popularisers of Latin music in the USA. She has very successfully blended English lyrics and and rock and roll style with her Cuban musical heritage. To find the roots of Cuban music we look to West Africa where the slave trade thrived. The Yoruba, Congo and other West African people created rhythms in ancient times to call forth various gods. Sadly, these wonderful rhythms were brought over to the New World under dire circumstances. One drummer named Ijibwa was taken captive and placed on a slave ship for America. He was forced to play on deck to keep up the spirits of the prisoners so that the "merchandise" would arrive alive. The slaves used the drum rhythms in Christian worship too. Slaves were forced to adopt Christianity upon arrival in the new World, but often called their own gods by Christian names so as to avoid punishment. A similar practice was the progenitor of the "Yo Mama is so..." jokes in existence today among African-Americans. "Mama" was actually a code word for "Master". Hardly anyone telling these jokes today remembers what "Mama" actually stood for in slave times. In Latin music most of the listeners are not even aware that the drum rhythms we dance to are actually religious in meaning, dedicated to various African gods. Cabillolos (secret societies) still exist in Cuba and keep alive over 200 different rhythms for different African gods. Troubadours from Spain brought Flamenco guitar music to Cuba. Out of this came Son. Rural Cubans brought the folk guitar to Havana after the war in 1898. Isaac Oviedo was one of the originators of son. He taught himself the guitar by watching other musicians and started the group Santiga Casana, a charuquita group; kettle drum (timbál), ceramic jog, accordion and guitar. In 1926 Oviedo brought the Matanza Sextet to Havana. Later on Emilio Orfe created the danzón style with violin, cello, flute and African drums. He started his first orchestra at age eleven! Oreste Lopez helped create Mambo by combining danzón with African rhythms from the street. The dancing itself came out of rehearsals where couples would come over and improvise. Lope put together Arcanos Orchestra in 1938. Xavier Cugat was another important figure in popularizing Mambo. Born in Spain and raised in Cuba, Cugat was initially trained in classical violin beginning at age 8. His music was a unique blend of Afro-Cuban and Flamenco influences. Cugat spent time in New York and Berlin before giving up music to become a cartoonist for the LA Times (!), but in the 1940's Charlie Chaplin dragged him out of his musical retirement to compose a score for the Chaplin film City Lights. Cugat formed a group, "Cugat and the Gigolos" and found that he could make a living in Hollywood doing tropical music for films. He created a smooth Latin blend of music that was very popular with Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire. Don Aspiazu started the Rumba craze in 1930 with his Rumba dance team and full orchestra. Anglo-Americans were in a frenzy over the "fiery tempo and barbaric melody" and thought of Latin music as daring and fascinating. The film industry continued to popularize Latin music with Desi Arnaz and his orchestra singing such songs as "Babalu" and "Cumbanchero". In 1940 he popularized the conga line dance. Tito Puentes' contribution to Mambo is well-known, as are the contributions of Willy Colon and Celia Cruz. Cruz was recorded on Cuban radio at age 7 and made her first record in 1951. One lesser-known figure is Arsenio Rodriguez, one of the true fathers of Salsa. A blind drummer in Cuba, he began to evolve the Salsa sound from Mambo in the early 1960's. People continually argue about the difference between Mambo and Salsa. Some say they are the same thing. Some say Salsa is something you eat! Some think Salsa is a generic label for all different types of Latin music. But if you listen to the early Mambo of Tito Puente, Machito, Beny More, Tito Rodriguez and the many greats who started playing before 1960, and then listen to some of the newer folks on the block, you'll find a distinction there easily enough. As to whether to move the body or feet on the first or second beat, that is a whole subject all on its own. Description:
Salsa is danced by stepping on 3 consecutive beats
of music and then pausing for 1 beat, then repeating. The step timing
can be thought of as step, step, step, pause; step, step, step, pause.
Dance teachers count the step timing as quick, quick, slow; quick,
quick, slow. Each quick consumes one beat of music, each slow consumes
two beats of music. Depending on how you hear and feel the music, you
may start the dance on any beat of the measure you wish. Most people
start the dance on the first beat of the measure. An essential character element of salsa is Cuban motion. Cuban motion, especially the hip action, comes mainly from the alternate bending and straightening of the knees. Like the basic for mambo, and for rumba, a full basic of the Salsa can be thought of as having a forward basic, which takes 4 beats of music, and a backward basic, which takes four beats of music. So, eight beats of music are required to complete one full basic. Each forward and backward basic can be considered to contain the following three steps: a break step, a replace step, and a slow step usually taken to second foot position. Most salsa dancers perform a touch step or tap step, not entailing a weight change on the second beat of the two-beat “slow” step. In other words, the tap occurs during the “pause” beat. Thus, this tap step precedes the break step.
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Throughout its long history, The Rumba has played many roles. It began as a fertility dance during which the dancers mimicked the courtship displays of birds and animals prior to mating. Later versions of the Rumba humanized these sexual connotations, to the throbbing, insistent beat of the music’s erotic rhythm, the woman moved sensuously and invitingly in order to attract the attention of the man of their choice. Much of the choreography used in today’s Rumba retains the age-old story of the woman’s attempts to attract and ultimately dominate the man by the use of her feminine charms. During a well-choreographed Rumba, there will always be an element of tease and run; the man is first lured and then rejected by his partner. The sensuous and erotic invitations by the woman will be answered by the man who expresses his macho image by performing physical feats in an attempt to win her favours. Rumba rhythm is based on four beats in each bar of music, with the fourth beat carrying the strongest accent. The standard tempo is 27 bars per minute.
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Saucy, fun, and carefree, The Cha Cha Cha is a dance of contact and one of the easiest dances to learn. Not as intimate as The Rumba, it also is one to do with your mother or sister as well as with your lover. Beginners, both men and women, find its Latin rhythm easy to follow because the clearly marked beats can be counted out in time with the music. With social dancers throughout the world, it’s a perennial favourite. The dance is based on a Chassé movement (three linked steps), which is danced to coincide with the accented beats in each bar of music. The words cha cha cha are said to represent the sound made by the feet of the dancers on the floor when they dance this chasse. Cha Cha Cha music, which originated in Cuba, has a strong, compelling, easily recognized rhythm that can be counted as “One, two, three, four and one, two, three, four and one” and so forth. The beats that occur on the count “four and one” are accented, and may be spelled out as cha cha cha. Like all Latin American music, Cha Cha Cha is based on a strong percussion section, which should contain bongos, congas, timbales, and a cowbell. The best tempo for the music is 30 bars per minute.
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The Merengue is the national dance of the Dominican Republic. It is very similar to Méringue, which is popular in Haiti. There are two popular versions of the of the origin of the Dominican national dance, the Merengue. One story alleges the dance originated with slaves who were chained together and, of necessity, were forced to drag one leg as they cut sugar to the beat of drums. The second story alleges that a great hero was wounded in the leg during one of the many revolutions in the Dominican Republic. A party of villagers welcomed him home with a victory celebration and, out of sympathy, everyone dancing felt obliged to limp and drag one foot. According to the Dominicans themselves, Merengue is a combination of two dances, the African and the French Minuet, from the late 1700's - early 1800's. The black slaves saw the ballroom dances in the Big Houses and when they had their own festivities started mimicking the "masters' dances". But the Europeans dances were not fun, they were very boring and staid, so over time, the slaves added a special upbeat (provided by the drums), this was a slight skip or a hop. It is possible the dance took its name from the confection made of sugar and egg whites because of the light and frothy character of the dance or because of its short, precise rhythms. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Merengue was very popular in the Dominican Republic. Not only is it used on every dancing occasion in the Republic, but it is very popular throughout the Caribbean and South America, and is one of the standard Latin American dances. There is a lot of variety in Merengue music. Tempos vary a great deal and the Dominicans enjoy a sharp quickening in pace towards the latter part of the dance. The most favoured routine at the clubs and restaurants that run a dance floor is a slow Bolero, breaking into a Merengue, which becomes akin to a bright, fast Jive in its closing stages. The ballroom Merengue is slower and has a modified hip action. The Merengue was introduced in the United States in the New York area. However, it did not become well known until several years later. Ideally suited to the small, crowded dance floors, it is a dance that is easy to learn and essentially a "fun" dance.
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Samba and Brazil go together like smoke and fire, thunder and lightning, and night and day. Samba is an integral part of Brazilian culture – it is the music and dance of the people by the people. Although non-Brazilians tend to think of the Samba as one particular dance, it is not. There are many different versions of the Samba – each with a different rhythm, tempo, and mood – resulting in many different dances. The dance the West knows as Samba is just one of these many exciting and thrilling rhythms. To capture the character of this Samba, dancers should adopt a flirtatious and exuberant carnival mood. Many of the figures used in Samba require a particular tilting pelvic action. This is somewhat difficult to learn, but without it, the figures that require it will not look rhythmic or authentic. Another action important for dancers to learn is what is called Samba bounce action; this is used during all figures where the count is “ONE a TWO”. All dancers wishing to produce a good interpretation of Samba music should aim to master these two actions. In addition to improving your Samba, you will certainly help improve your waistline. Samba music has two beats in each bar of music, with the strongest accent on the second beat. The standard tempo for the dance is 50 bars per minute.
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Some historians trace the tango back to the ancient light-spirited Spanish flamenco dance of the same name. The Spanish colonialists brought flamenco with them to South America, where, like all colonial imports, it soon melted with other influences and emerged as something quite different. The tangano, is also a likely ancestor of the modern tango. African slaves performed the tangano in the New World, where it merged with the Spanish flamenco and traditional native dances. By the late nineteenth century it had become popular in Buenos Aires. Dancers in the barrios called it baile con corte, or “dance with a rest”, referring to the manner in which the dancers would suddenly pause for a beat or two before resuming their progress. With the arrival of the folk dance from Cuba called the habanera, the Buenos Aires blended it with the baile con corte, producing a new step often identified as the milonga. In contrast with contemporary tango in any of its variations, the milonga was a very soft private dance emphasizing leg movements, but it soon transformed into a dramatic theatrical performance with sudden head snaps, erect torsos, and arrogant, almost disdainful facial expression. The worldwide spread of the tango came in the early 1900s when wealthy sons of Argentine society families made their way to Paris and introduced the tango into a society eager for innovation and not entirely averse to the risqué nature of the dance or dancing with young, wealthy Latin men. By 1913, the tango had become an international phenomenon in Paris, London and New York. There were tango teas, tango train excursions and even tango colors - most notably orange. The Argentine elite who had shunned the tango were now forced into accepting it with national pride.
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The music that today is called bachata emerged from and belongs to a long-standing Pan-Latin American tradition of guitar music, música de guitarra, which was typically played by trios or quartets comprised of one or two guitars, with percussion provided by maracas and/or other instruments such as claves (hardwood sticks used for percussion), bongo drums, or a gourd güiro scraper. Sometimes a large thumb bass called marimba or marimbula was included as well. When bachata emerged in the early 1960s, it was part of an important subcategory of guitar music, romantic guitar music -as distinguished from guitar music intended primarily for dancing such as th Cuban son or guaracha- although in later decades, as musicians began speeding up the rhythm and dancers developed a new dance step, bachata began to be considered dance music as well. The most popular and widespread genre of romantic guitar music in this century, and the most influential for the development of bachata, was the Cuban bolero (not to be confused with the unrelated Spanish bolero). Bachata musicians, however, also drew upon other genres of música de guitarra that accomplished guitarists would be familiar with, including Mexican rancheros and corridos, Cuban son, guaracha and guajira, Puerto Rican plena and jibaro music, and the Colombian-Ecuadorian vals campesino and pasillo- as well as the Dominican merengue, which was originally guitar-based. Before the development of a Dominican redording industry and the spread of the mass media, guitar-based trios and quartets were almost indispensable for a variety of informal recreational events such as Sunday afternoon parties known as pasadías and spontaneous gatherings that took place in back yards, living rooms, or in the street that were known as bachatas. Dictionaries of Latin American Spanish define the term bachata as juerga, jolgorio, or parranda, all of which denote fun, merriment, a good time, or a spree, but in the Dominican Republic, in addition to the emotional quality of fun and enjoyment suggested by the dictionary definition, it referred specifically to get-togethers that included music, drink, and food. The musicians who played at bachatas were usually local, friends an neighbours of the host, although sometimes reputed musicians from farther away might be brought in for a special occasion. Musicians were normally recompensed only with food and drink, but a little money might be given as well. Parties were usually held on Saturday night and would go on until dawn, at which time a traditional soup, the sancocho, was served to the remaining guests. Because the music played at these gatherings was so often played on guitars (although accordion-based ensembles were also common), the guitar-based music recorded in the 1960s and 1970s by musicians of rural origins came to be known as bachata. The word bachata also had certain associations, upper-class parties would never be called bachatas. In his book "Al amor del bohío" (1927), Ramón Emilio Jiménez, a distinguished Dominican "man of letters" and "writer of manners," described a bachata in terms that reflect how such gatherings were associated by the elite with low-class debauchery and dissipation. The "bachata" is a center of attraction for all the men, where the social classes as those who attend them are levelled and where the coarsest and libertarian forms of democracy predominate. The most elegant figures of the barrio are there, daring and audacious. The setting of these dissolute pleasures is a small living room impregnated by odours that seem conjured to challenge decency....In an adjoining room a guitarist plucks and unleashes into the contaminated air of the house (a) blazing street-level couplet, to which a singer with a well-established reputation as a "second" makes a duo, provisioned with a pair of spoons which he strikes to accompany the melody. Among Dominicans there is considerable disagreement as to exactly when the term bachata come to refer to a particular kind of music. In the absence of any systematic research into the subject, there is a tendency for people to rely on their own memories, which vary according to their age, class, and where they grew up. According to bachata musicians themselves, it was in the 1970s that the guitar-based music they recorded came to be identified by the term bachata, which by then had lost its more neutral connotation of an informal (if rowdy) backyard party and acquired an unmistakably negative cultural value implying rural backwardness and vulgarity. For example on hearing one of these recordings, a middle- or upper-class person might say something like "¡Quítate esa bachata!" (Take that bachata off!). By using the term in this way, a style of guitar music made by poor rural musicians come to be synonymous with low quality. The condemnation fell not only upon the music and its performers, but upon its listeners as well; the term bachatero, used for anyone who liked the music as well as for musicians, was equally derogatory.
In
the late 1970s and 1980s, the worsening social and economic conditions
of bachata's urban and rural poor constituency were clearly reflected in
bachata. The intrumentation remained the same, but the tempo had become
noticeably faster, and the formerly ultra-romantic lyrics inspired by
the bolero became more and more concerned with drinking, womanizing, and
male braggadocio, and increasingly, it began to express desprecio
(disparagement) toward women. As bachata's popularity with the country's
poorest citizens grew, the term bachata, which earlier had suggested
rural backwardness and low social status, became loaded with a more
complicated set of socially unacceptable features that included illicit
sex, violence, heavy alcohol use, and disreputable social contexts such
as seedy bars and brothels.
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In Latin Dancing, it’s not the moves you do but how you move that’s really important. Historically, dance classes have focused on teaching the steps, not the action. Very few teachers have been successful at understanding how to break down and teach the Latin Body Action or “Cuban Motion.” Not knowing how to break it down, many teachers simply dictate, “move your hips.” Some believe you either have it or you don’t. Other teachers go into a long, complex, confusing explanation of theory that ends without providing a clear step-by-step approach. Cuban motion comes mainly from the alternate bending and straightening of the knees. As a knee bends the same hip drops. Conversely, as a knee straightens, the same hip rises. Thus the hips move up and down. A common mistake is to twist the hips in an effort to achieve Cuban motion.
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What's the difference between Salsa and Mambo
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During the late 1950's in Cuba, there was a popular dance -- some might call it a "dance craze!" -- that was done in the streets and in the clubs, and in people's homes. It was called Casino Rueda, or Rueda de Casino, or simply Rueda. Rueda means "wheel". Casino refers to the kinds of turns and breaks you might normally see in ordinary partner Salsa dancing. "Swing Your Partner Round and Round..." If the first few words of this notorious dance command ring a bell, then open your ears, as you may start to hear phrases like "dame una" (give me one), "dame dos con vuelta" (give me two with a turn), and "exhíbela" (show her off)... the list is endless. Rueda de Casino is Country and Western square dancing SALSA STYLE! If you like dancing Salsa, then imagine the sensation of doing so not with one person but with an entire group. Picture this... you step out to your favourite Latin nightclub. Later in the evening, the floor opens as couples gather in a circle. You know the moves, the names, the signals. You grab a partner and you're about to enter into the most incredible Salsa experience. Rueda de Casino was originally danced in the 1950's to the Cha cha beat in members-only clubs in Cuba known as 'casinos deportivos'. These casinos sponsored dances with live orchestras where dancers would get together and create new styles. It was in these casinos that "la rueda" was born. It was first introduced to Miami in the early 90's and is rapidly making its way across the United States. Rueda de Casino, in its truest form, is an art of communication that requires dancers be alert and quick. A leader calls out or signals the dancers to a short combination of intricate steps followed by commands such as "adios", "enchufa", or "dame..." which are patterns that lead dancers to a change of partners. There are reportedly more than 150 moves, each with a name that often has a double entendre or some cross-cultural humour buried in it. Each pattern also comes with a hand signal or gesture which are well needed in large circles and/or loud night clubs. It's incredible to watch but certainly much more so to participate. Everyone in the wheel, including followers, keep their eyes peeled to the caller. When the dancers are on in "la rueda" it is intoxicating and addictive. The form of the Rueda -- passing partners in a wheel -- hints at its early, colonial origins, which were probably a "mezcla", a blend of French Court Dances (brought to Cuba by Haitians) and the indigenous Afro-Cuban dance movements. With Cuban emigration to the US -- with an especially large influx into Miami -- the Cuban culture, music and dance blossomed in North America, and, along with Mambo, Cha Cha, and Salsa, Rueda has reemerged.
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