Portal:Cuba/Selected article/2

Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly Spanish Caribbean genre that is popular across Latin America and among Latinos abroad. Salsa incorporates multiple styles and variations; the term can be used to describe most any form of popular Cuban-derived genre, such as cha-cha-chá and mambo. Most specifically, however, salsa refers to a particular style developed in the 1960s and '70s by Cuban immigrants and Puerto Rican migrants to the New York City area, and stylistic descendants like 1980s salsa romántica. The style is now practiced throughout Latin America and abroad; in some countries it may be referred to as música tropical.

Salsa is essentially Cuban in stylistic origin, though it is also a hybrid of Puerto Rican and other Latin styles mixed with pop, jazz, rock, and R&B. Salsa is the primary music played at Latin dance clubs and is the "essential pulse of Latin music", according to author Ed Morales, while music author Peter Manuel called it the "most popular dance (music) among Puerto Rican and Cuban communities, (and in) Central and South America", and "one of the most dynamic and significant pan-American musical phenomena of the 1970s and 1980s". Modern salsa remains a dance-oriented genre and is closely associated with a style of salsa dancing.