To understand the development of what we call salsa today, we need to examine its historical and cultural development from the time when en-slaved African people were shipped to the Americas, including the Caribbean.
From its African roots, salsa first developed in Cuba. As Thomas Guerrero, the Director of Santo Rico Dance Company has said, the origins of salsa lie in Africa and the Cuba.
It became popular throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, and finally made its way to mainland America and even the U.K. It is now truly global.
Salsa music is sometimes described as the African drum and the Spanish guitar which is African in origin. The guitar was brought into Spain by the Moors of North Africa who conquered Spain in AD 711. In 1492 they were overrun by the house of Castile and Oregon and ousted out of Spain.
The Catholic Church banned Moorish stringed instruments from being played in the streets.
Interestingly enough 1492 also saw the arrival of Christobel Colon in the Americas and the beginning of the removal and destruction of native people and cultures.
In the Age of Spanish Colonisation of South and Central America approximately 700,000 Africans were taken to Cuba.
Spanish political and ecclesiastical authorities put great pressure upon them to accept Catholicism; but a number of them, who came to reside in the remotest parts of eastern Cuba, enjoyed more freedom to practice their own African traditions and ways of perceiving God (the ALL).
Via-@ http://m.salsaspirit.co.uk
