Salsa

by Sue Steward

Genres: Music

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 1999

Reviews

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a heavily illustrated survey and history of the impact of Cuban music on the rest of the Caribbean, New York, Miami and Columbia... the Salsa centers as of the 90s when this book was written. I especially liked the chapter on the Dominican Republic. Although I have taken a merengue dance class, and I even saw Fefita la Grande live in Brooklyn, I really didn't know much about it. Wow, I miss New York when I read books like this. When I was there, you could still really see live Salsa Brava y Duro in the Lower East Side, with all the indigenous and African percussion... which unfortunately reminds me... Steward does not skimp on the dark side of Salsa, writing easily about all the bad boy antics and cocaine... guys like Hector Lavoe succumbing to their own image years before 2Pac. Steward seems to just love anything with a clave. People like Beny More get lots of love and ink, but was Dark Latin Groove really worth a full page gush-fest? Steward isn't as kind to the Salsa Romanitca/Erotica crap of the 80s, and there's some funny stuff in here about some of the more right wing nerds in the Miami scene.

I learned a lot about specific artists, too. I had always thought of La Lupe as a kind of novelty act, but apparently she was doing a lot of sexy stuff on stage that neither Castro nor the machos in NYC could really handle... with the exception of Tito Puente. And about Puente... I mean... obviously a giant, one of the greatest musicians ... but also just a really cool guy who seems to be on the right side of everything.

All in all, just a great intro to the topic, with enough politics and social history to put it in context without getting academic.