structural:scholar_edition
Origins of the term Salsa

The word Salsa means sauce in the Spanish language. The origin of the connection of this word to a style of music is disputed by various music writers and historians.

The musicologist Max Salazar traced the origin of the connection to 1930 when Ignacio Piñeiro composed the song Échale salsita (Put some sauce in it). The phrase is seen as a cry from Piñeiro to his band, telling them to increase the tempo to "put the dancers into high gear". In the mid-1940s, Cuban Cheo Marquetti emigrated to Mexico. He named his group Conjunto Los Salseros, with whom he recorded a couple of albums for the Panart and Egrem labels. Later on, while based in Mexico City, the musician Beny Moré would shout salsa during a performance to acknowledge a musical moment's heat, making a connection with the hot salsa (sauce) made in the country.

Puerto Rican music promoter Izzy Sanabria claims he was the first to use the word salsa to denote a music genre:

In 1973, I hosted the television show Salsa which was the first reference to this particular music as salsa. I was using salsa, but the music wasn't defined by that. The music was still defined as Latin music. And that was a very, very broad category, because it even includes mariachi music. It includes everything. So salsa defined this particular type of music... It's a name that everyone could pronounce.

Sanabria's Latin New York magazine was an English language publication. Consequently, his promoted events were covered in The New York Times, as well as Time and Newsweek magazines. Sanabria confessed the term salsa was not developed by musicians: "Musicians were busy creating the music but played no role in promoting the name salsa." For this reason the use of the term salsa has been controversial among musicians. Some have praised its unification element. Celia Cruz said, "Salsa is Cuban music with another name. It's mambo, chachachá, rumba, son... all the Cuban rhythms under one name." Willie Colón described salsa not as a precise musical style but a power to unite in the broadest terms: "Salsa was the force that united diverse Latino and other non-Latino racial and ethnic groups...Salsa is the harmonic sum of all Latin culture ". On the other hand, even some New York based artists were originally against the commercialization of music under that name; Machito said: "There's nothing new about salsa, it is just the same old music that was played in Cuba for over fifty years." Similarly, Tito Puente stated: "The only salsa I know is sold in a bottle called ketchup. I play Cuban music. Cuban musicologist Mayra Martínez wrote that "the term salsa obscured the Cuban base, the music's history or part of its history in Cuba. And salsa was a way to do this so that Jerry Masucci, Fania and other record companies, like CBS, could have a hegemony on the music and keep the Cuban musicians from spreading their music abroad." Izzy Sanabria responded that Martínez was likely giving an accurate Cuban viewpoint, "but salsa was not planned that way". Johnny Pacheco, co-founder of Fania Records gave his definition of the term “Salsa” during various interviews. “La salsa es, y siempre ha sido la musica Cubana.” “Salsa is, and always has been, Cuban music.”.

The marketing potential from the name was so big, that eventually both Machito, Puente and even musicians in Cuba embraced the term as a financial necessity.