Money over Love

[borikenSalsero]

During the early to mid 80s salsa too a huge hit. It became commercialized, its artists stopped playing tunes that evoked soul shaking emotions and created a flat bland salsa that has evolved to what it is now. A money making machine, that marks the line of success in dollar signs instead of musicallity...

Being humans, salseros all jumped the band wagon and started creating the new wave of money making salsa...

Has that change affected your love for the music? Why is greed such a beautiful quality in salsa musicians, even if the cost is the dillution of the music the so adore? Is salsa better than every because of it, or has it gone backwards? Has that change affected the way people dance? So many questions, so many answers, so little time, not enough education, all in the name of money over love. So, I think.

Is today's salsa music up to par with you?

[peachexploration]

I didn't really start listening to what I thought was Salsa until around 1999. I liked the new stuff but I always felt something was missing. I listened to Marc Anthony, DLG, Frankie Negron or even Gloria Estefan. It was okay but mostly it lacked magic, it lack spirit. I mean the "real" spirit of the music. So, I thought to myself, "This sounds nothing like the music on BET Jazz Channel's Latin Beat TV show, Tito Puente's Ran Kan Kan or Celia Cruz's Bembe Colora". So I started searching and just randomly listening to salsa music clips of people I never heard of and then I said, that's it, that what I'm looking for. I discover people like Willie Colon, Joe Arroyo, Africando and many others. I'm still "discovering" new music from 25 or more years ago. So, do I think today's salsa is up to par? Not really. Do I think it's a money making machine? Yes, it's all about the image of the artist and how many units they can push, not the music.

[salsachinita]

Coming from a person with a somewhat different musical taste (I am a known offender in the 'trash music' category.......got the biggest trashy Euro Disco on vinyls to show :oops: ), I dare say I enjoy some of the new "Top 40 Salsa" Huey Dunbar etc. A lot of them are not immediately dancer-friendly, yet I find it challenging as a dancer :wink: .....!

These are light-hearted fun moments though. That said, I think 'fluff' salsa has its role-------it contrasts with classic salsa, which inevitably gives the latter in a superior status. Most people who have listen closely to the two can & do appreciate the difference.

The 'fluff' salsa exist in the more popular/accessible domain, accuiring popularity because of the big name production/marketing companies behind them. Their exposure, IMHO, can actually be beneficial to the real stuff. As it 'invites' (or 'baits') would-be salsa lovers with a watered down version (which is less foreign/threatening to a culture that is not familiar with this genre) of the real stuff.

Sure, a lot of people stay with the 'fluff' and never progress. Still, many others take the next step to find the true essence of the genre, and before we know it, another salsaholic to the family :wink: !

[squirrel]

:) Salsa Clasica is my favourite when it comes to listening to Salsa... when it comes to dancing, I have my favourites, but the songs have to have beat... have to be saying me "Come, dance...!". Still, due to the very few Salsa songs they play in our club here, I Salsa to everything that is on 4 beats... :roll: :oops:
When I started listening to Salsa, I discovered first the classics and then the modern singers... this is probably why I have a definite and strong preference for the former but dance to anything danceable... :)
Yes, Salsa is a money-making machine... why not? Look at the techno Salsa, hip-hop Salsa, Raggaeton... All these are ok in the eyes of the general public, they sometimes become instant hits! This is just the development of the Salsa field... as of any other field! And it's nothing blamable about it! It's just ... human!

[vin]

I started learning to dance salsa about 3 years ago now. About 10 months ago a transformation occured. That's right, I started buying my own salsa music.

Actually my first salsa cd had alot of classic salsa that I was not really ready to appreciate.
Then I began buying some fluff salsa cd's because that is what I heard in the clubs.
Thankfully I only bought four cd's of fluff salsa before I heard Eddie.
Eddie Palmieri saved me from a salsa fate worse than merengue. The cd itself could be better actually, a few really good songs interspersed with a few songs that were just a little too intellectual for my tastes. But I went to his concert. Going to a Palmieri concert this year will go down as my best salsa experience yet. They really played like they meant it. Not like the computer generated crap I hear most of the time. It really changed how I percieved salsa music.
Since then I have become picky when I look for salsa music. I want to hear music where it sounds like the band likes to get together on saturday nights and let loose and have a great party.
I don't think it has to be older music although the older music generally has this quality more then the newer stuff. I even think some of the romantic salsa has this quality.
ie Dejate Querer, By Jose Alberto. Is a song I would say is romantica but it definitely has that let the good times roll feel to it.
Among the well-known bands that are still around the stuff by Africando and Spanish Harlem Orchestra has that quality. Bio-Ritmo is a band that is looking to explode soon that I have seen more than a couple of times, wow, I don't have the cd yet but I couldn't imagine it sucks. Reviews of it are excellent.
What I am trying to say is that fluff salsa has it's place and may very well suck, but "real" salsa will continue. We don't have to reminisce about days gone by to still get great salsa that has feeling.
If I recall alot of people in the 70's would have classified alot of Fania's stuff as fluff salsa. Now many consider it classic salsa.

[borikenSalsero]

If I recall alot of people in the 70's would have classified alot of Fania's stuff as fluff salsa. Now many consider it classic salsa.

In a sense yes, but it was more though off as noise that made no sense and looked to kill the real music in form of guajira, son, son montunos, etc, than anything else. It was seen as we now see the younger generation music, as crap, hehe.

Salsa really came to fruition in the late 60s and early 70s in what is now considered the classics, back then the only classification it had was under "popular music", hence, new, so it couldn't have possible been clasified as the classics of salsa at the time, for all it really was the beginning of salsa itself.

So while it was considered by some of the elite musicians as fluff, it was mainly because of the sound captured during recording sessions. Meaning that what was recorded never sounded as hard driving and as appealing to what the live versions sounded like. Bands (FANIA) aiming for mass production and profit, recorded their music with the general public in mind, knowing that the intricacies done in a live stage wouldn't float in the mass market. Hence, the said to be fluff of recorded salsa at the time, which some musicians have been known to call, "Sonido de lata", sound from a bucket.

Comparing what it had to follow, Jam-Sessions, no wonder they called it fluff... Even a vanguard, or whatever it is called Jazz, can even be labaled fluff next to that stuff. We must keep in mind that the 50s where the period where latin music was at its highest point in US history. The big bands had their mambo jazz, until they could no longer live in a world with low wages, theivery, etc... So then followed the smaller groups which could by no means produce the high sound of a big orquestra with 20, or 30 members. Hence, whey in comparion it is said to have been fluff, that is until Mr. Barretto, both palmieri, and a few others changed their minds little by little. The resistance to the new sound faded little by little until its worth was seen, when young musicians learned the necessary skills to show the, now older musicians, that salsa was as hard-driving as...

[vin]

Good point, do you think the stuff we think is crap now will ever be considered not crap?
I do agree I absolutely hate mass-produced salsa and wish it were not the norm these days.

[borikenSalsero]

Good point, do you think the stuff we think is crap now will ever be considered not crap?
I do agree I absolutely hate mass-produced salsa and wish it were not the norm these days.

Well, not necessarily, there is a difference between poplar music (i'm not even sure “popular” music is the term I want to use, but I will anyways) and trendy music. Trendy music fades away, popular music always becomes something that last.

Salsa was thought of as popular music, instead of trendy, where as the salsa-regeton is seen as driven by demand/society. It changes with changes in society, and they cannot be taken from society to society and mean the same thing, for other societies might very well not even relate to what the trend is somewhere else.

Popular music becomes so because it attracts people because of socio-cultural/ issues, possibly romance, and depicts a time and place where people not only from one society can relate but all. They relate not because everyone is doing it and is media driven, but because the people themselves are living, in every society, what the music depicts. As the case was with salsa, it was the identity of urban-latin america, however, all of the world-urban populations dealt with the same issues, hence, they could relate to the music from NY City, to Puerto Rico, Venezuela, etc. No matter how different their cultures were. The ghetto is always the ghetto no matter where it is. Here the case was that latinos in NY City were finally beginning to build their own identity, that identity was engarved in history through salsa. Poverty, hunger, crime, the nostalgia of their past in their old homes/countries, the fight for survival in a place where everything says you will fail. Still today people can relate, no matter where they are from, to those issues, for they are issues that will never change with the passing of time.

That is the case for old school rap, it meant something. However, it has become trendy, like pop/tropical salsa. It is garbage meant to attract money. Today, the music quality of both salsa, and rap has gone down and replaced by what sells, what is trendy! The music itself is ever changing to fit what the media calls for, as opposed to the music displaying something more than the shifting trends in a current society.

Trendy music looks for, ironically, popular trends and capitalizes on them, popular music doesn't create the trend, but rather lives it never changing to fit it. Popular music always has a following; it pretty much stays the same even when there are changes within it. Its attitude never changes, there were a lot of trends within salsa that died, however salsa stayed alive. Boogaloo died, pachanga died, latin-funk died, matanzerisando died, those were trends, they looked to capitalized in the current aspects of society, therefore, had only one choice, to change with society and die as soon as society itself no longer saw a need for it.

That is what I believe of pop music, regeton, however, I see regeton like once salsa was seen, a people looking to display their own identity (youth), it will go through crap until it finds a niche that displays something passed current national trends, until then it is a passing thing. All trends die...

[squirrel]

hmmm... and why do people go for fads when they can have the real thing?

[borikenSalsero]

hmmm... and why do people go for fads when they can have the real thing?

lol... I guess it is the same reason whey they go for the candy, and sweets at a party instead of the vegetables, and fruits. They don't know any better :lol:

[squirrel]

well... I go for sweets too... :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

But not in Salsa!