Salsa music is a style of Latin American music, combining elements of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and American influences. Because most of the basic musical components predate the labeling of salsa, there have been many controversies regarding its origin. Most songs considered as salsa are primarily based on son montuno and son cubano, with elements of guaracha, cha-cha-chá, danzón, descarga, bolero, guajira, rumba, mambo, jazz, funk, R&B, rock, bomba, and plena. All of these elements are adapted to fit the basic Son montuno template when performed within the context of salsa.
Kristoffer Kristofferson is an American retired country singer, songwriter, and actor. Among his songwriting credits are "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night", all of which were hits for other artists.
Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band active from 1970 to 1986. The band was founded in 1970 by Austrian keyboardist Joe Zawinul, American saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš, American drummer Alphonse Mouzon as well as American percussionists Don Alias and Barbara Burton. The band was initially co-led by co-frontmen Zawinul and Shorter but, subsequently as the 1970s progressed, Zawinul largely became the sole musical leader of the group. Other prominent members at various points in the band's lifespan included Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson, Victor Bailey, Chester Thompson, Peter Erskine, Airto Moreira, and Alex Acuña. Throughout most of its existence, the band was a quintet consisting of Zawinul, Shorter, a bass guitarist, a drummer, and a percussionist.
Jesús Valdés Rodríguez, better known as Chucho Valdés, is a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger whose career spans over 50 years. An original member of the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, in 1973 he founded the group Irakere, one of Cuba's best-known Latin jazz bands.
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm. The genre emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
Bonnie Bramlett is an American singer and occasional actress known for performing with her husband, Delaney Bramlett, as Delaney & Bonnie. She continues to sing as a solo artist.
A descarga is an improvised jam session consisting of variations on Cuban music themes, primarily son montuno, but also guajira, bolero, guaracha and rumba. The genre is strongly influenced by jazz and it was developed in Havana during the 1950s. Important figures in the emergence of the genre were Cachao, Julio Gutiérrez, Bebo Valdés, Peruchín and Niño Rivera in Cuba, and Tito Puente, Machito and Mario Bauzá in New York. Originally, descargas were promoted by record companies such as Panart, Maype and Gema under the label Cuban jam sessions. From the 1960s, the descarga format was usually adapted by large salsa ensembles, most notably the Fania All-Stars.
The Fania All-Stars is a musical group formed in 1968 as a showcase for the musicians on Fania Records, the leading salsa music record label of the time.
William Lance Swan is an American country singer-songwriter, best known for his 1974 single "I Can Help".
Juan Pablo Knipping Pacheco, known as Johnny Pacheco, was a Dominican musician, arranger, composer, bandleader, and record producer. Born in the Dominican Republic, Pacheco became a leading figure in the New York salsa scene in the 1960s and 1970s as the founder and musical director of Fania Records.
Irakere is a Cuban band founded by pianist Chucho Valdés in 1973. They won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording in 1980 with their album Irakere. Irakere was a seminal musical laboratory, where historic innovations in both Afro-Cuban jazz and Cuban popular dance music were created. The group used a wide array of percussion instruments like batá, abakuá and arará drums, chequerés, erikundis, maracas, claves, cencerros, bongó, tumbadoras (congas), and güiro.
Hiram Law Bullock was an American guitarist known mainly for playing in jazz funk and jazz fusion, but he also worked as a session musician in a variety of genres.
The Trio of Doom was a short-lived jazz fusion power trio consisting of John McLaughlin on guitar, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. They were brought together by Columbia Records in 1979 to play the Havana Jam festival in Cuba alongside Billy Joel, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, and others.
Roger Dawson is a jazz percussionist, conga drummer, bandleader, and jazz composer. He was a leading jazz and salsa disc jockey in the US and was acknowledged as being at the forefront of New York's salsa music explosion of the seventies and early eighties. He was the creator of the long-running "Salsa Meets Jazz" concert series at New York's Village Gate club.
Bruce Lundvall was an American record company executive, best known for his period as the President and CEO of the Blue Note Label Group, reporting directly to Eric Nicoli, the Chief Executive Officer of EMI Group.
Carlos Emilio Morales was a Cuban jazz guitarist.
Eliel Williams Lazo Linares is a Cuban percussionist, songwriter, composer, producer, jazz, rock, Latin and pop musician living in Denmark. Eliel is one of the most unique percussionists in recent times. In 2011, he received the Danish Music Awards for his album "El Conguero". He won also the "International Percussion Percuba Prize". During his career, he collaborated with musicians such as Oscar Valdes, Chucho Valdes, Herbie Hancock, Bob Mintzer, Wayne Shorter, Michel Camilo and Bands such as Diakara, Habana Ensemble, DR Big band, WDR Big band, BBC Big band The Savage Rose, The Antonelli Orchestra, Mikkel Nordsø Band and others. In 2008, the newspaper Havana Times labelled him "one of Cuba's top percussionists".
Juan Pablo Torres Morell was a Cuban trombonist, bandleader, arranger and producer. He was the director of Algo Nuevo and a member of Irakere, two of the leading exponents of songo and Afro-Cuban jazz in the 1970s and 1980s. He has also directed various Cuban supergroups such as Estrellas de Areito and Cuban Masters. He has been called "one of the best trombone players in the Latin-jazz community of the 1990s".
Bill Milkowski is an American jazz critic, journalist, and biographer. Since the 1970s he has written thousands of articles for magazines and album liner notes. He has written for DownBeat, JazzTimes, Jazziz, The Absolute Sound, Paste, Jazzthing and Guitar Club. He is the author of a biography of bassist Jaco Pastorius, a biography of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, an annotated history of jive music, a collection of interviews., and a biography of saxophonist-composer Michael Brecker.
Orquesta Akokán is a Latin jazz ensemble formed by musicians from Cuba and New York, United States. It takes inspiration from mid-twentieth century mambo musicians such as Perez Prado, Beny Moré, and Machito.
