The music is communal, with drummers playing the subidor or primo (barrel drums) and the singer playing the cuá (smaller drum played with wooden sticks) and the maracas. It's music born out of the transatlantic slave trade and formed out of the distinct musical traditions enslaved Africans brought with them to Puerto Rico in the 17th century. El Boricua in Río Piedras also has a ton of salsa in their jukebox, along with a dancefloor, where you can find sweaty partners passionately dancing the night away any day of the week.įeeling more adventurous? Check out some of the new salsa orchestras like Orquesta El Macabeo and Pirulo y La Tribu, or plan your trip around the Día Nacional de la Zalsa an event hosted yearly by the premiere salsa station on the island, Z93.īomba is music born out of the transatlantic slave trade © Omark Reyes / Discover Puerto Rico Keeping the bomba tradition aliveĪccording to Folkways Recordings – a branch of the Smithsonian Museum, bomba dates back to the early Spanish colonial period on the island. Inside La Factoría in Old San Juan you can dance salsa at their secret bar, Shing-a-Ling, which hosts La 51 salsa band on Sundays and Mondays. As is custom for locals on a night out on the town, be ready with formal wear and dancing shoes when going to these hotels.įor a more casual hang, head over to Taberna Los Vázques in the Placita de Santurce, an open-air market that also serves food, and usually has salsa from Friday to Sunday. Your best bet to find live orchestras and bands playing salsa is to visit hotel lobbies in San Juan, like the Embassy Suites Hotel & Casino and the renovated Fairmont San Juan Hotel which has an amazing musical history and keeps its original 1960s-style lobby and a live cabaret. However, salsa dura – a sound that originated in NYC that emphasizes instrumentation like the piano, horns, bass and percussion – can be heard from loudspeakers in colmados all around the island, and in bars like El Boricua in Río Piedras, La Factoria in Old San Juan and the spots Mijani and Taberna Los Vázques in the Placita de Santurce, which was founded more than 100 years ago as an outdoor market.Īlways wear comfy dancing shoes when you're ready to dance salsa in Puerto Rico © Lyma Rodrigués / Discover Puerto Rico Best places to hear salsa While there was a sonic evolution of salsa from the 50s to the 90s, the genre, at least in Puerto Rico, has stagnated a bit and remained mostly in its last incarnation, salsa romantica – a sound punctuated by slower melodies and lyrics about love gone wrong. You can hear this in a song like “Mataron al Negro Bembón”. Rafael Cortijo y Su Combo rose to prominence in the 1950s with their experimental infusion of guaracha, another fast-paced genre that developed in Cuba, and songs about social issues like racism and poverty. If you want to learn how to play some “ritmos de la bomba” check out some music online, such as Paoli Mejias playing this subidor solo, bomba dancing in Loiza (shake it, dude in yellow tank top!) and old time bomba in black and white (shake it, dude in a white suit!).Salsa music traces its roots to Cuba, though Puerto Rican musicians added their own spin © Lyma Rodrigués / Discover Puerto Ricoīut home-grown musicians helped develop Puerto Rican salsa as well. The dancers move their bodies in time with the drum beats, with the drummers challenging the dancers to dance with more and more intensity. There are low-pitched hand drums like the “ buleador” (the “segundo”), which lays the foundation of the beat, and the high-pitched “ subidor” (the “primo”) which improvises. The Bomba percussion ensemble consists mainly of maracas, palitos (clave-like sticks struck together), a cua (a bamboo tube struck with wooden sticks), and hand drums known as “ bariles,” because they were traditionally made from the wood of barrels. KEY INSTRUMENTS: Barilles, Cuá, Maracas, Palitosīomba is an African-inspired folk music style of Puerto Rico that is deeply intertwined with dance.
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