Salsa developed from Cuban musical styles like son cubano and mambo, mixed with jazz and other influences brought by Cuban musicians who moved to New York in the middle of the 20th century. In busy New York dance halls, all these styles blended together into something exciting and new. It then spread around the world, picking up local flavours in Colombia, Puerto Rico and beyond.
The basic salsa step is deceptively simple - a side-to-side weight shift that takes just four counts. But once the basics are learned, dancers add complicated turns, lifts and arm movements that look amazing. What is special about salsa is that two partners improvise together - one person leads and the other follows, but both are expressing themselves creatively at the same time.
Salsa music is built on a pattern of percussion called clave (pronounced CLAH-veh), a repeating two-bar rhythm played on two wooden sticks. Everything else in the band - the piano, bass, horns and singers - fits around the clave. Once you hear the clave in a salsa track, you cannot unhear it - it becomes the heartbeat of the music.