Music of Puerto Rico centers. After the island was taken over by Spain, the music and dance of Puerto Rico consisted of a combination of the harmonious musical styles that are borrowed from Spanish, African, and other European cultures, creating Puerto Rico's signature style of Latin dance. Salsa is a Spanish word that means sauce. It refers to the mixture of different rhythms composed of different Latin, African and Caribbean dances. Salsa is said to be first created around the 1960s and became popular to the non-Latino world drastically. The salsa dance is similar to the mambo dance. Salsa dancing is structured in six
Salsa music music for decades when salsa was popularized initially scoffed at the term. For example, Cuban-born Machito declared: "There's nothing new about salsa, it is just the same old music that was played in Cuba for over fifty years." Similarly, New York native Tito Puente stated: "The only salsa I know is sold in a bottle called ketchup. I play Cuban music." Eventually though, both Machito and Puente embraced the term as a financial necessity. The salsa conflict can be summarized as a disagreement between those who do not recognize salsa as anything other than Cuban music with another name, and