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 en la cara, nunca en el corazón'—in his final masterpiece before leaving Cuba, "Diós sabe"). Prior to D'León's performance, Cuban musicians had for the most part, rejected salsa, considering it bad imitation Cuban music. Something changed after d'León's performance. By that time, Cuban popular music had moved way beyond the old Cuban templates used in salsa. Cuba's momentary "salsa craze" brought back some of those older templates. For example, Orquesta Ritmo Oriental started using the most common salsa timbale bell and bongo bell combination. That bell arrangement became the standard for timba, which emerged at the end of the 1980s.