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
Puerto Rican Spanish both in Spanish and English, could be described as a reflection of Puerto Rico's historical European ethnic cultures. To understand the concept of the Puerto Rican accent in Spanish, one must remember that every country in Hispanic America has different accents in this language, many of which are very similar. The accents of Argentina and Uruguay, for example, were heavily influenced by the presence of Italians in those countries. In Puerto Rico's case, Spaniards arrived from many regions within Spain and brought with them their own regional dialects/accents. However, a many European immigrants to Puerto Rico came throughout its history