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 by the horn-based groups in New York. By the early 1960s, there were several charanga bands in New York, led by future salsa icons Johnny Pacheco, Charlie Palmieri, and Ray Barretto. Mongo Santamaría also had a charanga during this period. The pachanga was popularized by Orquesta Sublime and other Cuban charangas. The pachanga was the last Cuban popular dance to take ahold in New York's Latin community. The U.S. embargo against Cuba (1962) halted the two-way flow of music and musicians between Cuba and the United States. The first post-Revolution Cuban dance music genre was the short-lived, but highly influential