Salsa on the World-Wide-Web

General links

• Salsaweb is the biggest worldwide salsa website. They are west coast based but their city guides cover the globe. For instance, their section devoted to Belgium is really huge. This is where to look if you don't know where to go dancing next weekend.
• SalsaNewYork is the definitive source for salsa information in the New York City area.
• New York Mambo This site is similar to the above one: they have a calendar of upcoming events and list the places to be in the Big Apple. The big difference: they do it in Spanish, and they are not so picky about the way you dance your mambo.
• justsalsa.com "A Web Magazine Dedicated To Latin Music, Dance, and Culture" with lots of pictures and downloadable movies, with an emphasis on New York and the salsa world congress in Puerto Rico.
• MambOn2 has a huge gallery of pictures taken at New York's most popular salsa party's. Have a look, book a flight, and check them out in person !
• TOsalsa.com is about salsa in Toronto. Because of the large number of interesting articles, it should attract a much wider audience.
• Salsa Fix A salsa news center. Updated frequently. Nothing published on the web or in a newsgroup and of interest to a die-hard salsero escapes the maintainers of this site. And you can contribute yourself.

Our favorite teachers in NY

• Eddie Torres is the godfather of the NY salsa scene. They call him the Mambo King. Most NY based teachers started as one of his students. His dance company still is one of the best. The way we dance is very much inspired by this man's teachings.
• Descarga Latina Dance Co. is Nelson Flores and friends. Nelson is without any doubt the most energetic and inventive dance teacher that we have ever met. His classes are fun and exciting.
• Delille Thomas is the grand master of style and technique. He can make you move parts of your body you didn't know you had. He can teach you how to move your arms without looking like a goose at takeoff or how to do a double corkscrew turn without landing flat on your face.
• Mambo with Mario, Mario Diaz that is. He has been around for a while, as a performer and teacher and now he has his own website.
• Abakua Latin Dance Co. is one of the newcomers on in the New-York mambo scene. It is the dance company lead by Frankie Martinez, a promising new teacher, choreographer and performer.
• Nydia Ocasio finally got her own website. This lady is one of the few teachers who really go back to the basics: the music. She teaches mambo and also rumba by making you listen and understand the music.

History and theory of Latin music and dance

• Salsa 101 is a collection of excerpts from a few papers published by The American Museum of Natural History in NYC a couple of years ago. Very interesting for any student of Latin music history.
• SalsaMagazine is the website managed by Izzy Sanabria, a name that should ring a bell for everyone who is interested in the Fania era of salsa music. He was the designer of many record sleeves and posters (of which you can find reproductions on this site) and he was the Fania All Stars "official" MC. In this last function he was responsible for popularizing the word "Salsa" as a name for the genre. But read for yourself what he has to say about this story and many other contemporary issues (like the Cuba vs. Puerto Rico thing).
• Understanding Salsa/Mambo Timing A very clear exposition of the timing controversy in the mambo dance.
• Street Dance Australia is big site stuffed with interesting articles about the history and technical aspects of salsa, mambo, cha-cha-cha and even merengue and samba.
• Clave: The African Roots of Salsa A very interesting but somewhat difficult article about one of the basic rhythmic patterns of salsa. Written by a rather famous jazz musician.
• Latin rhythms is about Latin percussion. All important rhythmic patterns that are at the basis of salsa and Latin jazz are discussed. Clave, tumbao, cascara, ... If you have the right hard- and software installed, you can even listen to some sound bites.
• Proper Dance Floor Etiquette is not about how to ask a lady do dance in a gentlemanly fashion but about the basic principles everyone should follow so that no one gets hurt on the dance floor. Mambo is not kickboxing !
• The Lead is a very clear and concise article on what leading is all about. Guys - and also ladies - if you ever read anything about the technique of dancing, it simply has to be this short piece (except from the stuff on this website of course).
• SalsaRoots, The Heart and Soul of Salsa History. A website dedicated to the acknowledgement, preservation and promotion of the Afro-Latin music/dance traditions which have shaped the evolution of modern day Salsa.
• Salsa Dance Tips from the Latin Crew. Very useful, not only for beginners !

Latin music sites

• Descarga is the ultimate source for information on salsa and Latin jazz CD's. They are actually a web-based mail-order company, but their prices can be a bit over the top. Use this site as a catalogue. You can subscribe to their mailing list if you want to know all about new CD releases.
• AMG All Music Guide is exactly what the name implies : a huge encyclopedia of music, all kinds of music. But they do their stuff so thoroughly that I can really recommend this site also for such a specialized genre as Latin music.
• Charanga Flute Kings is a site dedicated to one of our favorite styles of salsa music - charanga - and the typical sound of it's characteristic instrument - the flute.
• Ritmoteca is an MP3 site hosting nothing but Latin music. As far as we know it is the only one of it's kind.
• WBAI 99.5 FM is a NYC based noncommercial radio station with an excellent Latin music program Ritmo Con Ache that is on from 12h00 to 16h00 EST every Sunday afternoon. You can listen to them over the Internet using Realaudio.
• WFDU 89.1 FM is another NYC based noncommercial radio station. Their Latin music program is called Que Viva La Música and it is on from 12h00 to 16h00 EST every Saturday afternoon. You can listen to them over the Internet using Windows Media Player.
• Latin Beat is the brand new website of one of the most influential periodicals dedicated to Latin music. Their website still has to grow a little but their top-20 lists are certainly worth a visit.
• Music of Puerto Rico is dedicated to exploring the full breadth and depth of Puerto Rican music. Most interesting is the extensive list of artist biographies. From Omar Alfano over the Palmieri brothers and Tito Puento to Victor Manuelle and Gilberto Santa Rosa. But what are Ruben Blades and Celia Cruz doing here ?
  Update: hey, at least someone is reading these pages, and this time it is no one less than the editor of this excellent site. He points out that the answer to my question can be found right here. Thanks for letting us know !
• Spanish Music Lyrics is for those of you who like to sing along with the music while dancing. Part of the TOsalsa.com website.

Friends around the globe

• República del Mambo is a site created by the Leuven, Belgium based dancer/teacher/DJ Changuito. He was one of the first on-2 dancers in Belgium and he actually was one of the founding members of the Nuyorican Co.
• Salsa Maastricht lists information on salsa events in the neighborhood of Maastricht and the Dutch - Belgian border region.
• Latin Music Antwerp cultural website with general information about the Latino world in Antwerp, its neighborhood and the Netherlands
• salsasite.com The homepage of a Norwegian on-2 dance teacher. So you thought those Nordic people were immune to Latin music ? We Nuyoricans know better ...
• ¡salsabor! is the homepage of the Paris based teacher Cliford Jasmin and his assistant Valérie Mitchelson. They are trying to spread the on-2 gospel in France and apparently with great success. You can read an interview with Cliford on the SalsaNewYork website
• cubapleasure is a website set up by our friend Julien, a real Cuba and salsa afficionado and above all: an excellent photographer.
• MamboFateegz Have a look at this website if you are wondering where the girls dancing above the crowds during the 2001 indoor Antilliaanse Feesten got those sexy "On 2" tops (see the pics).
• Sonbacan is a Belgium based band of mixed European and Latin American origin that brings you Afro-Cuban and Caribean music: salsa, merengue, son, cumbia, bolero, guajira. With 11 musicians, they claim to be the largest Latino band in Belgium.
• www.latinos.be This is website targeted to the Latino community of Brussels. Their Agenda Cultural is the most interesting part: as far as I can tell it is very up-to-date and complete. Oh yes, you better speak some Spanish when visiting this site.
• www.axxes.be every Friday and Saturday, the place to be in Antwerp for Salsa thanks to DJ Pepe.
• www.salsa.be The website of our friend and co-teacher Jeroen.
• www.tierralatina.be Information about Latin American culture in Belgium
• www.salsaevents.be is where you will find where to go if you want to dance tonight

And finally, no links page is complete without this one.