Spring 2018 Course: Salsa, Music & Culture with Professor Birenbaum Quintero
CFA MH 563: Salsa, Music & Culture
Prof. Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Wednesdays at 2:30-5:15 in 808 Commonwealth B36
Open to all BU students
Trying to define salsa is a formidable task. Tito Puente famously hated the term, which he described as a kind of sauce that comes in a jar. A broader definition would note that salsa emerged from the music of African slaves and Creole dance in Cuba, became a commercial popular music in Havana, was transformed in the hands of Puerto Ricans in New York City, contributed its DNA to jazz and rock in the United States, was taken up from Colombia to the Congo to Cambodia, and spawned entirely new variations back in Cuba. It can be tied to black social mobility in Cuba, the political struggle of New York Puerto Ricans, and women’s reclaiming of their bodies. This course, structured as both an academic seminar and a performance course, explores the various historical contexts, social struggles, and musical forms that would become salsa music, and that salsa has come to influence around the world. Students will both read about, listen to, discuss, and perform musical forms from a number of exemplary case studies, potentially including salsa from a number of settings and time periods (salsa dura, boogaloo, timba), Afro-Cuban traditional and religious drumming (rumba and batá), Cuban peasant music (changüí), Puerto Rican traditional music (jíbaro, bomba, and plena), Cuban and international Latin popular music (son, danzón, mambo, bolero, charanga), Cuban-influenced jazz and rock n’ roll, and related international genres such as Congolese rumba and Colombian salsa-currulao fusion.
No pre-requisites. Musical experience welcomed but not required.