Latin
Rumba
Rumba is both a family of music rhythms and a dance style that originated in Africa and traveled via the slave trade to Cuba and the New World. The so-called rumba rhythm, a variation of the African standard pattern or clave rhythm, is the additive grouping of an eight pulse bar (one 4/4 measure) into 3+3+2 or, less often, 3+5 (van der Merwe 1989, p.321). Its variants include the bossa nova rhythm. Original Cuban rumba is highly polyrhythmic, and as such is often far more complex than the examples cited above.
Cha-Cha
Originally known as the Cha-Cha-Cha. Became popular about 1954. Cha Cha is an offshoot of the Mambo. In the slow Mambo tempo, there was a distinct sound in the music that people began dancing to, calling the step the "Triple" Mambo. Eventually it evolved into a separate dance, known today as the Cha Cha.
The dance consists of three quick steps (triple step or cha cha cha) and two slower steps on the one beat and two beat.
Mambo
The history of modern mambo begins in 1938, when a danzon called "Mambo" was written by Orestes and Cachao Lopez. The song was a danzon, descended from European ballroom dances like the English country dance, French contredanse and Spanish contradanza, but it used rhythms derived from African folk music. The contradanza had arrived in Cuba in the 18th century, where it became known as danza and grew very popular. The arrival of black Haitians later that century changed the face of contradanza, adding a syncopation called cinquillo (which is also found in another contradanza-derivative, Argentine tango).
By the end of the 19th century, contradanza had grown lively and energetic, unlike its European counterpart, and was then known as danzon. The 1877 song "Las alturas de Simpson" was one of many tunes that created a wave of popularity for danzon. One part of the danzon was a coda which became improvised overtime. The bands then were brass (orquestra tipica), but was followed by smaller groups called charangas.
The most influential charanga was that of Antonio Arcano, who flourished in the late 1930s. It was Arcano's cellist, Orestes Lopez, whose "Mambo" was the first modern song of the genre. His brother, bassist and composer Cachao Lopez, is often described as "the inventor of the mambo".
In the late 1940s, a musician named Perez Prado came up with the dance for the mambo and became the first person to market his music as "mambo". After Havana, Prado moved his music to Mexico, and then New York City. Along the way, his style became increasingly homogenized in order to appeal to mainstream American listeners.
Following in the footsteps of Prado came a wave of mambo musicians, such as Enrique Jorrin. Some experimented with new techniques, such as faster beats and the use of side steps in the dance; this latter innovation formed the foundation of chachacha, and was the result of Jorrin's experimentation. Chachacha was very pop-oriented, especially after Arthur Murray further simplified the dance. Mambo remained popular throughout the United States and Cuba until the 1960s, when a combination of boogaloo and pachanga (both modified forms of mambo) were created.
Some of New York's biggest mambo dancers and bands of the 50s included Mambo Aces, Killer Joe Piro, Paulito and Lilon, Louie Maquina, Cuban Pete, Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and Jose Curbelo.
By the mid-1950's mambo mania had reached fever pitch. In New York the mambo was played in a high-strung, sophisticated way that had the Palladium Ballroom, the famous Broadway dance-hall, jumping. The Ballroom soon proclaimed itself the "temple of mambo," for the city's best dancers--the Mambo Aces, "Killer Joe" Piro, Paulito and Lilon, Louie Maquina and Cuban Pete--gave mambo demonstrations there and made a reputation for their expressive use of arms, legs, head and hands. There was fierce rivalry between bands. The bands of Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and Jose Curbelo delighted habitues such as Duke Ellington, Bob Hope, Marlon Brando, Lena Horne and Dizzy Gillespie, not to mention Afro-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Upper East-Side WASPs and Jews and Italians from Brooklyn. Class and color melted away in the incandescent rhythm of the music. Even jazz musicians such as Erroll Garner, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt fell under the mambo's charm, as can be heard on the many Latin recordings they made in the 1950's.
In 1954 the cha-cha-cha, a kind of mambo created by the Cuban violinist Enrique Jorrin, a member of the Orquesta America Charanga, swept through Havana and New York. Easier to dance than the mambo, with a squarish beat and a characteristic hiccup on the third beat, it spread to Europe, before being dethroned in the early 1960's by the pachanga and then the boogaloo.
Mambo returned to prominence in the 1995 when Guinness used Perez Prado's track Guaglione in an advertising campaign featuring the dancing of Dublin actor Joe McKinney. The song was released as a single and reached number 2 in the UK charts. In 1999, Lou Bega released a remix of Mambo No. 5, another Prado original, which became a hit across Europe.
Salsa
Salsa is a partner dance form that corresponds to salsa music, however it is sometimes done solo too. The word is the same as the Spanish word salsa meaning sauce, or in this case flavour or style.
According to testimonials from musicologists and historians of music, the name salsa was gradually accepted among dancers throughout various decades. The very first time the word appeared on the radio was a composition by Ignacio Pineiro, dedicated to an old African man who sold butifarras (a sausage-like product) in Central Road in Matanzas. It is a song titled Echale salsita, wherein the major refrain and chorus goes "Salsaaaaa! echale salsita, echale salsita." During the early 1950s, commentator and DJ "bigote" Escalona announced danceables with the title: "the following rhythm contains Salsa." Finally, the Spanish-speaking population of the New York area baptized Celia Cruz as the "Queen of Salsa."
Salsa is danced on music with a recurring eight-beat pattern, i.e. two bars of four beats. Salsa patterns typically use three steps during each four beats, one beat being skipped. However, this skipped beat is often marked by a tap, a kick, a flick, etc. Typically the music involves complicated percussion rhythms and is fast with around 180 beats per minute (see salsa music for more).
Salsa is a slot or spot dance, i.e., unlike Foxtrot or Samba, in Salsa a couple does not travel over the dance floor much, but rather occupies a fixed area on the dance floor. In some cases people do the Salsa in solo mode.
Samba
Samba developed as a distinctive kind of music at the beginning of the 20th century in Rio de Janeiro (then the capital of Brazil) under the strong influence of immigrant black people from the Brazilian state of Bahia. The title "samba school" ("escola de samba") originates from samba's formative years. The term was adopted by larger groups of samba performers in an attempt to lend acceptance of samba and its performance; local campuses were often the practice/performance grounds for these musicians and "escola" gave early performers a sense of legitimacy and organization to offset samba's somewhat controversial social atmosphere.
"Pelo Telefone" (1917), by Donga and Mauro Almeida, is generally considered the first samba recording. Its great success carried the new genre outside the black ghettos. Who created the music is uncertain, but it was most probably the work of the group around Tia Ciata, among them Pixinguinha and Joao da Bahiana.
In the 1930s, a group of musicians led by Ismael Silva founded the first Samba School, Deixa Falar, in the neighborhood of Estacio de Sa. They transformed the musical genre to make it fit better the carnival parade. In this decade, the radio spread the genre's popularity all around the country, and with the support of the nationalist dictatorship of Getulio Vargas, samba became Brazil's "official music".
In the following years, samba has developed in several directions, from the gentle samba-cancao to the drum orchestras which make the soundtrack of carnival parade. One of these new styles was the bossa nova, made by middle class white people. It got increasingly popular over time, with the works of Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
In the sixties, Brazil was politically divided, and the leftist musicians of bossa nova started to gather attention to the music made in the favelas. Many popular artists were discovered at this time. Names like Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho, Velha Guarda da Portela, Ze Keti, and Clementina de Jesus recorded their first albums.
In the seventies, the samba got back to radios air waves. Composers and singers like Martinho da Vila, Clara Nunes and Beth Carvalho dominated the hit parade.
In the beginning of the eighties, after having been sent to the underground due to styles like disco and Brazilian rock, Samba reappeared in the media with a musical movement created in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. It was the pagode, a renewed samba, with new instruments, like the banjo and the tantan, and a new language, more popular, filled with slangs. The most popular names were Zeca Pagodinho, Almir Guineto, Grupo Fundo de Quintal, Jorge Aragao, and Jovelina Perola Negra.
Nowadays, samba is still one of the most popular musical genres in Brazil.
Bolero
Bolero is an "American Style" Dance, which was introduced to United States in the mid-1930's. At that time, it was danced in its classical form, which was performed, to a constant beat of drums.
Originally a Spanish dance in 3/4 time, it was changed in Cuba initially into 2/4 time then eventually into 4/4. It is now danced as a very slow type of Rumba rhythm. The music is frequently arranged with Spanish vocals and a subtle percussion effect, played at a tempo of 20 to 25 mpm (measures per minute).
The Bolero is a modification of the Fandango, in which all the objectionable parts are omitted; but all the gracefulness is retained. It is has been said, that should the Bolero be played in the judicial halls or churches, the very judges and clergy could not refrain from joining in the general excitement of the dance.
This is a left turning dance based on a "slip pivot" (a slip pivot is a rotation of the body on the ball of the supporting foot creating a pivot either forward or backward). Bolero has body rise only (no foot rise). This coupled with the slip pivot and slow dreamy music gives Bolero a very slow, smooth, powerful, romantic look and feeling. The foot patterns are similar to Rumba but have a very different feeling.
The Bolero is often called the Cuban "Dance of Love", because of its slow and dreamy tempo, and it's beautiful melodies.
Although you may hear Rumba music which may seem slow enough to be a Bolero, the music is actually very different in tempo.
Merengue