"The Romantic Salsa"

By the 1980's, the Salsa world experienced fierce comptetition with the Dominican merengue particularly because of the syncopated nature of Afro-Cuban based music and the complexity of the dance styles. Merengue was simply easier to dance to, and appealed to massive audiences; it is a basic two-step. Plus, many of the merengue bands put on impressive shows with very large ensembles, including entire brass sections doing somewhat acrobatic choreography along with the singers, and other attention-grabbers. In order to appeal to the large Latin American market, the Salsa industry inevitably made some stylistic changes which, in many people's opinion, created an almost watered-down version of the music which focused on the sugary, banal and insipid themes of romantic pop music. With the so-called Salsa Romantica (romantic salsa), the tempos slowed to an almost mechanical pace, as if performed with a metronome or sequencer, and the music seemed to lack the fire and energy of its predecessors. Often songs were sung in English, which considering the subject matter--didn't quite match the more lyrical and syncopated nature of the Spanish Language. But sales grew, and so did wide-spread interest in a music which was previously conceived as too complex or syncopated. Well into the 90's, this offshoot of the Salsa music genre continues to gain popularity, and has generated a number of young "pop" stars targeted at the younger, record-buying market. Technically, one could identify a few musical characteristics of the Salsa Romantica genre, among them the tremendous influence of American pop music, in which the harmonic palette includes chord progressions and modulations not normally associated with Afro-Cuban based music. The challenge lies in playing montunos and tumbaos over these chords, and the end result has usually been the use of arpeggiated montunos, as well as the use of additional keyboards and synthesizer to add "pads" andcounter lines (much like in pop music).No necessarily related to the romantica genre is a rhythmic development which seems to have occurred around the 1980's and is unique to patterns in three-two clave direcction.