A salsa night in Vancouver is characterized by an assortment of colors and styles pulsating in partnerships to the Latin rhythms pounding out from the speakers.
New dancers stand around the floor mesmerized by the spectacle on the dance floor.
Whenever I run into one of these awestruck individuals, mixed with enthusiasm and intimidation my first question is how do you like the music? A smile or joyful sharing of how they love the music shows me they have the first ingredient to begin and enjoy their salsa journey. Like a cake needs flour dancers need a connection to the music they hear and is key to motivate the individual to motivate the student to progress and later to interpret and inspire. Salsa is new sound to many, however, like any other form love the music, love the dance.
Alright here is main obstacle. Most other forms of music have an underlying rhythm produced by a single instrument or sound, on other words the beat. This is usually a drum, or bass sound but the main characteristic is that it is constant and repeating. In salsa there is no static constant beat from one instrument, but rather several instruments overlapping one another so the first few counts could be made up, not of a bass or drum combo, but from a bell, drum and piano in conjunction with each other. This complexity in salsa music can sometimes make it hard to identify the beat and count the music. So what do you do?
I remember when I was first learning I could even figure out where the beat was let alone how to start it. I remember having to ask my partner to start for me and then I would jump in. Unfortunately there is no simple answer to this questions, but there is ways you can start to better identify the music and learn to appreciate it. Here are a few easy steps.
1. Find a salsa song you really like - If you do not speak Spanish, find a cover of a salsa song. There are many to choose from and listen to it all the time. Get really good at listening to that one song. If you pick a song you like it should be easy to listen to it all the time. You can find music on my site (see below), ask your teacher, use Sound Hound or another app to identify a song (if you are going out dancing). If the song is in Spanish, translate it and commit to memorizing one sentence a day. This will cause you to understand the music, but also via listening you will be able to anticipate the changes/hits in the music which you can then translate into steps on the dance floor.
2. Request that one song at the club and dance the hell out of it. This is important to get you in the right groove of feeling the music.
3. Take a brake on the next song and just try to rock back and forth to any rhythm you hear. In my experience, when you take the pressure of a partner away and just try to rock t any rhythm people naturally fall into it. Trust me.
4. Start off all the following songs by rocking/grooving back and forth for 10-20 seconds. This will get you on the music and also take away pressure about starting because you are already move and so technically dancing. Followers in this situation, you should also be rocking. You will usually hit the beat before your leader and they can star moving off of your rhythm.
5. After a few weeks with that one song, pic another and repeat. To this day (I have been dancing for almost 10 years) I start most every song with a little left and right rocking. It's fun and puts the social into social dancing.
You don't need to speak Spanish to like salsa, you can listen to English songs to a salsa rhythm, you can find many great instrumentals, or, and this is my favorite, just listen to songs and find the ones with a great chorus to sing/hum along with. This is what loving the music is all about finding something you like and putting that into your dancing.
Ivan Wan
Salsa Dancer & Teacher
Vancouver, BC, Canada
http://www.dance4uvancouver.com/
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