I don’t want to offend anyone or devaluate skills in other genres. This text is solely about the peculiarities of salsa music, which contribute to the development of an outstanding sense of rhythm, when being practiced by musicians.
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” – Unknown
What exactly is sense of rhythm?
The ability to feel the pulse in the music. Passively, by perceiving it and being able to react to it (e.g. by dancing), or actively, when making music, by creating the pulse. Holding a music instrument, you literally have it in your hands whether the music is strong and full of life or whether it vegetates away. We can differentiate two levels of active sense of rhythm.
Macro timing; which is about precision and consistency. This means that the tones and noises in a song are played as precisely as possible in time – according to mathematical criteria. The tempo remains constant, no note is advanced or delayed. (Computers are relatively good at this sort of thing.)
Micro timing; which is about controlled deviations (advancing or dragging) of individual notes from the basic grid. This way rhythmic figures each obtain their own character. The departure from mathematical precision, the supposed imperfection humanizes the rhythm to some extent and makes it carry some kind of feeling. When playing, it is hundredths of a second that decide whether something sounds particularly interesting or just wrong. It can only be felt and to some extent it is also subjective.
Sense of rhythm isn’t something that you have or not, but something that you can learn and train. The sense of rhythm is not only located in the head but to a high degree also in the body. Not metaphorically but literally. The movements with which we react to music or create it when playing instruments are embodied within us as muscle memory. Rhythm is processed cognitively by humans by associating it with movement impulses and sequences – ultimately, this is due to the sense of balance being located in the ear. The same organ that perceives the rhythm is the one that signals us, when it´s time to move.
And what exactly is salsa?
Literally sauce. There are various theories, but generally the name refers to the fact that from New York to Caracas various Afro-Caribbean, African-American and other musical styles (Son, Jazz, Mambo, Chachachá, Rumba, etc.) were thrown in the same pot and mixed together. That sounds extraordinary, but it’s actually like that with most genres of music. As a result, there are various Sub-Genres and intersections with other styles of music.
Classical salsa music since the 1960s is characterized by outstanding singing that, in addition to the usual love themes, tells complex stories or takes up topics of social relevance; lots of harmonic tension; drama; danceability; hard breaks between individual parts of a composition; concise accents in the melody; medium to fast tempos; extensive instrumental and solo parts; virtuosity and a rather peculiar instrumental line-up.
In addition to the singing, the melody is usually carried by wind instruments (especially trombones but also trumpets and saxophones), while the harmonic basis comes from the piano or string instruments (Tres, Cuatro).
Rhythm in Salsa
The rhythm section of a salsa orchestra consists of (double)bass and various percussion, which means that a relatively large amount of people is involved. They include bongos, congas, timbales, cowbells, cymbals, maracas, shaker, wooden claves, guiros and other instruments.
Two special rhythmic features make salsa what it is:
The clave as a basic concept of the rhythmic pulse. While in a large part of popular musical genres (electronic dance music, rock, country, folk music, hip-hop, metal, etc.) the beats in a bar are usually of the same length, in salsa a variation is applied, that structures the bars into parts of unequal length – beats of two and three. Instead of dividing the eighth notes in a bar into 2+2+2+2, for example the bar is divided into 3+3+2.
Visualized, this would looks like this:
Predominantely:
3+3+2:
A repeating basic rhythmic pattern is still present, but it is more complex. Generally various constellations composed of beats of twos and threes are possible (also stretched out over two bars) and being applied in salsa music.
Standards are:
3/2 Son-Clave:
2/3 Son-Clave:
3/2 Rumba-Clave:
2/3 Rumba-Clave:
Polyrhythmics: It doesn’t end with one pulse. Based on the clave, salsa music usually contains numerous independent figures, which interact with each other and create a complex rhythmic foundation by playing together. The rhythms vary along the individual parts of a composition which also leave room for improvisation. The percussion instrument usually play lots of fills and accents. Sometimes the orchestra is openly flirting with chaos in the process.
Visualized, in its most simple form, for example it would look like this: 
You grow with your challenges
Resulting from this circumstances there are a number of reasons and indications, that playing salsa music promotes the development of an outstanding sense of rhythm:
Having grown up with the clave as the basic rhythmic concept, musicians learn not to lose themselves, although the length of the accents within each bar are varying. This requires per se a sense of rhythm that is fundamentally sound.
There is no rhythmic center in a salsa band (e.g. drums), but rather the rhythm is created collectively in a decentralized manner by a large number of people. In order to fit in appropriately as a single instrument into a constantly changing collage of polyrhythms, musicians need sensitivity and circumspection, a sharpened sense of rhythm, so to speak. They have to be able to listen to each other very well so as not to step on each other’s toes. Remarkably, the percussion in a salsa orchestra is characterized by staying very much in the background and fulfilling its task efficiently but without attracting too much attention. Since most percussion only uses a limited range of sounds, learning the instruments is all about perfection of nuances.
The great salsa singers rarely shine with the range and volume of their voices (even though they certainly could). They often operate within of just few tones (sometimes on the verge of chanting), but still create interesting melodies by being very creative with the rhythmic placement of their tones. They don’t shy away from rhythmically very advanced figures. At salsa concerts, usually the singers additionally are dancing and using handhold percussion – permanent rhythmic multitasking.
The wind instruments, as the most distinctive melodic instruments, not only are playing complex rhythmic figures, but usually do so with several instruments in unison. This means that they play identical melodies together as if with “one voice” in order to give them more power. The performance of this technique highly depends on precise sense of rhythm (macro-timing and micro-timing) of those involved.
The harmony instruments in salsa music usually do not use long standing tones, but mostly arpeggios. In this technique, chords are broken into individual tones and distributed over the bar instead of being played all at once. The effect of a harmony is created by playing the individual notes quickly, rhythmically evenly one after the other. This way, the rhythmic foundation is given even more contour. Indeed in salsa the harmony instruments can be regarded as integral part of the rhythm section to.
Since the bass in salsa music has the low frequencies all to itself (in the absence of a bass drum from the drum kit, for example), it receives more presence in a relative sense. The low frequencies are in this respect special, since they also consciously can be perceived as vibration by humans. Being solely responsible for the part of the music that makes it “bouncing”, the bass in Salsa rarely plays complicated melodies, but rather plays rhythmically concise.
Last but not least, in addition to the music salsa culture includes dancing as a central element. Thus, musicians are dealing per definition with an audience that cultivates a sense of rhythm for their art of its own and is accordingly demanding. Since salsa is mostly danced as a couple dance, there is also a strong need for coordination, which is based on the sense of rhythm of those involved and a strong pulse in the music.
