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Why did salsa die?

I

Identnut

As I go to see a Gilberto Santa Rosa concert, I ask myself why salsa production died so hard in the 2000's, and I can't really find a conclusive answer.

I can only guess that the songs are too long. A typical pop song goes verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse. Now Regional Mexican songs are doing verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. And let's not even get started on reggaetón. Meanwhile salsa is verse-chorus-verse-chorus and then have a string of refrains and bridges, which is my favorite part of the genre, and makes covers killer, but I imagine that radio organizers aren't crazy about the song durations.

I'm jealous of Regional Mexican. Those guys are really enthusiastic about their traditional music. I miss the Omar Alfanno and Sergio George days, even if I was a kid who didn't even know what a producer or songwriter was.
 
Salsa did not die. The second highest rated music station in Puerto Rico today is all-salsa and was founded (by me) back in the last days of 1978!

But salsa has been displaced among younger people by reggaetón and related rhythms.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Salsa did not die. The second highest rated music station in Puerto Rico today is all-salsa and was founded (by me) back in the last days of 1978!

But salsa has been displaced among younger people by reggaetón and related rhythms.
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And yet that station and its competitor play mostly songs from 30 or 40 years ago. And they have a lot of talk programming. WZNT is a full on news-talk station in the vein of WKAQ and WUNO in morning drive.

Regional Mexican stations in the US have a lot of talk programming too, but the difference is that they play a lot of recents, despite there being some good bands in Colombia, for instance.

I like reggaetón as much as the next guy, and it's a great screenshot of urban life. I just wish that that we didn't have to ditch the backwards-looking, traditional music of our culture. Like country coexists with hip hop.
 
Identnut said:
And yet that station and its competitor play mostly songs from 30 or 40 years ago. And they have a lot of talk programming. WZNT is a full on news-talk station in the vein of WKAQ and WUNO in morning drive.
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So are most music stations today.
Identnut said:
Regional Mexican stations in the US have a lot of talk programming too, but the difference is that they play a lot of recents, despite there being some good bands in Colombia, for instance.
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There is no Colombian "regional Mexican". There is "native" Colombian music, such as Vallenato, but that has no cultural or national ties to Mexico.
Identnut said:
I like reggaetón as much as the next guy, and it's a great screenshot of urban life. I just wish that that we didn't have to ditch the backwards-looking, traditional music of our culture. Like country coexists with hip hop.
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But today's country vs. the country of, let's say, the 80's and 90's is very different. Salsa... and merengue in the Dominican Republic and Cumbia in Colombia and a number of other music forms did not transition into newer forms.
 
DavidEduardo said:
There is no Colombian "regional Mexican". There is "native" Colombian music, such as Vallenato, but that has no cultural or national ties to Mexico.
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I meant Colombian salsa bands. Puerto Rico tilted to reggaetón, obviously, but the city of Cali is very much associated with salsa (most reggaetón artists from Colombia are from Medellín).
 
Identnut said:
I meant Colombian salsa bands. Puerto Rico tilted to reggaetón, obviously, but the city of Cali is very much associated with salsa (most reggaetón artists from Colombia are from Medellín).
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Cali is sub-tropical all year. Medellín is "andino" with perpetual spring weather. That affects lifesyle. You'd never confuse a "paisa" with a caleño.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Cali is sub-tropical all year. Medellín is "andino" with perpetual spring weather. That affects lifesyle. You'd never confuse a "paisa" with a caleño.
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This whole region of South America is so diverse that you wonder why Gran Colombia either didn't stay together or split into more than 3 countries (4 if you count Panama).
 
Identnut said:
This whole region of South America is so diverse that you wonder why Gran Colombia either didn't stay together or split into more than 3 countries (4 if you count Panama).
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Panamá had no land link... for all practical purposes, it still does not.

But Venezuela and Colombia and Ecuador were separate Spanish territories that were centralized out of Quito, Bogotá and Caracas. So there was a tendency to stay together as a country by those territories when Gran Colombia... a construct of Bolívar... broke up.
 
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