Salsa y Mas, the Hampton Roads-based Latin jazz band, will headline the Richmond Jazz Society's Virginia Jazz Gala. Tongues know it as a spicy condiment.
Ears know it as one of the spiciest rhythms in jazz and dance music.
The salsa beat, imported to the United States from Cuba, Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America, is one of the most infectious in all of music. It's also one of the most elaborate beats you'll find on a dance floor. Jazz greats from Dizzy Gillespie to Chick Corea have dipped deeply into salsa. The group, one of the headliners of next weekend's Virginia Jazz Gala staged by the Richmond Jazz Society at The Renaissance, was organized 11 years ago as Salsa 90. What all these rhythms and styles have in common, he said, is their mating of Latino and African musical strains.