Salsa Jazz Instrumental
Where dance salsa meets jazz improvisation: extended solos over a montuno, harmony a dance band would avoid, and how to tell the two traditions apart.
Listening properly, a bar with an attentive room, or work that benefits from something more interesting than ambient.
Why this works
This is salsa's rhythm section with jazz harmony and jazz length on top. The consequence worth knowing is that the pianist plays a fixed montuno rather than comping, so the soloist rides a moving floor instead of being followed by the band.
If the trumpet plays for three minutes and the chords keep moving underneath, you are in this territory rather than in dance salsa.
The music behind it
Salsa jazz: where the dance floor stops and the solo starts goes into what this material actually is, rather than when to use it.
The rhythm
The latin jazz guide covers the tradition in full.
Frequently asked questions
When would you put this on?
Listening properly, a bar with an attentive room, or work that benefits from something more interesting than ambient.
Where does the music itself live?
On the GowiththeFLOW channel on YouTube. This site links to videos and shows their thumbnails; it does not host audio and runs no player of its own.