Salsa and bachata are two different musics from two different islands, and the most common beginner mistake is treating them as one Latin sound. Anthem is Downtown Orlando’s LGBTQ+ bar and venue at 100 Av. Laranja do Norte, and we run free Latin dance lessons every Thursday at 8:30 PM, so here is salsa bachata for beginners written the way we would explain it at the edge of the floor: where the music came from, how to count it, and what actually happens if you turn up alone.
Where salsa comes from
The backbone is Cuban son and son montuno. Add mambo and cha-cha-chá, add Puerto Rican bomba and plena, add jazz horn arranging, and set the whole thing in New York City among Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians and their neighbors. That is salsa, more or less.
The 1950s Palladium Ballroom in Manhattan was the mambo era’s center, with Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez. The word salsa itself is a commercial umbrella that took hold in the 1960s and 1970s, driven largely by Fania Records in New York, whose roster included Johnny Pacheco, Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe, Rubén Blades and Celia Cruz. Plenty of Cuban musicians have argued ever since that salsa is a marketing name applied to music that already had perfectly good names. That argument is still live and is worth knowing about rather than settling.
Where bachata comes from
Bachata is Dominican, guitar-led, and grew out of bolero, son and Dominican country music around the middle of the twentieth century. For decades it was looked down on. It was called música de amargue, bitterness music, associated with rural poverty and cheap bars, and largely kept off respectable radio.
José Manuel Calderón’s recordings in the early 1960s are the usual starting point, and Radio Guarachita was one of the few stations that would play the genre at all. Juan Luis Guerra’s album “Bachata Rosa” in 1990 made it respectable to the Dominican middle class and then to everyone else. Antony Santos and Luis Vargas pushed the guitar style forward, and Aventura, then Romeo Santos solo, took it worldwide. In 2019 UNESCO added Dominican bachata to its list of intangible cultural heritage, which is a formal answer to a century of snobbery.
How the counts actually work
Salsa music is in four, but dancers count in eight. You take three steps and then hold or tap: one, two, three, pause, five, six, seven, pause.
Styles differ in where the break lands. On1, often called LA style, breaks forward on the one. On2, often called New York or mambo style, breaks on the two and sits differently against the percussion. Cuban casino moves in a circle rather than along a slot, and rueda is casino danced in a group circle with called moves. Any of these is a fine place to start. Pick whichever the room you are in is dancing.
Bachata is also in four and much simpler to enter. Step on one, two, three, then pop the hip or tap on four. Repeat on five, six, seven, pop on eight. The basic travels side to side. Dominican style is faster, played closer to the guitar, and full of footwork. The style commonly marketed as sensual bachata is a later European development, and it is worth knowing that it is not what Dominicans mean by traditional bachata.
What to expect at a beginner lesson
Almost everything people are nervous about turns out not to be a problem.
- You do not need a partner. Group lessons rotate, and turning up alone is completely normal.
- The roles are lead and follow, not man and woman. Dance whichever you like, and learn both if you want to improve quickly.
- Wear something you can pivot in. Heavy rubber soles grip the floor and will fight your feet. Smoother soles are kinder.
- You will learn the basic step and weight transfer before you learn a single spin. Spins are built on the basic, and skipping ahead does not work.
- Expect to be bad for a few weeks. Everyone was. Social dancing rewards showing up far more than it rewards natural talent.
- Ask before pulling anyone into a close hold, and take a no as a no. Bachata in particular is danced close, and consent is part of the etiquette rather than an add-on to it.
Thursdays at Anthem
Free Latin dance lessons start at 8:30 PM every Thursday at 100 Av. Laranja do Norte, on the corner of Orange and Washington, and Latin Night Vol 2 with DJ Jery follows from 10 PM, free. The lesson is a real lesson and the night afterward is a real dance floor, which is the ideal order to do this in. Our Página da boate latina no centro da cidade covers the night, the Orlando, o centro da vida noturna latina collects everything Latin we run, and coisas para fazer no centro da cidade à noite covers the surrounding blocks.
Salsa and bachata are learnable in an evening and improvable for a lifetime, and the fastest route in is a free lesson with people who were also beginners recently. Happy hour starts daily at 3 PM, and the Calendário de eventos da Anthem confirms the week.
