Welcome to my new HSA Founder’s Blog. My name is Mikko Kemppe and I founded this academy in 2011 when I moved back to my home country Finland from San Francisco where I studied salsa with some of the great Bay Area salsa legends like Luis Aguilar from Couture Dance Academy and John Narvaez from Salsamania.

"So what style of salsa dancing do you teach?” was to me a little bit surprising question when I moved to Finland. Not because I was not aware that there, of course, are many different stylistically different salsa dance styles, I just did not expect to hear it as one of the first questions when I first begin visiting to observe the Finnish salsa dance scene.

When I lived in San Francisco around the years of 2007 - 2010 there were probably over 100 salsa instructors and numerous different dance schools and teams. However, most of them did not usually really try to categorize their teaching styles to a certain very precise box. But rather most companies simply described or categorized their teaching mainly based on the timing of the salsa, not really so much on the stylistic differences. Within the scene it was quite widely known that Salsamania training teams taught salsa On1 and On2, Couture Dance Alliance taught mainly On2, PB & G taught On1, RicaSalsa taught salsa On5, Montuno Dance Co On1, Mambo Romero On2, etc. Surely, there were also many stylistic differences amongst teachers and the schools, and of course I personally had many passionate discussions about those differences with many of the school owners, teachers and performers.

However, when I moved back to Helsinki and I answered to the question about which style of salsa I teach at the Helsinki Salsa Academy with an answer: “Salsa” my answer was often met with strange looks, with a follow-up question that went something like: “But is it the crossbody style, or a line style, or the LA style?”. These were terms I had never heard before (except, the latter, of course).

Upon a short study on the history of Finnish salsa scene development, I quickly realized that in Finland when many dancers were using the word “Salsa” when referring to the dance they were more precisely talking about the Casino dance or Cuban style of salsa dancing. I realized that in Finland the word: “Salsa” had become almost synonymous with the Casino dance most likely because one of the first schools in Helsinki (and Finland) was started by a Cuban. Thus, when some dancers in the scene talked about Salsa, they were actually referring to the Cuban style of salsa dancing or to the Timba music.

So what then is Salsa? When I lived in Louisiana where I started my salsa dance career initially the only “salsa" people there knew was the sauce served usually with chips at the local Mexican restaurants. A true story! It was in Mexican restaurant El Chile Verde (The green chili) that actually became my first teaching location. It was there where I began teaching salsa just because I just felt so much passion for the dance and music (not the sauce, although I like that also). I realised that since there were no salsa teachers or any kind of Latin dance community in the small city I was living in, I decided to take it upon myself to build one. I knew that if I wanted a community and find like minded people to dance with I had to take it upon myself to build one. Initially when I started students could leave a donation if they felt they really learned and enjoyed their time as money was not the motivation (nor did I think my skills were good enough either). So initially I was serving salsa alongside chips, but I already digress.

Around the 1960s & 1970s in New York the term/concept: “Salsa” was invented as a catchy commercial term and idea to try to sell more Latin music. This is what most researchers as well as dancers and musicians seem to believe to be the origins for the term and a concept of Salsa. In the 1970s in New York, there were already many different types of rhythms and music styles played by the musicians: mambo, cha-cha, son, rumba, among others. Some say it was the Fania Record labels and it’s founder Jerry Masucci and Johnny Pacheco who invented or were the catalyst for starting to popularize the catchy term: “Salsa”, a tasty sauce including many different spices all mixed together. They represented many of the best Latino musicians and they needed to find a good commercial term to sell more records.

One of our dear friends of the Helsinki Salsa Academy and a living legend of the Latin music Julio Romero, whom played with many of the best Latin musicians at the time like Larry Harlow (You can see Julio playing at 2:00 mark), Ray Barretto, etc. remembers a conversation where Celia Cruz was initially trying to promote the idea of using the word: “Azucar” (which means sugar) as the new commercial name to use to describe the Latin rhythms. Some musicians like Tito Puente, perhaps one the most famous Latin musician of all time nicknamed as the king of Mambo, was against inventing new terms and existing Latin rhythms and argued we should simply keep calling Mambo as Mambo, Son a Son and not try to give existing rhythms a new name. Nevertheless, the concept of Salsa was born in New York and as we now know it has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Many argue that salsa music also did take different distinct qualities; for example, it got took influences from Jazz and thus many argue that it did become its own legitimate music genre. Meanwhile, the dance in United States also got influence from many other dances like swing, hustle (especially in New York), ballroom, among many others and became its own genre of dance, later systematised further and popularised by instructors like Eddie Torres in New York and the Vazquez brothers in Los Angeles, for example.

Of course, many dancers do like to categorize their style of salsa dancing in a much more precise way. Our dear friend of Helsinki Salsa Academy and 24-time champion Liz Lira from Los Angeles often in many of our discussions together explained the differences of LA style salsa from Los Angeles and how it differs from New York style of Salsa, one of our dear friends and colleagues Jimmy Yoon, owner of the Washington DC-style salsa academy calls their style and mix of Salsa On2 often danced to Timba music as DC style salsa, a colleague and a 10-time world champion Oliver Pineda sometimes likes to call his style Aussie Style salsa (Oliver lives in Sydney, Australia), one famous salsa dancer Leon Rose from London calls his style the London style salsa, in Miami many dancers whom mix Casino, Rumba, and other Cuban dances to Salsa calls their style Miami style salsa, dancers in Puerto Rico calls their style Puerto Rican style salsa, in Cali, Colombia dancers refer to their style as Cali style salsa, one of the most famous dance school owners in Italy Fernando Sosa calls his style Sosa style salsa, and so on.

Are there some stylistic differences between all of these different styles? Of course, there are. Can all of them be called salsa? Absolutely. What those differences are exactly is already a much harder question, a topic for another discussion at another time. With some of the dances like the Cali style salsa, Casino (or Cuban salsa), and New York Style salsa, for example, perhaps many of the stylistic differences are much easier to distinguish and explain, while with other styles like the DC style, London Style, Aussie style and Miami style perhaps the differences get already harder to distinguish and the lines between each of them gets blurrier.

So but what then is Salsa? Well, at Helsinki Salsa Academy we, of course, explain that before the Catholic Church came to Finland and erased much of our history, we all knew that it was the Finnish Vikings before the time of Christoffer Columbus who brought the rhythms like Tango to Argentine and Salsa to Cuba (Ok, I got sidetracked to joking here, I will try to stay on track, or in Salsa terms on my lane ;)).

Joking aside, our HSA salsa training teams are currently mainly divided by the timing. We teach salsa on the first beat of the music On1 and/or on the second beat On2 depending on the training or performance team. In addition to this, we do then have training teams for Casino, Bachata, Cha-Cha, Afro-Cuban Rumba and also other Afro-Cuban dances. We believe that the more thoroughly we can understand the history of the dance and music the better dancers we also become.

Everyone agrees that Salsa is definitely an umbrella term that encompasses and includes many different styles of dances and musical rhythms and it can be used in many ways when we talk about it in the context of the music and dance. My personal view resembles perhaps closely to many other dancers like Luis Aguilar, John Narvaez, Jorge Martinez, Enrique Jarquin, Yasbek Cervantez, Johnny Vazquez, Rodrigo Cortazar whom I have listed and had conversations along many others who is the proponent of the view that also as a salsa dancer it is best to study and to learn to appreciate the rich history of salsa in its multifaceted nature. Thus, I am also a proponent of the idea that to be called a salsero(a) when we are referring to a dancer it would be recommend for you to to learn, study, understand and appreciate the rich and vast history of the different music and dance styles and to attempt to gain proficiency in many of its different rhythms and different dance styles.

In the end just like a carpenter the more tools and abilities you have in your toolbox the easier it is for you to build an amazing house or as a dancer to really express yourself on the dancefloor. Or like a painter who wants to paint a beautiful picture, you need not only to become extremely proficient in using your paintbrush and to master some styles of painting, you also need to learn to appreciate all the colors in the palette to really create a vibrant painting. And the same goes for Salsa, ultimately it really is a wonderful rich tool for you to express and even get in touch with what lies inside of your soul through its music and movements.