This article is not going to go in depth with the music, because I am not a musician, I don’t understand all the nuances in the music, how and why the music is put together, and quite frankly, I don’t care; in my opinion it is not important (although some of you will disagree). This article is how I relate to the music as a dancer and to do that I am going to talk about my journey through salsa.

Twelve years ago, I saw salsa for the first time in my life and all I saw was the dance, I don’t remember what song was playing or even the genre, I just saw people dancing and knew then that’s what I wanted to do. It took another four years for me to hear salsa again and that was about six months after I arrived in Dubai.

Throughout those early months and even years, I don’t remember much about the music, and I couldn’t hear the differences between the various rhythms, although the one thing I do recollect is that I didn’t like any of it, but I loved the dance, so as long as the DJ played something that resembled salsa, I was happy.

Slowly over the years, I started to appreciate it so much more, I was finding songs that I really liked and traveling to Salsa Congresses/Festivals really opened my mind to some of the music that was out there. This was the first time I really started enjoying the music, admittedly it helped that they were actually playing salsa and not the mixture of Latin rhythms that I was used to, but it did give me a newfound love for the music, which has only got stronger over time.

Two years ago, we decided to introduce a salsa night with the intention to play music that we really appreciated and to educate our students on some of the great Mambo and Latin Jazz tracks that have been produced over the years.

We have taken a lot of criticism and have had very little support from many people by playing this type of music, with the exception of the few educated salseros that have traveled and understand the style of music we prefer. Most request us to play commercial Latin, Romantica, and even Salsation which is incredibly monotonous to dance to. As for me, it is all about the tempo changes and the breaks, which most beginners and intermediates struggle with at first, although, helps to improve their dancing over time.

Two years on and we have so many people that love the music that we play and would go to our night over some of the others; we still get people complaining and some refuse to even attend the night, but quite frankly we are not going to change for them. There are many places that play other types of Salsa here in Dubai, so let us have one night where we can really enjoy the music that motivates us to dance.

So if you want to dance to our kind of music that may be a little different to your usual tastes, try our salsa night, and you never know after a few weeks or even months you might just start to like it, and if you don’t, there are plenty of other salsa nights for you – except of course if you are one of our students, you are contractually required to be at Zinc every Saturday night!!!! :-p