Who invented Salsa? Puerto Rico sometimes lays claim, but the truth is that Salsa epitomises Cuba’s history and culture. Like carnaval and dance, Cuban music is an eclectic mix of styles which are deeply rooted in the island’s history. Danzon was brought originally by the French fleeing from nearby Haiti to Cuba’s Oriente province, around the city of Santiago de Cuba in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was eagerly taken up by the locals. Soon it soon mingled with Rumbas of African origin and Son, the music of the Spanish-Cuban campesions. These small farmers, many of them first or second immigrants from poor parts of Spain and the Canaries, developed a style which mixed the music of the Spanish troubadour (sonero) with African drumbeats. Similar styles developed in other countries like the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Puerto Rico and in the twentieth century the Latin communities of New York and later Florida added their own ingredients. "Salsa" was originally coined in New York, though the dance and music did not originate there. But the term became popular as a nickname referring to a fusion of music from several countries which mingled Rumba, Son, Guaracha, Mambo, Cha cha cha, Danzon, Charanga and Merengue and then mixed all of that with jazz and Big Band to create the syncopated sound which became known as Salsa Salsa can be played with the Spanish guitar of the original soneros, along with the trumpet, bass and piano from jazz as well as African instruments such as the conga and bata drums, maracas rattle, guiro (a long, ribbed gourd rasped with a stick) and claves (sticks banged together). Carmen Miranda and Celia Cruz perhaps made the music famous, but Salsa has been popularised in Europe by the hit film 'The Buena Vista Social Club' and the modern, Salsa influenced music of Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez. Of course the intensely musical Cubans have kept many of their more traditional styles like Son and Mambo as well as developing new sounds such as Timba. Cubans have also embraced and developed other new Latin styles such as Reggaeton, a fusion of Jamaican reggae and Hip Hop with Latin music which originated in Panama, but which has been taken up with gusto by Cuban musicians at home and abroad.