Good evening dear readers and blog followers!

Happy day of all lovers to you all!

So, for the special day that shall very soon be upon us, I have prepared a special topic containing much more than the usually featured single artist & single song.

The topic for tonight is salsa romantica, and especially salsa romantica from Cuba (surprising, isn’t it? 😉 ) .

Throughout my 10 years of salsa dancing and enjoying Cuban music, I stumbled upon the topic of “salsa romantica” more than once, and what surprised me time and time again was the confusion most people (including DJs!) have about what salsa romantica is and what it is not.

So, what is “salsa romantica”?
For a song to be associated with this sub genre of “Salsa” music, it must answer 2 very simple conditions:
1. it has 2 be a “salsa” song
2. it has to be romantic, meaning, the lyrics must have something to do with the topic of love.

AND THAT’S IT !!!!!

Nothing else is needed for a song to be classified as such!
It doesn’t have to be of a specific tempo or range of BPMs (it can be slow or fast), doesn’t have to contain or not contain this or that specific rhythm (it can be based on both Son and Rumba, for example), doesn’t have to be of any specific length (it can be 3 minutes long, 7 minutes long, or anything in between!), etc.

As long as it’s a “salsa” song (which can be Son, Rumba, Songo, Timba…), and the subject in that song is romantic in some way, the song is a salsa romantica.

Unfortunately, and quite strangely (to me, at least), people very often tend to concentrate on the “romantic” criterion and forget the “salsa” criterion, classifying all sorts of romantic songs (from pop and commercialized covers of songs from the radio and MTV to certain Reggaeton compositions and also rock, Cumbia and who knows what else…) as “salsa romantica”.
While it is true that those compositions are romantic, they have absolutely nothing to do with “salsa” and any genre of Afro-Cuban (or Afro-Caribbean) music, and thus, do not belong to this category, and have no business being played at “salsa” venues.

Anyways, my post would be damn incomplete if I would not provide good, clear examples of what “salsa romantica” is, wouldn’t it?
So, especially for this day, I made a youtube playlist full of my favorite Romantic Son, Songo and Timba songs from Cuba!
The list if by no means complete, and will be expanded over time.
By the way, if you have any favorite romantic Son \ Songo \ Timba compositions from Cuba and you would like them to become a part of my youtube playlist, feel free to post them in the comments to this post.

So, here is the playlist.
Disfruten!