Salsa dura

Salsa dura, or hard salsa, is the aggressive, band-centered strain of New York salsa that flourished in the 1970s under #Fania Records# and its affiliated labels. Built on Afro-Cuban son and mambo foundations, it emphasizes long arrangements, forceful brass riffs, virtuoso piano and percussion solos, and socially realist Spanish-language singing delivered over driving clave-based dance grooves. Singers such as *Héctor Lavoe* and bandleaders including *Willie Colón*, *Eddie Palmieri* and *Ray Barretto* made it the sound of the Latino barrio. It is defined against the softer, ballad-oriented salsa romántica that displaced it commercially in the 1980s.