PBS will be having a documentary about history and culture of Latin Music in the USA. Not only will they air the documentary episodes on TV, but they are making them available for viewing online through the PBS.org website starting October 13, 2009. Their first chapter will focus on the birth of what is called 'Boogaloo' and how it ties to the origins of salsa music and dance.

Will salsa dancing finally rise from the underground to hit mainstream television? Shows like Dancing with the stars and So You Think You Can Dance have been on the rise, but even in these popular dance shows, salsa gets a brief cameo at best. So what, or who, would it take for salsa dancing to arrive to our TV screens in mainstream media?

After you get a Mac, a lot of fun things happen. I decided to put my compusic (computer+music) skills to some more good use an make a few interesting Salsa tracks with a program called GarageBand. While I was at it, I made three different versions of this salsa dance soundtrack. Here is the first one: an interesting salsa music trumpet solo with some mixed in jazzy piano, cowbell and congas. Let me know what you think and of course - enjoy!

I found this article very interesting.... it explains why at the beginning of learning salsa, its difficult to multi task your motor skills. This is also scientific proof of why learning to follow is much easier than learning to lead... Learning to follow requires the use of the sense of touch (which according to the published research - the brain can easily handle because it is directly connected to the motor processing part of the brain). However leading requires the images of the actions (planning and forming motor actions) be kept in the leads head followed my multiple motor skill actions - which the brain cannot easily do at the same time. (it has to keep track of how the leads feet are placed, timing of music, planning the next move, how the move should look, the follows feet, the hands to lead the move...etc). It says that the reason we are able to do this is because by forcing our brain to perform all these activities repeatedly, it ends up turning all these different tasks into just one. So as an example, crossbody lead - instead of thinking, ok, step forward, step side, open up, lead the lady across, and come back together on 7 and basic step... we just think - cross-body lead (so we don't have to "plan" for a cross-body lead just let our muscles execute it) and our brain is then free to do 'other' things such as adding styling and flavor.