ABSTRACT
I first came across a copy of Federico Betancourt's Llegó la Salsa in a Caracas record shop, When I initially purchased the album, I was unaware of its significance. With its campy jacket cover depicting affluent young adults dancing what appears to be more like the twist than salsa, the record simply entered my growing collection as another curio. Later, the album's importance became clear. Produced in June 1966, Llegó la Salsa (Salsa arrived) was the first salsa recording ever made by a South American salsa band (fig. 10.1). Notably, it is also the first salsa album ever to use the actual term "salsa" in its title (Rondón 1980:33). The title of the release is particularly suggestive, for "llegó la salsa" points not only to the arrival of a new sound, but also to the development of a new social reality that was emerging in both Venezuela and neighboring Colombia. When I later shifted my field research site from Caracas to Cali, I discovered that many salsa fans in Cali had original copies of Llegó la Salsa and remembered Federico and his eccentric vocalist, Calavén, with great fondness.
