Easily the most successful form of music named for a condiment, salsa transcended its humble beginnings as a marketing hook to become a powerful influence on music and culture worldwide. A blend of African rhythms and European harmony born in Cuba and developed in New York City, salsa is a truly international music encapsulating the Latin American experience—and you can dance to it.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, Spanish settlers brought Africans to Cuba to work as slaves, mostly on sugar and tobacco plantations. Afro-Cuban music developed out of traditional West African musical forms, replicated on homemade or Spanish instruments. Some elements stemming from African religious practice, including call-and-response singing and polyrhythms, remain dominant features of Afro-Cuban music to this day, and santería, a typically Cuban blend of African religions and Catholicism, is still a popular musical topic. By the beginning of the twentieth...