The history of Broadway itself goes back to the middle of the 18^th century, although musicals wouldn’t be born until 100 years later, with The Elves being widely considered Broadway’s first long run musical in 1857.

However, The Elves didn’t have the identity of a traditional musical today, so the official title goes to The Black Crook, which premiered in 1866 and ran for nearly 500 performances despite being over five and a half hours in length.

Musical Comedy

While there were various types of musical developing and taking place in New York at the end of the 1800s, musical comedy was by far the most popular genre, both with audiences and writers who were looking for their best opportunity to breakthrough and become big.

A Trip to Chinatown and A Trip to Coontown were among the biggest hits of the 1890s, the former holding the long run record at over 600 performances for nearly 30 years. Many of the hit songs featured in these musical comedies were written by the leading songwriters and publishers of the day in the world-famous Tin Pan Alley.

20^th Century; Competing with Cinema

Broadway continued to grow in the early part of the 20^th century, and took on a new feeling of glitz and glamour as theatres began using brightly lit signs and facades, leading to it becoming known as ‘The Great White Way.’

Despite the continued popularity of Broadway musicals, the emergence of motion pictures during the 1920s and 1930s proved challenging, while the Great Depression would also hit the industry hard. Broadway began to recover during the Second World War; during the war years, a number of wartime dramas were performed at numerous theatres.

The Golden Age of Broadway & Decline

Following the release of Oklahoma! in 1943, Broadway had cemented a reputation for producing songs that instantly became both local and nationwide hits. You could almost guarantee that the latest musical would be responsible for radio station playlists for years after their release.

The 1950s was Broadway’s most successful era, and many of the elements of 50s musical theatre production remains in place today. The following decade saw a decline in the popularity of Broadway, however, with theatres closing and the whole area becoming run down. Broadway wouldn’t recover from this until well into the 1980s.

Broadway Today

Since the industry picked back up in the 80s, there has been no looking back. Part of the success of Broadway is that seeing a show is considered a ‘must do’ activity during a trip to New York, a city which hosts almost 50million tourists every year.

Today, the longest running Broadway show is The Phantom of the Opera, which opened on January 26, 1988, and is still running at the Majestic Theatre today.

Image Source: Broadway Tour

Like hip-hop, salsa music emerged from New York City during the mid-to-late 1970s. However, the genre was actually popular for 30 years prior to that, just without the term salsa being applied to it. The Cuban community in the city, particularly Afro-Cubans, were mainly responsible for its popularity, with mambo bands playing regularly at venues across the city in the 1940s and 1950s.

At this time, there were strong links between the musical communities of the United States and Cuba, but the partial and then near total US embargo against Cuba, in 1960 and 1962 respectively, severed these links and prevented the evolution of music in Cuba from reaching and influencing the mainland.

Salsa in the 70s

The 70s was when the term salsa was first used, and when the style became popular across the Americas. From New York, salsa travelled quickly along the east and south coasts, before catching on in Mexico, the northernmost South American countries, and several of the Caribbean islands.

Innovation in salsa was popular throughout the 70s; Willie Colón, for example, introduced new instruments from Puerto Rico and experimented with both rock and jazz styles in his music, while native sounds from Panama and Brazil would also feature prominently.

Celia Cruz was already a massive star in Cuba and achieved the same status in the US, becoming known as ‘The Queen of Salsa’ and becoming a leading player not just in salsa, but also on the fast evolving general music scene.

The 1980s: When Salsa Goes Global

Having become popular throughout the Americas in the 70s, the 1980s saw salsa migrate to Europe, Africa, and Japan, as well as the southernmost Latin American nations. As a result, salsa started to become more diversified as various influences took hold and the genre was interpreted and developed in a variety of ways.

African and Cuban salsa would develop unique styles and become genres all on their own, although Cuban music was already popular in Africa from the mid-20^th century onwards. Elsewhere around the world, other genres to be evolving at the time, including hip-hop, R&B, and soul, would start to influence salsa as well as borrow ideas from this genre, creating blurred lines between these styles that can still be seen in some artists work today.

1990s Salsa to Today

During the late 80s, the meteoric rise of hip-hop prevented salsa from becoming a mainstream genre. In fact, salsa artists struggled for any type of publicity or success at this time, even in the Americas where it remained widely appreciated.

This changed in the mid-90s, however, when acclaimed producer and pianist Sergio George moved away from an exclusive salsa approach and began to mix salsa with popular music to create successful commercial tracks. Many of George’s ideas were seen as controversial and being ‘disloyal’ to the tradition of salsa, although many recognised them as necessary steps to raise awareness of the genre and make salsa appreciated globally once more.

Today, salsa continues to evolve, with ‘Latin house’ music being popular in Central and South America, while the leading salsa artists continue to enjoy some mainstream success across the Americas.

Image Source: klem@s