Vancouver's salsa revival is a family affair

Vancouver's salsa revival is a family affair, and it is filling dance floors that had been quiet for the better part of a decade.

The bands leading it are multi-generational in the literal sense. Parents who played the city's rooms in the 1990s are on stage with children who learned the arrangements at home, and the repertoire moves between salsa dura, son and funk-inflected originals.

Dance culture is doing the promotion. Weekly classes feed the socials, the socials feed the live nights, and the venues have learned that a floor full of dancers spends the whole evening rather than one set.

Rafa Torres's band has become the anchor, but the more interesting development is depth — there are now enough working horn players and percussionists in the city to staff several bands on the same weekend.

The constraints are familiar: rehearsal space is expensive, large ensembles are hard to pay properly from a door split, and touring a ten-piece band beyond the Lower Mainland rarely covers costs.

What sustains it is the audience's age range. A room that holds teenagers and grandparents at the same time is not a trend cycle, and the bands programming for it are planning in years rather than releases.