Popular Music of El Salvador

The famous music in El Salvador uses flutes, scrapper, gourds, marimba, drums and tehpech, as well as the more recently imported guitar and other instrument. The Colombian mainly and other Caribbean, South America and Central American music infiltrated the country, especially salsa and cumbia for instance, the very popular favorite La Somora Dinamita is a Colombia salsa bands with one Salvadoran singer (Susana Velasques). One of the first Cumbia bands to reach the international success; it is credited with helping to fame the genre throughout the Latin America, and the world.

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The political disorder tore the country apart in the early 20^th century, and the music was often concealed, especially those with song of the native influences. During 1940 for instance, it was decreed that a dance known as Xuc was to be the national dance that was initiated and led by Paquito Palaviccini’s and his group international Polio. That was one of the several groups he led during and the early 40s, his other hit was known outside the country, the carnaval En San Miguel was usually known to the whole country as the first Salvadoran band that will go on to receive several awards in the years to come. Paquito Palaviccini, who has being known outside the Central and South America, made tours to Cuba, Aires where Paquito studied and other Latin American countries. The motivation came to Paquito to create the Xuc and El Baile del Torito in a tour they had in Cuba. 1960s saw to the arrival of American and British pop  and rock, motivating like-minded Salvadoran groups while the following two periods were dominated by a wave of famous genres from the Latin America, mostly folk-based composer and songwriter genres such as Nueva Cancion and Chile. This is a new kind of Salvadoran rock music that was known as Guanarock (portmanteau of Guanaco, an animal closely related to the Andrean Llama ad the Alpaca, a misgiven name by the Spanish for a person from El Salvador), which motivate the groups like Ayutus.

The Dominica merengue and the Bachata became more famous, in the last ten years, the reggaeton and the hip pop has powered the majority of the Salvadoran youth, and has formed a group like the Mecate and Pescozada, also the former reggaeton producer such as Wilfredo Rivas (DJ Emsy) and Jose Castaneda (Mambo King) had worked with vary well-known reggaeton and hip pop includes DJ Flex, Cheka, the Black Eyed Peas, Nicky Jam, El Torito and several others.

Salvadoran cumbia is related but it is different from the Colombia cumbia, which is better known throughout of the El Salvador Chanchona ensembles, which is led by a pair or a single violin that are famous, especially among the settler community in the Washington D.C region.