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As if 2020 hadn’t already caused enough pain, a beloved, vanguard of Salsa, Cano Estremera, passed away in a hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico on October 28, 2020 after a long battle with multiple health complications. He was 62 years old and had endured a double lung transplant in late 2018 in response to a diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis. It’s yet another tragedy in a long list of tragedies this year has given us. According to himself and most of the Latin American music scene, Cano was the greatest Salsa improvisor, ever to grace the stage. Singing with the likes of Celia Cruz, Bobby Valentin, Ruben Blades and others, he dominated lyrical improvisation like few ever could.

Before there were rap battles, there were literal salsa duals where singers would improvise lyrics to see who was most talented, who could lob the best insults, who sang the most complex and poetic rhymes. Arguably, Cano Estremera was the best of all time and spent his life raising awareness of Salsa as an art form, especially when the genre was losing notoriety to other musical styles like Reggaeton, Merengue and Bachata.

Born Carlos Enrique Estremera Colón, in Santurce, Puerto Rico, he was raised in Barrio Obrero and the government housing project Las Casas. His parents were too poor to give him a stable upbringing and allowed Cano to stay with a retired Army soldier and his wife, who were childless, and took a liking to Cano, raising him with a strict moral, Roman Catholic code. Even still, because Cano was an albino child in a rough neighborhood, he was bullied relentlessly. For this reason, he often said he was a unique product of his upbringing; an idiosyncratic mixture of moralism, poverty, bullying and an unquenchable curiosity. The bullying, in particular, he felt was formative and instructive, giving him a sense of strength of character until he says he became the bully, which could always be seen in his braggadocio, swagger and confidence on the stage.

Cano wanted to be a neurosurgeon, a doctor, or a lawyer but, in Las Casas, the only avenue available to him was music not higher education. Surrounded by talented musicians in Barrio Obrero, all “geniuses without an education” according to Cano himself, he became part of a revolutionary new group called Los Pleneros del Quinto Olivo and La Orquesta Mulenze 76, bands playing Bomba y Plena with unique percussive arrangements, which included every member of the musical group acting as singer.

By 1978 he met the famous Bobby Valentin, a Puerto Rican bassist and band leader. In his self-titled album, Bobby Valentin made Cano Estremera the lead singer for the band, propelling the group to fame with the hit song “La Boda de Ella”. They went on to record six albums together, which included such danceable salsa classics as: “El Caiman”, “El Muñeco de la Ciudad”, and “Me Quede Con Las Ganas”.

In 1984, Cano and Bobby Valentin parted ways after a disagreement. Valentin was in the process of starting his own label and wanted Cano to headline his very own band alongside other acts with the record label. But Cano, who was uninterested in having his own band at the time and felt comfortable with the way things were, disagreed with Valentin. Describing the situation in this 2014 interview while on tour in Peru, Cano said it was due to his lack of faith in Bobby’s logistical capacity for growing a Salsa label that he decided to leave Bobby and finally start his own band. He goes on to explain, in the same interview, that he had noticed his own notoriety was not where he felt it ought to be throughout Latin America and he wanted to sing his own songs, not someone else’s.

It would be two years before Cano’s first solo album, “El Niño de Oro”, came out in 1986, lead by the hit “Viernes Social”. His most popular song with more than three million downloads to date, according to Spotify, is “Amame en Camara Lenta”, a romantic Salsa tune that came out on his “Salvaje! ’88” album released in 1988. Cano would churn out eight albums and various singles, many of them self-produced.

It was unfortunate that he embarked on his solo career at a time Salsa’s cultural influence in Puerto Rico, and Latin American in general, was waning. At a time when Reggaeton and Merengue were taking over Puerto Rican airwaves, Cano fought hard to keep Salsa relevant and was determined, not only to move Salsa forward as a musical genre, but to carve a unique name for himself within its musical space. The combination of an expansive vocabulary, brash fearlessness on stage, and a deep knowledge of Salsa’s Jibaro origins, Cano began to show off his improvisational prowess.

Cano also frequently combined jazz scat singing with his improvised lyrics on live performances. With a conviction that to consider yourself a Salsa singer, one has to be able to freestyle, Cano set out to prove himself the undisputed champion of lyrical improvisation, calling himself “El Dueño del Soneo” (The Owner of Freestyle).

The first time he tried free-styling was in a concert in Guanica, Puerto Rico and when Cano tells the story, he says it was essentially a game, a dare, in which, mostly out of boredom, the band challenged him to freestyle as many unrepeated, improvised verses as he could. He got to 100 verses. At the next concert, 120. Soon he got to 200. He says each time he achieved a new record, he was mentally exhausted from the effort.

He began to challenge other troubadours to lyrical duals where he would often win, though his improvisations during those duals included insults, which caused rifts between him and other artists the way dis tracks in American Hip-Hop or Reggaeton do now. It was obvious controversy would follow Cano, not only because of the content of his improvisations, but because as the freestyle king, he became a target for others looking to take his crown. His improvisations often lead to censures in other Latin American countries followed by apologies.

At a concert in Cali, Colombia, Cano improvised a few lines that alluded to throwing uncooperative women in a “casa de pique” (an abattoir). Cano was banned from ever returning to the city of Cali due to the public outcry.

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Cano Estremera was influenced by the likes of Justo Bentancourt, Hector Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano, Ruben Blades con Willie Colon, Ismael Rivera, y Marvin Santiago. It seemed his life was completely dedicated to the success and elevation of Salsa as an art-form, which to Cano implicitly meant all true Salseros would share in that success as well—so long as he was always the king of the free-styling.

His music often spun humorous stories about difficult subjects, spanning from infidelity to his own condition as an albino man. Drawing from many different influences he tried to impose a rigor on Salsa while knowing that he was constantly experimenting with the form; and he was the first to admit his experiments were far from perfect. Cano said, “We also cannot tie ourselves to traditionalism…I consider myself a vanguard singer and I am conscious of the fact that the greatest errors are the ones I commit because I’m experimenting.”

Cano was able to admit his faults even as he shined a spotlight on every one else’s during improvisations, and he explained how he was able to do this saying, “To get to the point where I can criticize other…you first have to leave your own body, take an astral voyage, look at yourself from the outside, to determine what you truly are, then you can talk about others…”

Over the last three years, he developed a condition common to some albinos, that of pulmonary fibrosis. The severity of his illness left him with little choice but to undergo a double lung transplant in November 2018, which he described as “exchanging one disease for another.” The transplant, performed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a resounding success. But he was left paralyzed for the rest of his life. After fighting an infection since last May, the 62 year old Cano passed away in the hospital where he had been sequestered for over a week. He is survived by his wife, Yamira Arce, and his three children.

Since his passing, there has been an outpouring of grief all across Latin America—from Panama to Peru, Argentina to Colombia, from New York City to Los Angeles, and most of all in Puerto Rico. Other members of Salsa royalty from Ruben Blades to Gilberto Santa Rosa have expressed their condolences on social media.

Over a 40 year period, Cano consistently had his finger on two different pulses: what the people wanted to hear and what Salsa herself wanted to say. Cano Estremera felt the responsibility of listening to both pulses and doing the best he could to be the best that ever was, “…because sometimes you see yourself in the position of having been commissioned, not because you wanted it, but because it was your fate, and what you do with that responsibility will eventually be weighed by history…” History will credit Carlos “Cano” Estremera with helping Salsa not become folk music, rarely listened to. His bombastic personality not only made him the King of Improvisation but kept Salsa at the top of Latin American music.

Como si el 2020 no nos hubiera hecho suficiente daño, el querido vanguardia de la Salsa, Cano Estremera, falleció en un hospital de San Juan, Puerto Rico el día 28 de Octubre del 2020, después de una batalla larga con complicaciones de salud. Tenia 62 años, había sufrido un transplante de ambos pulmones en el 2018 como tratamiento para fibrosis pulmonar. Es esto otra tragedia, de muchas tragedias, que nos a brindado este año. De acuerdo a el mismo Cano, y la mayoría de los músicos Latino Americanos, Cano era el “Dueño del Soneo”. Había cantado con Celia Cruz, Bobby Valentin, Ruben Blades, y muchos otros, dominando la improvisación como pocos pudieron.

Antes de las batallas entre raperos, salseros tenían duelas de soneo a ver quién era el mas talentoso, quien podia tirar los mejores insultos, quien cantaba las rimas más poéticas. Posiblemente, Cano Estremera era el mejor improvisador de cualquier época y trabajo toda su vida para crear conciencia de la Salsa como forma artística, ya que el genero estaba en competencia furiosa contra estilos de música como el Reggaeton, Merengue y la Bachata.

Nació Carlos Enrique Estremera Colón, en Santurce, Puerto Rico. Fue criado en Barrio Obrero y el caserio Las Casas. Sus padres no tenían los recursos para darle a Cano una vida estable, y permitieron que los padrinos, un soldado retirado y su esposa, que no tenían hijos, cuidaran a Cano bajo reglas rectas y Católicas Romanas. Aún, el hecho de que Cano era un niño albino, en un vecindario duro, fue “bullied” todos los días. Por esta razón, Cano dice que el fue un producto único de su crianza; una mezcla idiosincrática de moralismo, pobreza, intimidación, y una curiosidad sin fin. En particular, la tiranía que Cano sufrió por ser albino, él sintió que le había dado fuerzas de carácter hasta que él se hizo el tirano, algo que se ve en la manera seguro en que Cano se pavoneaba.

Cuando niño, Cano quizo ser neurocirujano, o doctor, o abogado, pero en Las Casas, la única manera de superarse era la música—no había dinero para la universidad. Rodeado por músicos, que Cano mismo decía que eran “genios sin educación”, en Barrio Obrero, el se hizo parte de un agrupación revolucionario llamado Los Pleneros del Quinto Olivo y La Orquesta Mulenze 76. Estas bandas tocaban Bomba y Plena con arreglos de percussion únicas, y cada miembro cantaba al unísono.

Para el 1978 Cano se encontró con el famoso Bobby Velentin, bajista puertorriqueño y líder de su propia orquesta Salsera. En el álbum auto-titulado, Bobby Valentin le dio voz principal a Cano y la orquesta se hizo aún mas famosa con la canción “La Boda de Ella”. Juntos grabaron seis discos, incluso los clásicos bailables: “El Caiman”, “El Muñeco de la Ciudad”, y “Me Quede Con Las Ganas”.

En 1984, Cano y Bobby se despidieron después de un desacuerdo. Valentin, queriendo empezar su propia marca, le pidió a Cano que hiciera una orquesta bajo la empresa de Valentin, parte de su nueva estrategia, según Cano, para crear mas orquestas y músicos. Pero Cano, que en ese momento no le interesaba tener su propia orquesta, y sintiéndose cómodo donde estaba, le dijo que “no” a Valentin. Describiendo la situación en una entrevista de farándula en Peru, Cano dijo que el no tenia confianza en las habilidades logísticas de Bobby para hacer una empresa cuyo propósito era mercadear el sonido Salsero. Al fin, Cano decidió irse a solos para lidiar su propia orquesta. En la misma entrevista peruana, Cano dice que el había notado que, la música que el había hecho con Valentin no era muy conocida en regiones de Latino America que el esperaba ser famoso ya. Ademas, no quería seguir cantando las canciones de otros.

Pasaron dos años antes de que Cano tirara su primer disco solo, “El Niño de Oro”, que salió en el 1986, con el gran éxito “Viernes Social”. La canción más popular, hasta el sol de hoy, de acuerdo a Spotify, con más de tres millones de usuarios, “Amame en Camara Lenta”, una canción romántica que salió en su álbum “Salvaje! ’88” grabada en 1988. Cano tiró ocho discos y canciones más, muchas ellas producida por Cano mismo.

Desafortunadamente, Cano embarco en una carrera a solas mientras la Salsa perdía influencia cultural a nivel Latino Americana. En esa época surge la invasion de el Reggaeton y Merengue en Puerto Rico. Cano lucho para que la Salsa siguiera siendo pertinente, y no solo quizo avanzar las tradiciones Salseras como genero, si no también hacerse famosísimo. La combinación de su vocabulario expansivo, su manera impetuoso en la tarima, y su conocimiento profundo de las origines Jíbaras de la Salsa, Cano comenzó a proclamar sus talentos de improvisación.

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Cano también utilizaba el canto “jazz scat” con sus líricas improvisadas en vivo. Con la convicción que para ser clasificado como un salsero, tenias que ser sonero, Cano quizo ser el campeón, y eventualmente él se nombro “El Dueño del Soneo”.

La primera vez que el trato de sonear para romper record, fue en un concierto en Guanica, Puerto Rico y cuando Cano hace la historia, el lo cuenta como si la ocasión fue un juego, un apuesto, hecho porque y la música se estaba poniendo aburrido. La orquesta le hizo el reto de ver cuántas soneos improvisado Cano podia hacer sin repetir un verso. Llego a los cien versos. En el proximo concierto, llego a 120. Pronto, llego a los 200. Cano admite que cada vez que superaba el reto, se quedaba completamente exhausto.

Pronto empezó Cano a desafiar a otros cantantes, entrando en duales donde ganaba el aunque sus improvisaciones venían llenos de insultos, causando tiraeras con otros artistas iguales a los que se forman entre los raperos hoy en día. Era obvio que la controversia le iba perseguir a Cano, no solo por el contenido de sus improvisaciones, si no porque, al proclamarse el rey del soneo, se postulo por la posición de blanco para el paredón. Sus improvisaciones ocasionaron controversias que forzó a Cano pedir perdón por video.

En un concierto en Cali, Colombia, Can, “en medio de uno de los soneos, hizo expresiones degradantes hacia las mujeres: ‘A la que no me lo dé (refiriéndose a la parte íntima de la mujer), la llevo a la casa del pique’.” Cano jamas pudo regresar a Cali después de esa controversia.

Los referentes más importantes de Cano Estermera: Justo Bentacourt, Hector Lavoe, Cheo Feliciano, Ruben Blades, Willie Colon, Ismael Rivera, y Marvin Santiago. La vida de Cano fue dedicada completamente al éxito y ascenso de la Salsa como forma artística, y con esa interés quizo actualmente elevar a todos los Salseros verdaderos—siempre y cuando el fuera el rey del soneo.

Su música siempre tenia un sentido de humor sobre temas difíciles, desde la infidelidad hasta su propia condición como hombre albino. El trato de imponer una estructura a la Salsa mientras el trataba de experimentar con la forma musical. Cano dijo, “…tampoco nos podemos amarrarnos al tradicionalismo…yo me considero un cantante de vanguardia y estoy consciente de que los errores mas grandes los cometo yo porque estoy experimentando.”

Cano podia admitir sus defectos aun mientras le tiraba a los demás durante sus improvisaciones, y el explico como podia hacer las dos cosas a la vez, “…para poder llegar al punto en que yo pueda criticar a los demás—porque primero te tienes que salir de tu de tu [sic] cuerpo, hacer un viaje astral, mirarte desde afuera, para poder determinar lo que tu eres, entonces poder hablar de los demás…”

How High Is Too High?

As a professional dancer, one of the major concerns you should have is being able to work the dance floor all night long. Essentially, there will be different reasons why this could take place. It could be from performing at a beautiful concert, festivals, congress or multi-day dancing. Regardless of the reason, getting the perfect pair of dancing shoes is the only way to make it a success. However, dancing comfortably for hours can not only be attributed to skill and practice, but also, to the heel length of your shoe.

Now, there are many other factors to consider, like the size and height of the dancer. This is so because according to research, the taller & heavier you are, the more difficulty you would have, dancing for longer hours. Also, beginners might not necessarily be skilled at performing for long hours. So, you should consider these before picking out the perfect heel length.

To help you understand more, this article will be broken down into different sections;

What Heel Size Is Best For Beginners?

For dancers who are just starting their professional career and are unsure of what heel size to get, it is safer to stick to a heel size of 1.5″. A sturdy and balanced ballroom or salsa dance shoe with a heel length of 1.5″ is absolutely perfect for beginning dancers. Also, it is a great choice for dancers with physical limitations and those, who aren’t great at walking in heels. With that variation of low heels, you can dance a long time without strain and discomfort. Hence, you will certainly be comfortable after hours of dancing.

Professional Dancers

If you’re a professional and have had quite a history of working in heels, then it’ll be easier to opt for higher heels. Start off with a mid-range heel length of 2.5″- 3″. This heel length is the perfect choice for talented dancers, who are quite experienced with dancing for hours. However, this number can jump all the way to 3.5″- 4″, depending on how great you are. A perfect example is the megastar, Beyoncé Knowles, who is known for her amazing and mind-blowing shows. How do you think she delivers excellent dance sets every single time? Well, she is a world-class performer, but her shoes play a huge role in the entire process.

So Beyoncé is about 5′ 7″, which is taller than the average woman and could cause her to get tired easily at every performance. However, she always seems to ace every show without expressing any form of fatigue. According to one of her stylist, she wears shoes with a heel length of 4¼” and heel thickness at ¾”. This dimensions offers her full support and comfort. Even though it might seem scary, once you’ve begun performing, you will get comfortable with higher and thicker heels after a while.

In summary, when picking out a dancing shoe for a show that requires you to be on your feet all night, think comfort and ankle support first. Start off using shoes with lower and thicker heels, especially as a beginner and gradually transition into a higher heel. This will help you perform better and longer without any form of injury.