Adut Akech was born in Sudan (in an area that later became part of South Sudan), but was raised in Kakuma, Kenya. Akech was born on Christmas Day, on the way to Kenya. She was 7 years old when she moved from Kenya along with her mother to Adelaide, Australia as South Sudanese refugees seeking asylum. They also had relatives there. Akech has five siblings.

 Akech was known as "Mary", her Christian second name in Adelaide, as Australian teachers found it difficult to pronounce her name.

Be proud of African names, and stop falling into the trap of saying all African names are hard to pronounce. Like European names are easy

Ichi was a form of facial ritual scarification worn by mainly men of the Igbo people of Nigeria. The scarification indicated that the wearer had passed through initial initiation into the aristocratic Nze na Ozo society, thus marking the wearer as nobility. Echoes of this tradition are found in the contemporary derivative word Ichie, which denotes a member of a class of titled chieftains amongst the Igbo.

The scarification was found among men in the Awka-Nri areas and among a few women in the Awgwu and Nkanu areas. Its wearers were authorized to perform ritual cleansing of abominations and to confer titles on people. People with facial marks were regarded as Nri men and were less likely to be taken as slaves. Other parts of Igbo land may have started wearing Ichi as a result of this. There are two styles; the Nri style worn in the Awka-Nri areas, and the Agbaja style worn in the Awgwu and Nkanu areas. In the Nri style, the carved line ran from the center of the forehead down to the chin. A second line ran across the face, from the right cheek to the left. This was repeated to obtain a pattern meant to imitate the rays of the sun. In the Agbaja style, circles and semicircular patterns are added to the initial incisions to represent the moon. These scarifications were given to the representatives of the eze Nri; the mbùríchi. The scarifications were the Nris' way of honoring the sun that they worshipped and was a form of ritual purification.

Long before it arose in New York City and became an influential style of music around the world, salsa music has its seeds in African rhythms and traditions that came to the Caribbean through the slave trade. Centuries of enslavement caused many cultural changes in Cuba, including the music that led to salsa.

Some people know Bobby Day’s 1958 “Rockin’ Robin” or Michael Jackson’s remake but the origin of the song goes back to the days of slavery.

The majority of the Africans that were enslaved and brought to the Americas were of West African descent where the drum was used as a form of communication. In the Americas, enslaved Africans used the drum in the same way — communicating with the enslaved on distant plantations and ultimately planning uprising.

The enslavers caught wind of this and enacted a ban.

That ban went down in 1740 and soon spread throughout Colonial America.

But the beat is in the heart of the African.

We soon found other ways to imitate the sound of the drum; stomping, playing spoons, washboards, or anything other household item. We also “slapped Juba” or played “hambone” where the body became an instrument where the player slaps their thighs and chest for the drum beat. (How did young boys in 1980s Park Hill, Denver know “Hambone?”)

Although we kept the beat, we lost the tradition, a cultural marker snatched away from us.

While the American enslaver worked feverishly to destroy any vestige of African culture, the Spanish enslaver of Cuba felt that it was in his best interest to allow the enslaved African to maintain his culture. In support of that, the Spanish allowed the Africans to organize Cabildos (or social groups) based on their nation of origin. Thus you had the Abakua (or Ekpe) from the nations known as Nigeria and Cameroon, the Madinga (or Malinke) from Sierre Leone, etc.

Our focus is primarily on the Lucumi, the Cabildo founded for the Yoruba of Benin and Nigeria. This lineage would be the cornerstone and origin point for what is now called “Salsa.” And what is this “Salsa?”

When we spoke of the drum being forbidden among the enslaved Africans in America, we forgot to mention that there was one place that didn’t enact that ban. That place was the port city of New Orleans, Louisiana — some even call New Orleans the Northernmost Caribbean city.

Similar in the way that the Spanish allowed for Cabildos in Cuba, the Louisiana enslavers permitted Sundays off and were okay with the dance and celebration so long as the enslaved African did so outside of the city limits in a place called Place des Negres (eventually known as Congo Square).

After the Civil War, Africans in America were able to get a hold of surplus brass instruments and shortly thereafter began composing music based on the popular music in the Caribbean at the time, the Cuban Habanero. Many say that this is one of the foundations of jazz music itself and the basis of the habanero, the tressilo, can be heard in second lines. Self-proclaimed jazz inventor, Jelly Roll Morton had this to say:

Because of those qualities, a young musical prodigy from Cuba, Mario Bauzá recognized the similarities between jazz and Cuban music straightaway. Bauzá fell in love with jazz having heard it on Cuban radio but it was his trip to Harlem, NYC in 1927 that convinced him that New York was where he wanted to be and jazz was the music that he wanted to play.

Bauzá returned to New York in 1930, immediately found work, eventually landing a gig in the Cab Calloway band. Here he brought on the legend in the making, Dizzy Gillespie, and the two became fast friends. Bauzá attempted to play his “native” music to many in the band but they dismissed it as “country” music. Gillespie, on the other hand, embraced it.

For the next eight years Bauzá played in predominately African jazz bands having seen discrimination from white Cubans. Yet he longed to start a group that incorporated the music from his home and his second love, jazz. He shot this idea to his childhood friend/brother-in-law and in 1939 at the Park Palace Ballroom the Machito Afro-Cubans would debut.

“I am Black, which means my roots are in Africa. Why should I be ashamed of that?” Bauzá said in reference to the name.

Bauzá replaced the drum kit, which at that time had only been around for 20 years, with the hard to find congas, timbales, and toms. “The timbales play the bell pattern, the congas play the supportive drum part, and the bongos improvise, simulating a lead drum”. In the 40s these drums could only be found at Simon Jou’s bakery, La Moderna, locally known in East Harlem simply as Simon’s.

Next, the Afro-Cubans needed a home and they would find that not in Harlem nor the Bronx, but instead in Midtown Manhattan, a club called the Palladium.

Salsa is a set of Afro-Caribbean rhythms fused with jazz and other styles. The truth is that its origins have always been much debated, although as a general rule it is mentioned that it comes from a fusion that came from Africa in the Caribbean when they heard European music and wanted to mix it with their drums

These origins focus especially on mambo, danzó, cha cha chá, guaracha and son montuno, later enriched with instruments such as saxophone, trumpet or trombone.

It was the Cuban exiles and those from Puerto Rico who popularized salsa in New York back in the 1950s. But it wasn't until the last third of this century that salsa dancing began to take off all over the world.

Cuba played a leading role in the origin of salsa. Already in the 1930s, melodies and rhythms from Africa were playing on the Caribbean island. Among them was the danzón, a musical piece acquired by the French who had fled Haiti.

History tells us that it was these first rhythms that were then mixed with rumbas such as guagancó and sonero to begin to create their own Afro-Cuban rhythms, including Afro-Cuban jazz, mambo, guaracha, Cuban son and montuno.

The exquisite melody of these new rhythms soon set in other Latin American countries. Puerto Rico and Colombia were the first to welcome these new sounds from the Cuban country.

However, it was not until their appearance in the United States, and more specifically in the Bronx neighborhood of New York, when these rhythms acquired a greater impact. It was the moment in which new musical instruments were added that today form an indissoluble part of salsa.

The great Cuban musicians who moved to New York along with the wave of these new rhythms created the famous tumbadoras, congas or son montuno, and were responsible for introducing trombones and guaracha.

The Origin of the Salsa Dance Steps

Once salsa was defined as a musical genre in the 1970s, the movements and steps of its dance were collected through a fusion of the African with the European.

These steps and movements of salsa fundamentally reflect the influence of the dances that the Africans brought to the Caribbean and the European dances that have been danced in Cuba since the 1930s.

So much so that the basic steps of salsa are precisely the same steps as the Cuban son, just as it also includes steps that can be seen in rumba, danzón and mambo.

The origin of these variants is in the regions where this style comes from, which are the ones that developed each dance, always under the same umbrella of the term salsa.

It is not surprising, then, that salsa is defined as the result of a series of social conditions and the evolution of a series of rhythms and melodies from Cuba, which were developed and achieved repercussion in the United States.

There are those who assure against this mixture that salsa is neither a rhythm nor a style, but rather a term that serves to represent all the music of Afro-Cuban origin that emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century.

In short, the origin of salsa has always been, and will continue to be, much discussed. American musician Tito Puente was right when he said, "Salsa doesn't exist. What they now call salsa is what I have played for many years, and this is mambo, guaracha, cha cha chá and guagancó".