This Rough Guide explores the heady influence of psychedelia on salsa, from the fuzzy tropical guitars of the sixties and seventies to today's cutting edge bands experimenting with weird and wonderful psychedelic sounds.

Psychedelic rock and salsa came of age together in the mid to late 1960s under parallel socio-cultural circumstances of upheaval, unrest and experimentation within the respective youth cultures of their core audiences; the best known apotheoses being Santana in rock and Eddie Palmieri in salsa. Aside from the obvious Afro-Cuban influences in both artists, the historical connections between the psychedelic and salsa may not be that readily obvious to the casual observer, but there are quite a few, and this compilation aims to shed some light in this regard, at least musically.