L.A. Finally Developing Taste for Salsa : Pop music: City doesn’t rival New York yet, but Saturday’s second Hollywood Bowl show is a good start.

Los Angeles is the capital of the popular music world, and its Latino population is greater than that of any other U.S. city. Despite these ingredients, the Southland has yet to become a bona fide center for salsa, the made-in-New York blend of Afro Cuban rhythms that’s considered the ultimate Latin dance music.

It is getting better, though.

“I remember that 30 years ago, there was nothing for us to do in Los Angeles,” said the legendary percussionist, composer and bandleader Tito Puente, one of the participants in the second annual Hollywood Salsa and Latin Jazz Festival on Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl. “But now, this city has changed so much and there is a lot more salsa activity.”

The term salsa (Spanish for sauce ) has been used in songs and albums since the early 1920s, but modern salsa developed in the late ’60 and early ‘70s. Actually, the term is almost offensive to Cubans who claim (not without reason) that salsa is nothing but Cuban music.

But there’s plenty of disagreement on that point.

“Now they say that,” observes Rudolph Mangual, editor of Latin Beat, the leading magazine of Afro Cuban music in Southern California. “But when this whole thing started the Cubans were saying, ‘That is not mambo, that is not guaracha. ‘ So there is a difference--salsa is a colorful, electrifying sound, much faster and danceable than traditional Afro Cuban music.”

With three well-defined centers--New York, Puerto Rico and Colombia--salsa reached its creative and commercial peak in the mid-’70s. After the dissolution of the music’s key record label, Fania, in the early ‘80s, things began to decline a little. But in the last few years salsa has experienced an influx of young faces--Jerry Rivera, Ray Ruiz, Marc Anthony, India and others who are attracting large, young audiences. And Los Angeles has joined the new spirit.

“Los Angeles offers salsa clubs every night of the week,” said Mangual. “The Mayan on Friday night is attended by up to 1,500, and the average smaller club by up to 500.”

Still, any comparisons with New York are premature.

“The immigration here is completely different,” said Ruben Blades, the Panamanian who collaborated with Willie Colon to take salsa to new dimensions in the ‘70s. “The Cuban and Puerto Rican communities here are much smaller than in New York, and Mexican culture is deeply rooted here.

“Also, in New York any poor person could take the bus or the subway to go dancing, but in Los Angeles it is much harder to go places if you don’t have a car. To make things worse, the commercial radio here won’t play salsa.”

Blades dismissed the notion that people of Mexican heritage are not open to salsa.

“C’mon, Damaso Perez Prado became ‘the Mambo King’ in Mexico,” Blades observed. “Mexicans are as open to salsa as everyone else, but their own music is always going to be more popular here.”

Saturday’s Hollywood Bowl concert is the city’s ultimate salsa event, with a lineup featuring some of the best of salsa’s legends and new faces:

Tito Puente & his Latin Jazz All Stars (including such illustrious players as Charlie Sepulveda, Mongo Santamaria and Dave Valentin) will make what could be one of its last appearances in California--Puente has announced that he’ll retire within two years.

Blades, who is recording his last album for Sony before changing gears for a new sound, will lead his band, Son del Solar, probably for the last time in California.

Marc Anthony, the hottest and most interesting of salsa’s new generation, is one of many hip-hoppers who switched to salsa. He is perhaps today’s most underrated salsa star.

“I never claimed to be a classic sonero ,” said the New York-born Puerto Rican, discussing the hard-line traditionalists who consider him and his peers a commercial concoction. “All I’m doing is going back to my roots. I defy anyone to prove I don’t feel what I sing.”

Also on the bill are Celia Cruz, still the Queen of Salsa after all these years; Venezuelan master of improvisation Oscar D’Leon, who is all but unanimously considered the world’s best salsa singer; and Cuban trumpet great Arturo Sandoval.

* The Hollywood Salsa and Latin Jazz Festival will be held Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., 7 p.m. $22-$67. (213) 851-3588