Afro-Salvadorans or Afro-Mestizo Salvadorans are the descendants of the African population that came to El Salvador, who have completely mixed into the general Mestizo population in specific places creating a population of Afromestizo Salvadorans. A total of 10,000 African slaves were brought to El Salvador. El Salvador has no English Antillean (West Indian), Garifuna, and Miskito population, largely due to laws banning the immigration of blacks into the country in the 1930s, these laws were revoke in the 1980s.

The declining Native American indigenous population influenced a Royal Ordinance issued in 1541 that gave the Spanish land owners and miners permission to import African slaves into El Salvador. The New Laws did not officially come into effect in El Salvador until 1548 when the president of the "Jurisdiction of Los Confines" (which included El Salvador) freed all Native Indigenous slaves in the country and recommended that more Africans be brought to El Salvador to take the place of those who had been freed. Over the next seventy-five years upwards of 10,000 Africans were brought to work on the haciendas and in the mines of El Salvador. In 1635 the town of San Vicente was established by Spanish colonists and became an important center for the indigo trade. African slaves were brought here to work on nearby plantations. Several other towns also had African communities: Zacatecoluca (south of San Salvador), Chinameca (west of San Miguel), and Ahuachapan and Sonsonate (both west of San Salvador) all had sizable African populations at one time.

Carlinhos Brown (born Antonio Carlos Santos de Freitas, November 23, 1962) is an Oscar-nominated Brazilian musician, songwriter and record producer from Salvador, Bahia. His musical style blends Tropicália, reggae, and traditional Brazilian percussion. He has also been nominated for an Academy Award for his musical contributions in Rio.

He founded Timbalada and Tribalistas, and is also a solo artist.

He was born in Candeal Pequeno, a small neighbourhood in the Brotas area of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) to parents Renato and Madalena. In 1967 he was still a child when Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (two 25-year-old musicians from Bahia) started a movement that would radically change Brazilian and popular music: Tropicália.

Osvaldo Alves da Silva (known as the Master of the Bongo) introduced him to the tradition of Brazilian folklore and its percussion: tambourine, drums and reco-reco. He soon learned all the secrets of the percussion instruments and developed a personal style he has never abandoned.

Vanessa da Mata - with full name Vanessa Sigiane da Mata Ferreira - (born 10 February 1976 in Alto Garças, Mato Grosso) is a Latin Grammy Award-winning Brazilian MPB singer, songwriter. She has released four studio albums and the songs "Ai, Ai, Ai", "Boa Sorte/Good Luck" and "Amado" became number-one hits in Brazil.

Vanessa Sigiane da Mata Ferreira was born on February 10, 1976 in Alto Garças, a small town in Mato Grosso located 248 miles from state capital Cuiabá. Her article in the Portuguese version of Wikipedia stated that she has Xavante ancestry through her maternal grandmother. Vanessa has denied these claims, but said that her grandmother has indeed Native Brazilian ancestry, although she "can't identify from which tribe".

An autodidact in music, Vanessa listened to very different genres in her childhood; from Luiz Gonzaga to Tom Jobim, and from Milton Nascimento to Orlando Silva. She would also listen to regional music like carimbó through the records brought by an uncle who travelled to the Amazon. She was also familiar with samba, sertaneja music, and even brega Italian music, which were available to her through a local AM radio station.