In September, 1974 the sports world was riveted by a boxing title match between Heavyweight Champ George Foreman, and former champion Muhammad Ali. The purse was $5 million, but Don King, the promoter, couldn't come up with the money. He shopped around for a foreign country to host the event, and put up some of the purse money in exchange for the prestige it would bring with it. Zaire's "president", Mobutu Sese Seko, siezed upon the opportunity. Billed as "The Rumble in the Jungle", a 3 day music festival was planned in conjunction with the prize fight, featuring James Brown, BB King, Bill Withers, The Spinners, Miriam Makeba and The Fania Allstars.
On the flight to Zaire, aboard a chartered plane, the musicians were free to move around, jam together and generally party down. As the plane approached Kinshasa and began its descent, an argument arose as to who would exit the plane first to greet the anticipated throng of fans awaiting them. According to Johnny Pacheco, one of the Fania Allstars musicians and cofounder of the Fania Record label, James Brown pulled rank and insisted upon being the first one out of the plane.
So when we landed in Africa, he wanted to be the first one out of the plane. So he comes out of the plane to go like this, 'My peoples! My peoples! My lovely people!' And there must have been 5,000 Africans. And they went past him, and they started chanting, 'Pa-che-co! Pa-che-co!' They went bananas.
Perhaps you are familiar with Salsa music, but draw a blank at the mention of the Fania Allstars. In 1974 they were Kings. The Salsa music they played had its roots in African rythyms, hybridized over generations in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and then cross pollinated yet again in the crucible of New York City. Just 10 years earlier it was primarily a regional musical genre whose popularity and musicians were mostly restricted to New York City. By 1974 they were international stars, even if few Americans between the coasts knew of them.
This is the story of the music, and the record label that put it on the map...for you can't really separate Salsa music from Fania Records. The label was founded in 1964 by Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco and an Italian American attorney/businessman by the name of Jerry Masucci with a stake of $2500, and over the course of the next 15 years it became what some have called "The Motown of Latin Music", making stars of its roster of musicians and introducing Salsa to a global audience.
Alas...nothing, however, lasts forever. Fania quit recording new music around 1979/1980. The musical landscape was changing, and they were no longer Kings of the World. That's a good cue for an aptly named song by Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe, Todo Tiene Su Final (Everything Has its End)
Most Americans who have a passing familiarity with Salsa, and perhaps even enjoy it, probably don't have any of the music in their music library. Maybe they have The Buena Vista Social Club cd, and if asked most would say that Salsa is Cuban music. They would be partly correct, but mostly incorrect. And The Buena Vista Social Club ain't Salsa, it's Son. The Son is a musical style based upon an African clave (rythym) which originated in Cuba's Oriente province around the first decade of the 20th century. By 1910 it reached Havana and cross pollinated with the rumba, and by the 1940's it was the most popular music in Cuba, and had spread to other countries in the Caribbean as well. Notably, it also became quite popular in Puerto Rico.
Cuba had become a popular tourist destination for Americans during Prohibition, and continued to enjoy a reputation as an exotic playground up until the mid fifties. Tourist brought back with them a taste for the Latin music they heard played there in the nightclubs...Rumbas, Sons and, especially, the Mambo, which married Afro-Cuban rythyms with Big Band Jazz. Cuban musicians travelled to the U.S., and there was a Mambo craze during the fifties that lasted until the early 60's.
At the same time, New York City was experiencing what was called "The Great Wave" of Puerto Rican immigration in the early fifties. Puerto Ricans first immigrated to the U.S. in significant numbers shortly after the first World War, forming a beachhead in East Harlem, which was then primarily Italian. Over the course of The Great Depression, enough Puerto Ricans had settled there that the neighborhood became known as Spanish Harlem, and the Italians had largely moved to other parts of the city. During WWII, the lure of factory jobs spurred a larger wave of Puerto Rican immigrants, and with the advent of air affordable air travel in the fifties tens of thousands more came. By 1960 almost 1 in 10 New Yorkers were of Puerto Rican descent, and they had established a large community in the Bronx as well as East Harlem.
Along with the relative new-comers, however, was a generation of Puerto Ricans who had been born in New York by this time. They retained their musical culture, but had also grown up with jazz, and by 1960 they, like everyone else, were exposed to all of the other musical styles of the day...Doo Wop, R&B, cha cha, Elvis Presley. While the Mambo still reigned in the larger clubs that booked Latin music, there was a hunger amongst the younger generation for something a little more vibrant...with a bit more spice. The Mambo was essentially dance music, but increasing the younger concert goers were shouting for more driving rythyms..."Echale salsa!", they would call out to the band.
There was a burgeoning community of excellent Latin musicians in the city, but the opportunities to make a decent living at their craft were relatively few. The premiere club at the time was the Palladium Ballroom on Broadway, but it was booked regularly by the established, and mostly older, Mambo bands. A new breed of Nuyorican musician was coming onto the scene, but aside from small gigs in the Bronx, it was hard to get booked at any of the larger clubs. They played a more traditional style of Afro-Cuban music, but with sophisticated horn arrangements and a more driving, energetic rythym. Record companies had little interest signing musical talent that sang in Spanish, but a new form of music evolved that combined Afro-Cuban rythyms with an R&B sensibility, and english lyrics. It was called Boogaloo. It was ushered in by Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria with his hit remake of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man."
Soon, musicians such as Joe Cuba and his Sextet, Pete Rodriguez, Richie Ray, the great Ray Barretto and others jumped onto the Boogaloo bandwagon. It never really broke out of the New York area to gain nationwide popularity, but it did catch on in San Francisco, where a young Carlos Santana used to hear the Joe Cuba Sextet play at picnics in San Jose. Listen to Santana's "Oye Como Va", and you will hear echoes of this Joe Cuba hit, El Pito (I'll Never Go Back to Georgia):
and its variants. The two of them began talking music, and Pacheco mentioned his dream of making his own album. Pacheco had about $2500, musical talent and a wide network of musician acquaintances. Masucci had some money of his own to kick in, as well as the business and legal background that starting a company would require.
In an interview with NPR's Maria Hinojosa, Pacheco tells of how he and his fellow musicians had played on several records with the likes of Machito and Perez Prado that had sold well, but they had seen little or nothing from the effort in terms of money. He felt like the record labels were cheating the musicians, and there were few existing labels willing to record the kind of music he wanted to do. He wanted to create a label that would give his fellow salsa musicians a place to record their music, and that would promote them and market that music, and insure that they earned a living from it. Those lofty goals would prove to be only partially fulfilled.
The first album on the Fania label was with Johnny Pacheco's new band, featuring Pete "El Conde" Rodriguez on vocals. It was a mix a straight ahead Cuban son montunos, guajiras and guarachas...all energetic, with no slower ballads or boleros. Here is the cut "Dakar, Punto Final", which shows the new direction that Salsa is about to embark upon.
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In the beginning, Pacheco and Masucci were selling their records around the city to salsa lovers out the trunks of their cars. Over the next several years Fania aggressively signed as many of the top Salsa musicians as they could. They added Larry Harlow, a Brooklyn born Jewish piano player who taught himself to play in the style of his hero, Cuban Arsenio Rodriguez and spent time in Cuba submerging himself in the music there. Orquesta Harlow's 1966 release "Heavy Smoking" displayed the template for the Fania sound that would take the world by storm in the next decade:
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Ray Barretto, Bobby Valentin, Roberto Roena, Willie Colon, Hector Lavoe, Luis "Perico" Ortiz and Ruben Blades were among the many great salseros in the Fania stable. Masucci's greatest satisfaction, perhaps, was when Fania signed Celia Cruz to the label. Around 1967, Masucci bought out Pacheco and became sole owner of Fania, while Pacheco continued on as the label's artistic director. Masucci teamed Celia Cruz, a star from the old guard, with Johnny Pacheco on the album "Celia and Johnny". It was a huge hit.
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Celia had been a huge star in her native Cuba, but was no fan of the Castro Revolution. She was out of the country on tour when the Bautista government fell, and never returned to Cuba. She moved to the US in 1962, but her career languished during the boogaloo years. She was so adamant about never returning to Castro's Cuba, in fact, that after a spate of planes were hijacked in the early seventies and diverted to Cuba, she stopped flying for fear that she might be taken there against her will. That self imposed travel restriction further complicated her career. Her label was Tico, which was acquired by Fania, but the label didn't do much with her. When she finally became directly affiliated with Fania, her career took off again.
Masucci had started buying up several of the other smaller labels that recorded Salsa music, until eventually his Fania label, in the words of Ruben Blades, was "the only game in town. He also purchased radio stations, thereby insuring that Fania's records got plenty of airtime. In 1968 he established the in-house band The Fania Allstars, as a showcase for the label's top talent. He booked them at clubs, sent them on international tours to countries like Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, even to Europe and Africa. All this marketing creating a market for the labels music on a global scale.
In August of 1973 Masucci booked Yankee Stadium for a concert headlined by the Allstars. Everyone thought he was crazy. The stadium seated 65,000, and it cost a lot of money to book it. A $50,000 deposit had to be put down as insurance against any damage that might occur to the infield. On the evening of the concert, Masucci was standing on the stage, located on 2nd base, looking up to the empty stands and shaking his head. He wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. And then the people started filing in. The crowd reached 45,000 (mostly Puerto Ricans)
Mongo Santamaria opened the show, and when it was finally time for the Fania Allstars to take the stage you could feel the electricity in the air. They began to play, but didn't get very far into their set when it happened. Ray Barretto and Mongo were trading conga licks when Pacheco noticed movement in the stands. Because of the lights it was a bit hard to see, but as he looked to the stands it seemed as if it had transformed into a waterfall of humanity decending the steps and spilling over the walls onto the field. The crowd began rushing the stand. One girl jumped on top of Larry Harlow's piano and began dancing. The band stopped playing and Pacheco screamed to his band mates to get out of there and quick. Some of them ran to a trailer behind the stage and locked themselves in, while others ran to the dugout and closed the doors behind them. The fans tore out the microphones, stole the drums and even the piano disappeared in the near riot. Masucci had hoped to film and record the concert for later release to cover the expense of the venue.
The seventies were the hetdey of Fania and Nuyorican Salsa. When Hector Lavoe left Willie Colon's band to pursue a solo career, Ruben Blades was chosen to replace him. Colon and Blades went on to record 6 albums together, all of them successful. Their most successful album was also the biggest seller for Fania of all time, "Siembra". Lavoe, who by the time he parted ways with Colon, was heavily addicted to drugs, had a drinking problem and eventually contracted aids. But his solo career was successful, as well. One of my favorites of his is a song called Aguanile, based upon a Yoruban prayer chant and influenced by Lavoe's interest in Santeria.
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1978's "Siembra" LP marked both the high water mark for salsa, and the beginning of the end. Colon and Blades had collaborated successfully to create a new style of Salsa...one which placed more emphasis on lyrics and storytelling. Their songs painted pictures of the urban milieu which gave birth to the music...gritty tales of the city and life on the streets, instead of the more traditional rural lyrics. Their music still had the essential clave of Salsa, but it wasn't primarily dance music as Salsa had always been previously. Club owners were not particularly pleased by the fact that many of their fans preferred to listen rather than dance. Dancing made you hot and thirsty, which fueled alcohol sales. The seminal song on the album is a reworking of "Mack The Knife", title "Pedro Navaja"
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Fania was finding the road to be a rocky one by this time. Many artists were leaving the label, disgruntled by the grueling touring demands written into their contracts, which didn't prove to be especially remunerative to boot. Royalties weren't getting paid. Masucci had purchased his own press, so nobody really knew how many LPs were being pressed and sold. People were owed money. Fania ceased recording at the end of 1979/beginning of 1980. Ruben Blades has spoken rather critically of Masucci over the years, even though he was among the few who made some money as a result of his association with the label. But even though Siembra has sold over 25 million copies, he doesn't get any royalties from it. Masucci once told him he sold the Fania catalog, and doesn't own it anymore. Lawsuits were filed.
Some of the musicians who recorded for Fania and put out many, many hits for the label, died almost impoverished. Fellow musicians would pass the hat around simply to pay for a suitable funeral service for them. Masucci died a millionaire, however. Ironically, he died in Argentina, where he had relocated to, in 1997 just a few days after he had been issued stock in Fania before it's going public. He passed away before being able to sell them.
Rhe music itself changed after 1980 for the worse. A new style of Salsa, Salsa Romantica, gained popularity. It was, the minds of many, a sort of neutered form of the original music. Syrupy lyrics sang by pretty boys and girls, without any edge. I won't call them out by name, for fear that there might be a La India fan here. The demographics were changing as well. The new generation of Latin music consumers were more recent immigrants, in some cases from countries with different music tastes. The merengue became increasingly popular, while radio programers were attempting to homogenize the sounds on their playlists. There were other factors at play, to be sure. Fania was no longer the "only game in town." Recording companies had sprung up in other countries, and the center of gravity for their business model became more globalized. Piracy became an economic issue. But overarching all of that was the fact that the newer manifestation of Salsa had lost its muscle tone, and was going soft. It was no longer "Salsa Dura".
Fania still exists. It was sold in 2005 to Emusica, based in Miami. They are remastering many of the great recordings from the extensive Fania catalog and rereleasing them, which is a good thing.
If you get the chance, there is a fine documentary of a concert by the Fania Allstars at New York's Cheetah Club called "Our Latin Thing", done by Leon Gast. He also did the film "When We Were Kings", by the way.
Links:
obituary, Celia Cruz:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
obituary, Hector Lavoe:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
obituary, Ray Barretto:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I'll leave you with one last song...one of my favorites by Roberto Roena:
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