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15 Necessities From Johnny Pacheco and Fania Data, the ‘Motown of Salsa’

15 Essentials From Johnny Pacheco and Fania Records, the ‘Motown of Salsa’

Johnny Pacheco’s life told a typical New York Latino story in many ways: He was a Dominican immigrant who played Cuban music for a predominantly Puerto Rican audience. Like many self-proclaimed New York entrepreneurs, he knew he had to take his product to the sidewalk and meet his customers face-to-face to sell records from the trunk of an old Mercedes-Benz in Harlem and the Bronx.

Pacheco had worked on several variations of the son genre at Triton’s nightclub in the Bronx and made a name for himself by adding a hop and flashing a handkerchief while on stage to a hot new one, according to Juan Flores’ book “Salsa Rising.” The style of dancing was called Pachanga. Dreaming of starting his own record label (and in the middle of ending a marriage), he met Jerry Masucci, an Italian-American divorce lawyer with a taste for the Cuban sound. The two got on so well that they started a new record label called Fania, which housed the greatest talents of salsa.

Pacheco and Masucci’s experiment went beyond their wildest dreams. Using the streamlined term “salsa” that had surfaced years earlier in Cuba and Venezuela, Fania Records linked the Afro-Latin fad (think, “I like it that way”) with the remnants of Cuban sounds dulled by the radio silence the embargo after the revolution to create an international dance craze. Fania Records turned Puerto Ricans like Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, Cuban diva Celia Cruz, a Brooklyn Jew named Larry Harlow and a Panamanian troubadour named Rubén Blades into stars and spread the new Latin groove from Yankee Stadium to Kinshasa, Zaire.

Here are 15 examples of how Pacheco, who died this week at the age of 85, and his Fania cohort made music history.

From his second album, “Johnny Pacheco y su Charanga”, this is a compelling distillation of Pacheco’s early Pachanga sound that shows the full effect of a Charanga-style Cuban orchestra heavy on flutes and violins. The relentless percussion embellishes texts that tell the story of a woman scratching the percussive Güiro instrument to the satisfaction of the narrator. If you can imagine Pacheco stepping on the downbeat quickly, witness the creation of salsa dance the New York style.

Pacheco’s collaboration with the unrecognized singer Pete “El Conde” Rodríguez (not to be confused with Bugalús Pete Rodríguez) captures a more polished phase of his career. Driven by the guaguancó rhythm that was to become the template for salsa, Rodríguez’s angular, velvety rasp is reminiscent of Afro-Puerto Rican colleagues such as Ismael Rivera and Cheo Feliciano. Pacheco’s arrangements, which created a gentle flow between the piano and horns, quickly became the salsa sound.

Pachecos and Masucci’s coordination of the Fania All-Stars, an inconceivably strong group of the genre’s emerging stars, was perhaps the single most important factor in salsa’s single-handed rise. This recording, which was made at the Cheetah Club, where Bugalú and the first production of “Hair” were shown before the Broadway run, includes long jam songs like “Anacaona”, a tribute to a rebellious Taíno leader powerful vocals by Cheo Feliciano, supported by Willie Colón, Larry Harlow and Ray Barretto, among others.

Celia Cruz was already a star with Sonora Matancera when she left Cuba in 1960 and replaced the legendary La Lupe as Tito Puentes singer in 1966. Her collaboration with Pacheco on “Celia and Johnny” was key to making her the queen of salsa. Pacheco’s precise tempo and the evolving wall of sound made this guaguancó a dizzying, onomatopoeic expression of percussion instruments.

Probably the most popular and talented singer in salsa, Héctor Lavoe was in many ways a symbol of the Puerto Rican experience in New York. His wistful, nasal singing style was reminiscent of a compatriot who at the same time lost himself in the big city and celebrated hell out of the city. The emotional power of Mi Gente, written by Pacheco, stems from his ability to bring New York’s diverse Latino community together to celebrate a dynamic self-esteem amid a grave financial crisis. The studio version is great, but the Live at Yankee Stadium version is the classic.

Willie Colón was born and raised in Mott Haven’s gravelly apartments in the Bronx. He recorded his first album at the age of 17, inspired by a sour, derisive tone that Barry Rogers gave to his trombone in his collaboration with Mon Rivera and Eddie Palmieri. Although there are many bugalú here, this is a scaled-down proto-salsa. Colón’s role in the invention of the salsa attitude by the “Malo” persona becomes clear here. The songs, which insist on Spanish-speaking, Latin American dancing authenticity, are filtered through a gangster-like heartfelt in the street fight.

This low budget 1970s film, directed by Leon Gast, has the grainy underground feel that later films like Charlie Ahearn’s hip-hop genesis “Wild Style” and Glenn O’Brien’s reconstructed post-punk fever dream “Downtown 81” has penetrated. The best visual record of Fania All-Stars rehearsals, club gigs, spontaneous Bembés and street party performances is also the African-hippie-fused wardrobe of the salsa dancers of the time. Just a few minutes later, on “Quítate Tu,” you can see Pacheco effortlessly master the diverse chorus of star singers as he conducts horns and percussion.

Ismael “Maelo” Rivera’s sound, known in Puerto Rico as “El Sonero Mayor” (the greatest singer), was born from working with his childhood friend, drummer Rafael Cortijo. The Rivera Cortijo sound recontextualized the rustic bomba and plena genres by adding more instruments and flowed easily into New York style salsa. “Las Caras Lindas” comes from Rivera’s solo time with Fania – it was written by the famous songwriter Tite Curet Alonso and celebrates the beauty of Afro-Puerto Ricans.

Harlow was a unique figure in the salsa scene – he was born and raised in Brooklyn, the son of a mambo musician who couldn’t get the Cuban sound out of his head. As a whiplash pianist, Harlow called himself “El Judío Maravilloso” (The Wonderful Jew) after his hero Arsenio Rodríguez, known as “El Ciego Maravilloso”. “Abran Paso”, sung by his favorite singer Ismael Miranda, is both an invocation of the Santeria mysticism and a metaphor for an aspiring Latino community.

This was a Christmas album with a twist – instead of tarnishing the Fania All-Stars to make salsa versions of “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells,” Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe decided to record classic Puerto Rican aguinaldos with some sort of bath Santa Feel New York. This album is inevitable over the holidays, when you’ve expanded the Puerto Rican family and balanced awe of tradition with an incredible sense of swing. A highlight is the first appearance of Yomo Toro, sometimes known as Cuatro’s Jimi Hendrix, a rustic 10-string lute that explodes out of vinyl.

Ray Barretto, the emotional percussive core of the Fania All-Stars, was a remarkably versatile conga player whose career ranged from bugalú to salsa, latin jazz to session work for the Rolling Stones. His mid-period excellence crystallizes in “Indestructible” riding unprecedented waves of frenetic dance energy. The title track describes a promise salseros make to themselves to keep getting up no matter how often they’re knocked down.

For many years, “Siembra” was the best-selling salsa album of all time and the highlight of the Blades-Colón partnership. The album is an attempt to combine a cinematic concept of New York Latino life with the idea of ​​a classic rock concept album, and the performances are unique and immortal. As a songwriting team, the two had no competition; Blades was at the forefront of his singing, and Colón’s arrangements were never more brilliant.

Another anthemic crowd-pleaser, “Plante Bandera,” alludes to the growing sense of nationalism and pride that brought salsa fans together, as well as the growing awareness of the Latino presence in the US and the projection of the salsa genre itself. Chamaco Ramírez’s sometimes overlooked plaintive style hits just the right notes, and the band’s percussive dynamics, punctuated by an insistent horn section, bring the lyrics to their maximum impact.

The multi-talented poet / troubadour / Hollywood actor shines here on his groundbreaking solo album and combines lyrical elements of the Cuban Nueva Trova with lush Colón orchestral salsa arrangements. With songs like “Pablo Pueblo” he defined the Latino theme of the working class, which became disillusioned with urban misery after being promised the American dream. In “Paula C” he recalls a lost love with the skill of a boom novelist of Magic Realism.

Ray and Cruz were one of the most successful internationalization forces of salsa and spread the promise of their sound especially in countries like Colombia. Ray and Cruz are evolving from their Bugalú roots into mainstream salsa machines and have a following of rabid fans. This particular track offers a break based on a Chopin etude that is always a live crowd puller.

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Johnny Pacheco, Who Helped Carry Salsa to the World, Dies at 85

Johnny Pacheco, Who Helped Bring Salsa to the World, Dies at 85

Johnny Pacheco, the Dominican Republic-born band leader and co-founder of the record label that made salsa music a worldwide sensation, died on Monday in Teaneck, New Jersey. He was 85 years old.

His wife Maria Elena Pacheco, known as Cuqui, confirmed the death at the Holy Name Medical Center. Mr. Pacheco lived in Fort Lee, NJ

Fania Records, which he founded with Jerry Masucci in 1964, signed the hottest talents in Latin American music of the 1960s and 1970s, including Celia Cruz, Willie Colón, Hector Lavoe and Rubén Blades. Mr. Pacheco, a talented flautist, went on and off the stage as the songwriter, arranger and leader of Fania All Stars, the first super group of salsa.

From the beginning he worked with young musicians who brought jazz, rhythm and blues, funk and other styles into traditional Afro-Cuban music.

In the 1970s, Fania, sometimes referred to as the Motown of Salsa, was a powerhouse of Latin American music, and the Fania All Stars toured the world. The label spawned burning creative collaborations, such as those between Mr. Colón, a trombonist and composer, and Mr. Blades, a socially conscious lyricist and singer; and to cultivate heroes like Mr. Lavoe, the Puerto Rican singer who fought drug addiction and died of AIDS complications at the age of 46.

Fania broke up in the mid-1980s due to royalty litigation, and in 2005, Emusica, a Miami company, bought the Fania catalog and began releasing remastered versions of its classic recordings.

Juan Azarías Pacheco Knipping was born on March 25, 1935 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. His father, Rafael Azarias Pacheco, was a well-known band leader and clarinetist. His mother, Octavia Knipping Rochet, was the granddaughter of a French colonist and the great-granddaughter of a German merchant who married a Dominican woman who was born to Spanish colonists.

The family moved to New York when Johnny was 11 years old. He studied drums at Juilliard School and worked in Latin American bands before founding his own, Pacheco y Su Charanga, in 1960.

The band signed with Alegre Records and their first album sold more than 100,000 copies in the first year. According to its official website, it became one of the best-selling Latin albums of its time. Mr. Pacheco’s career started with the introduction of a new dance craze called Pachanga. He became an international star and toured the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Fania Records was born from an unlikely partnership between Mr. Pacheco and Mr. Masucci, a former police officer who became a lawyer and fell in love with Latin music while visiting Cuba.

From its humble beginnings in Harlem and the Bronx – where releases were sold out of the trunk of cars – Fania brought an urban sensibility to Latin American music. In New York, the music had taken on the name “Salsa” (Spanish for sauce, as in hot sauce) and the Fania label began using it as part of their marketing.

Under the direction of Mr. Pacheco, the artists built a new sound based on traditional clave rhythms and the Cuban Son (or Son Cubano) genre, but faster and more aggressive. Much of the lyrics – about racism, cultural pride, and the turbulent politics of the era – were far removed from the pastoral and romantic scenes in traditional Cuban songs.

In this sense, salsa was “native American music that is just as much a part of the indigenous music landscape as jazz, rock or hip-hop,” wrote Jody Rosen in 2006 in the New York Times on the occasion of the new edition of the Fania master tapes – after years of being in Schimmel a warehouse in Hudson, NY

Recognition…Fania

Mr. Pacheco teamed up with Ms. Cruz in the early 1970s. Their first album, “Celia & Johnny”, was a strong mix of heavy salsa with infectious choruses and virtuoso performances. Thanks to Ms. Cruz’s vocal skills and Mr. Pacheco’s big band directing, it soon went gold, and its first track, the fast-paced “Quimbara,” helped drive Ms. Cruz’s career to Queen of Salsa status to lead.

The two released more than 10 albums together; Mr. Pacheco was the producer on her last solo recording, “La Negra Tiene Tumbao”, which won the 2002 Grammy for Best Salsa Album.

Over the years, Mr. Pacheco has produced for several artists and performed around the world. He contributed to film scores, including one for The Mambo Kings, a 1992 film based on Oscar Hijuelos’ novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. “For the Jonathan Demme film” Something Wild ” he teamed up with David Byrne, the head of Talking Heads, one of his many eclectic partnerships.

Mr. Pacheco, who has received numerous awards and honors in both the Dominican Republic and the United States, was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1998. He wrote more than 150 songs, many of which are now classics.

For many years he directed the Johnny Pacheco Latin Music and Jazz Festival at Lehman College in the Bronx, an annual event in association with the college (broadcast live in recent years) which brings together hundreds of talented young musicians studying music in New York City schools provide the stage.

In addition to this woman, Mr. Pacheco’s survivors include two daughters, Norma and Joanne; and two sons, Elis and Phillip.

The salsa phenomenon that Mr. Pacheco created reached new heights on August 23, 1973 with a sold out volcano show at Yankee Stadium, where the Fania All Stars got 40,000 fans to a musical frenzy led by Mr. Pacheco, his was rhinestone-studded white shirt, bathed in sweat. The concert cemented the legendary stature of the band and his own.

Recognition…Fania Records

In 1975 Fania released the long-awaited double album “Live at Yankee Stadium”, which despite the name also contained material from a show at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Puerto Rico, which had a much better sound quality. The album earned the Fania All Stars their first Grammy nomination for Best Latin Recording.

In 2004, it was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

Michael Levenson contributed to the coverage.