The Monthly Bible of Tropical Music Is by and for Ardent Fans

In the world of Afro-Caribbean music, reliable information is hard to come by. Because most records in the field lack liner notes, because the specialized media usually prefer gossip over appreciation, and because the genre has yet to be studied with the kind of reverence enjoyed by, say, rock ‘n’ roll, the novice listener is usually at a loss when attempting to separate the good from the bad, or simply trying to trace the histories of artists, songs and styles.

Rudy and Yvette Mangual realized this as early as 1990. That’s the year the couple founded Latin Beat, a magazine designed to inform and entertain lovers of tropical music. A former electrical engineer and professional musician, Rudy Mangual is the publication’s editor and an occasional reporter; his wife, a graphic designer, is Latin Beat’s art director.

Today, the monthly, which is available at newsstands and record stores such as Tower and Virgin, boasts a circulation of 50,000, and is distributed nationally, as well as in Canada, Puerto Rico and parts of Europe. It is arguably the most respected publication of its kind. In the Latin music community, where envy and gossip run rampant, no one has anything bad to say about the Manguals.

“Rudy and Yvette are the coolest couple in the Latin music industry,” says Jesus Naranjo, West Coast marketing manager for Universal Latino Records. “They’re open-minded, have a casual attitude and never talk [expletive] about anybody. And they always keep themselves looking young.”

Indeed, the first thing you notice when you meet the Manguals, both 48, at their Gardena home, which doubles as Latin Beat’s office, is their youthful enthusiasm. They recently gathered friends and associates at the Conga Room, where they celebrated Latin Beat’s 10th anniversary to the sounds of L.A.’s Johnny Polanco Orchestra.

In the iffy world of independent publishing, the magazine has maintained a remarkable consistency in content and circulation.

“It’s one of the first magazines in the United States that talks about Latin music without all the fluff the other publications have,” says Naranjo. “For all of us music aficionados, it’s like a Bible in monthly installments.”

Besides the expected artist profiles and record reviews, Latin Beat includes the kind of in-depth features that are difficult to find elsewhere.

Individual sections written by correspondents in New York, San Francisco, Puerto Rico and Los Angeles provide updates on each location’s salsa scene. There’s also an obsessively compiled column on upcoming record releases written by rabid collector and RMM Records executive Nelson Rodriguez. (The Manguals say they accept this journalistic conflict because Rodriguez got his Latin Beat job long before he began working for the label. And Rudy says he’s vigilant about keeping Rodriguez’s references to RMM releases to a minimum.)

Still, the essential articles are the encyclopedic surveys of artists’ careers and musical movements, written by Afro-Cuban experts Max Salazar and Luis Tamargo.

“I guess I’m the least knowledgeable of our contributors,” Rudy Mangual says with a laugh. “Most of them are musicologists with serious academic training. They don’t only tell you if a record is good. They also explain why.”

Salazar, for instance, has been collecting records and memorabilia for more than 40 years. His simple but eloquent articles keep opinion to a minimum, striving to preserve the history of the genre for posterity. And they are usually illustrated with rare photographs from his collection. A Tito Puente fanatic, Salazar has written extensively about the timbalero, as well as New York salsa icons such as Machito and Hector Lavoe.

Tamargo’s specialty is Cuban music, but he also ventures into ambitious retrospectives on the spectrum of Latin music. In recent months, he contributed definitive articles on the history of various musical instruments within the Afro-Cuban genre. His style is more opinionated than Salazar’s, marked by sardonic wit and jabs at the commercial side of Latin music.

Although the magazine, which sells for $2.50 a copy, has just begun to generate enough income to support the Manguals, Latin Beat is still a labor of love. Most of its writers deliver their columns for free, knowing that the prestige of the publication adds cachet to their names.

“The key to the magazine’s success is the union between Yvette and I,” says Mangual. “She takes care of the artistic side of things, while I coordinate the content. I was a professional musician for 15 years and realized that there was no money in music. Our magazine allows me to be in touch with the music that I love the most.”

Last year, the Manguals ventured into the record industry through a deal with the label the Right Stuff for a series of “Latin Beat Magazine” compilations. After an inauspicious pair of pop releases, they released two superior Latin jazz anthologies that included artists such as Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barretto.

Periodically, the couple have received offers from publishers wishing to invest in the magazine and bring it to a larger audience. But they are reluctant to cede control.

“We’re pleased whenever somebody approaches us with an offer, because it means that there’s a market out there,” Rudy explains. “But we will only take the magazine to a corporate level if we can maintain total control over its quality.”

BOOK LEARNING: Fans in need of a concise, no-nonsense reference guide to Latin music should try the newly released second volume of the “Rough Guide to World Music,” half of which is devoted to the Americas.

Divided by country, with extra chapters on salsa and Andean music, the British publication is remarkably level-headed, especially when it comes to recommending essential albums for each musical style.

There’s the occasional factual error, but the guide is still light years ahead of other volumes of its kind, thanks to its informed criticism and coverage of every aspect of Latin music. And most of the commentary (notably a hefty section on Colombian salsa and cumbia) has been written with sensitivity and care.