A Delicate Dance Over Credits

In the liner notes of his new salsa album, Marc Anthony gives credit to a group of people rarely saluted in this Latin genre. The artist thanks his team of lawyers--all five of them.

A close look at the fine print reveals why the singer might be so grateful to his attorneys. In contrast to his previous three salsa albums, Marc Anthony is listed as co-writer on all but one of the nine songs on his Sony Discos/Columbia release, “Libre,” which has been No. 1 on the Latin sales chart for three weeks, with total sales of about 120,000.

That’s because this time he insisted on songwriting credit for his contributions to songs originally written by others. Though he was said to be on vacation and unavailable for comment, Marc Anthony has publicly stated that he deserved credit for adding salsa elements, specifically choral refrains (coros) and vocal improvisations, to songs submitted in ballad form.

The issue may seem routine in an industry in which singers, writers, producers and arrangers negotiate daily over their creative contributions in a collaborative medium. But in the deeply traditional salsa world, Marc Anthony’s move nearly derailed his long-awaited album and has sparked a debate over long-held customs and practices in the Latin music industry.

Fellow salsa star Ruben Blades agrees in principle with Marc Anthony’s position, but other salsa figures don’t.

The controversy also created a bitter rift between Marc Anthony and his longtime collaborator, composer Omar Alfanno, who refused to share credit on a song intended for the new album. Alfanno, who has written several Marc Anthony songs, including “Nadie Como Ella,” worries that the singer’s actions will open a Pandora’s box, potentially costing composers millions of dollars.

“This is a lack of respect,” the Miami-based Panamanian said. “Why didn’t he call me directly to my home? Because he knows I’d hang up the phone in his face. They’d have to kill me before they take away my rights as an author, because that is the inheritance of my children.... Doesn’t he make enough millions without muscling in on my 7 cents?”

To many, there’s much more at stake than a share of the 7 1/2 cents per song composers receive from album sales. (Those pennies add up to $75,000 per song for every million units in sales--not to mention performance royalties.)

Marc Anthony has broken with decades of tradition in a genre that reveres singers for their improvisational abilities, but which reserves song credits--and accompanying revenue--for composers who pen the original verse and melody. The greatest salsa singers had never before demanded composer credits, no matter how extensive their improvisational contributions, industry observers say.

But that practice must change, maintains Marc Anthony, who decided to claim a share of composing rights based on what he learned in the English-language pop business, where he emerged in 1999 as part of the so-called Latin crossover craze.

“When you write pop music, if you come up with one line you get a songwriting credit,” he told Billboard magazine last month. “In salsa, even though I wrote entire coros, I didn’t get credit.”

The singer reached co-writing agreements in advance with all the composers on the new album, his representatives said. Marc Anthony, in other interviews, accused Alfanno and two other writers of reneging on the deal just weeks before the album’s release.

Alfanno told The Times he was unaware of the co-authorship demand until after his song had been recorded and he heard from the singer’s lawyers. As a counteroffer, he proposed giving Marc Anthony credit on the album for the coros and improvisations but not a share of the copyright--or the songwriting revenue. Alfanno says the singer declined.

Rather than forgoing the songwriting credits, Marc Anthony dropped that and three other disputed songs from an album that was meant to have 13 songs. His New York lawyer, Orin Snyder, said the singer deserved the credit and money because he contributed substantially to the creativity and the writing.

“It’s not only a matter of life but of law,” Snyder said. “When you make that significant a contribution, the law regards you as a co-author. There’s no real dispute about that....

“So what people are saying is controversial is actually quite commonplace in the history of songwriting in contemporary music. Now, it may be [controversial] to some people in the Latin music community, but there’s certainly nothing radical at all in what Marc is saying.”

Tell that to the musician members of Yahoo’s Latin Jazz Internet forum, who were queried on the issue for this story. Most who posted opinions disagreed with Marc Anthony’s position.

“I think this is totally unfair and seemingly underhanded on his part!” wrote respected pianist and arranger Oscar Hernandez. “It’s very easy to add or change a line or words after something has been created.... If it was someone else not of his fame or stature they would not get away with this.”

The complexities and passions of the debate are rooted in salsa’s long and colorful history.

Salsa singing traces its origins to the call-and-response traditions transplanted from Africa with the slave trade and preserved in the Caribbean’s myriad rhythmic song forms. This vocal art is so cherished that there’s a special vocabulary for it. Those who master it are called soneros, and their improvised lines are known as soneos, or inspiraciones. The terms come from the son, the traditional rural genre that developed in eastern Cuba in the early 1900s and quickly caught fire in Havana, where it was urbanized, giving rise to modern salsa.

Son compositions generally had two parts: a short opening section with written lyrics, followed by the montuno section, featuring a call-and-response exchange between the chorus singers and the sonero.

Before World War I, rival soneros spontaneously used double-entendres to question each other’s intelligence, their daughters’ virginity or their wives’ fidelity, according to Charley Gerard and Marty Sheller in their 1989 book, “Salsa! The Rhythm of Latin Music.” Wit was at a premium at these events, and riots were not uncommon.

In modern salsa, the insults have given way to more sophisticated themes, from love to politics. But singers are still on the spot to carry the song from the coro to the finale, playing off the formal theme at times with personal observations and experiences. The most acclaimed of them, including the late Hector Lavoe and singer-songwriter Blades, can turn a run-of-the-mill song into a runaway hit with a catchy coro or an inventive string of soneos.

Lesser singers avoid getting on the same stage with good soneros, lest their weaknesses be revealed. Ironically, Marc Anthony is not regarded by most critics as an outstanding improviser. His detractors say his coros and soneos lack the verbal virtuosity and split-second timing that mark such greats as Puerto Rico’s Gilberto Santa Rosa or Cuba’s Mario Rivera of Los Van Van.

“A singer augments lyrical content through the soneos,” Blades says. “You take the theme and you run with it, and you develop the second part of the argument.”

For this very reason, Blades says he backs Marc Anthony’s position.

“I think Marc has an argument,” he says. “There’s no doubt in my mind that when you add soneos, you are contributing to a song. The question is, to what degree?”

That was the question facing songwriters Mario Patino and Rudy Perez when they weighed Marc Anthony’s demand for credit on their tune, “Yo Dudo Que Con El.” They listened to the singer’s recorded version and compared it to their own demo, according to Ivan Alvarez, senior vice president, Latin America, for Universal Music Publishing, who represents the composers and who sat in on the listening session.

They all concluded that Marc Anthony’s five-minute version was almost identical to their demo, except for his soneos in the final 30 seconds, says Alvarez. No new lyrics. No new chord progressions. Nothing to justify calling it a new composition, he says. But Marc Anthony attorney Snyder disagrees. He contends Marc Anthony “transformed” all the songs through his lyrical and harmonic contributions.

After Patino and Perez refused to share the copyright, the singer rejected their song, too.

“I think that yes, it’s a dangerous precedent,” says Alvarez, former New York membership director for ASCAP, the composers’ association. “It blurs the line between artistic interpretation and songwriter contribution.... And I don’t understand it, because he had a wonderful record put together. Clearly, everybody loses on this.”

Sergio George, the producer who was principally responsible for creating the Marc Anthony sound, says he can see both sides of the issue. Though Marc Anthony could have been more diplomatic in his approach, George says, a change was overdue.

“Whenever you break the mold,” he says, “you’re going to get resistance.”