Present at the Birth of Salsa

Nobody can really say who created Afro-Cuban music as we know it, that blend of African and Spanish elements that evolved in the Caribbean about a century ago.

But it’s easy to pinpoint where and when salsa started: in a New York nightclub called the Cheetah on Aug. 26, 1971.

On that night, the now legendary Fania All Stars played a concert that would be a musical shot heard around the world. It marked the moment a musical movement--and a marketing strategy--was born.

Young Latinos lined up for blocks to see this exciting group of home-grown barrio musicians who would go on to become worldwide celebrities: Willie Colon, Hector Lavoe, Ray Barretto, Larry Harlow, Cheo Feliciano and a dozen more.

At the helm was Johnny Pacheco, the Dominican bandleader who seven years earlier had founded Fania Records, the independent label that became the Motown of Latin music. Pacheco, along with co-owner Jerry Masucci, had slowly built a stable of budding bandleaders and singers, each with his own records and followings.

“There was a lot of talent and what they needed was a home,” says Pacheco, who will join Harlow, Barretto and other key veterans of the salsa super-group at a Fania reunion concert tonight at the annual Hollywood Salsa and Latin Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl.

To many hard-core salsa fans, the Fania era has never been matched. At the Bowl tonight, they will relive a time when the music reflected the hopes and struggles of the community it came from. They’ll hear Domingo Quinones do his uncanny impersonation of the late Lavoe, who captured the spirit of the time with his uplifting anthem to “Mi Gente” ( My People).

The Fania effort reached critical mass at that Cheetah concert, which was recorded and filmed for a documentary called “Our Latin Thing.” It sparked a period of explosive creativity fueled by the civil rights movement and the drive for cultural identity among “Latinos en Estados Unidos,” to borrow a title and theme from a song by Celia Cruz with Willie Colon.

“[Young Latinos] were looking for something to identify with,” says Harlow. “We were singing songs of protest, love, politics, humanity. And it became their music.”

The Fania Spirit Reached All the Way to Peru

Significantly, none of the stars is pictured on the cover of the soundtrack of “Our Latin Thing,” which was released in 1972. It’s just a picture of a barrio wall with the title splashed on like graffiti. Below the graphic are the credits: “Starring the Fania All Stars and the Spanish-speaking people of New York City.”

The movie included scenes of children drumming on a catwalk, a crazed character at a block party, men at a cockfight. Interspersed was the music: Feliciano singing “Anacaona,” the Curet Alonso classic about an Indian slave woman; or Harlow with singer Ismael Miranda on apartment stoops belting out “Abran Paso” (Make Way!).

The Fania spirit reached all the way to Lima, Peru, prompting Paul de Castro to turn away from classical and jazz to embrace the new sound called salsa. (The term had been kicking around for a while as a catch-all for Afro-Caribbean styles of all kinds.)

“They really broke all the barriers in Latin America,” said De Castro, 38, who now teaches Afro-Cuban music at Cal State L.A. “FM radio would never dare carry salsa, and suddenly you were hearing the Fania All Stars and Ruben Blades, and then it just opened the gates.”

But the golden era didn’t last long.

By the end of the 1970s, Latinos were swept up in the narcissistic disco rage. The Fania All Stars released a couple of so-called crossover records on CBS, a patent sellout to the fads of the day. Their cheesy songs and nouveau riche image left no room for the common man anymore.

Fania, as a label and a family of musicians, was disintegrating. Many artists felt disaffected by the business practices of Masucci, who died in Argentina in 1997. To this day, Blades, Harlow and even Pacheco express bitterness about being cheated out of royalties, as they claim, by the man who had once been their patron and friend.

“He changed,” says Pacheco of his late partner. “I trusted him so much. He used to put a piece of paper in front of me, and I would sign it

The demise of Fania paved the way for the rise of salsa romantica, a diluted and processed sound that is to real salsa what Kenny G is to bebop and Vanilla Ice is to gangsta rap. The 1980s became the dark ages for salsa.

Some purists turned back to the source for dance music that was still authentic and interesting. Cuba, where it all started, had been mostly cut off from the U.S. music market because of the American embargo on the island. Artists such as Los Van Van and Elio Reve, who kept the music fresh, wouldn’t become widely known here until the 1990s.

By then, the salsa scene in New York would be dominated by a new wave of artists such as La India and Marc Anthony. The music was better, but the old spirit was still missing.

Marc Anthony hails from the same Nuyorican barrios as Lavoe, whom he admires. But unlike his predecessor, Anthony never sings about the neighborhood he proclaims to be proud of, or its people. Mostly, he sings about himself, or what he needs to know from women.

Salsa Today Is Simply ‘Not Global Enough’

That’s the big difference now. Today, it would be impossible to have such a salsa hit as Blades’ “Pedro Navaja,” the tale of a barrio lowlife who preys on a prostitute and gets shot to death.

“Something that really has an ethnic identity, like the salsa craze in the ‘70s did, I think would be a hard sell right now,” says De Castro. “It’s not global enough.”

The challenge for the Fania All Stars tonight is to avoid becoming a pitiful, middle-aged impersonation of their former selves. When they performed with a similar lineup at the Hollywood Palladium two years ago, they sounded tired and dated. It was heartbreaking to see these lions of the genre outperformed by a Los Angeles band, Son Mayor.

At the same time, fans shouldn’t expect any musical surprises. Harlow promises to appear in a 1970s outfit, complete with longhaired wig and bell-bottoms. And if the music is retro too, that’s fine by our local professor of salsa.

“Everything doesn’t have to be young and new,” says De Castro. “It can be old and great.”

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Hollywood Salsa and Latin Jazz Festival, tonight at 6:30, at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., L.A. $23.50 to $80.50. (323) 850-2000.