The Freshest Salsa Is From Old-Timers

Many young musicians in Cuba were puzzled when the nostalgia of the Buena Vista Social Club became a commercial phenomenon a few years ago, earning dollars and Grammys for its aging artists.

Some even felt a touch of resentment. They wondered why world markets would embrace a group of old-timers and their dusty standards when the island’s hot new bands struggled to get attention for their amazingly creative work.

Now the Grammy spotlight has turned again on a Cuban old-timer, although one who was already familiar to American audiences. Singer Celia Cruz recently picked up four nominations in the third annual Latin Grammy Awards for her latest album, “La Negra Tiene Tumbao,” which must be her zillionth recording.

Now nobody begrudges Celia her success. The artist is beloved here and in her homeland, which she left long ago. But the question still arises: Has the old guard again won out over the vanguard? Have Latin Grammy voters in the tropical categories ignored great new salsa music in favor of tried-and-true tradition?

This time there is nothing to resent. Instead of making us feel sorry for those left out, the success of Cruz and other veteran tropical acts in this year’s nominations makes us painfully aware that there’s not much out there to ignore.

Where have all the great new salseros gone?

Of the 20 nominations in four tropical categories this year, a dozen went to old-time acts. In the salsa album category, where you’d expect to find the latest stuff, three of the five nominees have been around for decades. Aside from Cruz, they include middle-aged singer Tito Rojas and El Gran Combo, the acclaimed Puerto Rican band that is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

The other two nominations in that category went to Giro (who’s he?) and Marc Anthony, for his album “Libre.” He may still be young, but Marc Anthony hardly represents a fresh style or new vision in salsa. The singer is so ‘90s.

The Nuyorican’s latest album is perhaps the weakest of his salsa career, which was launched in 1993 under the aegis of producer Sergio George, who also worked on the new Cruz album. George was at the forefront of an early-’90s salsa revival on the New York scene, led by Marc Anthony, La India and DLG.

Designed to appeal to young, bicultural urban youth, that New York salsa style now seems almost as dated as disco. Nothing has come along to replace it, at least not in the Big Apple.

That’s why people still yearn for salsa’s golden era, the boom years of the ‘70s when Fania Records was the Motown of Latin music. Styles come and go, but connoisseurs still snap up CD reissues of all the great Fania artists. (Too bad the digital transfers are so careless.) In those days, I was a student at UC Berkeley, part of a small clique of Chicanos who prized salsa albums from New York the way rock fans treasured British imports. Only a few stores carried the new Fania releases. So whatever we could find we would buy, sound unheard.

When a friend traveled to New York in the summer of ‘74, I asked her to bring back a few albums. Just buy whatever the store clerk recommends, I told her.

When she returned, it was as if Christmas had come early. Four of the records she brought back are now classics: Willie Colon’s “Lo Mato,” Larry Harlow’s “Salsa,” Ismael Rivera’s “Traigo de Todo” and the first album by the team of Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco, which includes the hit “Quimbara.”

New York was salsa’s London or L.A., a seemingly boundless reservoir of artists making music that sounded fresh and exciting, though it was grounded in ancient Afro-Cuban and Afro-Rican traditions.

You never knew what you’d discover on a new album, even from an established artist. If you bought Ray Barretto’s self-titled 1975 album featuring the cover with the congas that flapped open, you heard a new and unknown singer on a couple of tracks. He sounded a lot like Cheo Feliciano in those days, but his name was Ruben Blades.

Then came the dreary ‘80s, with its pop salsa romantica craze. The feel of the street, that exciting spontaneity, was gone from the music. And it never came back, at least not at its original level.

Recently, we’ve seen a spate of live albums by popular Puerto Rican bands celebrating 30, 35, 40 years together. They include the 45th-anniversary album of La Sonora Poncena, and the 40th-anniversary concerts by bandleader Tommy Olivencia and by El Gran Combo, whose latest studio album is among the Latin Grammy nominees for best salsa album.

Bassist Bobby Valentin, a member of the Fania All Stars, this year released his 35th anniversary album. It’s a live performance titled “Vuelve a la Carcel” (He Goes Back to Jail), a reference to his acclaimed live albums recorded in 1975 at Puerto Rico’s Oso Blanco state prison. With Blades and Feliciano among his guest artists, Valentin returned to perform for the prisoners, some of whom may have seen the earlier concert almost three decades ago.

It’s a powerful record. All these bands sound better than ever. No wonder the music of this era is now sometimes called “salsa dura,” or hard salsa, because it’s heavy, as we’d say in the ‘60s. Those of us who had a taste of it stayed hungry for it.

That’s why there was such a rush to Havana when the doors finally opened in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The Cubans still had that fire in the grooves. Each band had its own identity and each album had surprises. With the embargo, Cuba was like a forbidden mecca. So the treasure hunt started all over again: Just bring me back anything from Havana, my friend.

Sadly, those days are over too. Many dynamic Cuban bands have lost their way, falling into repetition or formulas. Whether in New York or Havana, artists who once prided themselves on being progressive no longer have grounds to complain if old-timers steal the spotlight.

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Agustin Gurza is a Times staff writer.