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In-Depth Information
beat, punctuated by horn sections that were typical of the great swing bands of Stan
Kenton and Count Basie.
Then young Puerto Rican drummer Tito Puente came into the picture. After
serving three years in the US Navy and attending New York's Juilliard School of
Music, Puente began playing and composing for Cuban bands in New York City. He
gained notoriety for spicing up the music with a host of rhythms with roots in Puerto
Rican
bomba
. Soon Puente had formed his own band, the Latin Jazz Ensemble,
which was playing way beyond the old Cuban templates.
When Fania Records came around, Puente was already a star. Celia Cruz, the late
Héctor Lavoe, Eddy Palmieri, Gilberto Santa Rosa, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico
and plenty of other
salseros
have made their mark on the world, but none can quite
claim the same place as Tito Puente, who became the face of the salsa boom and
bridged cultural divides with his music decades before multiculturalism was even
considered a real word. Shortly after the legendary
salsero's
death in 2000, at the age
of 77, a stretch of road in Harlem - East 112th St at Lexington Ave - was renamed
Tito Puente Way.
Salsa Today
Though salsa's faithful took plenty of solace in Fania records from the '80s, it wasn't
until the 1990s that a modern Nuyorican - salsa crooner Marc Anthony, aka Mr JLo -
brought salsa back from the brink of obscurity and into a blinding popular spotlight, braid-
ing its traditional elements with those of sleek and shiny modern Latino pop. Long be-
fore his wife even conceived of her breakout Latina-influenced 1999 pop album
On the 6,
Anthony's music packed New York's Madison Square Garden several times over with deli-
rious crowds (the DVD of these performances are required viewing in many a Puerto Rican
watering hole to this day). Although Lopez and Anthony remain salsa's premier couple,
American audiences have also had fleeting infatuations with Ricky Martin (Mr La Vida
Loca) and hunky Spaniard Enrique Iglesias. All these artists pay homage to their forbear-
ers with a lot of lip service and fundamental elements - the hand drums and horns,
clavé
rhythms and textured percussion sections. More recent Puerto Rican pop stars, like the
smart, jazz-fused group Cultura Profética, pick and choose the elements of the island's tra-
ditional sound to weave into contemporary records.
But the neo-traditionalist salsa from Bronx-born Puerto Rican singer India and
heartthrob crooner Manny Manuel carry the torch from the graying generation who inven-
ted it. There are a number of new ensembles who keep turning out the salsa hits in rotation
