The Rada Film Group caught up with some of the female producers of the WGBH series LATIN MUSIC USA to talk about their experiences creating the episodes.

Today, Pamela A. Aguilar, co-producer of Episode One: Bridges and Episode Two: The Salsa Revolution, takes us behind the scenes and fills us in on the challenges of U.S.-side Latin music research, the enduring appeal of Santana and Graciela Perez-Grillo, the “First Lady of Latin Jazz.”

Rada: What surprised you the most about the music history you were exploring that you didn’t know or had other assumptions about going into the project?

Pamela Aguilar: I was most surprised about the lack of scholarship done in the U.S. on the subject –from Afro-Cuban Jazz to the Mambo, the Boogalu and Salsa, etc. – it was a difficult task to get a grasp on the rich history and really get down below the surface.  Countless books and essays do not exist in the states.  We did, of course, source Spanish books and writings on the topic but it was surprising that there was so little material readily available for research in the United States.

Rada: It seems like an entire series could be done just on the first episode of Latin Music USA. What elements were the most difficult to leave out of the film that you think would have been relevant to the Latino community?

Pamela Aguilar: Ha!  How much time do you have? There are several elements in the history of Latin Music made in the U.S. that were left out of the final episode.  Key figures that for many Latinos are household names were cut from the final film for many reasons, mainly not enough time.

However, deciding on a starting point was the most difficult.  From the beginning we knew we only had an hour to cover nearly half a century of music –really about 54 minutes– and it was a struggle to figure out what point in time to start the film.  Early on, we had the idea to bookend the film with Woodstock and Carlos Santana.  Not only because he is an amazing Latino Superstar who introduced Afro-Caribbean percussion to what is referred to as mainstream America, but because as a filmmaker, in thinking about the final product we knew Woodstock would grab a wide audience and hook them into watching a historical film in which most of the talent is deceased.  After all, we must not only educate, but also entertain. The direct story link to Carlos Santana became Mario Bauza.

In making that tough decision, we left out at least two decades of a vibrant and significant Latino music industry that had developed (and was growing) in ‘El Barrio’ / East Harlem some twenty years before our first character, Mario Bauza arrived in New York.  It was that established industry made up of mostly Puerto Ricans that welcomed and embraced Bauza in the beginning.  This part of the story is very relevant to the Latino community and the overall history of music New York City and it deserves to be thoroughly covered.

Rada: As a female producer, what is your take on gender dynamics present in the Latin culture and music you profiled and how did that reflect in your experience creating this episode?

Pamela Aguilar: As a woman, the gender dynamics present in the Latin culture and music profiled in Episode One did not come as a surprise –it [the industry] was mostly a man’s world and there is no denying it.

It was then, a wonderful surprise to learn that the “First Lady of Latin Jazz,” Graciela Perez-Grillo, Machito’s sister, of Machito and the Afro-Cubans, who is in her nineties was living in New York City as clear and vibrant as ever!  I made it a mission to get an interview with Graciela, knowing that she played a pivotal role in the band as a featured vocalist and was a well-known artist in her own right from her days back in the early 1930s in Cuba, singing in the all-girl band Anacaona.

In my opinion, her presence in the film would have made a tremendous impact and it would have highlighted the talent of a living legend.  Regretfully, after countless attempts to schedule an interview with her, it was not to be.

She then became one more name that would be left for a most needed follow up series to highlight not only other female talent but the amazing artists that we were not able to include in this episode.

Last week, PBS premiered Episodes One and Two of LATIN MUSIC USA, a four-part documentary series tracing the origins and influence of Latino music in the United States. The series takes an unprecedented historical view of seminal musical trends in the Latino and the social forces that drove them. The series succeeds in placing Latin music in the center of the evolution of American music and culture.  A story that is long overdue in gaining its rightful place in American cultural history.

Episode One, produced by Pamela A. Aguilar and Daniel McCabe, explores the fusion that led to the birth of Latin Jazz, the popularization of the uninhibited, stylish Cuban-imported mambo, and the more (ahem) simplistic cha cha chá (portrayed by some musicians and dancers interviewed as kind of a dumbed-down mambo for rhythmically challenged North Americans). More importantly we learn about the racism many of the immigrant black musicians faced back home in Cuba and how Harlem became a haven for them, both socially and musically – a story seldom told.

We later learn how Tito Puente made the timbales the central instrument they are to Latin music today. The Mambo era coalesced in the sights and sounds of the Palladium nightclub, located just off Times Square, where people of all colors mixed, mingled and mamboed – still considered a taboo-breaking act in the mid-1950s. Now elderly, Cuban Pete – one half of a legendary dance team along with Italian-American Millie – was on hand in the episode to showcase some slowed-down grooves, which he clearly still had to spare. 

After the 1959 Cuban revolution, the mambo was replaced by Rock and Roll as the official music of American youthful rebellion. A fascinating segment in Episode One re-contextualizes the pared-down rhythms of rock hits like “Louie Louie” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” as near-identical cousins to the beats and chord progressions of early cha cha chá records. The episode wrapped up with the Latin rock fusion of the (to hear them tell it, inadvertent) multicultural band Santana, led by Carlos, hailing from the rough Mission District of San Francisco. It’s exciting to hear Santana and other band members recount their unlikely triumph at the Woodstock music festival. 

Episode Two, produced by Jeremy Marre, delves into the saga of the Fania music label in the 70s and 80s, based in New York City but whose success outside the U.S. significantly dwarfed their popularity stateside. Founded by Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco and Italian-American businessman Jerry Masucci, the label shepherded the mixture of many types of Latin American music into the blanket term Salsa. Engaging interviews with members of the Fania All-Stars, including legendary El Barrio-born trombonist Willie Colon anchor the account, telling of – among other seminal events of the time – the rise and fall of a jíbaro singer fresh from Puerto Rico named Hector Lavoe. The 1970s also see Afro-Cuban superstar Celia Cruz going from permed ponytails and corseted taffeta in the 1950s to colorful tunics and a glorious Afro belting out canciónes in front of the All Stars, dubbed the “greatest Salsa musicians in the world.”

As the unapologetically business-minded Masucci prepares to walk away with the lions’ share of the Fania profits, the poetry of a young Panamanian lawyer – Ruben Blades – would bring a whole new dimension of consciousness to the label before its 1980 demise. Blades collaborated with Willie Colon to create danceable, socially aware music to accompany social upheavals across North and South America. Hearing Colon explain the tension around working with Blades – Colon’s impoverished roots (and early career gangster persona) as compared with Blades’ middle class, socially conscious intellectualism – is an interesting layer to a class dichotomy that occasionally surfaces in hip-hop music today.

LATIN MUSIC USA is a treasure trove of anecdotes, interviews, footage and – most of all – amazing music, but it goes further than being just a nostalgic retrospective. By placing the songs in the context of the complex cultural moments in which they were born, we’re given an important history lesson we can dance to. 

Don’t miss tonight’s premiere of Episodes Three: La Onda Chicana/The Chicano Wave and Episode Four: Latin Pop, Monday, 10/19 at 9pm Eastern /8pm Central.