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.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 12:29 pm and is filed under mambo, Fania, salsa, music, Latino Public Broadcasting, PBS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.