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5 Salsa and Arsenio Rodriguez's Legacy FROM THE TIME it was coined in the early 1970s by Fania Records , the term salsa has been used to market a stylistically diverse and historically broad repertory of music under one name. Although most agree that salsa has since the 1980s developed into a transnational music, incorporating musical genres and styles from various regions of Latin America and beyond, some musicians, dancers, journalists, aficionados, and scholars continue to debate salsa's national provenance and maintain that the music has either a Cuban or Puerto Rican essence. Patria RomanVelazquez has, I believe, justly described this ongoing debate as a "fruitless attempt to prove beyond doubt that salsa is essentially Puerto Rican or Cuban" (Roman-Velazquez 2002, p. 214). This chapter asks two different and much-needed focused questions regarding the development of the musical repertory that would become known as salsa by the early 1970s. (1) How do the stylistic differences and social meanings that pertained to Cuban conjuntos in Havana in the 1940s problematize attempts to assign salsa a national origin and essence? And (2) to what extent did Arsenio's music and son montuno style shape the individual repertories and styles of early salsa musicians in New York City? In 1990 anthropologist Jorge Duany noted that the "historical sources of salsa have yet to be tapped in-depth. Future research should assemble written documents such as personal memoirs, original recordings of salsa songs, films of live performances, and interviews with key musicians to reconstruct the origins and development of salsa" (Duany 1990, p. 295). Unfortunately, Duany's assessment of research on salsa's musical antecedents and early development still pertains to the state of salsa scholarship .I This chapter begins to address these problems by comparing rerecordings made by early salsa groups in the 1960s with the originals as recorded by Arsenio's conjunto and other Cuban conjuntos in the 1940s and 1950s. My comparative analysis focuses on identifying the stylistic divergences in the rerecorded interpretations not to posit the originals as models of ultimate perfection. Rather, I want to highlight these divergences , many of which are subtle but nevertheless significant, as a way to lend both repertories (early salsa and Cuban conjunto music) social and historical specification. At the same time, I want to identify how the son montuno's underlying aesthetic principles shaped the category of salsa referred to as salsa dura, or hard salsa. I begin the chapter, however, by Copyrighted Material 118 CHAPTER FIVE tracing the personal and direct impact Arsenio and his music had on the first generation of salsa musicians, which dates back to the 1950s. "WE WERE DISCIPLES OF ARSENIO" Many of the first generation of salsa musicians in New York began their professional careers in the 1950s. Some spearheaded the development and popularization of pachanga and boogaloo music in the early and mid-1960s, respectively, before the emergence of the salsa industry. Because most of these musicians grew up and lived in the South Bronx, they had become very familiar with Arsenio's music as well as Arsenio himself who not only lived in the same neighborhoods (Longwood and Hunts Point) but also regularly performed with his conjunto at the local popular Tropicana Club and the Club Cubano Inter-Americano (see chapter 3). "I had the opportunity to grow up with Arsenio Rodriguez, Chappottin, and La Sonora Matancera," stated Johnny Pacheco, who in addition to knowing Arsenio personally studied his records and the records of other Cuban conjuntos (Pacheco interview 1997). Members of Ray Barretto's charanga, which scored both pachanga and early boogaloo hits, were not only fans of Arsenio's music but in fact had performed with his conjunto. Pianist and arranger Alfredito Valdes Jr., whose family often attended dances at the Club Cubano, explained that he and bassist Enrique Jackson played simultaneously with Arsenio's conjunto and Ray Barretto's charanga from about 1960 to 1963. Vocalist Wito Kortwrite, who had been Arsenio's lead vocalist since 1955 (refer to Figure 3.6), left the conjunto around 1958 and joined Barretto's charanga around 1960. Furthermore, Alfredito arranged for both groups. "The original [Barretto ] band was an offshoot of the Arsenio orchestra, an extension of Arsenio's sound because we were the backbone of Arsenio's band, the piano player, the bass player, and the singer. ... It was a charanga, but it was very 'Arsenio' in its feel, very son montuno and guaguanco. We [were] actually disciples of Arsenio" (Valdes...

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