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Puerto Rico resists military recruiting

Recruiting For Iraq War Undercut in Puerto Rico

By Paul Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 18, 2007; A01

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The political activists, brown envelopes tucked under their arms, staked out the high school gates just after sunrise. When students emerged from the graffiti-scorched streets of the Rio Piedras neighborhood here and began streaming toward their school, the pro-independence advocates ripped open the envelopes and began handing the teens fliers emblazoned with the slogan: “Our youth should not go to war.”

At the bottom of the leaflet was a tear sheet that students could sign and later hand to teachers, to request that students’ personal contact information not be released to the U.S. Defense Department or to anyone involved in military recruiting.

The scene outside the Ramon Vila Mayo high school unfolded at schools throughout Puerto Rico this week as the academic year opened. On this island with a long tradition of military service, pro-independence advocates are tapping the territory’s growing anti-Iraq war sentiment to revitalize their cause.

As a result, 57 percent of Puerto Rico’s 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders, or their parents, have signed forms over the past year withholding contact information from the Pentagon — effectively barring U.S. recruiters from reaching out to an estimated 65,000 high school students.

“If the death of a Puerto Rican soldier is tragic, it’s more tragic if that soldier has no say in that war,” said Juan Dalmau, secretary general of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP). His efforts are saving the island’s children from becoming “colonial cannon meat,” he said.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, all schools receiving U.S. federal funding must provide their students’ names, addresses and phone numbers to the military unless the child or parents sign an opt-out form. Puerto Rico received $1.88 billion in U.S. education funds this year.

For five years, PIP has issued opt-out forms to about 120,000 students in Puerto Rico and encouraged them to sign — and independista activists expect this year to mark their most successful effort yet.

Such actions come as other antiwar groups on the island are seeking to undercut military recruiting, as well. For example, the Coalition of Citizens Against Militarism, an association of pacifist groups, plans to visit about 70 schools on the island in the coming days, meaning that
many students will receive two, or even three, opt-out forms by the end of August.

Antiwar advocates have even gained direct access to Puerto Rican classrooms under a controversial directive issued last September by Rafael Aragunde, the island’s education secretary, granting “equal access” by pacifist groups and military recruiters.

Although he will not bar recruiters from schools, Aragunde said, he has “alot of sympathy” for what pacifist groups are trying to accomplish. “I’ve always felt that one of the byproducts of a good educational system is that you have citizens who will defend pacifism,” he said. “I think that just like we have to insist on ecological values, we have to insist on pacifist values.” Aragunde described his relations with military recruiters as “cordial.”

Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, acknowledged that the counter-recruiting campaigns are having an impact. “We’re drawing less than the national average” in Puerto Rico, he said.

In the 2003-06 period, 4,947 Puerto Rican men and women enlisted in the Army or Reserves, or approximately 123 people per 100,000 residents, according to Pentagon data.

That is below the average contribution of U.S. states, and far below the numbers in states such as Alabama, Kansas, Montana and Oklahoma, each of which enlists more than 200 men and women per 100,000, according to Army data.

“We’re not taking more than our share from Puerto Rico,” Carr said. “We’re taking less than our share, because that’s what they’ll give us.” Carr said he suspects that opt-out rates for states in the continental United States rarely break beyond 10 percent — a far cry from the nearly 60 percent on the island.

Reaction outside the gates of the Ramon Vila Mayo school this week seem to confirm that suspicion. A few students shrugged off the political activists’ overtures, while others smiled and declared their interest in joining the “Yankee” military.

But most of the teens politely accepted the forms, nodded and even fetched pens from their school bags.

Calls for Puerto Rico’s independence have existed since the days of Spanish colonial rule and continued after the United States seized control of the island in 1898. In the 1950s, a branch of the movement attempted a violent uprising.

Although many Puerto Ricans express deep patriotism for the island, the independence impulse has never translated in the polls — either in elections or in successive plebiscites on the status of the territory, in which independence has repeatedly been rejected.

Leaders from the island’s two major political parties say that their PIP opponents are exploiting young people to advance their separatist grievances. And Pentagon officials accuse the activists of “manipulating” impressionable young people.

“What’s going on in Puerto Rico is an artificial circumstance, where a group is trying to persuade students to take their name off a list, and of course that’s going to meet in some change in behavior,” Carr said. “In the event that someone approaches a young person and their
voluntary behavior is to take an opt-out card and give it to their teacher, there’s nothing we can or should do in that case. That’s free speech. But it’s curious speech, because it’s manipulating the flow of information . . . and that is unhealthy.”

The Pentagon said it is on track to meet its recruiting targets for this fiscal year. However, despite a $3.2 billion national recruitment campaign, the military was forced to bring back 1,000 former recruiters to help with the summer months — the peak recruiting period — and late
last month introduced a $20,000 “quick-ship” bonus for recruits willing to enter training before October. Carr said that Puerto Rico’s anti-military drive could force recruiters to focus on states such as Texas, where they meet with less resistance.

Maj. Ricardo Sierra, who runs eight of Puerto Rico’s 14 Army recruiting stations, rejected the notion that anti-recruitment efforts are affecting his operations. High school students are not his target demographic, he said, because few speak English well enough to pass military entrance exams. Instead, Sierra said, recruiters are meeting targets by contacting college-educated students.

“We do target [high school students], we do campaigns, we talk to the seniors, but we don’t get a whole lot of them,” Sierra said, estimating that the U.S. military enlists an average of 22 Puerto Rican high school graduates per year.

Senior chief Joe Vega, who heads the island’s three Navy recruiting stations, said that “if Puerto Rico was a fully bilingual state or country, the recruiting contribution would be much higher.” His top recruiter, Chief Select Ernesta Marrero, said that many young people sign up out of patriotism or a sense of obligation to the United States.

“Being part of the U.S. is what gives them the right to their freedom, democracy, the chance to voice their opinions — it’s the constitution that we [the military] uphold,” Marrero said.

Sonia Santiago, founder of the local group Mothers Against War, said her volunteers visit schools to “unmask” the way in which recruiters promise “villas y castillas” (villas and castles) that they cannot deliver. One persuasive tactic, she added, is to ask children how their mothers would feel if they were injured or killed in war.

Aragunde, the education secretary and a self-declared independista, said that most Puerto Ricans do not view the U.S. armed forces as “their military.” According to a recent poll by the Puerto Rican daily El Nuevo Día, 75 percent of commonwealth residents oppose the Iraq war — a figure that has escalated with the number of Puerto Ricans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon lists 37 service members from the island as killed in action in the two conflicts, but local antiwar groups say the number exceeds 80, including suicides and soldiers recruited from the U.S. mainland.

Deaths of all Puerto Rican troops make headlines here. The funeral in March of Army Cpl. Jason Nunez, 22, proved particularly emotional. In images broadcast throughout the island, his mother removed the U.S. flag from her son’s coffin and deliberately dropped it to the floor. She
later implored other parents not to allow their children to fight in the U.S. military.

Aragunde said such images shape public opinion.

“You don’t want children fighting on the streets, you don’t want children cheating, nor stealing, and you don’t want them to think that an alternative to solving any conflict is war,” he said. “I feel it’s my obligation to defend that value.”

Thoughts On Lavoe

Hector Lavoe has returned to the media spotlight with the release of El Cantante, which has not been well received by most movie critics (including many Latino critics). One of the reasons given in the negative reviews is that a large portion of the movie is spent focusing on Lavoe’s drug use.

I have not seen El Cantante so I am going to refrain from making any comments about the movie and the critic’s reviews.

I’ve been reading a book called “Cada Cabeza es un Mundo” (which is a line taken from the Lavoe classic “El Todopoderoso”) by Jaime Torres which is not so much a full biography of Lavoe but rather a book filled with anecdotes from friends, family, musicians and others who knew him and some interviews (among them one with Willie Colon that goes beyond the personal relationship with Lavoe, getting into some interesting musical discussions about the recordings they made and the state of Salsa in general).

The author of the book interviewed Lavoe extensively over the years and got to know him on a personal level and he shares stories of their encounters.

The book unfortunately is filled with too many pages about Lavoe’s drug problems and eventual death, doing so in alot of detail.

Apart from all the controversy that has surrounded the release of the movie, reading the book made me think about Lavoe’s legacy. What’s happened to it and where it is today. There are so many positive things that he gave to the world through his talent, great contributions of musical and cultural impact but it seems that all of those wonderful things have been buried and replaced by the media’s overwhelming focus, for many years not just now, on his drug use which I think has turned into not only the storyline but meaning of Lavoe’s life. In short, encapsulated as: Lavoe was a great singer and a junkie that died an early death. THE END. I think that’s what newcomers to his music and just people overall not familiar with Lavoe and what he actually accomplished as an artist, are finding as they begin to learn about him.

When I was growing up in Puerto Rico I idolized him as did everybody else that I knew, as he was all over the island but he was more than just a great singer, he meant and represented alot more than that not only to those in Puerto Rico but to people all over Latin America. But as with all Idols, fans sometimes have a hard time accepting that they may be less than perfect. Because Idols are not supposed to make mistakes or be anything different than the image created of them by their fans.

As far as Lavoe I think that the issue is not that his drug problems have been so widely reported. It’s a truth of his life and it should be told. What I object to and think is wrong is that its been magnified to the point where it has completely defined Lavoe to the public at large. It has diminished his legacy and even lessened his stature as a Latin music icon.

Lavoe is too important in Latin music history to be brought down into being just a sad and inconsequential footnote. I think it’s terrible the damage and injustice that’s been done to his name and the great legacy he left us.

The beauty that he brought to the world has to be reclaimed and presented in the proper musical, cultural and historical context.

It is owed to Hector Lavoe, to his family, to all the musicians that put all their heart and soul into the music they created with him and to all of those who have been long time fans, to all of those who are discovering his music for the first time and for future generation of fans.

Waiting For Lavoe

browardpalmbeach.com

Waiting for Lavoe
The elusive Héctor

By Edmund Newton
Published: August 9, 2007

When you make a biographical film about a public figure who’s well-known to much of the audience, you start out in a deep hole. From the moment the guy appears onscreen, people are making mental notes about the actor’s way of holding a fork or pronouncing tomato instead of getting into the plot. Give the makers of El Cantante credit on that score. Marc Anthony, with the slender physique and a pair of retro aviator-style specs, is a passable Héctor Lavoe. He has even picked up some of Lavoe’s vocal mannerisms — like Lavoe’s distinctive way of turning a long, line-ending note into a stretched-out triplet — and his supplicating, arm-waving stage posture.

But there are already rumblings in the Spanish media about the presumptuousness of using a tissue-paper balladeer like Anthony to portray one of the great salsa interpreters (to say nothing of the dreary tediousness of watching the protagonist’s 30-year act of self-destruction — and wasn’t there more to Lavoe’s life than that?). For Lavoe aficionados, seeing Anthony up there tends to evoke that Dan Quayle moment: Sir, I knew Héctor Lavoe — and you’re no Héctor Lavoe.

If you want to understand why Lavoe was considered a sonero supremo, get the El Cantante soundtrack. Listen to Anthony’s renditions of any of Lavoe’s signature songs, say “Mi Gente” or the title song, then listen to the originals, either the studio recordings or various live sets that Lavoe recorded before he died in 1993. The difference is a singer with a complete mastery of his material versus one who’s trying doggedly to pull off a reasonable simulation.

I’m not going to play a party-pooping Lloyd Bentsen to the makers of El Cantante — if anything, you want to give Anthony a reassuring hug, because his performance is a respectful one — but, yes, I remember Lavoe from those days, and his music, unlike the film’s tracks, could make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Those were exuberant times, the 1970s and ’80s on the salsa circuit. The famous Palladium in New York City had closed in 1966, more for security reasons than for any kind of cultural shift (the place had become a mecca for kids in rayon shirts, riding the IRT down from the Bronx and El Barrio, packin’ heat). But the party went on at the Corso on East 86th Street, Ochentas on the Upper West Side, the Tropicoro in the Bronx, and a dozen or so other joints, to say nothing of the merengue clubs in Washington Heights and after-hours clubs in all of the Latino barrios. (Anybody remember the brief reign of Smucker’s on Flatbush Avenue?)

In truth, Lavoe, a skinny dude with something of a ditty-bopper slouch, was never my favorite. Compared to some of the other great voices — Cheo Feliciano, Rubén Blades, and Ismael Miranda, to say nothing of the incomparable Tito Rodriguez — he sounded nasal, even creaky, like somebody’s hick grandfather. But coño, hombre, he took command of a stage. Salsa requires precision as much as emotion, a hard-wired feel for the rhythm, and an infallible instinct for the clave beat. The guys on the stage are all percussionists, even the wind instrumentalists. And from the perspective of the dance floor, Lavoe was one of the magicians who could make it all work.

A distinctive part of Lavoe, I think, was that he never really crossed over from Puerto Rico to the United States; he always nurtured that jíbaro connection. When he performed, there was directness to him, the attitude of a man saying: “Let me explain myself. I’m often misunderstood, but I’m a person of dignity and joy.” His Spanish-speaking audience loved him for it, always perceiving him as a great man of the people rather than as a romantic heartthrob.

The drugs? The movie doesn’t say it, but habits must have been sustained by the grueling routine of the so-called cuchifrito circuit. Playing two or three nightclub gigs a night (bars could serve liquor until 4 a.m.), then grinding away till dawn at an after-hours club took a lot of strength. Lavoe didn’t have the iron determination of some of the younger bandleaders. I remember one night in 1981 or 1982, standing with his musicians, one or two of them world-class percussionists who put in time with the Fania All-Stars, in front of a Bronx nightclub. Everybody was fidgeting restlessly, waiting for Héctor. It was the band’s third stop that night. No Héctor Lavoe, no gig, no fee from the club. Héctor never showed. There were a lot of pissed-off musicians and customers. That might have been the beginning of the end for Héctor Lavoe.

Fania Newsletter – August 2007

August Newsletter 2007

Cool news and hot happenings for all the FANIA lovers out there!

Fania News & Updates

It’s all about Lavoe!

Héctor Lavoe lives! The legend of the greatest salsa singer in history continues with our deep grooving, career long retrospective: La Voz: A Man and His Music. Released on July 17th, this new 2-disk collection packs in all the hard-hitting, salsa smashes of the gifted Fania singer. It’s all here, from Héctor’s early days as the lead singer of the Willie Colón orchestra, to his chart-topping years as a solo act.

Our new 27-song collection includes extensive liner notes (in English and Spanish) detailing the true stories behind the some of the greatest salsa tunes ever recorded. Plus, acclaimed Grammy winning DJ Louie Vega—Héctor Lavoe’s nephew—lends his ‘inside knowledge’ and provides us with a track-by-track written history of each of the selected songs.

With rarely seen black and white photographs, and this retrospective is an absolute treasure and a ‘must-have’ for every Héctor Lavoe fan.

Finally, the long awaited Hollywood biopic El Cantante premiers today in movie theaters across North America. Starting Latin heartthrob sensation Marc Anthony—as Héctor Lavoe—and Jennifer Lopez, the new film captures the magic and wonder of the Fania years. The film focuses on Lavoe’s rapid accent to the top of the charts and his tragic fall from grace and of course, all the top songs from Lavoe repertoire are there as well.

For those of you looking to delve deeper into the thrilling world of Héctor Lavoe, we suggest checking us on the web at faniarecords.com. Once there, you will find exclusive album reviews, news on Héctor and a list of all his albums—each one the Héctor Lavoe CD’s has been digitally re-mastered with the best technology available.

Fania History

Héctor Lavoe’s Last Record: Strikes Back (1987)

The last official album made by the celebrated Héctor Lavoe was 1987’s superb Strikes Back. Produced by his longtime friend, the trombonist Willie Colón, Strikes Back finds Lavoe re-visiting the folkloric roots of his natal city of Ponce, Puerto Rico. By the time of the recording, years of self-abused had begun to take their toll on Lavoe’s once powerful voice.

Yet, just like Jazz legend Billie Holliday, Lavoe’s talent went far beyond just vocal prowess, and under the tutelage of Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe sang what amounted to masterful set of now classic salsa songs. The highlight is the now legendary “Loco” (Crazy) composed by Tommy Sánchez, the song deals head on with Lavoe’s troubled personality—and finds the renowned singer admitting his shortcomings to his adoring fans. Other cuts, especially “Plato de Segunda Mesa” (Leftover Plate) proved that Lavoe had lost none of his emotive energy and became instant hit with “classic salsa” loving crowd.

Less than a year after the release of Strikes Back, Héctor Lavoe attempted suicide by jumping out of his hotel room in Condado, Puerto Rico. As a consequence of the fall, the singer suffered extensive damage to his throat and was never able to record again, making Strikes Back stand as his untimely swan song. A fan favorite, Strikes Back was nominated for a Grammy in 1988.

Featured Artist

Celia Cruz and her 1967 masterpiece: Bravo

Exquisite, masterful and passionate—that’s how music fans from all over the world have described the sultry rhythms of the late Celia Cruz. The legendary songstress captivated the world with her incomparable style and her one and only cry for “Azucar!”

Long out of print, the fabulous album Bravo catches the “Queen of Salsa” during the golden era of afro-Caribbean music. This 1967 recording showcases Celia Cruz at the height of her legendary vocal powers. Crisp and emotive, her voice cruises majestically over tracks such as the ultimate Cuban classic “Guantanamera” and is a pleasure to listen to her assure us that she still the champ on “Campeona” (The Champ.)

A product of its era, the album incorporates the A-Go-Go styles of the swinging sixties, while adding some old time Cuban flavor to the festivities. A rare jewel, this often ignored but highly regarded album by Celia, comes with a clean re-mastered digital sound, rare photographs and extensive liner notes in English and Spanish. Originally released under the Tico label, the long out of print Bravo is an essential addition for collectors of sixties era groovylicious afro-Caribbean rhythms.

Featured Album

Ray Barretto: The Message (1972)

Peace, love and bananas: the greatest conguero in the world at the end of the flower power ear—The Message was released in 1972 and finds Barretto’s band reaching the “right” salsa grooves. This is an album full rich and unexpected moments with unbelievable tracks like “Te Traigo Mi Son” y “Alma Con Alma.” After being together for five years, Barretto’s band had reached a tight sound, under the watchful eye of Barretto each member brought the right amount of “flavor” to the festivities. Singer Adalberto Santiago leads Barretto’s band with his marvelous voice but you don’t need to know any Spanish to understand Barretto’s message. Once Barretto’s unmistakable conga grooves kick in, the message becomes clear: Move your body & Dance!

New Releases

Lebron Brothers: Criollo
Aldalberto Santiago: Calidad
El Barrio: The Bad Boogaloo
Eddie Palmieri: La Perfecta
Latin Lounge Jazz: Havana
Latin Lounge Jazz: San Juan
Latin Lounge Jazz: Spanish Harlem
Héctor Lavoe: El Cantante- The Originals
Héctor Lavoe: La Voz: A Man and His Music
Ray Barretto: The Message
Celia Cruz: Bravo

Faniarecords.com

El Cantante – Salsa Self-Expression

nypress.com

SALSA SELF-EXPRESSION

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony craft glamor with soul
By Armond White

“You may not like my kind, but he does!” is Jennifer Lopez’s defiant assertion as Puchi in El Cantante. She plays Nilda Georgina “Puchi” Roman, the wife of salsa singer Hector Lavoe (played by Marc Anthony).

As Lopez’s most ethnically-defined screen characterization yet, Puchi’s street-tough impertinence about “my kind” gives this musical biopic a jolt of social realism. Not many biopics achieve such class reckoning—only Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and Sid & Nancy come to mind. Such extraordinary emotional authenticity grips the imagination more than director Leon Ichaso’s slapdash narrative.

In El Cantante, Puchi and Lavoe’s marriage reveals two young people coming to understand themselves. This personal story overwhelms the sensationalism of Lavoe’s hectic show business career. Lavoe’s renown during the salsa explosion of the 1970s, helps Lopez, Anthony and Ichaso focus on the development of modern Latino self-expression—the way in which private personalities connect to a large audience and, with Lavoe’s art joined to a musical tradition, contributed to defining the goals and feelings of the Afro-Caribbean community.

Through Puchi’s impertinence, El Cantante immediately avoids the typical bio-pic slump into tragedy—you know, drugs, infidelity, bankruptcy. Puchi makes no apologies; she claims the excitement of ghetto-rough high-life as simply hers and Lavoe’s pattern. “Don’t tell me how to live my life! I’ll tell you what happened!” she reprimands her interviewer in the film’s B&W bracketing scenes.

El Cantante explores Latin New York’s music and drug scene with greater depth than in Carlito’s Way because it is always distinguished by Lopez and Anthony’s personal authenticity. While the film memorializes Lavoe, Lopez and Anthony’s performances make vivid and credible Latino characters that are usually movie stereotypes.

When Puchi talks about the couple’s orgiastic excess, she says “I don’t know if it’s natural for others, natural for us.” Confessing risk is a harder truth than most biopics offer, and it’s said with a self-defensive candor that Lopez makes believable. She’s breathtakingly down-to-earth; her map-of-Puerto-Rico face has a beauty that is recognizable on the street, not an elevated fantasy figure—or the passing-for-Italian ruse she’s used in other movies.

Puchi and Hector share a sense of bluff, ambition and good times that reflect the symbiosis of people who grew up with the same language, customs and social influences. Inside this celebrity biography is a fascinating story of two Latinos (“jibaros”) who carve a relationship out of both the deprivation and riches of ethnic urban life.

Lopez, Anthony and Ichaso seize the opportunity to make Hollywood’s first NuYorican epic. A spiritual connection between the island of Puerto Rico and the New York drug-inflected environment is sketched in Lavoe’s immigration and his destabilization (the subject of his songs).

The family he forms with Puchi and musicians of the Fania record company, Willie Colon (John Ortiz), Johnny Pacheco (Nelson Vasquez), don’t simply represent a culture; they’re a lifeline that he desperately seeks.

Ichasho and co-screenwriters David Darmstaedter and Todd Anthony Bello fail to enrich this insight: They overuse montage, a commercial shorthand. Only one scene—a cliché red-for-passion-temptation musical number—connects Lavoe’s art and religion.

When Puchi says her husband “had everything you need for a good man to break down,” she speaks for more than Lavoe; she characterizes the providence of an entire urban culture. Puchi implies a fate not told in West Side Story.

There’s conscientiousness—even some soul—beneath El Cantante’s uneven glamor, especially in Anthony’s good, precise acting. He has a skinny, boney face like the young Sinatra but on stage as Lavoe, he sings with a marvelous open-throated pleasure that fulfills the idea of “El Cantante” as a people’s artist. But the film is propelled by Lopez’s fierce ally, Puchi; she speaks in a sharp squeal not so much reminiscent of Rosie Perez as evoking a street girl’s need to be heard.

At last, Lopez has found a role that gives her caste meaningful style.

These lines and these performances show a deep grasp of Lavoe’s environment. Had Ichaso put Lopez and Anthony’s simpatico into more coherent images, they’d have a superb movie.

El Cantante: J-Lo’s Journey Home

nydailynews.com

J.Lo’s journey home

The star’s heritage looms large in her music and new movie

BY JOE NEUMAIER

With tomorrow’s opening of her film “El Cantante” – a biopic about Hector Lavoe, the vibrant soul of New York’s salsa scene in the ’70s – along with a recent Spanish-language album (“Como Ama una Mujer”) and her marriage to fellow Nuyorican Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez is coming home to her roots.

But Lopez, 38, insists that this phase in her life isn’t a return to a low-profile, pre-celebrity J.Lo – nor is it a rebuke to the girl in that famous eyeball-melting green dress, the girl whose abbreviated name became shorthand for “megastar.”

Instead, she says, it’s merely part of the evolution of “Jenny From the Block” – the one in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx, where her parents, from Puerto Rico, raised her and her two sisters – to an actress, singer and dancer firming up her rep a decade into her fame.

“I’ve always felt very close to my New York Puerto Rican heritage,” Lopez tells the Daily News. “I felt like it gave me individuality and made me different in Hollywood. It’s always grounded me.

“But doing [the album and movie] in a row did happen very organically. I guess your heart leads you to what you love, you know?”

Being Latina, like being a New Yorker, “is who I am, part of my life,” she says. “It’s not something I have to put too much thought into, except that I’m very proud of being part of it.”

Lopez is not just a part of “El Cantante.” The woman who says she’s “constantly in motion, always working” decided to launch a new career as a producer with this film about Lavoe, the Puerto Rican singer who arrived in New York in the mid-’60s and became one of Fania Records’ most popular talents,

The roots of J.Lo’s success

“Latin Sinatra” who was the voice and face of salsa music.

Anthony plays Lavoe from his teens through his heyday and up to his death in 1993, when drug use and HIV tore him apart. Lopez plays Puchi, Lavoe’s wife, who professed a desire to have Lopez play her before she died in 2002. The script for “El Cantante” (“The Singer”), by David Darmstaedter and Todd Anthony Bello, came to Lopez six years ago. She developed it, and chose filmmaker Leon Ichaso (“Crossover Dreams,” “Piñero”) to direct.

Lopez says that when she read the screenplay, she pictured only Anthony, the modern era’s salsa superstar, as the lead.

Eleven years ago, they’d dated for a time. Two divorces, two media-circus romances (with Ben Affleck and Sean [Diddy] Combs) and many life lessons later, Lopez was setting up a production company and brought the project to Anthony. The timing was right, love was rekindled, and the two married in 2004.

She’d had her string of hits “(Out of Sight,” “The Wedding Planner,” “Maid in Manhattan,” “Monster-in-Law”) and disappointments (“Enough,” “An Unfinished Life”), as well as a recording career beginning with 1999’s “On the 6.” But she says that despite the critical attacks on “Gigli” — the 2003 film she and Affleck starred in, which had reviews that dissected their relationship as much as the movie — she didn’t hesitate to costar with her husband.

“Not at all,” she says. “My focus was on, ‘Who is the best person for this role?’

“We weren’t even together at that time. We weren’t a couple. And then, the fact that we were a couple when we actually shot the film — because of the [rough] material, I feel like it was a blessing, you know? We were so comfortable with each other, and we did know what it was like to be in that world of fame and craziness. It’s something that adds to the movie, another layer, a truth.”

Their life together, she reveals, has helped slow her down some.

“You get to a point where you think, life is passing me by,” she says. “I thought, I have to stop and enjoy things a bit, and then I can do these other things, too. But you have to have something to do that for, and since I’ve been married to Marc [with whom she shares an estate on Long Island], I’ve decided to concentrate more on actually living a little bit, as well as working on things close to my heart.”

One of those things is her return to live performing next month in support of “El Cantante.” Lopez will tour with Anthony in a concert that, she says, “will have a mix of singing and dancing and English and Spanish. It’ll take people on a ride and make you feel. Like everything we do.”

Fans and friends recall Hector Lavoe

northjersey.com

Fans and friends recall singer Hector Lavoe
By SAMANTHA HENRY

With his signature aviator glasses and ’70s feathered hair, Hector Lavoe captured an era like no other: the heyday of true New York Salsa.

His nickname was simply “The Voice,” his life story an arc of triumph and tragedy that took him from the heights of international stardom to his death from AIDS at age 46 in 1993, following a long battle with drug addiction. It was a personal journey that paralleled the creation, and some would say demise, of one of Latin music’s most triumphant chapters.

A native of Ponce, Puerto Rico, Lavoe gave voice to a new generation growing up on the mainland in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere — teaching them to take pride in their culture through his music. His songs, often a blend of melancholy longing with lyrics full of metaphor and message, were always layered over an infectious dance beat, making for some of the biggest Spanish-language hits of the late ’60s and ’70s.

“He was a salsero storyteller for our time,” said Virginia Cruz, a Lavoe fan from Passaic who remembered seeing him perform at a club there. “I was mesmerized by his presence. You didn’t just hear his music — you felt it.”

Now Lavoe’s life story — often lived like a soap opera — has been made into a movie starring the Nuyorican (New York-born Puerto Rican) power couple of Jennifer Lopez and her husband, the salsa singer Marc Anthony. In the movie, called “El Cantante,” or “The Singer,” which opens nationwide Aug. 3, Anthony plays Lavoe and Lopez plays his wife, Nilda “Puchi” Román.

On the eve of the movie’s release, North Jerseyans — from musicians who played with Lavoe to fans who worshipped him — reminisced about crossing paths with him during the height of his fame or in his final days, when he was ravaged by drugs and depression but still beloved by millions.

There was a time during Lavoe’s heyday, from the late ’60s to the early ’80s, when his songs could be heard on Spanish-language radio stations from New York to the tip of South America.

He churned out hit after hit, including his signature tunes: “Yesterday’s Newspaper,” whose lyrics say, in part, “Your love is like yesterday’s newspaper — that no one wants to read”; and the song most closely identified with him, “El Cantante,” a prophetic tale about the bittersweet nature of fame that foreshadowed his own spectacular rise and fall.

Arriving in New York at age 17 in the early 1960s, Lavoe landed in the midst of a hotbed of musical creativity. Latin musicians were mixing musical genres with abandon — Afro-Cuban rhythms with Latin jazz, blues with boogaloo, traditional Puerto Rican folk tunes with symphonic brass sections — to create an explosive new sound they called salsa, after the spicy dip that was also a tasty blend of seemingly disparate ingredients.

Lavoe soon joined forces with the famed bandleader Willie Colon. With complex but danceable musical arrangements, pride-filled lyrics that spoke directly to the Latino experience, and Lavoe’s unparalleled improvisational delivery, an unstoppable hit machine was born.

“That was the era of salsa. That’s gone; it’ll never come back,” said Gilberto Colon Jr. (no relation to Willie Colon), who played piano in Lavoe’s band for 17 years. “There were clubs on every corner.”

Gilberto Colon, also known as “El Pulpo,” or “The Octopus,” started working with Lavoe in 1974 when the singer embarked on a solo career. He described Lavoe as a serious musician, fiercely proud of the Puerto Rican musical tradition he represented. But he also saw a different side of Lavoe after the curtain went down, and he was one of the few to stick by him during his darkest days of spiraling depression, multiple nervous breakdowns and eventually a failed suicide attempt that left him practically unable to walk or perform. Lavoe’s very public descent was made worse by the deaths of several close family members in rapid succession — including the accidental death of his teenage son — as well his near lifelong addiction to heroin.

“The drugs transformed his personality, Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde,” Colon said. “When he wasn’t high, he was quiet, a real comedian, but on drugs he was tough, in your face, aggressive, and people loved it. But that wasn’t the real Hector Lavoe. The real one was quiet, real smart and real proud.”

It was Lavoe’s intimate connection to his fans — the way he would jump off the stage and wander among the crowd, his accessibility and humanity — that many North Jerseyans remember, whether watching him perform at intimate venues like the Father English Community Center in Paterson or to sold-out crowds at the Meadowlands.

Jorge Leureyro of Paterson recalled the fortuitous events that led to his meeting and working with Lavoe for several years. Leureyro was a star-struck teenager growing up in Peru in the late 1970s when he met a salsa singer named Ismael Miranda, who was passing through on tour. Miranda scribbled his New York address on a piece of paper and told Leureyro to stop by if he ever made it to the United States.

When Leureyro immigrated to New Jersey in the early ’80s, he went in search of the address on the crumpled piece of paper. He was disappointed to find it was an industrial building in midtown Manhattan, but turning to leave, he asked the security guard if any musicians lived there.

Leureyro was directed upstairs to a music studio and walked in to find a roomful of his music idols — Lavoe at the microphone, Cuban songstress Celia Cruz on backup vocals and the famous salsa group the Fania All-Stars taking directions from bandleader Johnny Pacheco.

“I thought I was in a dream,” Leureyro said. “I did not even want to touch the walls — because I thought I was in heaven.”

Leureyro hung out at the studio so much they eventually gave him a messenger’s job. He showed off a photo album in his Illinois Avenue living room, the walls lined with salsa CDs and memorabilia. Each page features Leureyro posing with a different musical titan of salsa’s greatest era.

“Most people see these people as idols, but they didn’t see themselves that way,” Leureyro said. “They are humans. I was very respectful of them and learned they wanted to be treated like humans; they got sick, they got tired, they had their own personal circumstances.”

He remembered chatting with Lavoe after a concert in Paterson one night.

“Hector was a very quiet guy,” he said. “He loved to smile, but he was very sensitive. He would cry a lot toward the end of his life. He would talk about things going on in his life and cry.”

Benito Guzman Jr., a self-described Lavoe fanatic who is the vice principal of School 25 in Paterson, said Lavoe’s music inspired a generation of young Latinos growing up in America’s inner cities.

“It was a different atmosphere then. Latinos weren’t looked too good upon, especially Puerto Ricans,” Guzman said. “It was a struggle to keep your own identity, and his music gave you a self-identity, a pride to be who you were.”

Guzman, who cherishes a memory of meeting Lavoe at a club in the Bronx, said he was an idol who will not soon be forgotten.

“He was the king,” Guzman said. “There’ll never be another one like that. There are some that are once in a lifetime.”

Review of “El Cantante”

The first of many to come.

newsday.com

‘El Cantante’ recaptures Lavoe’s music, not Lavoe
Ed Morales

There’s a scene early in “El Cantante,” the new movie about the life of Héctor Lavoe opening Friday, which is emblematic of the film’s joys and frustrations. Marc Anthony, playing Lavoe, is sitting in his living room watching the legendary “Iris Chacón Show” and Jennifer Lopez, playing his wife Puchi (Nilda Román), wriggles her butt in his face so that he can’t see Chacón’s ample posterior. While Marc and J.Lo are fun and pretty to look at, they often obscure what we came to see: the story of Héctor Lavoe.

It’s a quintessential tragedy of a self-destructive artist blessed with incredible talent who finds it impossible to deal with his personal life and his audience. The haunting beauty of the movie is the way it dramatizes the central figure of salsa music, the singer, who is burdened with carrying the hopes and dreams of his audience and transforming them into a nimble display of vocal magic and improvisation. “I am the singer,” go the lyrics to the title track, written by Rubén Blades, “Very popular everywhere/But when the show is over/I’m just a regular guy.”

The Puerto Rican-born Lavoe, who came to New York as an adolescent, was perhaps salsa’s greatest singer, but he made a mess of his life, descending into drug addiction, attempting suicide, and dying at only 46 in 1993 from HIV-related causes.

Watching “El Cantante” brings up conflicting emotions from sympathy to loathing, and, despite its surface portrayals of Willie Colón, Johnny Pacheco and the rest of the Fania Records crew, it’s a must-see for anyone interested in the classic salsa period of the ’60s and ’70s.

The problem with “El Cantante” is that Anthony and Lopez are too recognizable as celebrities, and it takes half the movie for you to believe their characters. As the harshly lit narrator and the doting but difficult wife, Lopez is in almost every scene, drawing attention away from Anthony, who spends his time moping and not demonstrating much of a feel for Lavoe’s enigmatic persona.

While Marc and J.Lo are dressed in the best funky-bohemian wardrobe ever seen, there’s no hint of what motivated Lavoe to become so self-destructive, nor of the intangible spark he possessed that incited so much devotion from his fans. There is little character development or narrative tension – at times the movie is a relentless chain of cliched montages and overly impressionistic and dreary sequences of Lavoe shooting up heroin.

The movie’s momentum picks up during the scenes when Anthony performs Lavoe’s music – even though he lacks Lavoe’s emotional quality, Anthony’s own considerable talent fills the screen, and there’s a nice touch when the lyrics are translated in flashy titles.

“El Cantante” fails to explain why Lavoe felt tortured enough to hurt himself and those around him, or how, with his musician friends, he helped create some of the best salsa ever recorded. What we’re left with is some exhilarating explosions of classic salsa, and a precious momentary illusion that he is still with us.

109th Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Puerto Rico

On the 109th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico, debate continues over Puerto Rico’s political independence and US military and corporate presence on the island. Puerto Ricans have had US citizenship since 1917, but residents of the island cannot vote for President and lack voting representation in the US Congress.

We speak with two prominent Puerto Rican voices: photojournalist and activist Frank Espada has worked for decades documenting the Puerto Rican diaspora, as well as the civil rights movement in the United States. Martín Espada is Frank’s son and an acclaimed poet and professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

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