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(Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez; Ponce, 1946 – New York, 1993) Puerto Rican singer and composer, considered one of the best interpreters of Caribbean music of all time and a pioneer in the introduction of New York salsa in the early 1970s.

He was part of the legendary orchestra of trombonist Willie Colón and was known by the nickname of El Cantante de los Cantantes.

-.Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez was born on September 30, 1946 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. His parents Luis and Francisca are musicians who, from song to song, manage to support a large family of several children.

-. In the year of Hector’s birth, the singers who would influence him are much older: Daniel Santos is 30 years old; Ismael Rivera, better known as “Maelo”, is 15; and Jose “Cheo” Feliciano is eleven.

-. At the age of three, he suffers his first loss: the death of Francisca Martínez, his mother.

-. Juan Morel Campos is a music academy where his father enrolls him. Héctor begins to learn classical music, but he quickly decides to learn what is played in the streets. Jesús Sánchez Erazo, better known as “Chuito el de Bayamón”, is his first idol.

-. Sings the song Campanitas de cristal, a bolero composed by Rafael Hernández Marín, at a school party.

-. In the early sixties, he forms with friends, including Papo Luca, a group that performs boleros and salsas. He earns 18 dollars a night and his talent seduces the people of Ponce. He is invited to sing on television programs. Musicians Felipe Rodríguez and Tito Lara give him a promising future.

-. At the age of 17, being recognized in his native Ponce, he travels to New York. His family does not agree with his departure. In the city he is greeted by the ghost of the death of a brother, who was supposedly a drug addict. He stays in the apartment of Priscila, one of his older sisters.

Before joining the Fania All Stars for the first time, a group directed by the Dominican Johnny Pacheco, he was part of bands such as Orquesta Nueva York and Alegre All Stars.

-. In 1966, at the age of 21, he sings alongside Pete Rodríguez, Adalberto Santiago, Tito Puente, Richie Ray, among other artists, in the incipient Fania All Stars. He meets Willie Colón, an American musician with Puerto Rican parents. “We both knew the world in the Bronx neighborhood. I learned to speak Spanish with Hector, although at first I understood what he was saying. I remember he had a brilliant sense of humor and was a great imitator of singers,” said Colón in an interview.

-. In 1967, he achieved fame with his first album with Willie Colón. It is a mixture of genres such as guaracha, plena and guaguancó, and is entitled El Malo. The album is a tribute to the slum culture of the United States and Latin America.

-. He tries to work as a painter, but his sister won’t allow it. After two weeks, he attends a musical rehearsal with his backing vocalist friend Roberto Garcia. Hector takes the microphone and makes the orchestra directors fall in love with him.

-. At the beginning of 1968 he meets Carmen, a follower he meets at a concert. On October 30 of that year Jose Alberto, his first son, is born.

-. After the birth of Jose Alberto, he has his second son with Nilda Román, another follower. With her, who is nicknamed “La Puchi”, he finally marries and stays in an apartment in Queens. Héctor Junior is the name of his second son.

-. At the end of the sixties he becomes addicted to drugs. In more than one stage he leaves the audience in a daze.

-. In 1971 he is called again to record, together with other stars, Fania All Stars at the Cheetah. This combo featured Cheo Feliciano, Richie Ray, Ismael Miranda, Celia Cruz and the young Rubén Blades. In 1973, the group filled the Yankee Stadium bleachers. Anacaona, Quítate tú and Ahora vengo yo are some of their hits.

-. With Willie Colón, he recorded more than 18 albums between 1967 and 1973. Thousands of reissues of Asalto navideño, El Juicio and Lo Mato were made. Che che colé, Ausencia, Calle luna calle sol, Todo tiene su final are the most requested songs by the Latin American public.

(H3) -. Willie Colón dissolves the duet in 1974. However, both continue to work. Lavoe’s talent continues despite his excesses and the author of Talento de televisión knows it well.

-. In 1975 he releases La voz, his first solo album. This incursion is interpreted as a second wind in his career. So much is his energy to continue that he releases eight more albums. De ti depende (1976) is a collection of boleros and Comedia (1978) breaks sales with the song El cantante, written by Rubén Blades. This work was also produced by Willie Colón, who that year teamed up with Blades to record Siembra, the best-selling salsa album.

-. His interpretation of El cantante helps to build the nickname “El cantante de los cantantes” (The singer of the singers).

-. He performs at the Coliseo Evangelista Mora in Cali in 1977. This concert was attended by the writer Andrés Caicedo, who managed to take a picture with Lavoe in the dressing room. Months later, the author of ¡Qué viva la música! committed suicide with an overdose of barbiturates.

-. As a result of a strong depression, Lavoe is interned in a mental sanatorium in the United States in 1977. His heroin addiction, which he had begun to suffer at the end of the sixties, is not only known by those close to him but also by his fans. “He paid a lot of attention to me and, when he was in trouble, he would call me”, confessed singer Ismael Miranda in an interview.

-. Lives in Cali between November 1982 and March 1983 at the Hotel Aristi. He is a regular singer at the Juan Pachanga discotheque, owned by Larry Landa, a concert organizer. In the capital of the Valley it is said that Lavoe takes drugs during the day and tries to sing at night.

In February 1987, due to a fire, he jumps out of his apartment in Queens. At the same time, in Puerto Rico, his mother-in-law is stabbed to death.

-. On May 7, 1987, his son Hector is hit by a stray bullet. “That death broke his heart,” said Tito Nieves in an interview. “At that moment Héctor Lavoe’s soul dies”.

-. He is diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. Those who visit him in the hospital maintain that he does not lose his sense of humor nor his desire to return to the stage.

-. In Bayamón, Puerto Rico, he sings Mi Gente in a patron saint festival. But his presentation is sabotaged by one of the organizers who supposedly owes him money; in the middle of the song the lights are turned off and Lavoe is left without sound to continue.

-. In 1988, he throws himself from the ninth floor of a hotel in San Juan. He survives to continue fighting the battle. He sings on a Bronx street in 1989. His physical deterioration is a reflection of his state of mind. Lavoe is a ghost of his former self.

-. Tito Nieves is one of his friends who accompanies him in his difficult days. Lavoe depended on other people to live. A thrombosis paralyzes part of his body.

-. In March 1993, pushed by his record company, he makes his last presentation in New Jersey. He sings with Roberto Roena’s orchestra. Maestro Roena is not able to play in front of the “Singer of singers”. “It was too much to put him on stage”, he said indignantly.

-. At the age of 46 he dies of a cardiac arrest, on June 29, 1993, in New York. “He came into the world to enjoy it and suffer it. Although he was not happy, he made many people happy,” said his sister Priscila.

-. He is buried in Puerto Rico. He is accompanied by a horde of followers. The presence of his friend Ismael Miranda stands out, who bids him farewell saying: “He is not here with us, but his music continues”.

-. In 2007, El cantante, a movie inspired by his life, was released. It stars Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez.

-. Currently there are two monuments in his honor. One in his native Ponce, Puerto Rico, and another in Callao, Peru.

Héctor Lavoe

You can read: Génesis of Salsa, its essence, characteristics, rhythm, history and expansión

Platfoms to promote salsa

Just as we always promote the artists and musicians who keep alive salsa and Latin genres, we also think it is important to highlight the work of communicators who have taken the task of continuing to spread the traditional Latin music through the resources that technology has made available to us. Such is the case of Charlie Perez and the web page ”Salsa Con Sabor”, which he has been running for several years.

We talked to this talented young man, who has illustrated very well how his work has been throughout these years with the management of ”Salsa Con Sabor”, interesting anecdotes and what he earned from all this process.

Conversation with Charlie Perez from ”Salsa Con Todo”

Salsa Con Sabor was born in 2010. I was always a salsa enthusiast and it runs in the family because my father has always loved tropical music, salsa, guaguancó, son montuno, bolero, among others. I became curious about these topics while naving in the social networks, so I created a Facebook page whose aim was to be a music space to share with salsa fans around the world. By this means, we began to share music, artist biographies, salsa history, salsa ephemeris and many more” were the words spoken by Charlie when asked how this project came about.

He also told us that the page was gaining a popularity that he and his team decided to shape this idea through the creation of a website, a YouTube channel and accounts in the rest of social media. All this led several independent artists to send their musical works to ”Salsa Con Sabor” to be shared and diffused.

Important to note that all members of this great team are professionals nothing linked to the world of music. They are simply people who enjoy Latin genres and want them to stay alive over time.

What do you see in an artist before spreading his or her music?

I like to support all artists, but I don’t deny that I focus a lot on the quality of the work presented. I always check certain aspects such as the cover art, the image and how music was worked, showing whether or not an album will be worth it. We always give the opportunity to all artists to send us their work, but they must have a standard quality” said Charlie on the subject related to unknown artists sending him their albums.

Successes to date

Perez has told us that he feels incredibly grateful for all the doors ”Salsa Con Sabor” has opened for him. He has met many important people in the industry and artists with whom he has developed good friendships, something he really values.

This space has also allowed him to expand to other fields. In the case of Charlie, he is a marketer and always had the desire to start his own business, which added to his knowledge of the music industry and marketing, led him to create his own advertising agency called Tumba Media Productions. The company is dedicated to dissemination activities such as press releases, graphic design, among other things.

Another thing that has been very important for the future career of this young man has been song writing. Composing his own material has earned him contact with great artists such as Venezuelan singer Néstor Pacheco, who motivated him to make music and with whom he has a clase friendship. They even wrote some songs together such as ”Sabor y Guaguancó” and ”Mamá Inés”.

The best experiences with the website

Regarding this point, Charlie replied that his reviews have received many positive messages from the public and many artists. He and his collaborators are very glad that so many people keep an eye on their content and that their platform let them know abut new music in terms of salsa, guaguancó, bolero, son montuno and other associated genres.

We are great popuizers of new music that nobody knows about due to the amount of content you can find, which makes us very happy and be satisfied with our work” says Charlie.

Activity during the pandemic

From the pandemic, we started working on interviews a lot more than before and had to focus on making video content. Video editing tools were very important for us at this stage, since it wasn’t just about doing interviews, but also about downloading them and doing all the corresponding editing to show them to the public in the most professional way possible” says the administrator of ”Salsa Con Sabor” about his experience with the pandemic.

He also told us that there were many artists he interviewed with whom he thought would never connect, which was made possible thanks to the tools that technology offers us today. In that sense, his wife Wilendy Rosario was very important in this entire process, as she was in charge of making contacts and conducting many of these interviews in that frame of time. She is described by her husband as a fundamental part of this project thanks to her communication style and charisma.

Read also: Broadcaster and host of Con Sabor Y Amor Latino Tatiana Mezarina

Interview with Angel Rumba

Angel Manuel Ramos Sanchez, better known as Angel Rumba, is a New York singer of Puerto Rican descent with whom we had the great opportunity to talk about several issues of importance such as the beginning of his career with Pancho Bongó Y Su Orquesta, his debut as a soloist, the meaning behind his lyrics, among other things. It is a pleasure for us to have talked with this Latin talent and to bring the story to all our readers of International Salsa Magazine.

His beginnings

Ramos Sanchez was born in New York City in the 1980s, when there was a well-established salsa movement in New York City and the United States in general. Evidently, little Angel could not be left out of this trend, especially if we take into account that through his veins ran Latin blood.

In addition, his father was a singer, musician and guitarist, so he always listened to salsa, merengue, bolero and other genres at home. It was at the age of seven when he started playing güiro, bongo and conga due to the curiosity generated by his father’s work, who spent a lot of time teaching his son to play as many instruments as possible.

In 1992 when Angel was 12 years old, he started playing with an orchestra called Projecto 3 in the city of Allentown, which represented his first opportunity to be on stage and show his face to an audience waiting to see what he could offer. It could be said that this was the beginning of what would become his life’s work.

Moving to California and Pennsylvania

Given that Angel’s father was a truck driver, the family had to move around a lot until 2003, the year in which he moved to Puerto Rico and lived there for three years. In 2006, he moved permanently to Pennsylvania, where he has been living until today.

Release as a solo artist

When asked about his release as a solo artist, Angel stated that ”my beginnings were with merengue, but salsa always fascinated me because I really liked soneros such as Ismael Rivera, Gilberto Santa Rosa, El Canario and many more. I saw them improvising on stage and I always wanted to do the same.”

In 2014, he was given the chance to belong to the group Pancho Bongó Y Su Orquesta, which he was a member of for more than seven years until he wanted to make his own project in 2020. He felt he had the experience and took all the necessary stages to get to that point. In addition to that, being subject to command of a musical director greatly limits the creativity of the artists and the New Yorker singer no longer felt comfortable with what he was doing at that time.

The singer is also a composer and was not allowed to play his own music with the orchestra, which also led him to seek new horizons and, in turn, record his first solo track.

While acknowledging that this was no easy decision, he says that he has no regrets about it and all that he has been given from then until now has been a blessing for him and his family.

Obstacles during his solo career

On this subject, he confessed that many of his orchestra fellows were not happy with his decision to leave the group and he even felt that certain figures tried to put obstacles in his way so that he would not succeed in the way he wanted to. This is one of the reasons why he prefers not to show so much about his work and future projects to the public to avoid problems.

”Mi sentimiento En Rumba”

The process of making this album was not easy, since the artist had to knock on many doors until making contact with Rafael Lozano, who arranged the first song ”Sin Un Amor”. This was a cover of a song by Los Panchos, so we can say that it is a tribute to the group in a totally different genre.

We went looking for musicians from several countries to work with u among whom was Angel Guzman, who plays trombone, baritone, saxophone, trumpet and many more. He also told us about sound engineer José Guerrero, who makes the mixing and mastering of the songs.

The album includes six songs composed by Angel himself and three that were adapted such as ”Perfidia” in a bolero version as a gift for fans of musical trios.

In total, the whole project has two merengues, two boleros and the rest are salsa songs.

Salsa in a market dominated by trap and reggaeton

”Every genre has its audience and every artist has his fans” was what the singer answered when asked about the challenges facing a salsa singer in these times. With this, he shows that it does not bother him in the least that there are more popular genres than salsa and that every artist could have a strong fan base without this meaning involving damage to another one. He says that he will continue to create music with his favorite rhythms in spite of passing trends.

One thing he did emphasize is that there should be more artists who focus on writing and creating original music instead of doing so many covers. A lot of creativity is needed.

The importance of continuing to promote romantic love in the lyrics

The salsa exponent says that it is very important that music continues to promote romantic love and bring positive messages because unfortunately there are many genres focused on negative stuff such as disrespect for women, drugs, violence and much more. The salsa singer seeks to make his contribution to creating a better society in these hard times.

”The lyrics of the songs have always influenced society because their meanings anchor in the minds and the message endures” said Angel about this issue.

Read also: Are we really what we listen to?