![]() ![]() ![]() Pete “El Conde” Rodríguez started working with Pacheco. Johnny was the music director and Masucci was the lawyer. ![]() In 1963, Pacheco and Jerry Masucci co-founded Fania Records. Johnny Pacheco leads the Fania All-Stars in Africa in 1974 His band was the first Latin band to play the Apollo Theater in 1962. By 1960 Johnny was the king of New York pachanga. In the late 1950s, Pacheco began playing with Charlie Palmieri. You can almost hear his exuberant playing now. Pacheco mirrored that with his big Fania arrangements and his flute. The charanga is influenced by French classical music and brings the flute up front. It is an evolution of the charanga of the the 1940s which itself reflects the influence of the French contredanse in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti. Pachanga is a mix between Cuban son montuno and Dominican merengue. Pacheco first rose to prominence during the pachanga years of the 1960s. Turns out it was in the bandleader, the whole time. We always wondered where was the Dominican and the merengue. Most salsa musicians are Puerto Rican, Cuban, Venezuelan or Colombian. Without any training, he picked it up and played a perfect “Compadre Pedro Juan.” The family was flabbergasted. When he was little, Johnny’s Dad gave him a harmonica. They were the first to record Luis Alberti’s “Compadre Pedro Juan” which is probably the most famous traditional Dominican merengue. His father was a musician, the bandleader and clarinetist of Orquesta Santa Cecilia which was a popular big band in the 1930s. Pacheco was born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic on March 25, 1935. Both are present in the music even to this day. The deepest roots are in the traditional cultures of West Africa and Central Africa, and the Indigenous cultures of the Caribbean and South America. The roots of the whole thing are the music of Caribbeans which first emerged when Black and Indigenous people were finally freed from the chains of human slavery. Salsa was something that everybody liked, that Latin people could be proud of too. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s enabled African Americans to proudly say “Black is Beautiful.” If Black is Beautiful, then Brown is Beautiful too. It was a time of expanding social consciousness. If you really know the Caribbean, you start to notice the echoes of Caribbean culture in African American culture, and the other direction too. Many of us are taught that Latin and Black are two different things, but both share the same roots and Latin is very Black whether you want to admit that or not. In a way the Fania sound was the popular sound of the Latin people, just as Motown was the popular sound of African Americans. You can hear the evolution of Latin music by following Celia from her roots in Cuba with La Sonora Matancera (1950-1965), into New York with Tito Puente’s Cuban sound (1966-1973), and then with Johnny Pacheco’s New York sound at Fania after 1974. Some artists like Celia Cruz worked with both, first with Puente at Tico Records and then with Pacheco at Fania. The two leading producers of the era were Tito Puente and Johnny Pacheco. Pacheco was a great musician himself, but also brought out the best in the artists he worked with like: Celia Cruz, Héctor Lavoe, Willie Colón, Larry Harlow, Bobby Valentín, Ray Barretto, Papo Lucca ( La Sonora Ponceña) and so many others. It includes Panama, Colombia, Venezuela Guayana, Suriname and French Guiana and the Caribbean coasts of Central America, including Veracruz, Mexico and New Orleans, Louisiana. But in its tightest definition, salsa dura (hard salsa) is the music of Johnny Pacheco and the now legendary artists from all over the Caribbean who worked with him in 1970s New York City. Johnny Pacheco popularized the term “ salsa” which is now commonly used to describe Caribbean or even Latin music. La Salsa is New York Music Johnny Pacheco, leader of the Fania All-Stars (courtesy Fania Records) “Compadre Pedro Juan, baile el jaleo…” “Baile el jaleo” is an old Spanish flamenco expression that means to dance with great passion like we do among family and friends. He helped make people proud to be Latin in the United States. Johnny Pacheco (1935-2021) was an important New York Dominican salsa musician who co-founded Fania Records, and led the Fania All-Stars to international fame. ![]()
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