The multi-instrumentalist of Dominican origin experimented with different Latin American musical styles, although he was particularly in love with Afro-Cuban genres such as charanga and pachanga. He was a band leader, producer and record label with an eye for talent, and his famous Fania Records would star Celia Cruz and other salsa legends.
Pacheco, a pioneering musician who helped popularize salsa music in the U.S., died this week, confirmed his former record label and his wife, Cuqui Pacheco. He was 85 years old.
The artist’s musical education began from birth. His father, Rafael, was head band in the Dominican Republic and Pacheco grew up playing percussion. He developed his musical taste through shortwave radio, listening to broadcasts from Cuba and learning “son Cubano”, or “the Cuban sound”, the country’s signature genre that reports on other Latin American musical styles.
When he and his family moved to the Bronx in the 1940s to escape the oppressive regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo, he picked up more instruments, including the accordion, violin, flute, saxophone and clarinet, the instrument principal of his father.
Pacheco attended the Juilliard School, where he studied percussion. The breadth of his musical talent earned him concerts in various Latin bands in the city until he finally conducted his own orchestra in the early 1960s. He called the group Pacheco Y Su Charanga, so called by the Cuban ensemble, or “charanga”, which plays “danzón”, another Cuban genre inspired by European classical music.
In 1962, Pacheco hired lawyer Jerry Masucci, a former Italian-American New York City police officer, to handle his divorce, according to Billboard. In Masucci, a fan of the Afro-Cuban sound that Pacheco helped popularize in New York, he found a worthy collaborator. In 1963, the two founded a record label that would continue to change the fact of Latin music in the United States: Fania Records.
His stamp created stars of the sauce
Fania’s rise began humbly enough, with Masucci and Pacheco selling albums from their cars in Spanish Harlem, according to Fania Records ’2014 Billboard oral history. He courted talents who were drawn to his New York touch in Cuban and Puerto Rican genres such as meringue and mambo, and by the late 1960s, he had formed a supergroup called Fania All-Stars.
Your specialty? A unique mix of Latin musical styles, mostly intense rhythm, marked by strong percussion and a musical ensemble that could steal the show from the singer.
The audience called it “sauce.”
“At first we didn’t think of anything special, until everywhere we went, the lines were amazing,” Pacheco told NPR in 2006. They tried to rip our shirts off. It reminded me of the Beatles. “
The formation of the Fania All-Stars changed over time, although its best-known members include Cruz, beloved Puerto Rican salsa singer Hector Lavoe and jazz pioneer Ray Barretto. But Pacheco was his constant. He played on records with the label’s talent, produced his albums and was their band leader in live concerts.
“I wanted to have a company that treated everyone as a family, and it came true,” Pacheco told Pennsylvania newspaper The Morning Call in 2003. “That was my dream.”
And at the same time, Pacheco’s All Stars became commonplace, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Latin Americans established a new identity in the United States. Fania’s music inspired many African-Cubans and Puerto Ricans to become politically involved, political science professor Jose Cruz told NPR in 2006.
Perhaps the best evidence of the impact of the sauce came in August 1973, when the Fania All-Stars performed with a crowd of more than 44,000 people at Yankee Stadium. Attendees hung Puerto Rican flags all over the stadium and at one point stormed the field during a particularly fascinating conga duel between Barretto and Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria.
“Johnny Pacheco started yelling and asking people not to come on the field,” said Ray Collazo, a Puerto Rican DJ who attended the historic concert, in a 2008 interview with ESPN. “But the more I said it, the more people jumped in.”
The concert ended soon after the storm, but was commemorated with a live album and a documentary.
The end of Fania Records
Fania’s success eventually waned as the salsa was overshadowed by other thriving genres, and stopped recording in 1979. But her success meant a shift in the American music scene, which the pushed towards a more international direction.
In 1999, Pacheco and the Fania All-Stars returned to the stage, this time at Madison Square Garden. At the time, the New York Times described his style as “city music: fast, sharp, and unstoppable,” punctuated by bongos and competing metals.
Pacheco was distinguished for his musical successes during the 1990s, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor of the Dominican Republic and the Governor’s Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, both in 1996. be admitted to the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1998..
He continued touring with an orchestra in the early days, playing many of the same songs he wrote for his Fania artists. Enthusiasm drove his performances, he said.
Despite his fractured relationship with Fania co-founder Masucci and his early departure from the label, he told Billboard that he was still “very proud” of the work he did then.
“I formed a band that was amazing,” he told Billboard in 2014. “It’s been 50 years and we’re still like a family.”
His Fania family remembered him on Facebook, praising Pacheco for his contributions to the sauce.
“He was much more than a musician, bandleader, writer, arranger and producer; he was a visionary,” the label wrote. “His music will live on forever and we are grateful to have always been a part of his wonderful journey.”
