Johnny Pacheco will be buried Tuesday and buried in The Bronx

New York. The remains of well-known musician Johnny Pacheco, co-founder of the Fania label, which brought together stars of Latin salsa music, will be on display next Tuesday, February 23, at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home in Manhattan, he reported this Friday the family.

The composer, arranger and conductor, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s a few years ago, died on February 15 in a New York hospital from pneumonia at the age of 85.

His wife Cuqui Pacheco and the family of who is considered the father of the sauce posted a statement on the artist’s Facebook page informing the details of the vigil, which will take place from 2:00 to 9:00 pm next Tuesday.

The Campbell Funeral Home was also home to the multitudinous vigil of the “Queen of Sauce”, Celia Cruz, a member of the famous stars of Fania, a group that was born in the 1970s and was also among the its members Héctor Lavoe and Pete “El Comte” Rodríguez, now deceased, as well as Willie Colón, Rubén Blades and other renowned musicians.

Wednesday will be Mass at Santa Cecilia Church on 106th Street in the Latin Quarter or Spanish Harlem, where the birth of salsa is located among Puerto Rican, Cuban and Jewish musicians such as Larry Harlow, one of the pianists of the Stars of Fania next to the boricua Papo Lucca.

“In The Neighborhood and the Bronx they were singing, playing, inventing, hesitating, playing before Fania was formed,” Aurora Flores, a journalist who writes about music and also a writer, told Efe. “A lot of the salsa musicians knew each other from school, where they had bands like Johnny Pacheco, Eddie Palmieri or Joe Cuba,” he added.

He recalled that in the church of Santa Cecilia were also buried the remains of Puerto Rican Hector Lavoe “the singer of singers.”

Pacheco’s remains will rest in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where Celia Cruz and her husband Pedro Knight were also buried, and the final home of musicians such as pianist Duke Ellington and trumpeter Miles Davis.

Pacheco’s family also reported that due to the COVID-19 pandemic there will be restrictions on the vigil and thanked the support he has had “in these difficult times.”

Percussionist and composer, Joan Zacaries Pacheco Knnipping, real name Johnny Pacheco, was born on March 25, 1935 in Santiago de los Caballeros, in the north of the Dominican Republic, and emigrated as a child with his whole family to New York, where he began his studies and musical training.

Pacheco, whose family settled in the Bronx, composed more than 150 songs throughout his successful career, many of which became classics, such as “My Say”, “Get Yourself” Pa’Ponerme Jo “,” Acuyuye “,” El Faisán “or” El Rei de La Puntualidad “, Lavoe’s distinctive theme.