Adam

For years I noticed that virtually every record reviewed in any given issue of Jazz Times also had an ad in that issue. Maybe they run it like Downbeat, with the ad dept. contacting you once it's decided they will review it. However, if you are going to have any advertising dollars put into any jazz record, it makes sense that those are the magazines where you would place the ad. Chicken or egg?

up

I've just done searches on several of the terms, and found no thread dedicated to this set. That seems odd. I don't have it, and I know that most of the material is supposed to be classic. Opinions on it, as I weigh purchsing it for the sale? Thanks!

up for the sale

up for the sale. Has anyone else bought it?

Fun little site: http://www.grotrian.de/spiel/e/info.html You drag notes or chords from the right into the "field of play" as it were.

RIP Los Angeles Times obit today http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...news-obituaries Arthur Lee, 61; Forceful Leader of Influential '60s Band Love By Mike Boehm, Times Staff Writer August 5, 2006 Arthur Lee, who forged a legacy as one of rock's great visionaries and forbidding eccentrics while reigning briefly with his band Love as princes of the mid-1960s Sunset Strip, died Thursday of leukemia in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital. He was 61. Mark Linn, a longtime friend, said Lee learned in February that he had leukemia and spent most of his remaining months in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy and an experimental umbilical cord blood treatment. Lee, who established himself as the first black rock star of the post-Beatles era, fronted Love through astonishing musical changes that have continued to resonate for other rockers and a cult of critics and fans. Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant cited the influence of Lee and Love in his acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. But Love also became one of the first burnout bands of the 1960s, and with Lee's death, only three members survive of the eight who were in the band between 1965 and 1967. Dogged by intra-band rivalries, substance abuse and Lee's reluctance to tour, the first version of Love was finished by 1968, although Lee continued using the band name to record and perform at least sporadically for the rest of his life. He was imprisoned from 1996 to 2001 on a weapons charge, but after his release he had new energy and a new story to tell that led to a resurgence for a time in concerts, including a 2003 performance in London, available on DVD, in which Lee was able to re-create Love's masterpiece album, "Forever Changes," backed by a sharp, four-man rock band and an orchestra of horns and strings. Love's first three albums were indeed forever changing. They yielded eloquent folk-rock on the 1966 debut, "Love," the first rock record ever released by Elektra Records, and jazz-inflected rock with a flute player added to the lineup on the follow-up, "Da Capo." That album also included the explosive hard rock of the band's lone Top 40 single, "7 and 7 Is" — a song that ended with the sound of an atom bomb exploding and foreshadowed late-'70s punk rock by 10 years. In 1967 came "Forever Changes," a gorgeous, haunting song cycle infused with classical horns and strings. Thematically, the album gave an emotionally undulating, impressionistic take that captures sweet hopes from the "Summer of Love" giving way to paranoia and dread. "Forever Changes" ranked 40th on a list that Rolling Stone magazine compiled of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Yet it has remained an overlooked treasure, reaching no higher than No. 154 on the Billboard albums chart after its original release and selling 103,000 copies since 1991 on CD reissues, according to SoundScan. Besides helping to hasten rock's acquisition of a wide range of stylistic possibilities, Love played a crucial role in Los Angeles' early rock history. By 1965, the Byrds had created a Hollywood folk-rock scene at Ciro's. When Lee and his guitar-playing boyhood friend, Johnny Echols, saw the Byrds, they decided folk-rock was the way to go, rather than the Booker T & the MGs-style rhythm and blues they had been playing. "We didn't want to be stuck playing the Chitlin' Circuit," Echols said Friday. "We wanted to play this new kind of music." They quickly enlisted the Byrds' guitar-strumming road manager, Bryan MacLean, who became second-chair singer-songwriter to Lee. Love's racially integrated lineup — Lee and Echols were black, MacLean, bassist Ken Forssi, and drummers Don Conka, Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer and Michael Stuart were white — forged a model that the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Sly and the Family Stone and War would follow to much greater stardom. Echols said that he and Lee met Hendrix while he was still R&B sideman Jimmy James, and that Hendrix took fashion cues from the flamboyantly dressed Lee. Intent on bringing his New York-based Elektra label into the rock era, Jac Holzman rifled through newspaper club listings on a trip to Los Angeles, thought the name Love looked interesting and checked out the band at Bido Lito's in Hollywood. What he saw was Lee fronting the band in a motley pre-hippie outfit. "It was just a sight, their take on things was so interesting, and the girls in the club were so into what they were doing," Holzman said. He quickly got an inkling that, in Lee, he wasn't dealing with a typical fellow. "He was one of those people you know is likely to do something terrible to you or around you," Holzman said, "but you like him so much and he's so talented that you always support him." Holzman said he trusted Lee's musical judgment enough to check out a band he recommended called the Doors — and to keep going back after he didn't initially think much of them, because Lee kept saying the Doors were special. "Arthur set in motion things that had enormous consequences," Holzman said. "When we approached the Doors, they thought that Love was the coolest band around, and the fact that Love was on Elektra was a reason for them to be on Elektra." When the Doors took off in 1967, Echols said, Love began to question whether it was getting enough attention from its label. "They were an easier sell than we were. It became frustrating." Drummer Michael Stuart-Ware (his married name), who played on "Da Capo" and "Forever Changes," recalled Lee on Friday as a man who could be charming but who also could use his tall, athletic, lanky frame and lacerating wit to win through intimidation. "He liked people to acquiesce to his dominance. When he walked into a room, it was his room," Stuart-Ware said. "He had his talent, his physical presence, his songwriting ability — a lot of tools to get his way." After the first version of Love disbanded, Lee found new musicians and made a pair of albums, "Four Sail" and "Out Here," that showed continued songwriting strength. Hendrix accompanied him on "False Start" from 1970. Then Lee fell from the spotlight for the better part of two decades. He reemerged in 1989, booked on a Psychedelic Summer of Love package tour. But in 1993, he connected with a new set of young admirers, the interracial Los Angeles pop-rock band Baby Lemonade, who became the next and last incarnation of Love, billed now as Love With Arthur Lee. It became the steadiest, most enduring lineup of Lee's career. He toured regularly until his 1996 sentencing, then picked up with the same players after his release in 2001. "Arthur seemed to have learned a huge lesson after he got out of jail," said guitarist Mike Randle. Lee, Randle and guitarist Rusty Squeezebox worked on new material and in 2005 were confident about landing a new contract. But Lee did not rise to the occasion. He could be brilliant and focused, Randle said, but last year he began to miss gigs or show up only to stand on stage without singing. "When he was sober, he was the sweetest, most giving man on the planet," Randle said Friday. "But I would say he was sober 15% of the time. The rest was dealing with him and not trying to take it personally." Early this year, Lee moved from Toluca Lake to his birthplace, Memphis. Lee was born Arthur Porter Taylor. His mother, Agnes, was a schoolteacher; he saw little of his father, Chester Taylor, who was a cornet player. In a 1994 interview with The Times, Lee recalled listening while his aunt played blues records and listened to Nat King Cole. When he was 5, he and his mother moved to Los Angeles. Six years later, she married Clinton Lee, a carpenter and plumber. Lee began taking accordion lessons as a child and by his mid-teens was playing keyboards in Los Angeles clubs. In June, Plant, Ian Hunter and Ryan Adams headlined a concert in New York that Linn said raised $50,000 for Lee's medical expenses; Baby Lemonade was joined by Love alums Echols and Stuart-Ware for a smaller benefit in L.A. Linn said Lee married his longtime girlfriend, Diane, near the end of his life. He had no children.

Going to see Manu Chao tonight. Been wanting to see him for years. Today's LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et...1,6023659.story Old rebel with new issues Now middle-aged, but not mellowed, Manu Chao brings his feisty act on the road. By Agustin Gurza, Times Staff Writer August 1, 2006 BERKELEY — A loopy-looking fan with a wild Mohawk climbed onto the Greek Theatre stage Friday night and crept up on world-music icon Manu Chao, here to kick off his first U.S. tour in five years. The unsuspecting singer, who performs tonight at the Shrine, was delivering an exuberant show before a delirious audience when the weird interloper appeared to clutch him from behind. This being Berkeley, a wary security man made only a timid attempt to stop the fan, perhaps worried about sparking a free-speech incident. The hesitant guard backed away when Chao, a diminutive figure onstage, awkwardly reached up with one arm to hug the hulking but harmless admirer, who eventually slinked off by himself. The moment was not unusual for a concert like Chao's, amped up on frenetic punk energy, entrancing reggae grooves and sociopolitical fervor, all soaked in a pungent pall of marijuana that made you feel high by osmosis. But it must have been a nerve-racking moment for Chao's Paris-based managers. They had privately fretted about how the current political climate would play out for their outspoken client, who recently called President Bush the world's most dangerous terrorist. Whatever the risk, Chao wasn't holding his tongue on this tour. At one point he unfurled a red Zapatista flag in support of Mexican rebels in the state of Chiapas. At another, he delivered a sharp rebuke of "politicians that say lies, lies and more lies." "They say we must fight violence with violence," he continued in heavily accented English. "That's not true. We must fight violence with education." Not exactly a ringing slogan for someone considered a pop music messiah. But it showed that the activist artist, now 45, has not mellowed with age. "The problem is that the more I mature, the more the world becomes unjust," Chao said in an interview before the show. "So my spirit of searching for a solution to create a world that is more balanced and fair for everyone grows more vital with every day." Well into middle age, this elusive, almost mythical musician remains one of the most influential figures in what has come to be called world music, a term that aptly describes the goulash of styles he cooks up in Spanish, French and English. Chao hasn't had a new studio album in five years. He doesn't even have a record label, though he has three new albums in various stages of production. And he manages his career like he says he lives his life, day to day. Still, despite his absence from the pop spotlight, thousands turned out to see him perform with his crack, raucous band, Radio Bemba Sound System, named for a slang term meaning gossip or word of mouth. On Friday, many in the ethnically mixed crowd sang along to songs from his two solo albums and from his work with Mano Negra, the pioneering Latin alternative band he formed in the mid-1980s and named for a historic anarchist group. You could say that Chao needs to freshen his sound and his material. But what's the point? Nothing new is more thrilling or compelling than what he does. "We're in a period that is musically very boring," the guitarist said in Spanish, seated on a couch in a softly lighted room backstage. "But I think we're at the bottom of a bad cycle. Which means that not long from now a new musical wave will emerge, I don't know from where. It could come from Monterrey or Bombay, from Rome or Kinshasa. But it's going to sweep away everything. For now, we're just waiting for the next new thing." The return of Manu Chao makes the wait more bearable. Chao is the son of Spaniards who fled Franco's fascist Spain. He was raised in Paris, where he found musical kinship with other immigrants, especially North Africans, many of whom drown trying to reach Europe. He recently produced albums by Malian duo Amadou & Mariam and by Akli D, a singer-songwriter from Algeria. This unique Algerian music is the latest style Chao has absorbed into his eclectic repertoire, informed by the brash spirit of The Clash, the rootsy groove of Bob Marley and the idealistic aura of Che Guevara. That musical stew makes his music hard to define, and that's the way he likes it. "The last thing I need to accomplish is to define myself," he says. "I have to continue growing and never be defined." Perhaps by design, there's a certain disconnect between Manu Chao, the public figure, and José Manuel Chao, the person. He's considered a protest singer but his songs are rarely overtly political. He's revered like a guru, but he's very down to earth. He has a reputation for being hostile to the press, but he was patient and accommodating with the curious media on this tour. After sound check, he gave a formal news conference at the Greek, attended by about 15 Bay Area reporters, many young enough to be his children. Some swarmed him after the formal Q&A, holding out their notebooks to request autographs. Their questions were mostly about politics — immigration, the Zapatistas, globalization, terrorism. It was clear they looked to him for answers. But who does he look to? Chao has given up on politicians. Democracy is in crisis, he says, because elections don't change underlying economic realities. And he no longer believes in revolution as a mass solution either. I need to accomplish is to define myself," he says. "I have to continue growing and never be defined." Perhaps by design, there's a certain disconnect between Manu Chao, the public figure, and José Manuel Chao, the person. He's considered a protest singer but his songs are rarely overtly political. He's revered like a guru, but he's very down to earth. He has a reputation for being hostile to the press, but he was patient and accommodating with the curious media on this tour. After sound check, he gave a formal news conference at the Greek, attended by about 15 Bay Area reporters, many young enough to be his children. Some swarmed him after the formal Q&A, holding out their notebooks to request autographs. Their questions were mostly about politics — immigration, the Zapatistas, globalization, terrorism. It was clear they looked to him for answers. But who does he look to? Chao has given up on politicians. Democracy is in crisis, he says, because elections don't change underlying economic realities. And he no longer believes in revolution as a mass solution either. "Today, the only solution I see is thousands of small revolutions," he said in the interview. "I believe in the revolution of the barrios. You and I can't change the world, but we can change ourselves. We can change our own families, and we can even change our own neighborhoods. There, nobody has excuses." After years of wandering the world like a nomad, Chao now lives permanently in Barcelona, where he haunts the clubs of this lively mecca for immigrants and musical fusions. He wasn't immediately recognizable Friday as he ate lunch backstage with his band. partly because his face doesn't usually appear on his illustrated CD covers. The only giveaway was his jaunty, bright red beret. Despite lines in his face, Chao looked fit and vigorous. He says he drinks half a liter of water before breakfast every morning and occasionally fasts to cleanse his system. He's also an amateur chiropractor, pretending at one point to massage the necks of fellow musicians hunched over control panels and computer screens in recording studios. "I know how to help people," he says. "Click, click, click. I set them right straight, and they thank me. In music, it's nice to do a good show and feel appreciated, no? But when you fix the back of someone who was messed up with his energy half blocked, they appreciate it even more." His dream is to hang out a shingle that reads, Manu Chao: Chiropractor. He'd be the town curandero, offering the folk remedies he's learned from his travels. If only he could retire from show business. "Two or three times in my life I have tried to put on the brakes, but I can't find them," he says. "There are so many projects that appeal to me and so much music that rouses my passion, I can't stop." Chao displayed that musical enthusiasm at one point by interrupting a photo session on the stone steps of Berkeley's open-air amphitheater, while his band rehearsed on the stage below. I was caught up in the unusual rhythms when he surprised me with a tap on the shoulder. He wanted me to know the band was playing the music from Algeria that he had mentioned in the interview. He flashed the smile of someone who loves to share his passion, then scampered back up the steps for more pictures. Chao says he thought he would retire after "Clandestino," the acclaimed 1988 album that established him as a solo act. "I was sincerely convinced that would be my last album," he said. "I was sure it wouldn't work and my fans would throw rocks at me. But. look," — here he grabs himself by the collar of his shirt — "that album grabbed me from behind and said, 'You come back here.' " Chao released his most recent studio album just before the terrorist attacks of 2001. It was titled "Próxima Estación: Esperanza," which means, Next Stop: Hope. He wouldn't change the title today, even though he thinks the world has entered an extremely dark and dangerous period, fueled by the growing rift between rich and poor. The darker it gets, he says, the more people need that hope. "This is all the more reason to be an optimist," he says. "Without hope, you fall into pessimism and nihilism and cynicism, and I don't want to succumb to all of that." Soon, Chao would be lighting up the cool Berkeley night with his performance, jumping around joyously as if on pogo sticks despite a bout of tendinitis around both ankles. The positive vibe of his music would create an instant community in that small bowl of humanity and, for one night at least, help transcend the world's troubles. Welcome back, Manu Chao.

I've seen Janet Klein perform in Los Angeles. the Los Angeles Conservancy has a series each year called The Last Remaining Seats, some classic films in the big classic movie houses of Broadway. the shows are always sold out, and each come with various opening acts. Klein has performed there (more than once, probably) before films from the 1930s. Nice and well done, but I haven't felt a need to buy any of their CDs.

I went in thinking I would order 20 or so, and I ended up getting 51. Sigh. And that counts the Debut Records story box as 1. But that's the only box that I bought. I wish they put some Mal Waldron on sale, but c'est la vie!

I just heard one track from the Charlie Palmieri album last night on Jose Rizo's "Jazz On the Latin Side" radio show - excellent. Time to get that album. Just before it he played an even better track (IMHO) called "Moses" by the Harold Johnson Sextet, album "The House on Elm Street" out on Vintage. But Amazon doesn't carry it. Any ideas where it might be found? I guess descarga if no where else.

up - here's the old thread

up - Anyone buy any. I've only picked up Joe Bataan's "Riot!" It basically switches between doo wop numbers and salsa numbers. A bity more poppy than I would have liked, but not bad.

Yeah, the Eagles album passed Thriller 4 or 5 years ago. It just keeps selling, I guess.

up for Allegro's Hep sale this week (or was it last week?)

Heck, I turned 40 yesterday. 25 ain't nuthin'! Except your auto insurance rate goes down. And you begin to get interesting to talk to.

I've been wanting to hear Carson Robison and his Kansas City Jackrabbits for a while. I bought the first one from you, so I'm in for the discount as well. yee haw! Pay Pal here I come.

Murphy is not on the public radar, in the way that he was, but he is no shooting star. He has made loads of money, as have his films, in Shrek & Shrek 2, Dr. Doolittle, and the other family films. I think he just grew up.

Criterion is bringing out their redone versions of Playtime, Seven Samurai, and Amarcord this fall. Here's the link to Playtime: http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=112 Seven Samurai will become a big 3 disc edition: http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=2 I also read that they are redoing their 3 disc Brazil edition. It seems almost ridiculous.

I find that Virgin Megastore sales are pretty much always useless. Real discounts are for uninteresting titles. The normal discounts still leave them with prices higher than most places.

Which "this" - the fate of FMP, or the distribution of hat, or both?

It does seem reasonable but I have a problem with these two sentences: Its one thing to say that back-up copies may remain on the servers, but why should MySpace.com retain the rights? Does this mean the rights delineated above are retained? Then what is the point in saying that the license will terminate when the content is removed? Hmm, yeah, that is a bit more worrisome. I think it largely is there for the same reason. if some back-up exists somewhere, they don't want you suing them after you've removed it from their site. that seems straightforward. I'm sure My Space like other sites does regular back-ups of everything, and those back-ups might include information that has since been deleted. Who knows where those back-ups live? But I am sure My Space is doing it to cover their asses. I still don't see how it allows them to start selling or licensing your music or images to other people.

That sounds plausible, reasonable, and fair. But the wording seems to leave open some potentially unsavory loopholes, no? I'm sure it does, but it depends also on how clearly they define 'Services" elsewhere in the agreement, and whether trhat is truly limited to the My Space site. And of course one can still sue, no matter what agreement has been signed or clause has been agreed to.

Actually, I think Billy Bragg doth protest too much. First, it's a non-exclusive license, and second, it just gives My Space permission to show it on their services - meaning My Space. Basically this is a clause written by lawyers to prevent this potential event: a songwriter posts a song, and then sues My Space for having the song on My Space without a license. Absurd but certainly possible. It is saying that by posting the song you are giving My Space permission to have the song played from My Space. Without this clause, My Space theoretically would have to license and pay for every song that gets posted on their site - even if you are the creator and are posting it on your own site.

We had an old thread on this, but the search function is not working for me. We were discussing the poor state of remastering labels such as Tico and Fania. Anyway, here's the label's page: http://www.faniarecords.com/Fania/site/Home.aspx And here is the article in today's NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/arts/mus...e692023&ei=5070 The Return of Fania, the Record Company That Made Salsa Hot By JODY ROSEN Published: June 4, 2006 FANIA RECORDS, the legendary New York label that pioneered salsa, has often been called the Latin Motown. In its heyday, from the late 1960's through the 70's, Fania, like Motown, had a superstar-packed roster, a virtual monopoly on salsa's A-list: Celia Cruz, Willie Colón, Hector Lavoe, Johnny Pacheco, Rubén Blades, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Bobby Valentin, Larry Harlow and other greats. Like Motown, Fania began as a humble cottage industry — its releases were once sold out of the trunk of a car on the streets of Harlem and the Bronx — and became a multimillion-dollar business that carried a bracing musical hybrid to the nation and the world. But the comparison soon breaks down. Today Motown looms gigantic in American cultural memory, a cornerstone of the 60's nostalgia industry, the subject of innumerable books and documentaries, its hits still ubiquitous on the airwaves decades after they made the charts. Fania, on the other hand, is recalled mostly by collectors and Latinos of a certain age. And where Motown's records have been endlessly reissued and anthologized, Fania's catalog languished for years, its master tapes moldering in a warehouse in Hudson, N.Y. Dozens of its most important recordings are out of print, and others were so shoddily transferred to CD — often directly from the original vinyl — as to be virtually unlistenable. Now, though, a Fania revival is stirring. Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez just finished shooting "El Cantante," a biopic about the short, tragic life of the singing star Hector Lavoe. More important, the music itself is at last being reissued properly, with informative liner notes (in Spanish and English) and shimmering remastered sound that conjures a bygone era: the funky tumult of Latin New York in the years of Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter. Emusica, the Miami company that purchased the Fania catalog last year in a deal worth several million dollars, recently released the first 30 of a planned 300 reissues. This bounty holds surprises even for longtime Fania aficionados and offers non-initiates a chance to catch up with some of the greatest music from one of pop's most fertile periods. "Fania is the catalog of salsa music, an unmatched body of recordings," said David Garcia, an assistant professor of music at the University of North Carolina and an expert on Latin music. Larry Harlow, the keyboardist and bandleader who produced and arranged many of Fania's classic records (his 1979 album "Yo Soy Latino" is among the first reissued Fania CD's), called the label's output "a chronological biography of the whole Latin music scene from the mid-60's through the early 80's." Fania, Mr. Harlow said, "is Latin music." The label was the brainchild of unlikely business partners: the Dominican flutist and bandleader Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci, an Italian-American former New York City police officer turned lawyer who fell in love with Latin music during a brief stay in Cuba in the early 60's. In 1964, Mr. Masucci (who died in 1997) and Mr. Pacheco teamed up and began signing hot New York musicians, including Ray Barretto (who died in February at 76), a conga virtuoso and leader of one of the city's best dance bands, as well as younger bandleaders like Bobby Valentin and Mr. Harlow. By the late 60's the label's roster had swelled with young talent, and Fania would soon annex several smaller Latin labels. The roster included Willie Colón, a gifted trombonist and composer with eclectic musical tastes, and Hector Lavoe, a Puerto Rican singer with a luminous tenor voice. Together these musicians honed a new sound — a blend of bustling Afro-Cuban rhythms, big-band jazz, street-smart R&B and other styles — in a combustive atmosphere of collaboration and friendly rivalry. "It was a very competitive time," recalled Mr. Colón, who in recent years has become involved in New York City politics, running for public advocate in 2001 and serving as co-chairman of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's re-election campaign last year. "Within the label, there was a lot of competition. We were all trying to innovate and outdo each other." Those innovations are all over the first batch of Fania reissues. The music is built on a rock-solid Afro-Cuban base, on the clave beat and on the sensuous big-band stylings of Cuban son, with numerous other styles stirred into the mix, from mambo and rumba to Puerto Rican plena and bomba. But on early albums like "El Malo" (1967) by Mr. Colón, and classic 70's releases like "Rey del Bajo" by Mr. Valentin and "El Maestro" by Mr. Pacheco (both 1974), a sophisticated new style emerges, with son's 1-4-5 chord structures giving way to jazz chords and harmonies, complex arrangements and far more aggressive rhythm than is typical of Cuban music. Cold war geopolitics played a role in the development of that sound. The Cuban embargo cut off virtually all contact between the island and musicians based in the United States, and a distinctively New York style was incubated in the city's dozens of Latin nightclubs. The Fania reissues radiate big-city cosmopolitanism. The label was a melting pot, with a lineup that included black and white Latinos: Puerto Ricans (Mr. Valentin, Ismael Rivera, Pete Rodriguez), Dominicans (Mr. Pacheco), Panamanians (Mr. Blades), Cubans (Celia Cruz), native New Yorkers (Mr. Barretto, Mr. Colón), even gringos like Mr. Harlow, né Lawrence Kahn, whose keyboard skills earned him the nickname El Judio Maravilloso (the Marvelous Jew). Their music drew on bebop, soul, rock and other sounds of the polyglot metropolis, and the lyrics were steeped in grit and street reportage. "We were making city music, talking about, you know, city things — what's happening on the corner, stories about drugs, violence, looking for a job," Mr. Colón said. "The stuff that was coming from Cuba was more rural, you know, 'my grass shack' and all that. We were kind of doing an urban folklore." Mr. Colón in particular cultivated an image as a New York street tough, toying with gangster iconography and glowering on the covers of records like "El Malo" ("The Bad One"), whose artwork includes photos of his band performing in prisoners' uniforms. What really shines through on these remastered records is extraordinary musicianship. Albums like "Celia & Johnny" (1974), Mr. Pacheco's collaboration with Ms. Cruz, and Roberto Roena's "Roberto Roena y Su Apollo Sound 5" (1973) are the essence of classic salsa: tough, gleaming, unstoppable dance music, with brass fanfares braying over crackling syncopation from claves, timbales and congas. Jazz fans who have not caught up with salsa will be impressed by the virtuosity packed into tight pop song structures: Eddie Palmieri's cluster-chord-thick electric piano solo on the title track of his 1971 "progressive salsa" landmark "Vamonos Pa'l Monte," or Mr. Colón's blazing trombone improvisations on "El Malo." Most of these records are headlined, à la big-band jazz, by bandleader-instrumentalists. By the mid-1980's, with the arrival of a new style, salsa romántico, singers routinely got top billing. (In that period Fania dissolved amid a string of lawsuits involving royalties.) Fania's heroic sound was a singer's: the high, pure voice of Hector Lavoe, whose mastery of both velvety crooning and fierce, percussive vocal improvisation set the standard for all salseros who followed. On the remastered version of his 1975 solo album "La Voz," one hears the disarmingly boyish warmth of his voice, a yearning quality that fires both love ballads and up-tempo numbers like "Mi Gente" ("My People"), the Johnny Pacheco song that became Mr. Lavoe's anthem. The sweetness of Mr. Lavoe's singing belied his hard living and hard luck — battles with drug abuse, the murder of his son, suicide attempts and an AIDS-related death at 46 — and today, 13 years after his death, he remains salsa's tragic saint. (His cult, one suspects, will only grow when "El Cantante" hits theaters.) Fania will forever be defined by those hard-driving salsa records from the mid-70's, not least by the albums of its flagship band, the Fania All-Stars, which featured most of the label's biggest names. (Emusica is planning several Fania All-Star releases.) But the new reissues reveal the surprising breadth of Fania's catalog: it wasn't just a salsa label. The recordings include a remarkable album by the eccentric vocalist La Lupe, singing torchy boleros with string orchestra accompaniment; groove-oriented Latin jazz by the Cuban conga legend Mongo Santamaria; "Cuba y Puerto Rico Son," a superb 1966 collaboration between Tito Puente and a young Celia Cruz; and several very funky boogaloo and Latin soul releases from the middle and late 60's. The best of these is Joe Bataan's "Riot" (1968), whose cover photo of weapon-wielding Latin youth captures the growing militancy of the barrio in those turbulent years. One of the hallmarks of Fania's golden age is politics, the social-consciousness messages musicians brought to songs that had previously stuck to themes of romance and dancing. "It was revolution time," Mr. Harlow remembered. "It was Woodstock time. It was the Black Panthers. It was Vietnam. When Latin music got cut off from Cuba in the 1960's, New York musicians added that new kind of lyrical content. We would sing about love, we would sing about war, we would sing about protest." The pivotal figure was Rubén Blades, the singer-songwriter whose poetic lyrics carried forceful, often satirical messages about racism, social justice and cultural pride. "Siembra," Mr. Blades's 1978 collaboration with Mr. Colón, was a sweeping concept album with propulsive salsa tunes (and disco parodies) lampooning American materialism and calling for Latino unity, which for years stood as the top-selling Latin album of all time. Like nearly all Fania albums, "Siembra" was recorded in a Manhattan studio. Your local record store will probably shelve these CD's in the world music section with all the other non-Anglophone stuff, but salsa is homegrown American music, as much a part of the indigenous musical landscape as jazz or rock or hip-hop. At a moment when the country is convulsed by debate over the latest waves of Latin immigration, the Fania rereleases are reminders of the deep roots of Latinos here — the first Puerto Rican tradesmen arrived in New York in the 17th century — and of the profound role they have played in both shaping United States culture and exporting it back to points south. "Fania really led the way in spreading salsa throughout South America and the Caribbean," Professor Garcia said. Leading second- and third-generation salsa musicians have hailed from such places as Colombia and Venezuela, and it wasn't just Fania's music but also its messages that took root. The huge popularity throughout Latin America of politically trenchant albums like "Siembra," with its feisty calls for pan-Latin pride, is just one dramatic example of the ways that the Latin diaspora has spoken back to the homeland. Latin music has found a growing audience among gringos in the United States. But is the audience that embraced the Buena Vista Social Club's prerevolutionary Cuban son ready to discover some more Latin music, not nearly as genteel, from a lot closer to home? The sound should certainly be familiar to most American listeners. Fania's songwriters were inspired by American pop like Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," but the influence ran both ways: the sonic texture of Gaye's album, with its gently percolating congas, is audibly indebted to salsa. Fania's sound seeped into soul and classic rock, into Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield, into Santana and even Led Zeppelin, whose album radio staple "Fool in the Rain" is a salsa pastiche. And no one who has lived in a city with a significant Latino population in the last four decades can have missed the festive music blasting from cars and open apartment windows on sultry summer evenings. To younger Latinos enamored of today's Fania equivalent, reggaetón, these old albums will doubtless sound old-fashioned. But music this rhythmically tough could never be dowdy. It's late-20th-century music ready to ignite 21st-century dance floors.