The musical documentary and cult classic Our Latin Thing (Nuestra Cosa), released in 1972 by Fania Records, is generally considered the debut of The Fania All-Stars. The film features concert footage from a 26 August 1971 performance by the All-Stars at the Cheetah Lounge, one of New York’s most well-known clubs of the time, located at 53rd Street and Broadway. The ensemble band included many of the most well-known musicians and vocalists signed to Fania, including bandleaders Ray Barretto, Roberto Roena, Willie Colón and Larry Harlow, alongside lead vocalists such as Héctor LaVoe, Ismael Miranda, José ‘Cheo’ Feliciano and Pete ‘El Conde’ Rodríguez.

In addition to the concert, Our Latin Thing incorporates a series of scenes filmed on New York’s Lower East Side and in its primarily Puerto Rican and more broadly Latina/o community. Record World praised the film for its “spectacular” camerawork and montages that would contribute to the box office success of the “historic” film. Salsa historian César Rondón appreciated seeing “where the musicians came from, what world they represented, and to what social and cultural circumstances the music played.” The film captures a rawness, creativity, and sense of possibility that drew precisely on a Nuyorican performative excess across the stages, nightclubs and streets of Latin New York that could not be anticipated or fully appropriated by Fania Records.

The film begins with a shot of children playing on a rooftop and an aerial view of New York’s streets below. The camera cuts to the roof where one boy appears to fly a kite while others watch, and the sounds of congas and bongos fill the air. The camera then follows a prepubescent boy across the roof, and the viewer gets another bird’s eye view of the neighbourhood as he looks over the edge at buildings, children playing in the street, and trash strewn on the street and sidewalks below. The boy turns and runs to the roof door, and the scene changes to the street itself, where children pour out of one building as the percussion continues offscreen alongside Spanish-speaking voices that become increasingly distinct. The boy from the rooftop, smiling and seemingly carefree, emerges from the building where we last saw him and skips across the street, returning to view at the entrance of an alley. The clanging of the metal can he kicks reverberates across the concrete as the sounds of the city fall away and the film’s theme song, Barretto’s “Cocinando” (“Cooking”), begins to play. The smooth groove of the largely instrumental Latin jazz track marks a transition from the streets and sounds of Latin New York to the music itself. The repetition of “cocinando suave” (“cooking smoothly”) suggests that the film is cooking up something for the viewer.

In the alley, the boy lingers to read the film credits on the concrete wall. Designed and hung on the wall to look like graffiti, the credits read like a greatest hits collection of Latin musicians in New York. Once the boy reaches the end of the wall and the credits, he disappears momentarily from the screen. In the next shot, he appears running across a small lot before darting through an opening in the chain-link fence that leads to a street lined with garbage piled in heaps and buildings obviously in severe need of repair.

The New York Times review described them as “blocks where the city sanitation sweepers seem never to have visited”. Indeed, the mise-en-scène underscores the deteriorating economic conditions at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, a period marked by the serial displacement of Puerto Rican residents, increasing unemployment, and disinvestment in Black and Puerto Rican neighbourhoods throughout the city. The opening scene also summons memories of the Young Lords garbage offensive in 1969 in East Harlem. In response to the residents’ concern about mounting garbage, the Young Lords moved the trash from the neighbourhood sidewalks to the middle of the street. They lit the pile on fire because the Department of Sanitation refused to collect the trash or give them supplies to do it themselves.

With an ease that suggests familiarity with the neighbourhood, the boy sprints through passages that appear innocuous from the sidewalk but provide shortcuts between buildings. A temporalisation effect occurs as Barretto’s solo begins in “Cocinando”. The boy, like the music, appears to pick up speed. “Cocinando” ends abruptly, what’s cooking is ready, and the dissonant sounds of a descarga (jam session) taking place offscreen begin. The boy’s smile conveys his excitement and anticipation as the camera follows him in and through buildings and alleys. He finally arrives at the descarga taking place on scaffolding erected in front of a building with a sky blue, red and white mural. He quickly picks up a bottle and stick and attempts to accompany the musicians on clavé.

The camera, which privileges the line of sight of children on the ground next to the scaffolding, moves along a horizontal axis to reveal various prepubescent and adolescent young people on each level. The oldest and most experienced musicians are perched on the top two levels, where several young men and a young woman play the congas and a younger boy accompanies them on bongo. Prepubescent boys sitting on the scaffolding alongside the musicians participate in the music making by tapping on their own bodies and found objects like boxes, cans, and bottles. The combination of actual instruments and found objects creates a discordant and raw musicality. While the dissonant sounds of the descarga contrast sharply with the melodious rhythms of “Cocinando”, the aspiring musicians on the scaffolding follow a well-defined rhythmic pattern locked in by the percussionists.

The camera pans the children playing, watching and dancing before lingering on one of the adolescent congueros on the top platform of the scaffolding. As he increases the tempo, the shot tightens around his hands until they occupy the entire screen and begin to blur. The swish pan effect continues as a different rhythmic pattern overlaps and eventually overtakes the first. Another object then begins to take form on screen. A pair of hands, one the viewer has not seen before, comes into focus. The conga, like the rhythmic pattern being played on it, has also changed. As the camera pulls away, the shot reveals the transformation of the young conguero on the scaffolding into an adult man wearing thick, black, horn-rimmed glasses.

Viewers familiar with the Latin music scene will recognise him as none other than renowned Nuyorican percussionist, arranger, and bandleader Barretto on tumbadora, rehearsing for the Cheetah concert with the other Fania All-Stars. His presence on-screen brings together Latin music’s past, present and future at the culmination of the film’s opening scene.

A break in the rehearsal creates an opening for Sid Torin, a jazz disc jockey known as Symphony Sid Torin who was among the first to play Spanish language music on an all English radio station in New York, to interview Barretto. Barretto sits on a chair with his tumbadora positioned between his legs as Symphony Sid asks about the percussionist’s aspirations for Latin music. Barretto responds, “The thing that eventually I really hope happens is that [strikes the tumbadora] message and the feeling of unity we have here... and our Latin music and culture goes out all over the world.”

Positioning himself as an ambassador of both music and culture, Barretto highlights the intersection of salsa’s aesthetic and affective contours with his hopes for the music’s commercial success. Barretto, the only musician interviewed in the film, is known to have exerted creative control in the recording studio. His slap on the instrument draws attention to Latin music’s sonic imaginary, the circulation of expressive culture, and the transmission of cultural knowledge. It expresses the music’s development at the intersection of culture and market priorities.

For Barretto, salsa’s commercialisation was not at odds with musical innovation or cultural authenticity. Instead, salsa’s commercialisation and potential crossover offered the opportunity for musical collaborations, creative innovation and economic opportunities. The desire for salsa’s commercialisation originates, within Our Latin Thing, from the musicians themselves rather than Fania Records. The transition from the streets of Latin New York to the stage at the Cheetah positions Fania Records as the vehicle for Latin music to reach the potential referred to by Barretto.

As a marketing tool, Our Latin Thing proposes salsa’s commercialisation as part of an organic process, one embedded in the dense community networks in New York’s Puerto Rican communities. Scenes filmed outside the Cheetah with the various musicians reinforce this possibility while symbolically linking the All-Stars to Latin New York. In one scene, Johnny Pacheco, accompanied by a group of children who follow him, plays the flute. In another, Barretto takes on the role of piragüero, handing out shaved ice to children at a music festival sponsored by Fania Records. During the same festival, LaVoe and pianist Mark ‘Markolino’ Diamond form part of the crowd watching a performance by Orchestra Harlow. By linking the streets of the Lower East Side to the Cheetah, Fania Records presents salsa’s commercialisation as a natural progression of the music’s emergence on the streets of Latin New York.

Yet the film also suggests that Fania emerged in a vacuum. Our Latin Thing does not explore the history of music-making within Latin New York from which Fania benefited. Historian Ruth Glasser has shown that friends, family, colleagues and small businesses provided an informal network that helped sustain Puerto Rican musicians after World War One. Tríos (trios) and cuartetos (quartets) looked after musicians arriving in New York, social clubs hosted dances with live music, civic organisations sponsored musical entertainment, and individuals hired bands to play at weddings and other private functions. Small business owners, particularly (but not exclusively) those who owned record stores, became intermediaries between artists and record companies when labels like Victor began to focus on the US market for Spanish language music.

Victoria Hernández, who opened what is believed to be the first Puerto Rican owned record store in New York in 1927, became an important patron of local musicians. She acted as booking agent, advanced recording fees to musicians, and likely collected a fee from record labels for identifying commercially viable artists. Glasser notes that Hernández, a professionally trained pianist in her own right, “never became a popular musician, [but] she was involved with popular music in every way short of playing it herself.” Her success supported the musical career of her brother, renowned Puerto Rican composer, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader Rafael Hernández.

Glasser underlines how “Victoria Hernández’s business acumen not only gave her brother the time he needed to concentrate on his musical groups and compositions and the wherewithal to avoid more gruesome industrial experiences, but she was also indispensable as an organiser of his musical projects and became social manager for his cuarteto, which was named Victoria in her honor. Victoria organised tours and record dates and made sure that her brother and the other bohemios [bohemians] in his group fulfilled their contracts. In fact, she did everything possible to combat the image of the musician as bohemia [bohemian], down to making sure its members wore suits and ties rather than the stereotypical rue-sleeved rumba shirts.”

Victoria’s business acumen, patronage and involvement with her brother’s musical career are indicative not only of the important role played by merchants in supporting local artists but of the ways women in Puerto Rican communities helped sustain musicians. Casa Hernández in the Longwood section of the Bronx is now named Casa Amadeo after its current owner, Mike Amadeo. During the salsa boom, Casa Amadeo continued Victoria’s legacy and “provided a safe space while the neighbourhood was burning” in the 1970s and a place for young people to reconnect with Latin music.

Made In NuYoRico is published by Duke University Press (text copyright Duke University Press, 2024). Read a review of the book by Derek Walmsley in The Wire 490. Wire subscribers can also read the review online via the digital library.