NYC NOW - August 22, 2024 : Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

New York City’s open data portal shows New Yorkers are complaining more than ever about city employees who use their parking permits to break the law. Plus, new data show that reading hasn’t gotten better in the city’s public schools after a major overhaul in how students learn to read. And finally, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with Leila Cobo, Chief Content Officer of Latin Music at Billboard, about the pioneering independent music label, Fania Records, and how it helped define the sound of salsa in New York City.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. New Yorkers are complaining more than ever about city employees who use their parking permits to break the law. That's according to 311 reports shared on the city's open data portal. The data shows New Yorkers are submitting about twice as many complaints as they were this time last year. Many of the complaints focus on police precincts, where cop cars and personal vehicles are often often parked on the sidewalk.

Dr. Sharon McLennan Weir is with the Center for the Independence of the Disabled New York. She says it can be difficult for blind pedestrians like herself to navigate the obstacles. One able-bodied person convenience makes it a nightmare for those of us that are disabled. The U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District has threatened a lawsuit if the problem isn't fixed. The NYPD did not immediately return a request for comment. the city overhauled reading instruction, New York City Public School students' reading scores have dropped. WMYC's Charles Lane has more. The 2.6% proficiency decline in grades 3 through 8

comes after years of stubbornly low scores that Mayor Adams and schools, Chancellor David Banks, were determined to reverse. Schools began phasing in a whole new approach to learning to read, but instead of reversing low numbers, scores have declined. Susan Newman is an NYU education professor who advises city schools. She blames COVID. We still are getting kids who are sick. We're still getting families that are sick. And the absentee rate is higher. Skeptics say that the administration is ignoring feedback from teachers on the new reading curriculum. For 60 years, the independent music label, Fania Records has helped define the sound of salsa across the five boroughs. After the break, we discuss how the label developed over the past six decades.

Stick around. The pioneering independent music label, Fania Records, is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Fania helped define the sound of salsa right here in New York City. WMYC's Michael Hill talked with Laila Kobo, chief content officer of Latin music at Billboard, about the genre's New York City roots and how Fania helped develop the sound of a generation. those who are not familiar with Fania Records and what it accomplished, would you explain the origins of this label? Fania Records was an independent record label that was created in New York City in the early 60s by bandleader Johnny Pacheco, who was a very important band leader at the time, and by Jerry

Masucci, who was an attorney and former New York City Cop who loved Latin music. And they came together and they started to sign all these emerging brand new artists at the time, many from New York who were doing the music that would later be coined salsa, which was a mix of Latin sounds, Afro-Cuban beats, and then New York City. And who were its major players? Oh my gosh, they signed everybody you can think of. First, there was Johnny Pacheco, who was an institution of himself. They've signed Willie Colon.

They sign Ruben Blades. They signed Celia Cruz. They signed Ector Laval. They signed, oh, my, every name you can think of in Latin music. They signed Larry Harlow, who was a pianist and who was Jewish. She was known as El Judo Moravilloooso. They had an amazing roster of artists spanning many nationalities, many genres, and all of them kind of united by tropical.

music. We call it tropical music now, but really the essence of Fania was salsa. You know, Layla, when people here is talking about this, they're going to think of the Fania All-Stars. Yes, and they would be correct to think of the Fania All-Stars because Fania became such an institution that they recorded as the Fania All-Stars and they would bring all their artists together and they would do recordings and these huge concerts, including Yankee Stadium, which was very legendary. because it was the first time any Latin act performed at Yankee Stadium. So Panya was, I don't even know whether to call them small, but if they were small, they were incredibly mighty.

Layla, would you explain exactly what genres came together to help make salsa and why it happened in New York, of all places? It's really interesting that salsa is always thought about as something that came from another country when really the term salsa was something that happened. and in New York. And you had all this migration of people from Puerto Rico and people from Cuba predominantly. And you had these artists from Cuba playing, you know, Afro-Cuban music. You had people like Machito, like Mongo Santa Maria, who were playing in the big jazz and dance clubs in New York

City. And they were playing Afro-Cuban rhythms, right? And then from Puerto Rico, you had Plena and you had all these artists that were also making dance music there. And they all converged in New York were exciting things were happening with music and jazz. Of course, you know, artists like Dizzy Gillespie were big advocates of Latin music. And there's a lot of commonalities between jazz and between Latin dance music, beginning with improvisation, for example. You know, in jazz you have improvisation. And then in salsa, you have dasoneos, which is what the singers do when they improvise.

So these two, I would say streams of music came to. in New York at a time when there was a lot of experimentation, when people love Latin rhythms, because we forget often that Latin dance music topped the Billboard charts in the late 50s as well. So there was a lot of interest and a lot of cross-pollination. And this is what gave birth to the music we now call salsa, which is anchored in those Afro-Cuban rhythms, but really has that New York excitement and grid and improvisation and the big horns. What songs might people think of when they think of it? When they think of salsa and fania, oh my gosh.

Pedro Navaja by Ruben Blades and Willie Colon. Anything Celia Cruz did, Kimbara, for example, which is one of her signature songs. Then Cheche Colet, which was with Actors, Lavo singing. All the albums by Willie Colon, you know, Cozano actually, which was such an avant-garde album, you know, Willie Colon was a trombonist,

he was a producer, and he really came from New York City and just kind of harnessed all this excitement that was happening in the streets into music. Well, Fanya Records was a pretty foundational institution we can say. It wasn't a perfect one. Leda, what problems did the label grapple with? Well, it started to kind of come apart at the seams a little bit. And part of the problem was that

they signed a lot of these artists who had never had record deals or came from very small record deals in their native countries. Then suddenly they became big stars as a result of Fania and other people started to look for them. So they started to look at their contracts, more carefully. Maybe they weren't getting the royalties they wanted, and people started to move in and out of Pania, and eventually, you know, the label kind of dissolved. But the catalog lives on. Are there musicians still making salsa music today, the same way Fania was back in the 60s and 70s? Has anything replaced it? I have to say, there are still a lot of musicians making salsa today, because salsa is one of the foundations of our Latin music, and it's not going to

go anywhere. But I have to say that the movement that Fania created that moment in time and the movement especially, I don't think that's been able to be replicated. Kind of like trying to replicate Motown to a certain extent. Absolutely. That's a great comparison. And after Fania, we had RMM, which was Rolf Mercado. And Ralph kind of took where Fania left off. But then RMM also faded. So I don't see a big movement like there used to be, but there is a lot of talk of a big resurgence in tropical music overall and in salsa in particular. That's Lila Kobo, Chief Content Officer of Latin Music at Billboard,

talking with WNYC's Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.