In the credits for his groundbreaking 1977 album, La Raza Latina, producer/pianist Larry Harlow drops a cryptic clue to the source of inspiration for this symphonic salsa suite. He thanks a group – identified simply as Musica Moderna de Cuba – that was then virtually unknown to all but the most devoted followers of Afro-Cuban music. Its full name is Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, a seminal ensemble that featured some of Cuba’s most cutting- edge musicians, including the original core of what would become Irakere, the island’s legendary salsa/jazz band.

At a time when the rest of the world was largely cut off from creative developments behind the Sugar Cane Curtain, Harlow had his ear to the nascent vanguard of a progressive movement in dance music that swept Cuba after the revolution. In New York, while many Latinos got swept up in the utterly disposable disco craze, Harlow was tuned to short wave radio to pick up on underground sounds that would have an impact on salsa for decades to come.

The result is one of the most extraordinary and ambitious works to come out of the salsa boom of the 1970s, a concept album that tells the story of Latin music in orchestral fashion. The suite moves from the music’s origins in African drumming and its roots in the Caribbean to its mambo heyday in New York of the 1950s. The experimental fourth movement explores a vision of salsa’s future in a flourish of frenetic percussion and jazz improvisation, for which Harlow borrowed riffs from those cutting-edge Cubans.

This work brings together the two strains of Harlow’s musical career, his passion for Afro- Cuban roots and his drive to make salsa sound modern. During three days in January of 1977, he gathered a veritable army of musicians (30 players and eight singers) at La Tierra Sound Studios and recorded the four-part suite, meant to be heard as a continuous piece. Sometimes wielding a baton to conduct the string section, Harlow wrestled with complex time and tempo changes to master the sweeping, at times stunning arrangements by Luis ‘Perico’ Ortíz and Marty Sheller, who wrote his charts in pencil on score paper. “Marty’s a genius,” says Harlow. “You just tell him what you want and he writes it.”

Vocals were added later, but they weren’t an afterthought. Néstor Sánchez, ‘El Albino Divino,’ sings the title track, the only stand-alone song on the album. Rubén Blades carries most of the suite, displaying a passion for the concept, diligent research and “magnificent” inspiraciones (inspirations) Harlow recalls. Singer Frankie Rodríguez contributes a dramatic and authentic santero narrative while angelic tones are added by a trio of singers from Latin Fever, the all-female salsa group Harlow co-produced the following year.

On the eve of the 32nd anniversary of La Raza Latina, Harlow declares the work “ahead of its time.” He ranks it in the top five among his career’s three dozen albums, along with Hommy: A Latin Opera (1973), Tribute to Arsenio Rodríguez (1972) and Salsa (1974). The future may not have worked out as the suite envisioned, but the English lyrics he wrote for the finale still captures salsa’s idealism and universal appeal: “Come on our dream/ We’ll go through our music one more time./ Love, dance and sing,/ For what’s ours is ours for all mankind.”

LESS >