Political Facets of Salsa

Author(s): Brittmarie Janson Perez

Source: Popular Music, Vol. 6, No. 2, Latin America (May, 1987), pp. 149-159
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Political facets of salsa

BRITTMARIE JANSON PEREZ

1. Context

Late at night, in a discotheque in a Latin American country whose political system is

dominated by the military and is not particularly known for its respect for human
rights, a crowd is dancing salsa, a generic term covering Caribbean dance music. The
song is Willie Col6n's 'El general'.I It starts with a roll of drum beats and a sarcastic
description of the general getting up in the morning to put on his uniform and dictate
orders to the president. A thrill of fifes follows and a stentorean shout: 'To the right!'
The verse describes citizens as delighted not to have a free press and a dangerous
democratic system with its tricky politicians. The military gazette is very enjoyable
and it is reassuring to have a regime which puts men with strange ideas behind bars.
In the discotheque, the crowd continues dancing. The next stanza says the general is
rumoured to be about to retire: What will happen to the country and the people
without him? 'For a long time I've wanted to thank you,' is the refrain, 'goodbye and
thank you, my general.'
By this time one of the dancers is consciously aware of the lyrics and wondering,
'what kind of a song are we dancing to?' It is a long song which thanks the general in
the name of those who are no longer there, los desaparecidos. A chorus which starts by
asserting that there is no censorship in the country cleverly turns the refrain into a
denouncement: Censura! This is followed by the sounds of an execution. Someone
orders: 'Aim ... Fire!' A spatter of shots is heard followed by a military march and
the ominous sound of a siren. Over a megaphone, a male voice with a Chilean accent
announces a curfew. The next stanzas are loaded with hypocritical thanks to the jefe
supremo for all he has done for the people, for what he did for Pablo Pueblo, who
came home from the factory to find his family missing. 'In the barrio we all toast the
general with rum and cold beer, waiting for the day he can rest,' the lyrics add.
Addressing the general, the song continues: 'Either you retire or they retire you, but
what a glorious day that will be. How happy I am that you will go. ... Goodbye little
general, tyrant of my life.'
The song is a dramatic composition with bold sound effects and elements in the
verse with which people from many parts of Latin America can identify. A proper
semiotic analysis is impossible here; only a few examples can be given. A general
who dictates orders to the president is compatible with many past and present
regimes in Caribbean countries. The missing, los desaparecidos, are a characteristic of
dictatorships, but the term is most closely connected with the Argentine and Chilean
experiences. The general's early rise and his work routine are reminiscent of
Paraguayan radio newscasts which often start with such reports. The apologia for
not having a democratic system is a standard one for military regimes in Latin
America.

149

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150 Brittmarie Janson Perez

This song, which was brought to my attention by the dancer just referred to, is
not unique. There is a trend in many contemporary salsa recordings to include one or
two topics, such as poverty and injustice in Latin America or the oppression of Latin
Americans living in the United States, and to present them as a product of corrupt
regimes, US imperialism, or capitalism. Denouncements of electoral fraud,
government censorship and officially-sanctioned drug trafficking are among the
themes dealt with in salsa by Panamanian composer and singer Pedro Altamiranda.
The proclamation of nationalist causes is seen in the work of other composers from
the Caribbean region. The range of issues is broad but the one whose social and
political implications is rarely addressed is machismo.
The question of why 'El general' could be played under the particular
circumstances just described is a fascinating one, but because the permissibility of
aesthetic protest is heavily dependent on the country and the prevalent political
climate, it will not be broached here. Instead, I want to explore two broader
questions: why salsa, an eminently danceable genre, is being used as a medium for
powerful political messages; and whether commercial, ideological and technological
impingements threaten salsa's survival.

2. The genre
Politics has rarely been absent from Latin American music (Fairley 1985). Mexico's
politicised corridos are well known. Puerto Rican composers voiced their indepen-
dentist concerns in a few boleros, also a Latin American dance genre.2 The highly
committed nueva canci6n latinoamericana has been amply documented (Fairley 1984).
Salsa differs from these, however, in that it is a large-scale capitalist commercial
production, a consumer product aimed at all of Latin America and Hispanics
residing in the United States but which, nevertheless, contains critiques of
capitalism from various viewpoints. The salsa of socio-political themes is not the type
of protest song sung in demonstrations, rallies, or overtly political contexts. It is
protest embedded in everyday life: songs heard over the radio or record-player, and
music danced to at parties and in nightclubs or discos. The public is in a passive,
recipient situation in contrast with, for instance, the US blacks of the civil rights
movement who sang 'We Shall Overcome' in active resistance (Johnson Reagon
1983). This recipient relationship in popular music, between the product and the
consumer, should not be overemphasised, however, since in the end it is the
individual who, in accepting or rejecting a song, has the last say as far as commercial
success is concerned.3
The birth of salsa was the product of an eminently political event: the Cuban
Revolution of 1959 and the OAS boycott of the island which ensued. Until that time
Cuba was the undisputed centre of Caribbean or Afro-Antillean music. Commercial
production of popular music in Cuba for export was brought to an end by these
events and many prominent Cuban musicians, composers and singers emigrated to
the United States, where New York still had sufficient big bands to be able to
assimilate the influx. But the final end of the big band era was in sight by the time the
Beatles swept the entire continent in 1964. US recording companies had stopped
production of Cuban music several years before. Yet New York was the mecca of
Latin American artists as well as the centre of large-scale migration, not only from
Puerto Rico but from all Caribbean Basin countries. Marginalised in the new land
and consigned to an inferior status not unlike that of US blacks - many of the

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 Political facets of salsa 151

emigrants were black - the emigres settled in ghettos of their own, the barrio,
adjacent to slums such as Harlem. In New York the musical outcome was the
emergence of barrio music and musicians, of small ensembles which played for their
barrio brethren and incorporated into their music the sounds and daily problems, the
cacophony and violence of the urban slum (Rond6n 1980, pp. 19, 32, 54). The
musical roots of these compositions - which were in part a quest for affirming ethnic
identity - were eminently Cuban or Afro-Antillean. The clave, a rhythmic time-line of
3/2 or 2/3 over two beats, became the pattern not only for the re-interpretation of
already existing Caribbean music, but also for new compositions (Singer 1983, pp.
189-91; Roberts 1980, p. 283). The use of traditional instruments such as congas,
maracas, giiiros, bongos, the piano, plus trumpets and trombones - which were
emphasised to translate the sound of the barrio - was retained as an ideological
affirmation of the Caribbean heritage. The new music was heavily indebted to the
highly syncopated Cuban son.
In the following years a most interesting phenomenon occurred: although salsa
was still not identified as such, the genre which started in New York was rapidly
taken up in the big cities of the Caribbean in a spontaneous process, unconnected
with fashion or commercial promotion. Possibly this was because the need for
cultural identification felt by the Latins in alien New York was basically the same as
that of Caribbean barrio inhabitants; both lacked a musical expression to represent
them at a time when radio stations were playing the Rolling Stones and television
stations were dominated by canned US serials (Rond6n 1980, p. 32).
By the early 1970s salsa reached its first stage of maturity in New York and the
recording industry made its influence felt. Barrio music was given a label, salsa, and
actively promoted. The salsa boom which followed had its apex in 1974, fuelled by a
recording enterprise, Fania, which came to dominate the salsa market.
But the boom was double-edged. It gave employment to many Latin American
musicians but the enterprise's efforts at 'crossing over' into the broader US and
European markets had negative effects. In general terms, 'crossing over' means
validating an economically, politically or racially subordinate culture before a
hegemonic culture. In this case the goal was commercial: to invade the lucrative big
markets with salsa. For this effort to be successful, however, the enterprise's
executives deemed it necessary to modify the genre. For the salsa industry to become
really big-time and surpass the confines of the Latin consumers market, Fania's
managers felt that they had to change salsa's image radically. From being the music
of the barrio, associated with poverty, delinquency and marginality, it had to be
polished and approximated to the overwhelming US pop culture (Rond6n 1980, pp.
90, 98).
The salsa boom would increase sales but eventually it killed the music's feeling
and indeed its reason for being. Fania started producing supermarket music which
insistently and desperately denied the true essence of salsa and became a
Caribbean-type music disguised for 'gringo' consumption. An example of such
music is Rhythm Machine released by Fania with CBS in 1977 (Rond6n 1980, p. 103).
Productions such as these were rejected by the Latin public. The boom was
exhausted in New York by 1979, at which time Venezuela and Puerto Rico took up
the slack. But the demand for new recording resulted in very poor quality, overnight
productions which did not satisfy the public. Salsa seemed to be on its way out
(Rond6n 1980, p. 237).
However, in keeping with Raymond Williams' theory of the flux of dominant,

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152 Brittmarie Janson Pe'rez

z4 W,--

APd

Figure 1 (a) Ruben Blades and (b) Pedro Altamiranda. No less popular than the internationally known
Ruben Blades in his own country, Panamanian salsa composer and singer Pedro Altamiranda addresses
socio-political issues in a number of his albums. While Blades targets his songs for an international
audience, Altamiranda focuses on problems specific to Panama. The bowler hat with a wide rhinestone
band is his trademark.

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 Political facets of salsa 153

emergent and residual elements in the cultural hegemonic process (Williams 1985),
an emergent trend arose within salsa - itself the product of an emergent, oppositional
and co-opted element - which was to give new life to the genre in the nick of time.
The downward slide of commercial salsa was dynamically broken by what I here
term socio-political salsa.

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154 Brittmarie Janson Pdrez

3. Ideology
As already noted, from its earliest days barrio music contained a number of
compositions which in sound and themes provided a metacommentary on poverty,
delinquency, oppression and domination. These themes were to a large extent
submerged during the salsa boom but once that boom waned they returned to
prominence through the contributions of Willie Col6n, Catalino Curet Alonso and
Ruben Blades. These and other figures each deserve more individual attention than
they can be given here. I have chosen to focus on Ruben Blades, who has played a
stellar role in the introduction and popularisation of socio-political themes in salsa
and whose co-production with Col6n, Siembra (Planting), became the best selling
salsa record in 1979, when the end of the boom was in sight (Rond6n 1980, p. 307).
A Panamanian composer and singer, lawyer and film star, who emigrated to
New York in the early 1970s, Blades appears to have a two-fold mission. On the one
hand his musical compositions are directed at Latin America in an effort to give Latin
Americans an identity and to raise their political consciousness. Ideologically he has
identified with the left in Latin America and the left has identified with him. On the
other hand, Blades seeks to represent Latin America in the non-Latin world, to
validate the Hispanic presence and seek its rightful place in the order of things,
particularly in entertainment.
He contrasts in these efforts with Pedro Altamiranda, who is also a
Panamanian, has a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Paris, and whose
socio-political songs seek to capture the language and lifestyle of his fellow
countrymen. Altamiranda is strictly focused on his country. He has described
himself politically as 'oppositional and anti-militaristic' and has refused offers to
enter into the glossy international entertainment world (Perez, forthcoming).
This, however, is the world in which Blades is eminently successful. In his quest
to give Latin Americans an identity and to unify them ideologically, he has been
triumphant and has become the idol of Latin American leftists and the public in
general. His songs have dealt with the predicaments of the common man in Hispanic
America as well as of Latin Americans living in the United States. His most overtly
political album, Buscando America (Searching for America), was released in 1984, after
Blades had done a stint with various salsa artists and recording companies in New
York, and had become the first Latin American artist to be signed by a US
mainstream label, Elektra/Asylum (Hamill 1985, p. 44). The songs deal with themes
such as emigration because of political repression - ('Caminos Verdes' - 'Green
Roads'); the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero ('El
padre Antonio y el monaguillo Andres' - 'Father Anthony and the acolyte, Andres');
his search for unity, identity and social and economic justice in America ('Buscando
America' - 'Searching for America'); the secret police ('GBDB'); difficult decisions in
everyday life ('Decisiones' - 'Decisions'); and missing persons in dictatorships
('Desaparici6n' - 'Disappearance').
Previously recorded songs which gained him his outstanding position in
socio-political salsa include 'Pablo Pueblo' ('Paul People'), to which Willie Col6n
referred in 'El general', 'Pedro Navaja' ('Peter, the Switchblade'), and 'Juan
Pachanga' ('Juan, the Playboy').
In his second objective, to make the Latin American presence felt in the
international entertainment world (or 'crossing over', which is the subject of his
second film, Crossover Dreams, released in 1985), Blades has been no less successful.

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 Political facets of salsa 155

He has received extensive media coverage in the US, been featured on the cover of
New York magazine (19 August 1985) and Current Biography (May 1986) and been
written up in other publications too numerous to mention. His US television
appearances have included interviews on the Johnny Carson Show and 60 Minutes. He
has been on several world tours, appeared as an opening star in a concert given by
Joe Jackson in Baltimore in 1984 and at the Olympia Music Hall in Paris in May 1986.
As an actor he has appeared in two films and is in two more scheduled to be released
in 1987: 'Continental Divide,' directed by Michael Apted and co-starring with Richard
Pryor, and 'The Milagro Beanfield War,' directed by Robert Redford (Blades 1986).
His unqualified success in 'crossing over' (he himself dislikes the term and
prefers to use 'convergence') (Current Biography May 1986, p. 13) may ultimately
jeopardise his other role, that of addressing Latin America. To be lionised in the
heart of capitalism, starring in Hollywood productions, and being selected as one of
the ten sexiest men of the year by Playgirl (September 1986, reported in Panama by La
Prensa 10 August 1986, p. 22B) may place him in the situation of playing a discrepant
role (Goffman 1959). That is to say, his loyal Latin American constituents may ask
how, if he represents oppositional sectors, can he be so applauded by the culture
which dominates them? In the United States he has announced his intentions of
putting Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez' stories to music and
to compose an album entirely in English, singing calypso under a new name, 'not his
own persona but in that of an alter ego, "Panama Blades" (Current Biography 1986,
p. 13). In a Panamanian television interview he announced that he would record a
two-album series of songs for Panama and by Panamanians and omitted mention of
his plans to make the English-language record (Blades, opus cit.).
Blades has explained his cinematographic efforts to his constituents - who may
some day become his real constituents as he has announced at various times that he
may enter into the Panamanian political arena - in the following terms:
Right now I am in the United States helping to end the stereotype of the Latin in the United
States and also helping the 20 million Latins who live in that country for many reasons but
generally because of the opportunities it affords. [I am in the United States] also for economic
reasons, to make my life more possible to maintain once I return to Panama. [The latter]
because in situations where you are economically controlled, money is freedom. That will give
me an opportunity when I return to Panama not to have to ally myself with discredited groups
and to see in what way I can do my work here. (Blades, opus cit.)
Blades' situation has been discussed here because it is relevant within the
framework of Williams' previously cited work. More will be said about this in a
moment. Within salsa, the success of Blades' socio-political songs has attracted a
large number of imitators. Some songs, such as Willie Col6n's 'El general' are of the
same quality as Blades' own best productions, while others, such as the work of
Pedro Altamiranda, is of an entirely different nature and follows different aims. But
there are many imitators of a vastly inferior quality, characterised by trite themes and
virtually inaudible lyrics. Oscar D'Le6n, for example, a Venezuelan salsa star,
recently released an album which contains two socio-political themes, one on the
errant street boy and another on poverty, which are wholly lacking in originality,
feeling and clarity.4 In the end, commercial enterprises and imitators may kill off the
authenticity and attractiveness of socio-political salsa. In other words, again, what
was once a brave ideological and artistic effort may be co-opted by commercialism.
The question which now arises is: What is going to happen to salsa? Such
important figures as Willie Col6n and Elias L6pez have commented on its current

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156 Brittmarie Janson Perez

F.
iJitaniEiuI5Ia

i?? i

fijdrli

Figure 2. The cover of Panamanian composer Pedro Altamiranda's album, Ve! (1985), referred to a song
which attacked government censorship. Both the song and the illustration were a message to the National
Censorship Board which had frequently barred Altamiranda's songs from being played over the radio.
Subsequently, the no less political album, Bafio de Pueblo (1986), was not subjected to any restrictions
by the board.

problems (Extra 8 August 1986, p. 12). If its themes are played out, are there other
resources that can prevent this genre from falling into the musical fossil pit of tangos,
boleros and other past Latin American genres which are heard today only for
reasons of romantic nostalgia? If one looks to either ideology or technology to rescue
the genre, there is little cause for optimism for the following reason: ideology is
constraining technology.

4. Technology
The very affirmation of ethnic identity in the face of a dominant, hegemonic culture
led early and later salsa composers and arrangers to eschew electronic music and rely
for the most part on traditional instruments with which they were more comfortable.
It was believed that the purity of Latin music would be lost to a technology which
was essentially capitalistic. But the use of traditional Caribbean instruments and the
cautious introduction of electronic music into salsa have resulted in a sound which is
anachronistic from the viewpoint of today's stereophonic record players, equipped
as they are to transmit sounds which are far beyond the range of these instruments,
particularly in the bass. In the opinion of informed individuals whom I have
interviewed, salsa simply cannot compete in sound with rock music. The model for
those who advocate change is the Miami Sound Machine, a group of musicians of
Cuban origin who seem to have been successful in the crossover quest. They were
recent guests at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, have played for President
Reagan in Miami and in festivals in Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, and a number of
other Latin American countries (Suplemento El Buho 8 August 1986, p. 15). Although
retaining a Latin beat, the Miami Sound Machine is contemporary in its use of
electronic instruments. Its clientele in Latin America is formed by a younger
generation more in tune with rock, computers and arcade games than with the

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 Political facets of salsa 157

legacies of the past. On the other hand, this musical group is anathema to the
nationalist left.
This war of ideology embedded in technology is felt at another level, that of
composers. Tille Valderrama, a Panamanian composer and arranger who has a
degree from Berklee Music College in Boston, expresses the frustration felt by some
contemporary composers in Latin America. He feels that salsa is becoming obsolete
because of the strictures of those who dominate its commercial production (as, for
example, in their insistence on keeping the clave rhythm for the sake of the dancers
who, if the rhythm were changed, might reject it). Additionally, they eschew the
richness of what Valderrama calls the American drum set and are extremely hesitant
to use electronic music (Valderrama, personal communication).
The whole issue has become ideological: to use electronic music or to change the
rhythm is felt to be as much a betrayal of the culture as what Fania enterprises did to
the original salsa. If Blades uses electronic music or changes the rhythm it is accepted.
If other composers do it, it is ideological treason.

5. Conclusions

We can see, therefore, that the history of salsa has been one of fluctuation between
emergence and co-optation by capitalism. I have not said 'by the dominant culture'
because that is what the whole issue of 'crossing over' involves. Whether or not salsa
or the issues raised in socio-political salsa will be accepted by the public who are part
of the hegemonic cultures is very open to question. It may depend on the success of
the efforts of Blades or someone else, or upon the emergence of yet another saving
lifeline. What seems to be clear is that the whole process of the dominant culture's
absorption of emerging or oppositional elements is very complex. On the one hand
there are purely commercial efforts to exploit emergent trends. On the other, one
sees individuals from emergent trends or subordinate cultures seeking validation
through inclusion in the dominant stream. 'Crossing over' may be done with a
number of intents and poses a thorny problem. An artist may seek to have his ethnic
group represented in the world's entertainment field and be very successful in doing
so. On the other hand, he may run the risk of losing his constituency for failing to
represent them ideologically. The whole process of the emergent being absorbed by
the dominant may thus be seen as an active one on the part of both sides - with
certain qualifications and intents on the part of both - rather than as a one-way path
in which the dominant makes use of and manipulates the subordinate, emergent or
oppositional.
Another question concerns the use of an eminently danceable genre to transmit
powerful political messages. It is here suggested that in the Caribbean and regions
influenced by the Caribbean cultures, dance music is a privileged genre. Not only do
the cultures which make up this region fall roughly within what Ong calls oral or
residually oral culture (Ong 1982, pp. 171, 45), but there is a strong African heritage
whose musical traditions, e.g. the heavy use of drums and syncopation, may also
privilege dance music as an aesthetic communicative genre. As Rond6n (1980,
p. 233) explains:

As far as the Caribbean is concerned, far from entailing a sacrifice to dance, music always
entailed an emphasis on dance. It is not a question of falling into the mediocre classification of
making music to dance to; it is simply that music, with all its virtues, innovations, and variations,
has dance implicit in it. In this part of the world there is no sense in making music that is not
danceable.

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158 Brittmarie Janson Perez

As far as salsa is concerned, it is not difficult to conceive of a political message

being successfully transmitted when heard at home, over the radio or record-player;
it is much more difficult to assess its effectiveness in a social context, when a crowd is
enjoying itself drinking and dancing.
There is more than one way to approach this subject. One can draw on Maurice
Bloch, who declares 'you can't argue with a song', because it involves abandonment
of the freedom of natural discourse, and no argument or reasoning can be
communicated (Bloch 1974, pp. 71, 62). In this particular context the implications
might be that the recipients of socio-political salsa receive and accept the message
without question. Alternatively, a view held by several research assistants and
record salesmen is that people go along with the music and either do not listen to the
words, or listen to them selectively. The implication here is that the political effect
upon listeners is slight.
However, both the dancer who brought 'El general' to my attention and the
large number of Blades' followers seem to indicate that some individuals do listen to
the lyrics and others, being ideologically attuned to a particular trend or identifying
with a particular genre, are indeed highly conscious of the lyrics, even when
dancing.
Lastly, one may think of the recipients of the messages of socio-political salsa in
terms of Freudian psychoanalytic theory:
In the same way tunes that come into one's head without warning turn out to be determined
by and belong to a train of thought which has a right to occupy one's mind though without
one's being aware of its activity. It is easy to show then that the relation to the tune is based on
its text or origin. (Freud 1977, p. 108)

From this perspective one could imagine that there is ideological penetration of
the listener who, whether he listens to the lyrics or not, is unwittingly having his
consciousness raised.
The answer to this question may include all three of these opinions. It is hard to
argue with a song and song therefore has a great deal of force. Many people do not
pay attention to the lyrics, but it is possible that the lyrics may penetrate their
subconscious. Other people identify with the lyrics or with a particular ideology and
for them the song has the greatest force. Additionally, if we are dealing with a
culture in which dance is not only a comfortable but indispensable and traditional
component, the fact that a political message is embedded in a dancing song should
not affect these various conditions of receptiveness just discussed.

Endnotes

1 The same recording contains a song protesting has already been done in masterful detail by the
against nuclear arms, 'La era nuclear'. Venezuelan musicologist, Cesar Miguel Rond6n
2 These were by Puerto Rican composers Rafael (1980). Duany (1984) has also written an excel-
Hernandez, Noel Estrada and Daniel Blanco. lent paper on the anthropology of salsa in Puerto
Pagano (1985) notes that these caused a polemic Rico which gives more attention to the musical
in their time but, actually, the lyrics are quite aspects of salsa than will be given here.
mild compared to today's socio-political salsa 4 The two songs are 'Niflo Jestis de la Calle' ('Child
lyrics. Jesus of the Streets') and 'Pobre Pedro' ('Poor
3 A complete history of salsa's evolution is beyond Peter'), released in 1986 on the record, Oscar
D'Le6n 86.
the purview of this paper. Additionally the job

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 Political facets of salsa 159

References

Books and articles

Bloch, M. 1974. 'Symbols, song, dance and features of articulation: is religion an extreme form of
traditional authority?', Archives Europeennes de Sociologie, 15, pp. 55-81
Blades, R. 1986. Aqui Ahora interview by Roberto McKay. Canal Once (Panama), 30 July 1986
Current Biography, 1986. 47:5 (May), pp. 10-14
Duany, J. 1984 'Popular music in Puerto Rico: toward an anthropology of salsa', Latin American Music
review, 5:2 (Fall/Winter) 1984, pp. 187-216
Extra (Panama) 8 August 1986, p. 12
Fairley, J. 1984. 'La nueva canci6n latinoamericana', Bulletin of Latin American Research, 3:2, pp. 107-115
1985. 'Annotated bibliography of Latin-America popular music with particular reference to Chile
and to nueva cancion', Popular Music 5, pp. 305-56
Freud, S. 1977. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (New York)
Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, (New York)
Hamill, P. 1985. 'Hey, it's Ruben Blades', New York, August 19, pp. 42-9
Johnson Reagon, B. 1983. 'Songs that moved the movement', Civil Rights Quarterly, Summer, pp. 27-35
La Prensa (Panama) 10 August, p. 22B
New York, 19 August 1986, cover
Ong, W. J. 1982. Orality and Literacy (New York)
Pagano, C. 1985. 'Batalla musical: balada versus bolero', Suplemento Istmo (Panama) 29 December, pp. 17-18
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Discographical notes
Altamiranda, Pedro. 1985. Ve! Sonomundi 84644 (Panama). (Cassette)
1986. Bafio de pueblo. Sonomundi SMN 001-85 (Panama). (Cassette)
Col6n, Willie. 1984. Criollo. RCA; also Sonolux 05(05151)02041 (Colombia).
D'Le6n, Oscar. 1986. Oscar D'Le6n. THC-014. (Distributed by TH Records & Tapes, Inc., 10124 NW.80
Ave., Hialeah Gardens, Florida 33016)

(For Ruben Blades, see review by Mike Gonzalez, p. 252)

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