Shake

Few people have invested more in the business of salsa than Ralph Mercado. The 59-year-old CEO of RMM Records was in the game before the genre even had a name, representing originators in the early Seventies such as Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barretto. In the universe of Fania Records, whose founder Jerry Masucci popularized the word salsa as a marketing term, Mercado was a prime mover: promoting shows, managing acts, and plunking down much-needed cash. After Fania foundered Mercado established his own label in 1987. RMM Records fueled the fire of long-burning stars Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and Oscar D'Leon while sparking the careers of newer Nuyorican luminaries Marc Anthony and La India. For a brief flash, RMM even signed Cuban island estrellas Issac Delgado and Paulito FG.

Earlier this month both Mercado and RMM filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of a $7.7-million judgment awarded songwriter Glenn Moroig. The songwriter alleged copyright infringement and, referring to legislation that applies in the free associated state of Puerto Rico but not on the U.S. mainland, staked a moral rights claim for the alteration of one of his songs by Cheo Feliciano in a documentary film produced in 1996 by RMM Filmworks, Yo Soy ... Del Son a la Salsa (I Am ... From Son to Salsa). According to Mercado's lawyer, Bruce Caplan, a reduction if not a reversal of the ruling is anticipated under U.S. federal law. In the meantime the day-to-day business of RMM continues. While the bankruptcy may well be a quibble on the label's ledgers, it is symbolic of a deeper crisis in salsa as a genre.

Salsa was born, and may perhaps die, by celluloid. The 1973 Nuestra Cosa (Our Latin Thing) introduced the Fania All-Stars in a concert film at the Cheetah nightclub. Then 1974's Salsa confirmed the genre's name and the Fania stable's superstar status with a sold-out show at Yankee Stadium. The early Fania films crackle with the electricity of the new. The kids tapping out clave on tin cans in the back alleys and vacant lots of Nuestra Cosa's New York City are building a brave new Latin world from the refuse of the United States' manifest destiny. The archival footage of Desi Arnaz crooning "Babalu" for an amused Anglo crowd in Salsa is dismissed by sneering narrator Jerry Rivers (yes, Geraldo Rivera before Spanish was hip) as nothing more than a Latin minstrel show that would be run out of town forever by the Seventies' race savior salseros. The 1996 RMM documentary has a more reverent feel, tracing the trajectory the title promises from the origins of salsa in Cuban son through the glory days of Fania, to a sampling of where the sound has ended up: from the romantic R&B-inflected strains of New York's Marc Anthony to the frenetic instrumental high jinks of Havana's Los Van Van. Where Nuestra Cosa was a call to action, Yo Soy ... Del Son a la Salsa is a museum piece, preserving a movement that already has happened.

Long before the advent of MTV, the images of the All-Stars jamming onstage sold enough records for a minority ethnic and largely immigrant group to create an independent music industry of its own. Over the next quarter century, the majors caught on to the selling power of Latin music; as fast as RMM could birth new stars, Sony and others would woo them away. By 1996 Latinos no longer were a community building their own barrios in the belly of the beast. Instead they had become another demographic whose tropically accented desires the marketing departments of the majors would try to tap. Compared to the hemorrhage of RMM's platinum-selling acts, bankruptcy may not even be the heaviest blow sustained by the independent label.