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Fame is a misunderstanding. Or a coin toss. In 1974 the Narváez Orchestra – then made up of almost teenage New York musicians – presented Reincarnation, an eight-track album. Despite the street lyrics and aggressive trombones, the work aroused neither the enthusiasm of salsa critics nor the passion of the dancers in the clubs of New York or Puerto Rico.
Seen in retrospect, the reasons for the album’s lukewarm reception are understandable: without being a copy, the sound of the trombones of Dewell Narvaez and the voice of Armando Vasquez refer to the first works of Willie Colón with Héctor Lavoe. In other words, the album came out at an inopportune moment: the market was occupied by the biggest figures of Fania. However, through the twists and turns of life, the album acquired legendary status more than two thousand kilometers from the streets of the Big Apple.
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Reincarnation It was, in the eighties and nineties, the hallmark of the tough salseros of Medellín. “At that time, one knew in Medellín who was a real salsero because he listened to Narváez,” says the driver of the car that takes us to the Laureles hotel where five of the group’s original musicians stay. They are here for the June 15 concert in Plaza Mayor.
We come from a rehearsal. From one thirty until minutes before six in the afternoon, Duke – salseros call Dewell that way because of his history in the United States Army – polished the details of the concert’s setlist. The orchestra will play Reincarnation classics and some of the songs from 65th Infantería, the album he recorded in 2013, the time of his resurrection. The years of recording silence have a reason: the orchestra disappeared in the iron knot of Fania. According to street encyclopedists, Fania ensured its dominance in the Afro-Antillean rhythms market with the signing of the main salsa stars and with the purchase of several alternative labels, among them Tico Records, which put the album on the market. of Narváez. The band’s followers appeal to this strategy of Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci’s company to explain the absence of Dewell and company from the stages and albums. In part, this explains why the salseros of Cali, Bogotá, and Barranquilla do not even know Reincarnation nor from Narváez. At least not with the level of depth as the average Medellín salsero.
At this point the question about the cause of Paisa’s passion for this orchestra and for that album in particular is inevitable. The answer has a specific name and dial: Latina stereo, 100.9 FM. Founded on November 30, 1985, this station has been the school of tastes for the salsa singers of the Aburrá valley. The songs included in Latina’s programming grid gained space in the predilections of Medellin residents, especially those who lived in Manrique, Aranjuez, San Javier, Barrio Antioquia, the areas where the station registers its highest audience numbers. And Latina made of the songs of Reincarnation essential pieces in their programs. “Of the eight songs on the album, Latina turned seven into hits,” says a longtime salsa singer. This appreciation is shared by Viviana Alvarez, until last year director of Latina and the most salsa female voice in Medellín and its surroundings. “Latina was important in Narváez’s positioning because she sounded the best on that album and hit all the songs,” she says. Now, why did Latina spread that album so much? Hearing the songs gives clues.
The songs of Reincarnation They record the experiences of the children of Puerto Rican migrants who grew up in the bowels of New York. The lyrics are direct about the issues of marginality and crime. For example, in the song The Mafia, the pawn of a drug trafficker speaks openly about his life in the criminal structure. “They call me terror, / I kill people, I rob banks / I look for a fight and I don’t give up / I work with the mafia,” Armando Vásquez sings with his high, timbred voice. The songs also distill the essence of the street corner galladas, composed mostly by young men with many temptations and little future. These characters are not afraid of death, they have little trust in women, but they cry when they leave them adrift. This masculinity permeates El malo, another of Narváez’s classics. “They call me the bad guy/ because I don’t believe in women/ I don’t blame anyone for that malabala/ women are treacherous/ and in reality they are worthless (…) listen, lady/ This is true/ that the man cries “, is heard in one of the passages.
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With these clear elements, the success of Narváez in the outskirts of Medellín is not surprising. Ultimately, this album contains the keys to a generation that grew up in the midst of the anxiety of the war against drug trafficking, nurtured by a certain vision of the world that her parents danced in tangos. In addition to the harsh lyrics, Reincarnation has the sound that the steel and sidewalk salsero likes, in whose songs there are trombone, timbale and conga solos. “The brave salsero doesn’t like the light salad,” says Viviana, making a veiled allusion to the lachrymose songs of the nineties line of salsa. And the Narváez is an orchestra located at the opposite end of the motel salsa, so called with high doses of sarcasm and contempt. This orchestra reminds its audience that no matter how hard they run, they cannot escape the work of time. “Mortify me, accuse me, stab me/ with evil, illusions, witchcraft it will not change.”
And, as if this were not enough, the public’s imagination contributed to the rise of Narváez. During the eighties and part of the nineties in Medellín a rumor circulated that the members of the orchestra had died in an accident, leaving behind only one album. In this way, the tragic ingredient of some young people who died at the beginning of their musical splendor was added to the artistic component. We already know what happens when death visits a promising artist: his silhouette grows to hyperbolic proportions. In these cases, people wonder what would have happened if Andrés Caicedo had not gorged himself with Seconal pills or if Kurt Cobain had not blown his head off. Speculation fuels the legend, keeping it current.
Despite already knowing the history of the orchestra, less bizarre than the legend, the followers of the Narváez – today they are almost forty years old – do not hesitate to say that this is their favorite orchestra in the world. “If you ask a hundred salseros from Medellín about Narváez, sixty or seventy will tell you that it is one of the best salsa orchestras. That only happens here. Here they play as locals,” says a high-mileage salsero.
In fact, while in the lobby of the Dewell Hotel he was talking about the importance of a school teacher who let him experiment with various wind instruments until he found the trombone in his training, and Armando was talking about his conversion to Christianity, outside the building he was waiting for them. a group of seven or eight thirtysomethings, some dressed in t-shirts printed with the name of the orchestra or with the painting by Carmen Martínez, which appears on the cover of Reincarnation.
At this stage of the orchestra, the businessman and owner of the Melodía para dos bar franchise, Edgar Berrío, played an important role by inviting it to be part of the programming of one of the first editions of Leyendas Vivas de la Salsa, an annual concert. that brings to Medellín a staff of old school musicians. That time, in April 2016, the local salseros who attended La Macarena were overwhelmed by the emotion of finally seeing Duke and Armando on stage. “I’ve never seen anything like it, not even at a rock concert. People cried with emotion, they climbed on the shoulders of their colleagues to see them better,” says Juan Fernando Trujillo, known in the rumba scene by the nickname Flakojazz.
In the hotel lobby, before serving his fans, Duke says that he doesn’t really know where he got the inspiration to compose Reincarnation’s songs. He says that not all the material from that time was recorded and that one of Narváez’s plans is to release an album with some of those unreleased songs. He also recognizes that neither he nor Armando are the same. In any case, regardless of whether this project becomes real or not, the truth is that Narváez left her mark on the salsa of Medellín, in the attitude with which the Paisas understand and dance salsa.
