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So You Want To Be A Salsa Star? by Néstor Louis
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| You know, the more I listen to today’s salsa music, or the lack thereof; the more I’m convinced that salsa is a thing of old. Though there’s a small constituency of industry folks that arduously disagreed with the overall premise of my previous article titled
"The Death of Salsa in
NYC", I managed to get a steady flow of emails from people that agreed with my perspective.
It saddens me that the music of The Fania All Stars is now a format that is commercially audible only on Sundays, and the much maligned salsa romantica/salsa monga is now considered salsa vieja. It is indeed a thing of cycles. Today, I totally understand what my parents probably felt when their musical icons... Marco Antonio Muñiz, Roberto Ledesma, Armando Manzanero, Javier Solis, Alberto Beltran and many others, were only heard on Sunday mornings. "Get it through you thick skull Salsa is not dead. Just because, you don’t want to come out and pay money to see Sonora Ponceña when they come out to Lehman College, doesn’t mean the music is dead. It’s you who’s dead". And that opinion is well taken, and very much welcomed! But to dismiss the fact that salsa is no longer the genre that’s synonymous with a vibrant Latin New York nightlife, is like dismissing the profits earned by Toyota Motors on American soil as a minor hiccup by General Motors. If GM and the rest of American automakers do not "reinvent" themselves, Toyota Motors and the rest of foreign auto makers will dominate and control the American automotive business. They already control most of the world’s car market. Similarly, and yet again, salsa music needs to reinvent itself. Not just in the way it sounds, but in the way it conducts its overall business. It can be done! From artist creation and development, to public relations and distribution; the genre can pretty much be as great if not greater than what it once was. All it needs to flourish is a different and more modest approach. An approach that somewhat resembles the path walked by its most successful icons, without the greed and deceit. An approach that embraces modern technology and nurtures talent. One that creates and reward its fans. The approach I propose to the willing, is one that is totally untested and unproven by me, or by anyone I know. Yet is one that I believe, after working smart and hard; could offer a great career.
One of the many reasons salsa is not as popular today as other Latin genres is the fact that the songs are just not good. The themes and topics covered by the genre today are very dated and flat out corny. Is like; outside of the top acts in the genre, salseros seem shop for song lyrics at some sort of bottom shelf, low rent, bargain basement outfit. Just the other day, I heard a song about “azucar”. The song’s main message, theme, and premise, was everyone needs a little sugar in their life. Duh? Many producers are up front about their low budget songs, and to some degree I can’t blame them. "Listen I’ll be honest some of these songwriter guys... Guys with no kind of track record want all kinds of crazy money for songs. It’s ridiculous! Everyone of them is so smart and so educated about the business that they do not realize someone has to record their song before they can have a hit song that makes them money. This kid I met had a song I was interested in. The kid was willing to have my band record the song! Next thing you know, he wants like $600 for it plus one point of the gross sales! Is like somebody sat him down and ‘educated’ him about the ‘business’. As if he was dealing with Marc Anthony or something... And that’s another thing. You got a bunch of guys running around with decent songs that no one will ever hear. All of them are holding out for Marc Anthony, Victor Manuelle, or Gilberto Santa Rosa, to come knocking their door. They all want to become the next Jorge Luis Piloto or Omar Alfano without paying their dues. What these guys don’t get, or chose to ignore, is they got to get recorded first! But what am I supposed to do? Not record? Overpay some unknown for some silly song? No. I’ll just go to the well of what works and take it from there." This explains the onslaught of salsa cover bands that exist today, whose sole purpose is to raid the Willie Colón archives or re record another version of Ray Barretto’s ‘Indestructible’. And that’s sad. The moral of that story is, salseros have to choose better songs with relevant stories, topics, and themes. Also, songwriters looking to break in the business have to be more forgiving and give away their songs for free before their big payday. Get your name out there!
Time and time again its been said that in the old days, before the digital revolution, a successful production in the tropical genre represented 50,000 units sold. That number pretty much translated into lots and lots of club dates, tours, and lots money to be made. Though the industry claims that they’ve been hurting, it’s almost ridiculous to think that the internet, music downloading, and CD piracy, "crippled" such a tiny sector of the music business. "Each time I see my CD bootlegged I get angry... the reason is very simple. Those guys are stealing from me. And I’m not just talking about the guys with the floor mat, I’m also talking about the labels themselves bootlegging your stuff to decrease the amount of legit sales you get paid on. I guess, there not much I could do about music downloads, but it is stealing nevertheless. It is my intellectual property... I worked hard to put out there and get paid on. Who was the rapper that beat up the people selling his bootlegged CD? Who ever it was, I can’t blame them." A point well made by Ernie Acevedo of Conjunto Imagen. Yet on the other hand, it’s been said that the distribution network of any thing is key to its success. I don’t know but it seems that with regards to tropical music, there’s no bigger distribution network than that of music downloaders. All salsa artists should embrace the internet as a way to broadcast, promote, and distribute their music. Some of them should even consider giving their music out for free! Most newspapers have made their content available to their readers on line for free! "Making money off music sales is the old business model. Digital technology is the great equalizer, and here to stay. For most if not all large music companies, the internet is the enemy. The internet has taken the labels out of the sales equation between the fan and the artist. In many instances, especially dealing with alternative rock bands, the internet has made the independent label flourish. The fear the labels have is so huge and so real that all of them are trying to find ways to make money on their artists’ concerts. As a small independent label, we are not focused on selling records, we are focused on finding the artists first! Honing and nurturing their talent, broadcasting their music, and putting a show together. Generating excitement! The day I see one of my artists bootlegged, that’s the day I’ll say as a company We’ve arrived. Why? Well because that only means that my brand of artists is popular enough to merit that kind of attention. That attention would tell us there’s a demand for our music and allows us to book more shows. Kinito Mendez, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Marc Anthony, Toño Rosario... These guys did not become millionaires on mere record sales. They became millionaires by having their music heard by the masses, creating a demand for their "services", and earning huge amounts of money in the process. Record sales is a by product of their mass appeal and popularity. Let’s do some math; you have a hit record, book your artist 10 times a year at $10,000. That nets you $100,000 a year. Say after a 60/40 split that covers all kinds of operating expenses, leaving the artist with roughly 30 to 40 grand. For any artist, Is that a bad payday? Most of them are just happy to be there! Imagine as an artist, if you raise your fee? Imagine if you had a hit record? Imagine if you just gigged more as a result? Imagine as a label we had more than one artist on demand? Get the picture?" The internet is music’s biggest ally. It is indeed the greatest equalizer for broadcast. I’m convinced, now more than ever, that the MP3 and WMA music formats along with all the different platforms capable of playing such formats will drastically reduce the need for conventional sources for music and its promotion. "Can you imagine - hot off the studio, you can just upload a song to a peer to peer service. Salsa, merengue, reggaeton, whatever! Have a song resident on a PC with the artist name, song title, and genre... let it sit there for a while. |
Suddenly,
one guy gets it... another one gets it... and so on and so forth... www
dot and all that goes along with it! Your songs and artists find their
way on to several MP3 players whether they are Ipods or not who cares?!
Next thing you know, your song gets attention and gets you a gig here
and there... I mean you never know what can happen by having such large
broadcasting range and distribution coverage. It sounds corny but the
internet is global."
The moral of that story is, don’t focus on record sales. Focus more on getting your product... Your music out there for the masses to hear via the internet and utilizing some of the most popular peer to peer exchanges, including but not limited to ITunes, Napster, or LimeWire. Radio, as a "free" tool used to promote free music, is headed to extinction. As it is today, they barely play music. Many of them are all talk. To a lesser degree so are djs! I said it once and I’ll say it again - not radio… not djs... none of them, have created a bonafide artist in years! More than half the time no one knows the name of the song, much less the name of the artist they are spinning. Record pools on the other hand, and much to my chagrin, seem to provide a "service", though I question their effectiveness. Satellite radio, though I’m a fan and a stock holder of Sirius Satellite Radio, is light years away from becoming the dominant media it needs to be to create a successful music artist, much less a salsa artist Speaking of radio, internet radio should be embraced as a powerful and useful alternative to other more traditional forms media. As such it shouldn’t be assaulted by ASCAP or BMI, and get financially crippled for doing a better job in promoting artists and generating real revenue via work for some of their lesser known paying members.
That’s the reality. The big labels are not signing salsa acts. They might be involved in distribution deals with several smaller labels, but that’s as far as it goes. They’re not plunking down any money on salsa records from new artists. Still there is hope. I’ve never recorded anything. I’ve never done anything remotely close to music. I dance a bit. I took some dance lessons from Eddie Torres. I’m good enough to have a good time on the dance floor, not good at all to be part of a dance company, much less be part of a dance click. I play some percussion (congas, bongos, and timbales). Not good enough to make it as a musician, but good enough to play in my basement for my own amusement. I play a very bad chord piano. So bad that any and every beginner piano student will cringe upon my thumping of every key, but good enough to make me feel like I learned something every time I try. I also play a little trumpet... Literally! Is a Jean Baptiste pocket trumpet. Is not worth mentioning how bad I sound playing it, but it’s worth mentioning how happy my little girl gets when she finds it and tries to get me to play it. I swear, she looks at me as if I was Satchmo! It also comes in handy at your kid’s birthday parties. Pretty much what I’m trying to say is, I know nothing about music or music making, so don’t take my advice on anything seriously before consulting with a true professional. Having said that, I believe that there are still a few remaining ways to perhaps make something positive happen for you musically, if you have the will and determination to get lucky.
© 2007 Nestor A. Louis nestor@palosalsero.com or visit Lo Que Dice La Gente... Digalo Usted |
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