Never Released Fania's Golden era to hit the stores
Written by Torqueo
Saturday, 09 August 2008
A treasure of unreleased music from the Fania archive has been discovered, and will be seeing the light of day for the first time ever. More than just brilliant music, this is also of the highest historical importance.
Included in the find is....
Unreleased music from the Siembra sessions!!!!
Two never-released songs by the revered Celia Cruz?
A full recording of a live concert by the original Fania All-Stars in Cali, Colombia?
Unpublished music from Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto and other legends of Latin music?
These are just samples of what has been found so far in the Fania Records archives since 2005, when Emusica bought the fabled label and rescued thousands of original tapes from an upstate warehouse where they had been languishing for years.
The names on these tapes, according to Emusica CEO Giora Breil and other people familiar with the Fania treasure trove, are astonishing.
Breil even talks of “songs unreleased” by Willie Colón and Rubén Blades from “Siembra,” the classic 1978 collaboration album that contained the hits “Pedro Navaja” and “Plástico.”
But Colón, who’s embroiled in a highly-publicized breach of contract lawsuit with Blades in Puerto Rico, says he would move to block any additional releases from the album.
“‘Siembra’ is a complete work. It should not be remixed nor should any material be added that we decided we did not want to release,” the bandleader said in an e-mail.
“I will take legal action to defend the integrity of my project,” he vowed. “Would they change the Mona Lisa’s backdrop or her clothing? That would be a lack of respect towards the artist who created the project.”
Whatever unreleased material may or may not exist from “Siembra,” it seems to be the tip of the Fania iceberg.
“Every day we find new, unreleased recordings,” says Breil.
Locating the Croton-on-Hudson warehouse where the tapes had been stored took some detective work in 2005, says Breil.
Since then, Emusica has been involved in what he called a “labor of love” to identify and preserve the material.
Some of the tapes had to be literally baked in order to save them from disintegrating, and many were not labeled at all, says composer, producer and Emusica consultant Bobby Marín.
To work on them “you had to literally blow the dust off the boxes,” says Marín. And some tapes weigh more than 20 pounds.
It was during this process that Marín noticed that “some titles looked unfamiliar, making me believe that perhaps they were never released.”
His research found that those titles had been “kept in the can for future release, but never were.”
The list of artists in these unpublished recordings, according to Marín, includes the legendary sonero Ismael (Maelo) Rivera; Cuba’s Orquesta Aragón; the dynamic duo of Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz; merengue singer Wilfrido Vargas and many sacred names in Caribbean music including Benny Moré, Daniel Santos, Machito, Mongo Santamaría and Cortijo y su Combo.
(This is an edited version of an article featured in the NY Daily Times)
