El Canttante

EL CANTANTE celebrates the life and music of the legendary Puerto Rican salsa singer Hector Lavoe, a pioneer of the sound and sensibility that redefined Latin music in the 1960s and 1970s.

Directed by Leon Ichaso, the film is a labor of love for its stars, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, who are both New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent. Shepherded to the screen and produced by Lopez, EL CANTANTE portrays an era when a new sense of national identity and pride took root in Puerto Rican communities across the U.S. Hector Lavoe’s music was both a soundtrack to and affirmation of that awakening, and that music courses joyfully through EL CANTANTE.

Spanning the 1960s to the 1980s, EL CANTANTE charts Lavoe’s rapid rise to success and fame as an artist whose music combined Puerto Rican tradition with streetwise modernity, unabashed emotion with straightforward realism. It reveals the singer not only as an architect of salsa but as its soul; the kind of artist, like Billie Holliday, Edith Piaf or La Lupe, who forges an uncanny emotional bond with his audience. Love, pain, joy, pride, sorrow, endurance: Lavoe’s singing contained the raw stuff of life as ordinary people -- and he himself -- knew it. As Lavoe, Anthony mines the contradictory essence of a gifted man who could express anything with his music, but channeled his inner turmoil into a host of self-destructive behaviors. Anthony’s intensity and honesty is matched by that of Lopez, who portrays Lavoe’s indomitable wife, Puchi. In their first onscreen pairing, the real-life couple captures the complex dynamics of a relationship between two bright, funny and flawed human beings who loved, battled and forgave one another for twenty years, until Lavoe’s death in 1993.

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As a young man in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Hector (Marc Anthony) is already steeped in music, having grown up with a father (Ismael Miranda) who plays guitar in local orchestras. While his father envisions him joining an orchestra in Ponce, Hector dreams of a singing career in New York City. But Hector’s decision to pursue that dream causes a profound rift his father, a rejection that will haunt Hector in the years the years to come.

Arriving in New York in 1963, Hector finds a thriving music scene in the city’s Latino neighborhoods. Energetic, modishly dressed groups of young people crowd the clubs where live bands play rumba, mambo, plena, son, merengue and other types of Latin music. Hector soon becomes part of that scene as a singer with various bands, and draws the attention of Johnny Pacheco (Nelson Vasquez), a Dominican bandleader and one of Latin music’s biggest stars. Johnny introduces Hector to Willie Colon (John Ortiz), an up-and-coming trombonist and bandleader in search of a singer. Together, the two musicians embody the dual nature of New York’s Puerto Rican community: Hector, the Puerto Rican native who grew up speaking Spanish; and Willie, the New York Puerto Rican, or Nuyorican, who grew up speaking English in the Bronx. Equally important, Hector and Willie are part of a younger generation that is attuned not only to traditional Puerto Rican styles but also to rock, jazz and R&B. They music they make will be a product of those ingredients, like a sauce: salsa.

As Hector’s career blossoms, so, too, does his personal life. Smitten virtually upon his arrival by a beautiful, lively club-goer, Puchi (Jennifer Lopez), Hector turns up uninvited at her birthday party. But the boldness of the gesture stands in contrast to his sweet, polite demeanor and Puchi, who recognizes Hector from his performances, is intrigued. A sly, teasing flirtation grows deeper as the hours go on, and a romance begins in earnest.

Meanwhile, Hector is being groomed for stardom. He signs a contract with Fania Records, a new label founded by Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci (Federico Castelluccio) as a Motown for the Latino community and its music. But before Hector can hit the recording studio as a vocalist with the Willie Colon Orquestra, his last name, the extremely common Perez, will have to go. And so he is rechristened Hector Lavoe, a play on “la voix,” the French translation of “the voice.”

The singing career that Hector envisioned as a young man in Ponce is about to materialize. Beginning in 1967, Hector and Willie release a succession of LPs that are the foundations of salsa, with Hector’s voice soaring over percolating brass and percussion on records including “El Malo” (“The Bad One”) and “Cosa Nuestra” (“Our Thing”). There are sellout tours, festivals and outdoor events that reflect the heady, psychedelic spirit of the times. Concerts are jubilant extravaganzas that find Hector in his element, often with Puchi dancing by the side of the stage. In Puerto Rico, throngs turn out to welcome their beloved hero. By the early 1970s, salsa has conquered the streets of New York and cities around the world, and Hector Lavoe is its voice.

But success is not the uncomplicated boon the young Hector might have envisioned, and the emotions so easily expressed in music are harder voiced in everyday existence. Hector’s initial wariness of drugs and alcohol gives way to excess and addiction, and he tests Puchi’s loyalty before and after their marriage with numerous affairs. The mid-1980s will bring more heartbreak: the accidental shooting death of their son, Tito; the death of Hector’s father and the murder of Puchi’s mother; Hector’s positive diagnosis for AIDS. But the marriage survives. Along with music, Puchi is the constant in Hector’s life. Their relationship is as full of tender, unguarded moments -- jokes shared in an empty arena after a concert, a fully clothed Hector joining his wife in the bathtub -- as it is heated arguments.

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