Here's Marisol Negrón, assistant professor at UMass Boston and author of the book Made in Nuyorica.

By the mid-1970s, the image of salsa as a Black urban music of poor and working class Puerto Ricans becomes less fashionable, so that then by the mid-'70s we get the narrative, yes, it's music in New York, but actually it comes from Africa.

[upbeat music]

Fania gave artists creative freedom.

To enjoy being a musician and gigging and being a part of this incredible moment of possibility that is taking place at a cost that always favors the label.

What's proper for a woman.

When it comes to acceptable Latinidad, an acceptable Latinidad as prescribed within Latinx communities, right, is that you can't be too Black, you can't be too poor, you can't be too sexual, you can't be too loud, too emotional, or too theatrical.

And she was disciplined for it by the label, by band leaders like Tito Puente, and by fans who, who criticized her.

Marisol Negrón is an assistant professor and author of the book Made in Nuyorica.

Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe were already emerging, right, as salsa's bad boys in this period, and so there's already a community and excitement around this thing that would come to be called salsa during this period.

[upbeat music] So look, everything seems golden, right? Our Latin thing was a hit, the industry is now promoting salsa as a genre, the singers are getting their heyday, everyone is creating community, business is booming, music is musicing, musicians are vibing.

Pacheco's vision as he expressed to me and to others was certainly to create a place where artists were valued as individuals, where they were valued as creators, as they were valued as artists.

Well, it was new, it was interesting, it was exciting, it was fun

funIn some ways, it is absolutely a marketing strategy, right? Of salsa as a, you know, man's music, right? We're real men making real music.

Marisol Negrón is an assistant professor at UMass Boston and author of the book Made in Nuyorica.

But it's also really political.

It's about taking that trope of Puerto Rican criminality and of Puerto Rican presence in the streets of New York as a threat to, quote, "real New Yorkers" and turning it on its head.

I'm the criminal who is killing you [laughs] with my music because you're dancing all night, and you're dying of exhaustion.

And the music takes that position and turns it on its head and says, "Yeah, I am a criminal."