A Repertoire for the Imperfect
El Cantante
Last night, my fiancee and I watched El Cantante, a first-person retelling of legendary salsa star Hector Lavoe’s life of music, drugs, and suicide through the eyes of his wife Nilda “Puchi” Perez. For anyone who caught the movie and knew anything about the music and times in which the movie takes place, you’d agree with Willie Colon’s assessment that the creators of this movie “missed an opportunity to do something of relevance for our community. The real story was about Hector fighting the obstacles of a non-supportive industry that took advantage of entertainers with his charisma and talent. Instead they did another movie about two Puerto Rican junkies.”
As I started looking at all the so-called heroes from the histories I can remember, my first assessment could be
