The Orquesta de la Luz, the salsa group from Japan that became famous in Latin America with almost no knowledge of Spanish

The presentation, which took place during the XVI New York Salsa Festival, preceded several tours of the Orquesta De La Luz through the United States, Europe and Latin America, where they became famous in the first half of the 1990s by performing in the To sing in spanish. .

How did they do it when they hardly knew the language?

The Orquesta De La Luz might not have existed if Tito Puente and the Fania All Stars had not gone to Japan since the 1960s and 1976 respectively.

Puente helped popularize Latin music in Japan, recalls the Hunter Center for Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Fania All Stars served as an influence for Japanese musician “Pecker” Hashida to found the orchestra in 1978 del Sol, Japan’s first salsa group.

With tropical rhythms playing in Japan as far back as the early 1980s, Suzuki and a friend of hers, percussionist Gen Ogimi, belonged to an R&B group called Atom.

But Ogimi was also interested in salsa. So he introduced Suzuki to the Latin rhythm when she was about 21 years old, and according to the singer’s story on BBC Mundo, she “fell in love”.

They also started to like the Orquesta del Sol and Gen wanted to play salsa with Atom, but the band broke up.

“Gen wanted to create a new salsa group with me, so we founded the Orquesta De La Luz in 1984. Gen and I chose that name because the Orquesta del Sol already existed. It was like a name of brothers, sun and light,” says Suzuki v BBC Mundo.

At first, La Luz whispered salsas from artists like Celia Cruz and others.

“We didn’t know any Spanish and I wrote the letters phonetically. Then I took a free Spanish lesson,” says Suzuki.

“At first we tried, but we couldn’t play a whole song. It was difficult for us,” he recalls.

But after a while, not only were they playing the songs of their idols, but were already composing their own songs, so they set a more ambitious goal: to play their salsa in New York.

Around 1987, Suzuki saved up and traveled to New York alone to search managers they could finance a tour of La Luz in that city. This decision, according to Nora, made the difference between La Luz and the Orquesta del Sol, which did not become so famous outside Japan.

Suzuki had brought a cassette with a few songs La Luz had recorded: “Cúcala” by Celia Cruz, and one of her own songs..

“I called several agents. I didn’t want to give up. Until I found an agency, I got an appointment to go to their office and found a tall, very tall Latino cop,” says Suzuki.

“He listened to the cassette, I showed him the pictures of La Luz and he understood that we were a Japanese orchestra playing salsa. At first he couldn’t believe it. He was very surprised,” he recalls.

“I told him that playing our salsa in New York was our dream and he promised to organize live orchestral performances,” said Suzuki.

“It was a very happy moment, one of the happiest,” said Suzuki.

This agent was Richie Bonilla, who launched the careers of artists such as Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe.

According to what he told BBC Mundo, Bonilla liked the band. But he put a condition on Suzuki: the group had to pay for their tickets to New York.

So back in Japan, it took Suzuki and the orchestra “nearly two years to save about $ 2,000 each” for the cost of their first tour.

Meanwhile, in New York, Bonilla went to major city clubs to coordinate La Luz’s presentations and have the managers listen to the cassette.

“The music was so good that no one believed they were Japanese. They believed they were Puerto Ricans living in Japan, so Nora had to send in a video,” Bonilla said.

He finally got them six introductions. After helping build some of the leading figures in salsa, he was about to make La Luz famous too.

The group first played in New York in 1989. But salsa was not having its best moment.

“When they came, the sauce was on the floor because of the meringue. But when La Luz came on the scene, everyone wanted to see them. They filled everything. They helped bring the sauce back by force,” Bonilla tells BBC World. .

They already had what would be one of their major successes, “Hot Sauce from Japan” written by Suzuki.

“I spoke more English than Spanish. So I wrote it in English and used a dictionary to translate it into Spanish, and I changed a few words to make them rhyme,” says the singer.

Bonilla recalls that “people got so excited watching the tape that I knew something was going on.”

The last concert of the first tour was at the iconic Palladium Ballroom, located in the heart of Manhattan, where musicians like Tito Puente himself had played.

That night, La Luz had a special spectator: Ralph Mercado, founder of the mythical record label RMM, and promoter of artists such as Celia Cruz, and later Marc Anthony and La India.

Mercado had already heard of it and did not want to just see them. He also wanted to offer them a contract to record their first album.

But La Luz had already finished his tour and had to return to Japan.

“So Ralphie said, ‘Someone is recording them in Japan and I’ll distribute them,’” says Bonilla.

Ralph Mercado sent producer Sergio George, later a four-time Grammy winner, to Japan to record the first album “De La Luz”.

The album was released in Japan on the BMG Víctor label and RMM distributed it in Latin America in 1990.

The album topped the Billboard chart Latin music for 11 weeks.

George produced two other La Luz albums in Japan: “Salsa no hay frontera” and “We are different”.

In the first half of the 1990s, Bonilla organized three tours five weeks a year through different cities in the United States, Europe and Latin American and Caribbean countries such as Peru, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador. , Chile, Costa Rica, French Guiana, Martinique, Aruba, Curacao, Sint Maarten.

In 1993 La Luz was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal.

“They played just as well as the top band”, says Bonilla. Until the group broke up in 1997 because the members wanted to develop a solo career.

But they got back together in 2002 and have been performing together in Japan and other countries ever since.

In 2019 they released an album to celebrate their 35th anniversary, “Gracias Salseros”, en since 2015 they have a plan to “Latinize Japan”.

Suzuki explains that the phrase “is an appealing way of saying we want to promote salsa in Japan,” where the singer believes people are very “serious and pessimistic.”

“I want them to be more optimistic. I think I was. I thought a lot. I am more Latinized than before. I am happier now,” says Suzuki, who believes that salsa makes people happy.

“When I play, the audience laughs, dances, I forget about sad things, feel the music and enjoy it,” he says. “That’s why I don’t stop singing salsa. I love salsa. It has always made me happy.”

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