Rafael Labasta is a Dominican trumpeter, arranger and orchestra leader, born in San Pedro de Macorís on the twenty-second of October. Salsa people call him el Mago de la Trompeta, and he made the whole of his career outside the country.

The sideman years

Before he had an orchestra of his own he played trumpet in the bands of Tito Rodríguez, Tito Puente, Machito and Cortijo y su Combo. That is four of the founding orchestras of the New York and Puerto Rican Latin scene, and a Dominican holding a chair in all of them is not a small fact.

Trumpet in that music is exposed work. The section carries the mambo, the solos are short and public, and there is no hiding in a band that size. Getting hired by Puente and by Machito is a technical verdict as much as a musical one.

Panama

He arrived in Panama and stayed. In 1971 he put his own orchestra together there, and Panama became what a salsa historian calls his second country — the place that transformed his life, and where he is remembered as a national figure rather than a visiting one.

The records came fast. En Vivo en el Rancho Grande and Labasta Llegó are both from 1972, Con su Salsa… y Basta from 1974. Zum Zum Ba Ba É, Guanguacó Bongó, El Rey de los Pollos, Grande Grande, Esta Noche la Paso Contigo.

The one people ask for is No Volveré — a Mexican ranchera by Manuel Esperón, taken apart and rebuilt as salsa. Doing that to a ranchera was the sort of move the seventies rewarded: the melody was already in everybody’s ear, and hearing it come back with a horn section and a bongó was the joke and the point at once.

A prophet outside his own country

Herencia Latina calls him exactly that. He is one of the Dominican musicians whose work is documented, honoured and taught somewhere other than the Dominican Republic — Panama has held tribute evenings for him in Chiriquí — while at home he is a name most people would not recognise.

He has kept a big band. The instrument, the arranging and the stand in front of the orchestra have been the same job for fifty years.