Arroyo, D.J. who brought Latin rhythms to Vegas, dies

Friday, March 31, 2006 | 7:08 a.m.

There are some places in the world where everybody listens to the same music, everywhere you go - on the bus, walking down the street, in the corner store - the tacit agreement being that life moves to a certain beat.

When you're from one of those places like, say, Cali, Colombia; Ponce, Puerto Rico; or even parts of the Bronx, N.Y., the daily soundtrack is salsa. When you move to a place like Las Vegas, one thing you notice is that the music is gone.

That happened to my family when the four of us got off a 12-hour plane ride from Cali almost five years ago. Salsa, that Caribbean-born rhythm mixing percussion and horns, was nowhere to be heard. The list swelled daily of things unfamiliar - debit cards in supermarkets, people not used to embracing when saying hello, on and on.

That changed one Saturday morning when we flipped on the radio in a cheap stereo sitting on the floor of a near-bare apartment. Rae Arroyo was spinning salsa and Latin jazz records, recorded during the last six decades, on KUNV 91.5-FM. We relaxed a little, tapped our feet a little. We felt like this sea of neon could be home.

The Bronx-accented bearer of a musical message welcomed thousands of newcomers such as us to the valley via her show, "The Latin Connection," during the last 12 years.

That's over now. Arroyo, 67, died Wednesday afternoon, several weeks after finding cancer spreading through her body.

The news came via e-mail sent to a list that included a who's who of the music Arroyo played: Willie Colon, Tito Rodriguez, Cuban bandleader Machito's son Mario Grillo. The world's a big place, and these are big names in other parts of the world. Arroyo kept their music alive here; she was also a friend.

Arroyo saw the musicians growing up in the Bronx, became a professional dancer and performed in the movie "The Mambo Kings."

So the Las Vegas Valley, which as of last Saturday had one public champion of dozens of Latin music legends, now has none. It's something that can happen in our so-new, so-now city, where cultural roots are so shallow that an entire scene can disappear from one day to the next.

"There's now a void," said Chris Roman, general manager of Entravision Communications Corp., owner of four local Spanish-language radio and television stations.

Friends, family and the radio station all said they want to keep the show alive, but they don't have firm plans beyond this Saturday, when a disc jockey from California takes over to say goodbye.

Music is a thread running through Latin lives, and radio is often where the music comes from. The industry has a technical term for it - "time spent listening" - and Spanish-language stations tend to outrank English-language stations in that category, Roman said.

We kept the radio on all Saturday morning, five hours of brassy beats, while the breakfast got made, my two boys played, the chores were done.

Music such as the Caribbean sounds Arroyo spun plays a special role in the parts of Latin America where it's heard, Roman said - "it's fresh, delightful and happy ... and will get anybody's feet tapping."

It's also somehow "the hope of a better life," in every song, he added.

Arroyo knew what it was to go without the music. She moved with her husband, Damian, from New York to Southern California, and couldn't find the rhythm she grew up with in the Bronx. One day in 1979 she called a Mission Viejo radio station and offered to bring them some records.

"She started with some instrumental tunes, and got them into the groove, then boom! She got them hooked," Damian recalled, tapping a beat and laughing. "She was very slick that way."

Eleven years on the radio in California followed, and then, a few years after their 1991 move to Las Vegas, she took on the same cause.

"She used to say, 'I have to share this music with everybody so it doesn't die,' " Damian said.

My 9-year-old son, Jesse, can now identify the rhythm underpinning the famous Cuban standard "Guantanamera" after years of Saturdays with Rae.

There will be a viewing from 2-7 p.m. today at Palm Mortuary, 800 S. Boulder Highway, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, with a service following.

Then, Damian said, there will be salsa. "Rae wanted music. She didn't want sadness," he said.

So musicians are heading across the desert from Los Angeles and other compass points to honor Arroyo's memory at El Coqui, the valley's only Puerto Rican restaurant, on Saturday following the service.

It's the only way to say goodbye to Rae.

David Reese, general manager of KUNV said, "she's going to spice up wherever she is."

It's up to those of us who are left to spice up where we are.