New release introduces Marc Anthony's salsa to U.S. fans

When Marc Anthony listens to music, he can't sit still. He does a little samba in his swivel chair, flutters his hands rhythmically against his thighs.

"This first song will be the opening; it's called 'When I Dream at Night,' " he announces, playing a few tracks from his new album. He pretends to saw soulfully at a violin as the strings swell in a crescendo.

"My absolute favorite song," is his intro to the next number, a ballad he co-wrote for his 5-year-old daughter. He mouths the words, taps his cheap plastic flip-flops on the floor.

He's in Studio D at the Sony complex on the West Side, a wood-paneled room with a vast, complex soundboard that looks as though it could launch missiles; it's where, in fits and starts over the better part of a year, he recorded the CD "Marc Anthony," which hit stores last week.

"D as in dog," says his friend Jennifer Lopez, who's hanging out in the rear of the studio, eating a takeout lunch.

"D as in dinero," Anthony returns, joking. Sort of.

This CD actually deserves the phrase much-anticipated. Anthony can sell out arenas on several continents, pack Madison Square Garden and make history with the way his albums fly up Billboard's Latin music charts - but that all barely got noticed by the somewhat insular American mainstream. He's been a salsa singer who records primarily in Spanish. Industry insiders and smitten critics have been waiting for the rest of America to discover him.

Claimed as a local hero by both his native New York and his ancestral Puerto Rico, Anthony contemplated an English album for at least three years. But he got waylaid by his own good fortune as he starred in Paul Simon's 1998 Broadway musical "The Capeman" - the first time many Anglos paid attention to the skinny guy with the astonishing tenor - and then spent months shooting Martin Scorsese's new movie starring Nicholas Cage, "Bringing Out the Dead."

If they kept him from touring, from releasing this album earlier, he is not sorry. "If that's a sacrifice," he says dryly, "I could live with that kind of sacrifice."

But now, a couple of weeks past his 31st birthday, here it is, with the first single shooting up the pop charts. A non-salsa album in English might have stirred talk about musical crossover and cultural assimilation whenever it was released. To have it hit in the midst of this supposed Latin Moment, when Latin artists who record in English (Lopez, Enrique Iglesias, Ricky whatsisname) are getting splashed on magazine covers, makes the transition trickier. Columbia Records and another Sony division, Sony Discos - which have signed him to deals said to be worth more than $40 million for English and Spanish recordings - stand to make, or possibly lose, a whole lot of dinero.

The subject of crossover and competition makes Anthony wince, roll his dark eyes, draw as close to uneasiness as a guy who's famously friendly and unassuming gets, at least in public. Ask him to describe the album and he sighs and swivels his chair. "That's the hardest thing to do," he says. "I don't know. It's just the best music I can make this year."

In concert, Anthony has a repertoire of personas. He's a dervish who dances maniacally as the salsa sizzles, a romantic clutching his heart when the tempo slows, a master showman who can strut one moment and roll across the floor the next. He also communicates stunned disbelief at what's happening; at the Garden last year, with flowers raining down on the stage, he often clapped his hands to his temples and shook his head.

Salsa, a percussive urban brew of Cuban and Puerto Rican forms with jazzy improvisational flair, was hardly hip when Anthony felt drawn to it a decade ago; it was nostalgic, parents' music. The salsa world, province of bands in matching suits, was suspicious of this ponytailed novice. His dance tunes had relied more on synthesizers and drum machines, and he sang in English.

But he could sing. His three salsa albums broke sales records and won a raft of awards; Time magazine, voting "Contra la Corriente" one of the 10 best albums of 1997, called his voice "a flash of gold." He soon required bodyguards to keep fans from engulfing him on the streets of Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. By the time Simon's "The Capeman" was about to open, with huge posters of its three Latin stars (Anthony, his longtime hero Ruben Blades, his friend Ednita Nazario) plastered around Times Square, Billboard columnist John Lannert could say "Marc Anthony, in New York, is God" - and not sound wildly off the mark.

He'd just returned from a tour when Simon invited him to his apartment on Central Park West. Simon spent four hours talking and playing songs about a Puerto Rican kid named Salvador Agron, who'd figured in a famous murder of the '50s.

"This is Paul Simon singing in my ear! How cool is this?" Anthony remembers thinking. "As I'm leaving, putting on my coat, I said, 'One question. What am I doing here? What was this all about?'" Simon's response, he remembers, was, "To get your opinion of the music. And see if you were interested in being in it. Being Sal."

He was, investing more than two years in the project as it slowly wound toward Broadway.

Anthony was amused at the way critics and the Anglo media regarded him. "What they saw was a seasoned veteran they thought was a beginner," he muses. " 'Wow, this kid has raw talent!' No, it's polished craft, but you've never been exposed to what I've been doing for the past seven years. You just didn't see it."

Though "The Capeman" swiftly closed it showcased Anthony before a broader audience, including music execs.

"There's a certain emotion with Marc: When he opens his mouth, whatever the lyric, you believe what he says," explains Don Ienner, president of Columbia Records.

Anthony's most distinctive trait as a performer isn't conventional sexiness, though he's frequently referred to as a "salsa heartthrob." It's intensity. Anthony is almost disturbingly thin, angular-faced; he used to wear a pair of spectacles but jettisoned them after recent eye surgery. He portrays emotions from lovelorn suffering to wild exuberance with convincing fervor - which is why he's made an impression in such movies as "Big Night," though he's never studied acting.

"He is a very natural actor," says casting director Ellen Lewis, who suggested to Scorsese that a homeless man, a part originally written for an African American, could be played by a Nuyorican. "This character was definitely a stretch, playing a psychotic guy. But something in the character projects a great deal of soul, and that's something Marc projects."

Still, music is what compels Anthony most.

"It's exhilarating," he says. "When I sing, I feel like everything I've ever wanted to say, in my whole life, is about to come out of my mouth."

10-13-99