Of all the reasons I keep this blog going, one of them has to be this: we need new heroes. For far too long, music writing and criticism has been centered on rehashing the same stories, reinforcing certain points of view that purposely downplay and ignore those on its periphery, whose stories strike at its framework. When I listen to Joy Salinas’s self-titled debut and dig into her history, I can’t help but feel it puts another nail in my thinking.
Joy Salinas’ biography speaks of finding joy in discovery. Born in the Philippines in 1968, as Joy B. Salinas Angel, to a young Filipina actress, from a young age she was encouraged to sing. It was her mother that taught her Spanish poems and songs, plopped her on top of a table, and invited her friends over to watch her sing these little songs.
When Joy was growing up in the Philippines, it was the music of The Carpenters and later on Dionne Warwick that originally inspired the phrasing and character her voice would take. By the time Joy’s voice matured, she realized she could sing songs from jazz and soul heavies like Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin. Eventually, Joy would learn guitar and perform on stage as a solo singer. For a moment, many imagined her following in her mother’s footsteps into acting in telenovelas and modeling.
Yet, in the mid ’80s, under the spell of love, she left her homeland. Joy followed her boyfriend to Italy where she’d settle down and try to use her new European home as a launching pad to pursue a career as either a soul or jazz singer. In 1986, Joy auditioned with RAI and won an invite to be a guest for their long-running Italian Gino Bramieri variety show, even though she didn’t speak a lick of Italian.
If one can pinpoint anything about Joy’s life, it is how many opportunities she gamely didn’t waste by saying no. Small guest spots on the G.B. Show led her to become a permanent part of it, as a “vedette”. And based on the strength of her warm reception, Joy parlayed her small notoriety into a music contract, albeit making dance music — not something jazzy or funky, as she always imagined for herself.
Joy’s debut solo single, 1989’s “Paris Night”, saw her trying to find her way around the martial, four-on-the-floor rhythms of European dance pop music. Even though the single charted on French radio, its impact was minimal. It would be her second single, “Stay Tonight”, produced by members of Italy’s pioneering house music label, Flying Records, that would receive a better reception in the UK’s club scene, pointing to a different direction she could take.
Working with Roman cousins, Max and Frank Minoia, and American songwriter Vanessa Crane, Joy’s next release would be the one that put her on the map, “Rockin’ Romance”. A pioneering bit of Italian house music, “Rockin’ Romance”, was a record conceived as a break from Italy’s grip on dance styles like Italo Disco and New Wave that had aged out elsewhere but not yet here.
Outsiders on the Italian dance scene, the Minoia cousins had grown up as big jazz heads, once idolizing Pino Daniele and bands like Weather Report and The Crusaders. By the time they went pro in 1989, they had done production work for groups like Paradise Orchestra or The Jam Machine, conceiving dance music that was less stilted and electronic and more a mix of live and sequenced music. An original demo of “Rockin’ Romance” featured draft vocals by Frank singing in broken English, as if looking for just the right person to fill in the missing piece.
What Joy brought to them was her impressive vocals and phrasing that captured the moment. Shows and performance venues like Italy’s storied Festivalbar would turn a track that was gently bubbling in Italian discotheques into a crossover hit that grew ever more popular by Joy’s impressive live performances. When the Minoias heard “Rockin’ Romance” blaring out of British tourists’ stereos in Corfu, they understood that they had captured something special.
1991’s Joy Salinas is brilliant by doing something very simple: following the instincts of all those involved to the end. In it, songs like opener “The Mystery Of Love”, “Tears Are Falling” and more, pull at the strings of all those then new forms of dance music, and pull harder at those strings where the human touch is the most visible. On the record, acid jazz, deep house, and downtempo scenes inspire just as much as fusion, hip-hop and techno. Rather than have Joy sing on beat, every little bit of her full-length debut finds Joy imposing her will over the music.
Released by Flying Records themselves, it allowed them to express a fuller vision of what Italian house music can be. The musicality of songs like “When I’m With You” and “Groove My Lovin'” invites no easy pigeonholing. This was lyrical soul music with all sorts of dance easter eggs that invited comparisons to the mercurial house realism of artists like Crystal Waters transported to the plazas of Rome.
For a very brief moment in time, it was not radio but DJs all across Europe that were taking album tracks like “Come To My World” and “Stay Tonight” and giving them the audience and club play the record required. Where other like-minded Italian groups like Black Box, who contributed a remix to the record, settled into a producer-led miasma striking out the true talent in their music, the Minoias did the opposite by doing the right thing, creating music that remains well-aged and timeless by serving its singer’s own ideas. Other simpatico artists like Italy’s own Souled Out contributed equally sophisticated and masterful backing tracks and vocals.
There’s just something striking about Joy’s spirited embrace of something that seemed so alien, of understanding how her voice could fit this new scene and make it part of her experience. In the end, it goes back to the beginning, that moment when you realize that the moment you put up walls is the moment you’re boxing yourself in. Before anything is Italian, Filipino, soul or house music, it touches your heart by simply being something else: good.
