Larry Harlow, salsa music pianist/bandleader and Fania All-Star passes into ancestry.

Facing the music: going home.

A founding member of the Fania All-Stars’ supergroup of bad-boy bandleaders, co-producer of the salsa music cult film classic “Our Latin Thing,” storied producer of hundreds of hit recordings and gold albums, and a fierce activist who successfully campaigned the National Academy of Recorded Arts and Sciences (NARAS) to designate a separate Grammy Award category for Latin music in 1976, pianist Larry Harlow nee Lawrence Ira Kahn died at Calvary Hospital in New York at 82 years old on August 20, 2021. He is survived by his son Myles Kahn and his grandchildren Aaron and Sasha Kahn; his brother Andre Kahn; his daughter Haiby D. Aparicio, and his wife Maria del Carmen Kahn.

He marked his territory with style, panache, and innovation. Larry Harlow, el Judio Maravilloso was a marvel in modernizing Latin music while sticking to the roots. He helped assemble a crew that reflected the color, ethnic and racial mix of New York City. They expressed a hip blend of rejuvenated and fused Cuban and Caribbean music rooted in African soil, developed, and influenced in the Antilles, and made famous in New York City.

Together, they traveled the world as the Fania All-Stars, were greeted like the “juvi” rock stars of Cuba…