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Tito Puente was a legend. He was that rare artist who transcends culture to captivate fans and musicians alike. At the time of his passing on May 31, 2000, he was as popular and successful as ever. Following in the footsteps of an icon can be difficult enough, but when you're that icon's son and namesake, it can be downright impossible. So why would a music producer, one who found massive success in the dance music scene, willfully give it all up to take on an impossible challenge like that? Because that's they type of fearless hombre Tito Puente, Jr. is. Rego chats with Puente Jr. about timeless music and his father's legacy.

Rego: What's your take on the power of music?
Tito Puente Jr.: I accepted a while back that music is timeless. We innovate and try new things, let people's flair and individual musicians infuse the music, but it's always within the context of the genre. And if you look even further back, that's what my father [did]. But performing his music and watching new, young fans coming to hear us play every year, you realize that his music is timeless.

Rego: Did your father want you to follow in his footsteps?
TPJ: He didn't discourage me, but he didn't teach me to play like him, or pressure me, or anything like that, either. What he was adamant about, though, was getting an education. He'd seen what not having an education did to musicians around New York, and wanted to make sure that I didn't end up like that. But my dad had seen the business side of the industry-the ugly side where talented but uneducated and even illiterate musicians got used. So I went to college, and on top of everything else I took classes in music. I played in a band in high school but in college I really dove into production, arrangement, reading and composing.

Rego: Did you grow up listening and dancing to salsa? Or did you reject it?
TPJ: I can honestly tell you I was not into salsa as a kid. I didn't reject it, and I always appreciated what it meant to our culture and to my family, but it didn't speak to me as an artist or even as a music fan. It was something I just started feeling relatively recently, maybe five years before my father passed. Growing up I was about Madonna, Aerosmith, Phil Colins, and Michael Jackson, and early hip-hop. I was always turned off by [salsa], because like any typical kid I went against the grain of what my parents liked.

Rego: Does it surprise you that, even in 2008, we still make a big deal about Latin artists "crossing over" into the mainstream American music scene?
TPJ: It does, especially when you consider that my father and others were going through that process in the 1950s. Later in his life, whenever he was asked about being a crossover artist, he would always say, "Crossover? I'm on my way back." He had already made it as a "crossover" artist in the ‘50s, and not just here in the U.S. but worldwide. So to him his music was always international in scope.

Photo courtesy of Tito Puente Jr.