At night: To prison, with love

It's nearing midnight on a wintry Saturday, and Janet has a message to get out.

Listening to a radio in her Chelsea home, with her infant daughter fussing and crying, she waits for the OK from a familiar voice. "Good evening, and welcome to Con Salsa," says José Massó , the host of the "¡Con Salsa!" radio show at the WBUR studio at Boston University.

"I'll be with you until 5 in the morning, featuring the very best in Afro-Latin music."

Massó pushes "play" for Eddie Palmieri's "Puerto Rico," and the phone at the BUR studio rings. It's Janet. She wants Massó to send out her weekly "saludo," or greeting, to her husband, Johnny, who's serving time in MCI-Concord .

Johnny listens to the show via headphones in his cell, she says, and he rarely misses a broadcast. If she gets her saludo out, it's like she's whispering in his ear before he goes to sleep.

" 'Ta bien," Massó assures, taking down the request he'll read out later in Spanish. "To Johnny, from your wife, Janet, in Chelsea . . . time and distance can't keep you out of my heart."

While most of Massachusetts sleeps, Massó deejays every Sunday morning this five-hour show of classic salsa and merengue. It's in between the songs that Massó reads listeners' shout-outs -- love letters, holiday messages, promises and requests for forgiveness, to and from prisoners.

After the Janet call, Yvette in Lowell phones in for a saludo to her husband, Pin, who is also in Concord.

"Calling to send you much love for St. Valentine's Day," relays Massó into the microphone, "and your friends Carlos, Sammy, El Viejo Mickey, Rafin, El Mexicano and Angel also say hi."

Yvette is followed by Natividad in Brockton, who calls for Chupa , a boyfriend who's in MCI-Shirley : "From Nati : Jose and your baby Gatito send you much love" says Massó.

After that comes a slew of other women -- and a few men -- from Cambridge, Lawrence, Needham, Quincy, and Jamaica Plain, all calling to give their greetings to locked-up love ones listening in facilities throughout the Boston area.

In addition to the prison connections, Massó preaches self-reliance, talks politics, and interviews legends of Latin music. He mediates love spats and settles sibling disputes.

Listener Enok calls to say he has tried for weeks to get his estranged brother, Carmelo , to call him. He asks Massó to go on air to ask Carmelo to contact him. "Within two minutes," Enok tells a reporter later, "my phone was ringing."

"¡Con Salsa!" has even helped listeners cope with loss.

"I really enjoyed your show last Sunday," one listener e-mailed Massó. "I was driving from the Lahey Clinic in Burlington back to Connecticut at 3:30 a.m., just after my father-in-law passed away.

"The music you selected has so much Latin soul and spirit that it raised mine, and helped keep me awake until WBUR faded at the Connecticut state line."

"It's an all-purpose show," says Massó of the broadcast he's been doing for almost 32 years. "We do everything here."

But the show resonates especially with the incarcerated and their families. "I've been listening to him for years," says Luisa , who lives in Lynn.

Massó has just relayed her shout-out over the air: "To Papo from Luisa and her children, just wanted to say we're thinking about you and want you to come home soon."

With Luisa off the air but still on the line, Massó hands the phone to a reporter.

"I'm a child of the '70s, and the salsa he plays brings me back," she says. Like most callers, she declines to give her last name to protect the privacy of her family. "But he also talks about a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff."

Since the show can now be heard via the Internet (consalsa.org ), former Bostonians, former prisoners, and even American expatriates are listening to "¡Con Salsa!" around the world.

In Boston, salsa and merengue is the music of choice, since most of the area's Latinos are from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, says Massó. The music brings the listeners, he says, but the voices keep them.

Born in San Juan, Massó moved to Boston in 1973 after completing his studies at Antioch College in Ohio. He worked as a teacher in the Boston public schools a while before becoming Hispanic liaison to then-governor Michael Dukakis , where Massó became one of the state's most visible activists in the Latino community.

But Massó's major imprint in the area has been in music. He has brought big names in Latin music to major venues in Boston as a promoter.

Why music? Growing up, Massó says, music was one of the few mediums in which Afro-Latinos like himself could express themselves.

During salsa's classic period in the 1970s, the music of Hector Lavoe and Willie Colon took a politically charged tone. These were singers who talked about conditions of the barrio, poverty, and class. Massó says those artists got him forever hooked on salsa.

That spirit sometimes shows its head on "¡Con Salsa!," says Massó, and the listeners have to deal with it.

A few years ago, Massó remembers, he received a call from a mother who wanted to give a shout-out to her husband in prison. She was followed by her daughter, who also wanted to send a saludo to her own incarcerated love one. Then she was followed by a cousin who did the same.

"It was like they were treating each prison like it was an Ivy League college," Massó says.

That call sparked a 20-minute speech by Massó -- a lecture he has given in one form or another many times before and since -- who blasted the listeners for romanticizing and accepting loved ones behaving in ways that land them in jail. Citing lyrics from Ruben Blades's songs, he challenged Latino men to stop using nicknames in prison and start getting their act s together so they could take care of their families. He demanded that Latinos start taking charge of their lives and end the cycle of poverty for the sake of young Latino children.

Immediately after the speech, the studio's phones lit up.

"People were crying," Massó says. "And then they asked for song requests."

Russell Contreras can be reached at rcontreras@globe.com.