Willie Colón, who has died in New York at the age of 75, was many things: master blaster of Nuyorican salsa; Puerto Rican superstar; actor in Mexican soap operas; an activist and, later, a reactionary in New York politics. These are just a few of the myriad accomplishments of a musician who always seemed to be in a hurry to move on, make new music and get into a spat with a fellow salsero or political opponent. Colón was an energy source, a musician as loud and vibrant – and sometimes infuriating – as the city he lived and died in.
While to Nuyoricans – Puerto Ricans living in New York – Colón was a legend, to many Anglo New Yorkers he barely registered, perhaps noted by a few for playing with David Byrne during the singer’s adventures in Latin American music. He was nominated for 10 Grammys but never troubled the US Top 40, yet across much of Latin America he was arguably the most celebrated brass player of the past six decades, winning the Latin Grammys’ musical excellence award in 2004. Colón was to salsa what Elvis Presley was to rock’n’roll – the fearless teenager whose loose, fast, rough interpretation of the music he heard on the streets helped create a genre that grew into the dominant Latin dance music.
Born in the South Bronx and raised largely by his Puerto Rican grandmother, Colón initially learned trumpet, then switched to trombone, using that instrument to shape the sound of salsa, just as JJ Johnson had done for jazz and Don Drummond for ska.
Latin boogaloo was the big sound of the Bronx when Colón was growing up but, by the age of 16, he and his friends were playing a faster, more rhythmically complex Latin music, drawing from Cuban son and Puerto Rican crooners and alert to jazz, funk and rock (a fusion he described as “a swinging musical Jabberwocky”). Signed to Fania Records, then a fledgling independent Latin label, vocalist Héctor Lavoe, another teenager of Puerto Rican heritage, joined Willie’s band and the sound they forged proved revolutionary.
Colón’s debut album, 1967’s El Malo (The Bad Guy) had a raw, dynamic feel that reflected a Latino generation now beginning to refer to themselves as “Nuyoricans”. El Malo sold 300,000 copies – huge for a niche music sung in Spanish – and not just in New York and Miami, but in Colombia and Venezuela, too. With the Cuban revolution ending Havana’s dominance as the capital of Latin dance music, New York became the centre of a new, fluid Latin music; and Colón, a star at 17, whose album sleeves often emphasised a gangster image, would become one of salsa’s dons. His look and sound offended the mambo kings but, as in all genres, the new must break with the past.
In 1968, Colón was a founding member of the Fania All-Stars, a salsa supergroup who could pack out stadiums. They were joined on stage by the likes of Billy Cobham and Manu Dibango, and played alongside leading African American artists at the concert in Zaire organised to celebrate the Muhammad Ali v George Foreman heavyweight title fight in 1974. In the same year, Colón teamed up with Rubén Blades, a Panamanian singer and songwriter, and the pair went on to lead an explosive band that took salsa to places it had never been before, with Blades’ lyrics commenting on social issues and US imperialism in Latin America. Their 1978 album, Siembra, won wide critical praise and sold more than 3m copies – it is widely considered the bestselling salsa album of all time.
The two men had an on-off working relationship, and both moved into politics – Blades unsuccessfully stood for president in Panama, and Colón unsuccessfully ran for public office in New York – until 2007, when they entered into five years of litigation (which Colón ultimately lost). By then their musical interests and politics had divided, with Colón, who had performed at Bill Clinton’s inauguration ceremonies, becoming a vocal supporter of Donald Trump.
No matter: his best recordings are among salsa’s finest. And it was salsa to which Colón devoted his life, writing: “Salsa is not a rhythm. It is a concept. An open, ever-evolving musical, cultural, sociopolitical concept.”
