Willie Colón, a trombonist, bandleader, composer, and key architect of salsa music, has died. His household confirmed the information through social media on February 21; though they didn’t share a explanation for demise, they wrote that Colón “handed away peacefully” surrounded by love ones. Colón was 75.
Born in 1950 in The Bronx, Colón was raised by his Puerto Rican grandmother, who launched him early on to an array of Latin sounds, from Cuban son to guaracha to jíbaro to tango. By age 11, he’d begun making his personal music, studying flute, bugle, and trumpet earlier than lastly touchdown on trombone. He first fell in love with the instrument listening to Barry Rogers play it on Mon Rivera and Joe Cotto’s “Dolores.”
“It gave the impression of an elephant, a lion … an animal,” Colón advised the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo in 2011. “One thing so totally different that, as quickly as I heard it, I stated to myself: ‘I need to play that instrument.’” He minimize his tooth enjoying at weddings and shadowing Rivera, who would change into his mentor, at nightclub reveals across the metropolis. Colón ultimately signed with Fania Information in 1967, at age 17.
On the label, Colón proved important in creating the then-nascent sound of salsa, which fused conventional Latin rhythms with funk, jazz, and R&B and coursed with distinct activist undertones. “It was rebellious music,” Colón advised the Miami Herald in 2006. “We had been watching Martin Luther King strolling into Selma and the canine and water cannons. The music wasn’t explicitly political but, however the music was a magnet that might deliver folks collectively.”
Colón’s first album, 1967’s El Malo, paired him with vocalist Héctor Lavoe; the duo would collaborate on many extra data over time, together with Cosa Nuestra (1970), Crime Pays (1972), and Lo Mato (1973). Throughout his decades-long profession, Colón launched greater than 40 albums and earned an 11 mixed Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations. He acquired a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Recording Academy in 2004, and joined the Latin Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 2019.
Throughout his life, Colón additionally fostered fruitful partnerships with Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, David Byrne, and Rubén Blades. Colón and Blades’ 1978 album Siembra—which featured the “Mack the Knife”-inspired “Pedro Navaja”—is broadly thought-about a masterpiece, and remained the best-selling Latin album in historical past for many years after its launch. Colón and Blades additionally partnered on data like 1981’s Canciones del Photo voltaic de los Aburridos, however stopped recurrently collaborating after a monetary dispute within the early 2000s.
Colón’s profession didn’t start and finish with music. He was concerned in politics, working in a 1994 Democratic main for a U.S. Home seat representing the Bronx and decrease Westchester County. In 2004, he labored with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, serving as a liason between Metropolis Corridor and New York’s Latin Media and Leisure Fee. He additionally appeared within the movies Vigilante, The Final Struggle, and It May Occur to You; the TV reveals Miami Vice and Demasiado Corazón; and, extra just lately, Dangerous Bunny’s music video for “NuevaYol.”
Later in life, Colón got interested within the evolving reggaeton scene in his metropolis, mentioning parallels between the style’s emergence and the beginning of salsa. “It might need been stated about some reggaeton beats that it’s mistaken — you’ll be able to’t do that,” he advised the Miami Herald in 2006. “But when it feels good musically, you do it.”
