Willie Colón is a Latino-American recording artist who has been credited as a founder of modern salsa, and has helped launch the careers of influential and world-renowned Latin musicians such as Rubén BLADES and Hector Lavoe. Colón is also one of the most prominent musical figures (along with Blades) responsible for the birth of La Nueva Canción (New Song) movement, a socially conscious and musically modern salsa style.
Since the early 1970s and the inception of the contemporary salsa sound, a mix of the mambo, the cha-cha-cha, Latin jazz, and other Afro-Cuban musical styles, Willie Colón has greatly influenced and contributed to the music while establishing himself as an accomplished bandleader, composer, vocalist, trombonist, arranger, and producer.
Born April 28, 1950, in New York City’s South Bronx, William Anthony Colón Roman was raised by his grandmother in a primarily Puerto Rican neighbourhood. He first began writing and performing music during his teenage years, when he picked up the trombone and began a friendship and collaboration with the young Hector Lavoe, himself destined to become one of salsa’s pre-eminent vocal stylists.
Colón has also worked with many contemporary musical stars, including salsa diva Celia CRUZ and enigmatic art-rocker turned Latin music devotee, David Byrne. Along with his band, “Legal Alien,” he has won 11 Grammy nominations and has been awarded 15 gold and five platinum albums. Colón has been involved as an artist or producer on 39 productions to date and has sold over 10 million records worldwide.
Willie Colón has developed a much-emulated trademark sound that includes tight horn punches; catchy melodies and lyrical twists; smooth vocal harmonies and coro arrangements (background voices sung in harmony or unison); use of the nasal, high-pitched jibaro lead vocal style (referring to the sounds and styles of the back-country people of Puerto Rico); and limited use of descarga/montuno vamps (rhythm section “jams” over which the lead vocalist acts as a solo or improvising instrument, trading musical phrases with other instrumentalists or coro). Seminal Willie Colón works include the early collaborations with Hector Lavoe, such as El Malo, The Hustler, and Cosa Nuestra. Colón also created extremely influential and genre-establishing recordings with Rubén Blades, especially the 1978 smash album Siembra, one of the greatest selling salsa records of all time. The record included barrio anthems such as “Plastico” and “Pedro Navajo.” Newer recordings include the Grammy nominated Tras La Tormenta (again with Blades), and Y Vuelve Otra Vezf (both released in 1995).
In the 1980s, Colón established a further career for himself as an actor. He has featured in several independent films, and made television appearances in both local and network programming. For the past few years, he has been busy as a political and social activist, taking up many causes that affect the Latino community in the U.S. and elsewhere, as well as the general population—AIDS awareness, voter registration, and support of various candidates for elected office. In 1994, Colón even took time out from his musical career to make a bid for the office of U.S. Congressman for the 17th Congressional District.
Originally informed by Afro-Cuban music and Latin American sounds, as well as by American jazz, pop, soul, and progressive rock, Colón has come full circle, from being influenced to becoming an inspiration himself. As members of Los VAN VAN, an internationally popular group from Cuba, admitted recently, they had added trombones and various musical arrangement devices to their sound in an attempt to “Get something closer to the style of Willie Colón.”
Gregg Juke
SEE ALSO:
CUBA; LATIN AMERICA; LATIN JAZZ; SALSA.
FURTHER READING
Boggs, Vernon W. Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Cosa Nuestra; Siembra; Tiempo Pa‘Matar,
Tras La Tormenta;
Y Vuelve Otra Vez!