Willie Colón, salsa pioneer, has died at 75 : NPR

Willie Colón, the salsa legend who took the style to new heights whereas recording greater than two dozen albums for Fania Information, died Saturday. He was 75 years outdated.

Colón’s household shared the information in a put up on the musician’s Fb web page. No reason for loss of life was offered.

“Whereas we grieve his absence, we additionally rejoice within the timeless present of his music and the cherished recollections he created that may reside on endlessly,” learn the assertion.

The New York Metropolis trombonist and bandleader was a key a part of Latin music’s evolution throughout the Seventies. He was born within the Bronx in 1950 however had direct ties to Puerto Rico, due to grandparents who nonetheless lived on the island. As a younger teenager Colón was absorbing widespread music of the Nineteen Sixties: R&B, rock, jazz … and Puerto Rican folks music, which he heard whereas visiting his prolonged household throughout the summer time.

He began enjoying trumpet at age 12 then switched to trombone. By age 15, he was recording with a brand new upstart indie file label referred to as Fania Information. At age 17 he launched his first album, a file that was so uncooked and unorthodox that critics and older musicians panned it. Irrespective of — it grew to become widespread with younger Nuyoricans who had been on the lookout for one thing to hold their id on.

The album featured Puerto Rican vocalist Hector Lavoe, who went on to change into one among salsa’s first main stars as a solo act — however solely after he recorded a number of highly regarded albums with Colón between 1967 and 1975.

Two years later Colón recruited vocalist Ruben Blades to hitch his band, and this time his music addressed among the social points the 2 musicians had been seeing within the Latino neighborhood. That led as much as the duo’s Siembra, launched in 1978 and nonetheless thought-about one of many excessive watermarks of salsa.

Musically, Colón’s trombone-based brass part set his band aside from different widespread Fania bands. He was additionally busy as a producer and arranger for a lot of Fania albums, which led to him teaming up with Cuban vocalist Celia Cruz for an album referred to as Solely They May Have Made This Album.

Willie Colón’s later years had been a mixture of music and politics. In 1994, he ran as a Democrat within the major for New York’s seventeenth congressional district, and later for the workplace of New York Metropolis Advocate. He served for greater than a decade as an advisor to former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Within the 2010s, Colón took a slight detour from music by enrolling within the Westchester County Police Academy. He was sworn in as a police officer in 2014 at age 64 and stayed with the division for eight years half time whereas nonetheless performing. He resigned in 2022 as a deputy lieutenant.

In the end it is the music that Colón shall be remembered for. His was the sound of the Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York discovering its voice.