Hispanic Heritage

Willie Colón

Birth: 1950
Nationality: American, Puerto Rican
Ethnicity: Hispanic American
Occupation: bandleader

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biographical Essay
Further Readings
Source Citation
Works

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Willie Colón has earned considerable fame as a salsa musician and bandleader. He has played with nearly all the greats of the form, and for many years worked with Rubén Blades. Many credit Colón with bringing an urban feel to the Afro-Cuban sound, giving it what music critic Enrique Fernández called "an attitude." Like Blades, Colón uses his music to address issues of concern, especially Latin American ones. While he is foremost an entertainer, Colón has also campaigned for political candidates, raised money for drug prevention programs, and worked for environmental groups. In 1994 he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for New York's 17th Congressional district.

Musical Success

Willie Colón was born on April 28, 1950, in the Bronx, New York. He has lived most of his life among whites, Puerto Ricans, blacks, Cubans, and other ethnic groups. Growing up in this ethnically diverse environment, Colón absorbed cultural and musical influences which have shaped his career and music. Called by Fernández "a total New York musician," Colón brings to his music the cosmopolitan feel of the city of his birth.

His interest in music began early, and at age 16, Colón released his first album. Although he dropped out of high school, Colón's canniness about urban life has informed his music from the very beginning. As one of his supporters in the 1994 election said, "When one has spent much of life on the streets, one knows much more." Colón's street smarts and musical talent made El malo, released in 1967, an enduring favorite among salsa fans, and Colón became one of the music genre's rising stars.

Colón started working with Rubén Blades when, as Colón said, a "confluence of ideas and ideals" between the two men brought them together. The two musicians recorded several albums, including Siembra in 1978 which sold three million copies around the world. Colón has recorded ten gold albums (an album is designated "gold" when sales exceed 500,000 copies). He has also received ten Grammy nominations.

Although in recent years Colón and Blades have parted musically, the two men continue to share both political and musical common ground. Like Blades, Colón finds more appreciative listeners outside the United States. In fact, Fernández said that "in Latin America [Colón's] stature is downright mythic." The Hispanic-American Almanac names Colón and Blades as two of the musicians responsible for "strengthening" the "style and instrumentation" of various latin music forms, like the rumba-guaguancó and son, made popular by Tito Puente, Machito, and Tito Rodriguez in the 1950s. Colón helped bring those sounds together into the modern musical form known as salsa. Blades and Colón also played dramatic roles in expressing the Latin American and Caribbean barrio experience in music which could not be imagined without them.

Political Ambitions

In 1992, Congressional redistricting made the northern Bronx and southern Westchester County areas of New York into a district almost equally populated by blacks, hispanics, and whites. Taking advantage of the new demographics, Colón decided to run for Congress, hoping that his celebrity would outweigh his inexperience in the minds of the voters. A neophyte in the world of campaigning, Colón says he feared that someone would yell "Willie, where's your trombone?" as he rose to make his campaign speeches, but he later told the New York Times that his supporters "were urging me on" to enter politics. He found significant support for his crossover attempt into the political world, although Representative Eliot Engel eventually defeated him for the nomination.

Despite losing the nomination, Colón seems likely to try again in the future. His involvement in politics has not ended his musical career, of course, and Colón continues to produce, write and perform.

WORKS

Selected Discography

• El malo, 1967.

• Cos nuestra, 1972.

• The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, 1975.

• Ciembra, 1978.

• Tiempo pa matar, 1984.

FURTHER READINGS

Books

• The Hispanic-American Almanac, edited by Nicolás Kanellos, Detroit, Gale, 1993, pp. 615-16.

Periodicals

• New York Times, June 25, 1994, p. A25; September 10, 1994, p. A21; September 11, 1994, p. C1; September 14, 1994, p. B5; September 19, 1994, p. B2.

• Village Voice, January 31, 1989, p. 78.

SOURCE CITATION: "Willie Colón." Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Gale Research, 1996.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2002.