For weeks now, low rumblings about Willie Colón’s hospitalization, followed by posts for prayers for the salsa legend, have spread across social media. Many journalists who knew him refrained from digging further, careful not to spark the feisty musician’s ire or that of his team. We all knew his Kanye-esque tendencies — the 3 a.m. message-machine missives erupting if “musical genius” wasn’t used to describe him.
Then the official news of Willie Colón’s passing at 75 hit hard Saturday morning. Those of us of a certain age remember the defiance of the sixties — street fights followed by club nights, black lights, and after-hours flights of fancy fading with the morning sun.
The Bad Boys of Salsa are all gone now.
Separating the man from the artist, Colón’s recordings with Héctor Lavoe, Yomo Toro, Rubén Blades, Celia Cruz, Mon Rivera, Ismael Miranda, and so many others set a polyrhythmic stamp on an era. Around 1969, Lavoe’s voice rang out “Ché Ché Colé” over every dance floor, house party, and jive joint. That sound: brash trombone, streetwise swagger helped define salsa’s urban identity.
At just 16, Colón released “El Malo” (1967) with Lavoe on Fania Records, considered the Motown of salsa music. Then came “Cosa Nuestra” (1969), his first gold record; “La Gran Fuga” (1970); “El Juicio” (1972); and “Lo Mato” (1973), albums that expanded salsa beyond barrio dance halls to global stages. His 1978 collaboration with Rubén Blades, “Siembra,” remains the bestselling salsa album of all time. It was not just a hit record; it was a political and musical manifesto.
Colón’s achievements were recognized formally and culturally. His catalog earned multiple Gold and Platinum certifications. He received the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame. Numbers aside, his horn changed the architecture of salsa — bringing it forward, unapologetic and bold. His trombone roared with confidence. The musician behind it, not so much.
Willie Colón, the man, was complicated. His politics drifted far from the progressive undercurrents that framed our music in that era. He marched to support Mayor David Dinkins, then voted and worked for Giuliani and Bloomberg. He voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, only to fully support Donald Trump twice. There was also the lawsuit against Rubén Blades, a public rupture that felt less like business and more like ego. Didn’t anyone advise him against suing a lawyer? Especially one from Harvard?
I met Willie in the offices of Latin N.Y. Magazine in 1975. He threw spitballs while I wrote in the back office. He was annoying, loud, and full of himself, but he had a banging band and a kick-ass singer. Although belligerent toward critics and hecklers, he was never political one way or the other — until Blades. That partnership — and its later fracture — revealed how politics and pride began intertwining in ways that were not always flattering.
Still, Colón was capable of social courage. In 1989, he recorded “El Gran Varón,” written by Omar Alfanno — one of the first major salsa songs to confront HIV/AIDS, homophobia, and family rejection within Latino communities. The story of Simón, estranged and dying alone, pierced dance floors with uncomfortable truth. The song earned a Lo Nuestro Award and remains one of the most socially resonant tracks of his later career.
His musical lineage is undeniable. In the footsteps of Barry Rogers, Mon Rivera, and Eddie Palmieri, Colón foregrounded the trombone as both rhythmic engine and emotional weapon. His music framed barrio realism, Afro-Caribbean identity, and diasporic pride in brass and percussion.
It was a time when Boricuas marched alongside African Americans for civil rights, against war, for Black and Puerto Rican Studies, housing, and self-determination. We lived in the same projects, went to the same schools, had the same jobs, and ended up in the same jails. We Latined to salsa and shimmied to soul — SalSoul. When DJs broke hits, dance floors filled with boogaloo. The music moved with the movement. Colón’s brassy, defiant band of bandits became part of that soundtrack.
The contradictions came later. The mythmaking. The insecurity. The political pivots. They complicated the legend but did not erase the work. In June 2004, Willie Colón received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Lehman College. When I called to congratulate him, he retorted, “That and a token’ll get me on the train!”
We stopped using tokens the year before.
Willie Colón’s catalog remains: “The Hustler,” “Guisando,” “Siembra,” “Tras la Tormenta.” The collaborations. The risks. The boldness of a 17-year-old Bronx trombonist who helped birth a global sound.
Willie Colón belonged to a generation of Latino male icons who helped soundtrack a radical moment in history: Black and Puerto Rican affirmations, anti-war marches, barrio solidarity — yet who were also shaped by machismo, ego, and a hunger for control in industries that rarely gave it to them. The outlaw branding, the bravado, the need to dominate the narrative — these were not accidents. They were part of the architecture of the era.
But movements outgrow their myths.
The music, rooted in African rhythm and Caribbean memory, proved more durable than any one personality. The grooves carried consciousness long after interviews faded and lawsuits dissolved into footnotes.
Those records spin on turntables from El Barrio to Panamá, from Cali to Santurce. Young bands still study the arrangements. The trombone still slices through dance floors like a West Side Story switchblade. Generations who never met him know the intro to 1978’s “Plástico” before the first lyric lands.
When Rubén Blades calls out Latin American nations in a roll call of identity and accountability in “Plástico” from the “Siembra” album, it still resonates. If it sounded familiar during a recent Super Bowl moment, now you know why.
Colón’s legacy, then, is not singular. It is communal. It belongs to Lavoe’s voice, to Blades’ pen, to Yomo’s cuatro, to Celia’s roar — and to every kid in the Bronx who picked up a horn believing it could change the world.
Perhaps that is the real measure.
The man wrestled with his era. The music transcended it.
May the Universe receive Willie Colón with the same thunder he gave us — and may we remember him at his best, when the brass was bold and El Barrio, like Benito today, believed anything was possible.
© Aurora Flores Hostos, 2026
This is a revised and updated version of an article that first appeared at Substack Salsa Diaries: aurorafloreshostos.substack.com