Legendary salsa musician Willie Colón died Saturday, February 21. He was 75. His longtime manager, Pietro Carlos, broke the news in a statement on Facebook. “We’ve lost an architect of the New York sound, a trombonist who made metal his banner and wrote enteral chapters in our musical history,” he wrote. “Willie didn’t just change salsa; he expanded it, politicized it, clothed it in urban chronicles, and took it to stages where it hadn’t been heard before. His trombone was the voice of the people, an echo of the Caribbean in New York, a bridge between cultures.”
Colón was born in 1958 in the South Bronx. Although he grew up in New York City, Colón spent summers in Puerto Rico with his mother’s side of the family. He first picked up the trumpet as a youth, but switched to the trombone after hearing Barry Rogers and Mon Rivera. He signed with Fania Records at the age of 16. His first album for Fania, El Malo, began a storied career innovating salsa music and fusing it with New York’s jazz and funk scenes.
Colón’s biggest hits include “Ché Ché Colé” and “Aguanile.” He was also a massively collaborative musician, as seen in his album with Celia Cruz, Celia and Willie, and his work with Héctor Lavoe and Rubén Blades. Siembra, his second album with Blades, is still the biggest-selling salsa album of all time, according to Billboard.