Every genre has its bad guy, villain, heel. In the world of salsa, that dark genius was Willie Colón, who died on Saturday at the age of 75.
His predilection for playing the antagonist came across in a variety of ways. The titles of his music albums: 1967’s “El Malo,” which translates to “The Bad Guy”; 1973’s “Lo Mato — Si No Compra Este LP,” or “I’ll Kill Him — If You Don’t Buy This Record”; 1970’s “Cosa Nuestra,” a play on the Mafia’s clandestine tag; and 1970’s “La Gran Fuga,” on whose cover he appears in a makeshift F.B.I. wanted poster. And Mr. Colón also fashioned himself as the heavy of the film, the offender.
“The clothes I was wearing and that gangsta thing played into the image and it really caught on,” Mr. Colón said in 2017 in “Latin Music USA,” a PBS documentary.
Mr. Colón may have designed his image after the transgressor, but he was a salve for the Latino youth of the 1960s. He became an avatar for young Latinos who could not style themselves after John Wayne, Muhammad Ali or Elvis Presley. Those Latinos were slicker and younger, and they had roots in this country that were just beginning to bloom. There was no one from their generation in the mainstream they could pin their own image onto.
Members of that generation felt unrepresented and struggled for a toehold in a culture they said overlooked them. Mr. Colón gave them a sly, tough example of success and charm and bravado to latch on to. They did not have to become small. They could be as big as they wanted to be.
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