Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe

Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón are two of the leading figures in the history of salsa: the former was the definitive male voice of the genre, known by the title "cantante de los cantantes", the latter is its most important musician, a producer and arranger who dominated the scene from the end of the Sixties to the mid-Nineties, shaping its evolution. Their lives were very different, though from a certain point on they became intertwined and remained so for a long time.

Lavoe was born in 1946 in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and had a very difficult youth, marked by the death of his mother while he was still a child and that of a brother from an overdose. He defied his father's wishes for him to study classical music, choosing instead to engage with what he heard on the streets of his homeland. Singers like Daniel Santos and Ismael Rivera deeply influenced his artistic growth, steering him toward that melting pot of styles that would eventually crystallize under the name salsa.

At 17, he's already a locally admired singer, but has little chance of professional growth due to the lack of a proper music industry: so he decides to leave for New York, at the time already known for its thriving Puerto Rican immigrant community, which had built a circuit of venues to perform in and had repeatedly launched the recording careers of its most important names. Just a year after Lavoe's arrival in New York, Fania Records is born, destined to become the salsa label par excellence.

For Colón, things are far less rocky: born in 1950 in New York to Puerto Rican parents, he shows himself to be a musical prodigy from childhood, first on trumpet and then on trombone, whose sound he prefers. Johnny Pacheco – multi-instrumentalist and producer, but above all the founder of Fania – spots him performing at the American Legion Club in the Bronx and immediately signs him to his label. In 1966 he provides him with an orchestra and offers him the chance to record an album of his own, on the condition that he find a singer.

Together they pick Lavoe, who is himself starting to make a name for himself in the clubs of the Bronx. So, at just 16, Colón writes and arranges his debut album almost entirely on his own, showing the first spark of a talent destined to leave its mark on the history of Latin American music. Lavoe is the lead singer on the record, titled "El malo", released in 1967. His name doesn't appear on the cover, since the bandleader takes priority, but his crystal-clear voice and flawless technique are part of what draws the attention of the US Hispanic community to the record.

From then on, the duo keeps working together undeterred: the records initially come out under Colón's name alone, then Lavoe's name too starts appearing on the covers, albeit in smaller type.

In 1975 Fania decides Lavoe can finally have his own spotlight and grants him a solo record: it's a separation in name only, since the project is produced by Colón, and serves to shine a brighter light on a singer whose charisma clearly resonates with audiences. "La voz" comes out in 1975 and is a huge success, as are the follow-ups "De ti depende" (1976) and "Comedia" (1978).

Then something breaks: during the Seventies, despite the great acclaim, Lavoe sinks into depression and becomes increasingly dependent on heroin. Help from colleagues and stints in rehab clinics have no effect: his name starts being seen as difficult to work with and unreliable on the touring circuit, due to delays caused by his physical condition, which sometimes lead to cancelled dates.

Fania keeps putting out his records, but they suddenly stop generating any interest. The turn from the Seventies into the Eighties is a period of great change for salsa: Panamanian singer-songwriter Rubén Blades turns it into a politically engaged genre, while Fania sinks into a deep crisis caused by a string of bad management decisions, which within a few years alienate many of its most well-known artists.

Colón, on the other hand, stays on top, teaming up with Blades and releasing landmark albums like "Siembra" (1978) and "Canciones del solar de los aburridos" (1981). It's at that point that Fania asks him to team up again with Lavoe, in order to relaunch him: the label can't afford to let its most talented singer languish in the vault.

The opportunity seems to arise when he's asked to record the soundtrack for "Vigilante", a violent thriller directed by William Lustig, in which Colón makes a cameo as an actor. In the end the music isn't used in the film, but Fania releases it anyway: ironically, while the movie turns out to be a commercial flop, the album becomes one of the label's last great successes.

Both sides of the vinyl open with a track running 6-7 minutes and close with one running 11-12 minutes. This is one reason the record is considered a symbol of salsa dura, the variant of the genre that leaves ample room for both repetition and instrumental digressions: although both artists had already ventured into similar territory before, never had one of their records – and perhaps no salsa record at all – contained so few tracks, with even the shortest one running 6 minutes.

Colón directs the sessions, while the arrangements are handled on the first side by his trusted pianist Héctor Garrido, and on the second by young, jazz-trained percussionist Louie Cruz Beltran.

The opening track "Triste y vacía", sung by Lavoe, was written for the album by the little-known Puerto Rican songwriter Luis López Cabán, about whom almost nothing is known: his name remains tied exclusively to this song, which is nonetheless hugely famous.

The structure is rather complex: the first three minutes consist of a song with the classic verse-chorus alternation, followed by a brief instrumental interlude that leads into the coro-pregón (a typical salsa element, consisting of a call-and-response between a soloist who improvises and a chorus that keeps repeating the same phrase). After the fourth minute there's an instrumental section in mambo rhythm, followed by a return of the coro-pregón (first for voice and horns, then again for voice and chorus), which carries everything through to the ending.

The instruments are masterfully balanced: the horn section shines especially during the opening section, the piano during the mambo break, the timbales during the call-and-response, but every element is more or less present throughout most of the track.

The title track is written and sung by Colón and is the only song on the album without Lavoe. It stands out for its length, unorthodox arrangement and free-flowing structure, with room devoted partly to instrumental virtuosity and partly to building a cinematic, dramatic atmosphere.

The desire to push the genre's boundaries beyond is also evident in the presence of instruments unusual for the world of salsa, played by musicians coming from other backgrounds: the soprano sax is entrusted to South African jazz musician Morris Goldberg, who had moved to New York around that time to study and was working both as a session player and as a television musician; the electric guitar goes to Swedish musician Georg Wadenius, who in his home country had split his time between jazz-rock bands and children's music records before moving to the United States, where he spent a few years as a member of Blood Sweat & Tears; the string section, finally, is led by classical violinist Harold Kohon, a former member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Both Goldberg and Wadenius stand out for their impressive virtuosity on their respective instruments, while Kohon's strings color the track with emotional peaks and troughs from start to finish, in an unrelenting swirl. The horn section, piano and percussion keep their feet firmly planted in salsa, but all around them is a flowering of influences ranging from jazz-rock to prog, from Ennio Morricone to the soundtracks of the blaxploitation movement.

“Juanito Alimaña” is penned by Puerto Rican songwriter C. Curet Alonso, a fixture of the Fania scene and one of the greatest songwriters in salsa history (it's hard to find a performer who hasn't tackled one of his songs at some point). Lavoe returns on vocals, leading a more conventional arrangement, though the track's structure still sticks to the usual cycle of variations, moving between song, coro-pregón and mambo. Fania's house bassist Sal Cuevas throws himself into a complex bassline, drawing heavily on slap technique and jazz harmonies.

Closing out the tracklist is the other extended piece, “Pasé la noche fumando,” composed by Colón to lyrics by Curet Alonso, sung by Lavoe and Colón as a duo. It features Yomo Toro, a virtuoso of the Puerto Rican cuatro, a stringed instrument related to the guitar. The instrument is given plenty of room: it accompanies the rhythm section for the entire track and even carves out a solo with an almost dissonant edge, partly shifting the album's center of gravity toward folk music, rounding off a record built entirely around cross-pollination.

The lyrics are also of note: “Triste y vacía,” for instance, calls out the prejudice faced by women, telling the story of a woman betrayed by her partner who nonetheless ends up branded as promiscuous by neighborhood gossip (“She has managed to carry herself with dignity, even though many gossips slander her, even though many make up stories about her”); “Vigilante” and “Juanito Alimaña” both deal with the world of crime: the former tells of run-down neighborhoods where honest workers are forced to form vigilante groups to avoid being overrun, steering clear of institutions in which they've evidently lost all trust (the lyrics were inspired by a real news story from New Jersey, the same one that had prompted Lustig to make his film), while the latter tells of a street criminal who lives off scams, robberies and threats, shielded by a code of silence and by police complicity, with whom he has direct dealings. “Pasé la noche fumando” is a more conventional lovelorn lament, if a deeply moving one (“I feel you in every mark you left on me, you're the great master who said goodbye to me, I'm searching for the peace of mind you took away with you, I long for that time that once was ours”).

“Triste y vacía” and “Juanito Alimaña” instantly became salsa standards, played and danced to everywhere, while the two longer tracks remained the preserve of dedicated fans, though they still play a crucial role today in feeding the album's cult status (suffice it to say that it is currently the highest-rated 1983 record in the RateYourMusic database).

Lavoe, back on top, would manage to stay there for a couple more albums, until in 1987 two events permanently destroyed his physical and mental health: in February his mother-in-law was stabbed to death in Puerto Rico under murky circumstances, and in May his 17-year-old son died after being shot by a friend's gun during a cleaning accident. In 1988, an HIV diagnosis put the final nail in his career: he would die in 1993, isolated from the artistic community and in financial ruin.

Today he is a legendary figure in Latin American culture, complete with monuments dedicated to him (notably a statue in his hometown of Ponce, a bust in Callao, Peru, and several plaques in New York).

Colón, on the other hand, would keep racking up hits until the mid-Nineties, before gradually stepping back from recording, although he remains active as a live performer to this day.

Unfortunately, his public image has taken something of a hit in recent years: after decades of supporting the US Democratic Party, at times through active political campaigns in defense of Latino communities' rights, since 2017 he has become a fervent supporter of Donald Trump, going as far as embracing the worst kind of conspiracy theories and adopting an aggressive rhetoric he freely displays on social media. One of his favorite targets has become none other than Rubén Blades, who has instead remained true to the liberal values he has always espoused.

Fortunately, Colón's musical career was too brilliant to be tarnished by a man who today bears little resemblance to the one he used to be.

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14/12/2025