https://youtube/watch?v=uAVs0m3Xak4 El Gran Varon, the story of Simon, a cross dressing young man who dies of AIDS at the age of thirty is the unlikely material for one of the greatest salsa songs of the 1980s The song “El Gran Varon” was not thought of as a potential hit, or at least it was not initially presented as a candidate for such, perhaps because of the risky territory it covered. It was a song about AIDS and the isolation that homophobia and stigmatization bring. Salsa is a powerful style, capable of expressing a great variety of emotions with its wide repertoire of rhythms, dynamics and tonalities. It has a basic structure but many origins, from African rhythms, to the clubs of Puerto Rico, Cuba, New York and the Caribbean as a whole. The New York style, of which Willie Colon was a leading exponent, was nurtured in its formative years in the jazz world of Manhattan in the forties and fifties (that is, the West Forties and the Nineteen Fifties), where jazz bands and salsa bands would sit in on each other’s gigs. Improvisation and idiosyncratic flair were highly prized elements there, as evidenced by the elaborate solos and characteristic free-form piano bridges. Willie Colon’s trombone was a part of this tradition but in this song, his innovation is so much more: in the words of a timely, modern and tragic story within the framework of a traditional salsa structure. To my knowledge, he was the first well known artist, singing either in Spanish or in English, to allude so specifically to the horrifying epidemic that was devastating young victims in cities like New York, San Francisco, Miami and San Juan. It was not without its risks. If Caribbean culture has a famously vibrant gay element to it, quite apparent to those with even a passing acquaintance with the culture, it is kept in line and overshadowed by a virulent sense of honor that insists on presenting a macho image to the world. Add to that the stigma attached to this disease, not only in Puerto Rican culture, but in American culture as a whole during that period. It all could have very easily damaged Colon’s career. dominicambrose.wordpress/2009/09/02/el-gran-varon-willie-colons-story-of-simon-is-20-years-old/
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 05:18:52 +0000
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