Willie Colón Biography
Willie Colón, whose birth name was William Anthony Colón Román and who was born on April 28, 1950, in the Bronx, New York, United States, is a trombonist, composer, bandleader, and activist from the United States who was instrumental in the spread of salsa music throughout the United States in the 1970s. His full birth name is William Anthony Colón Román. Colón was born into a Puerto Rican home and reared in a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood of the Bronx. During his infancy and teens, he was steeped in the arts and culture of urban Hispanic America, as well as the struggles that are associated with living in such a setting.
This milieu was a strong factor in molding both his career as a musician and his career as an advocate for numerous concerns affecting the Hispanic community. When he was 12 years old, his grandmother gave him a trumpet and paid for him to take lessons, which marked the beginning of his official education in music. At the age of 14, he switched his concentration to playing the trombone, and by the time he was 17, he made his recording debut with “El malo” (1967; “The Bad One”).
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