Dedicated fans with cell phone cameras were out in force at H2O Friday night for salsa legend Willie Colon's farewell tour appearance. This Bronx-born musician, businessman and community activist is only 55, but after 40 years of performing he has decided he's had enough of the road. Let us hope he breaks his promise. The onetime bad boy now has a paunch and has gone gray, but he and his eight-piece band served up his catalogue with power and passion for 90 minutes.

Colon is best known for his pioneering recordings as a trombonist, songwriter, bandleader and producer in the 1970s with the likes of Ruben Blades, Celia Cruz and Hector Lavoe. Although he has experimented over the years with jazz and rock touches, onstage he largely stuck to the fast-tempoed Afro-Latino approach that he filled dance floors with in his prime. On selections including "Idilio" and "La Banda," a red-cheeked Colon feverishly blew his horn and then sang, accompanied by two other trombonists, a sax player and musicians on piano, acoustic bass, timbales, bongos and congas. Crowded together on a small stage, Colon and company created a multi-layered joyous racket of call-and-response vocals, booming brass and intricate beats without their sound's ever descending into chaos.

Colon has long been as interested in melody as the clave beat, and he uses bright vocal choruses adapted from rural Puerto Rican standards. This do-it-all artist showed that he is not bad as a vocalist on the countryish "Ares de Navidad" and lush "Periodico de Ayer." The rap-influenced genre of reggaeton is the Spanish-language sound of the moment, but the vibrant salsa of Colon's ensemble remains anything but passe.

-- Steve Kiviat