Willie Colón casts his spell.
José Rodríguez
Willie Colón casts his spell. José Rodríguez |
SALSA urgently needed a concert like the one Willie Colón & Rubén Blades offered Saturday at the Hiram Bithorn Stadium. An eloquent concert, that, from song to song, would remind us that the future of this genre depends on the receptivity of the contemporary artists to the drama of everyday life. A concert that, to the pulse of a steamroller rhythm section, a demolishing montuno and a violent trombone section, allowed the orchestra to say things that a singer cannot express with words.
The repertoire from the "Metiendo Mano", "Siembra" y "Canciones del solar de los aburridos" continues to narrate, 25 years later, what today's Romantic Salsa cannot articulate. That's why the old music hasn't lost it's relevance. The stories about the fortune teller reading her cards, of the nocturnal criminal that pours through the alleyways hunting his next victim, of the con artist, and of the lover whose is incapable of tearing from his soul the pain of love and of the exploited native Indian deep in the plantation are still repeated everywhere and, facing the inexistence of a new Salsa chronicle, they never lose their freshness and originality.
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| Willie Colón &
Rubén Blades perform memorable vocalizations in
"Siembra: 25 Later" at Hiram Bithorn Stadium. Photo by José Rodríguez. |
That's how, Siembra... 25 Years Later", resulted in an unforgettable spectacular. Although technically César Sainz and Ariel Rivas presented a mediocre production (the sound was poor and the camera shots projected on the screens flowed without synchronization to the show), conceptually and artistically Willie y Rubén compensated by interpreting for almost three hours a select repertoire. Despite the erratic lecture of some of the arrangements, they reciprocated fully to the mass of humanity that bothered to remember the second shining of the 70s, an era that used it's conscience and that 25 years later, thanks to their militancy, demonstrates that it is still alive and awake.
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| Willie Colón &
Rubén Blades perform memorable vocalizations in
"Siembra: 25 Later" at Hiram Bithorn Stadium. Photo by José Rodríguez. |
The Concert, as this writer has learned, was recorded. The people deserve that record. Willie and Rubén also, because since 1982, the year of "The Last Fight", they haven't collaborated on a project with the chemistry, commitment and enthusiasm that they demonstrated Saturday. Yes, in 1994 they were part of a Papo Coss production and a few years later in Madison Square Garden and the Rubén Rodríguez Coliseum in Bayamón, but with Willie Colón as an invited guest and without participation or decisions over the musical direction.
Saturday, Willie directed and pianist Ennio Gatti assisted. His gift for being able to smell what people want was ratified when he changed the charts and in the mambos of "La Maleta" and "Plantación Adentro" he conducted trombonists Ozzie Meléndez, Luis Bonilla and José Dávila through some streety and wounding tags and that took us back to the Héctor Lavoe epoch. The model that inspired Mon Rivera's "trombanga" and Barry Rogers' attacks with Eddie Palmieri's La Perfecta band.
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| Blades
accompanies himself on the maracas as he sings "Madame
Kalalú", "Ligia Elena" and Pedro
Navaja". José Rodríguez. |
Morally, Willie is obligated to sing to Lavoe and, yet, he deposited the deference on Rubén to the role of singing the Panamanian "Murga" before singing his own tribute to the memory of "El Cantante" (THE Singer) with a smashing medley of "La banda", "Periódico de ayer", "El Todopoderoso" and "El cantante".
Consummating the posthumous salute, Colón and Blades continued their nostalgic passage, delighting us with their duet vocalizations and dramatic routines in "Madame Kalalú", "Ligia Elena" and "Pedro Navaja".
"Siembra... 25 years later", also put in perspective Willie Colón's enormous contribution to Salsa. Although he knows the heritage of the son montuno and the cha-cha, the bulk of his productions with Héctor, Rubén, Mon Rivera, Celia, Sophy, Soledad Bravo and Ismael Miranda break with the afrocuban scheme, formulating a true Puerto Rican sound enriched at times with harmonies and rythmic elements from Brasil, Venezuela, México, Colombia, Panamá and the Andes.
It is sad, with so much that he could still contribute to Salsa (his work in "Talento de televisión" and "Caer en gracia" on the Tras la tormenta CD will substantiate), that he is practically retired from the record business.
Perhaps the magic and the emotions shared this Saturday with
Ruben will motivate him to return
to the studio to harvest his crop with the Panamanian
singer-composer or with Domingo Quiñones,
who reconfirmed he has the potential to cultivate with credibility
and genius our urban folklore.