{"id":157537,"date":"2026-03-09T06:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T06:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/157537\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T06:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T06:19:10","slug":"urban-salsa-music-pioneer-willie-colon-to-be-remembered-at-new-york-funeral-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/157537\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban salsa music pioneer Willie Col\u00f3n to be remembered at New York funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 Family, friends and fans will gather Monday morning in New York to pay tribute to Willie Col\u00f3n, the Grammy-nominated architect of urban salsa music<\/a> and social activist who died last month<\/a> at 75.<\/p>\n

A public funeral Mass will be held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown Manhattan, following a weekend of private and public visitations. His burial will be private.<\/p>\n

The trombonist, composer, arranger and singer died on Feb. 21. The cause was not publicly announced. His family said on social media that he passed away peacefully surrounded by relatives at a hospital in Westchester County, just north of New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we grieve his absence, we also rejoice in the timeless gift of his music and the cherished memories that will live on forever,\u201d his family said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Born in New York City\u2019s Bronx borough<\/a>, Col\u00f3n produced more than 40 albums that sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and collaborated with a wide variety of artists, including the Fania All Stars<\/a>, David Byrne and Celia Cruz.<\/p>\n

He was nominated for 10 Grammys and one Latin Grammy and was known for songs including \u201cEl gran var\u00f3n,\u201d \u201cSin poderte hablar,\u201d \u201cCasanova,\u201d \u201cAmor verdad\u201d and \u201cOh, qu\u00e9 ser\u00e1.\u201d<\/p>\n

His manager, Pietro Carlos, wrote on social media that Col\u00f3n not only changed salsa, but also \u201cexpanded it, politicized it, clothed it in urban chronicles, and took it to stages where it hadn\u2019t been heard before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Col\u00f3n was also a community leader who fought for civil rights, mostly in the United States. He further dabbled in politics, serving as a special assistant to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Michael Bloomberg. In 1994, he lost his challenge to then-U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013 Family, friends and fans will gather Monday morning in New York to pay tribute to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14666,29315,14743,65040,157,37649,12363,9,24,55,54,56,65041,14509,421,23159],"class_list":{"0":"post-157537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-celia-cruz","9":"tag-david-byrne","10":"tag-david-dinkins","11":"tag-eliot-engel","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ethnicity","14":"tag-michael-bloomberg","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","18":"tag-new-york-city-news","19":"tag-ny","20":"tag-pietro-carlos","21":"tag-race","22":"tag-u-s-news","23":"tag-willie-colon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}