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Family, friends and fans gathered at St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral on Monday to remember Willie Col\u00f3n, a New Yorker and Grammy-nominated architect of urban salsa music who died last month at age 75.<\/p>\n
It was a sendoff fit for a king \u2014 a king of Salsa music.<\/p>\n
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<\/b><\/div>\n \u201cI thought I was in the Puerto Rican Day parade, how about that,\u201d fan Mitchell Tolentino said.<\/p>\n The rhythms of Willie Col\u00f3n echoed down Fifth Avenue Monday morning. His sons gave his eulogy and said it was their father\u2019s dream to have his funeral here.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone knows Willie \u2018El Malo,\u2019 Willie El Salsero, Willie the composer, even Willie the sheriff, but to us he was Papa,\u201d his son Diego Col\u00f3n said.<\/p>\n Col\u00f3n was of Puerto Rican heritage, and he grew up in the South Bronx. He learned to play the trumpet at 12 years old, switching to a trombone two years later.<\/p>\n He was a trombonist, composer, arranger and singer, and was revered as a pioneer of Latin music.<\/p>\n One family traveled all the way from Canada to attend his funeral.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, we come from Montreal and we went to see Willie in October,\u201d Yani Re said. \u201cSo then, when we heard the news, we wanted to be physically here also.\u201d<\/p>\n A band, including musicians who had played alongside him, serenaded his casket, and hundreds of devoted fans gathered to pay their respects.<\/p>\n Ozzie Melendez played with Col\u00f3n for more than 35 years and was part of the sendoff.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an incredible learning experience. It was humbling as a trombonist the way he played, as well as producing and singing. He was one of my mentors, so it\u2019s a very sad day,\u201d Melendez said.<\/p>\n Col\u00f3n produced 40 albums and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and even collaborated with artists like Celia Cruz.<\/p>\n He was also a community leader who fought for civil rights and served as a special assistant to two New York City mayors. His album, \u201cEl Malo,\u201d featured a quintessential New York sound that drew renewed interest in Latin music during the 1970s.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a pioneer. He was a trailblazer. He was an architect of that music. He defined the sound for trombonists all over the world,\u201d trombonist Frank Cohen said.<\/p>\n Col\u00f3n is survived by his wife of 49 years, Julia Col\u00f3n Craig, four sons, his sister and six grandchildren.<\/p>\n The cause of his death was not publicly announced, but his family said on social media that he passed away peacefully, surrounded by relatives at a hospital in Westchester County.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ny1.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Family, friends and fans gathered at St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral on Monday to remember Willie Col\u00f3n, a New Yorker and Grammy-nominated architect of urban salsa music who died last month at age 75. It was a sendoff fit for a king \u2014 a king of Salsa music. What You Need To Know Family, friends and fans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2320499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22694,306917,22811,21741,306918,25614,21738,397973,21737,71501],"class_list":["post-2320498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-app-arts-entertainment","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-top-stories","tag-entertainment","tag-human-interest","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-olivia-leach","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Urban-salsa-music-pioneer-Willie-Colon-remembered.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320500,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320498\/revisions\/2320500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2320499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}