Siembra

Blades, Rubén and Willie Colón

album cover

Subversive Salsa

From a distance, Siembra sounds like much of the high-intensity Latin dance music that came out of New York in the late '60s and '70s: a chattering, trombone-heavy horn section, rhythms so persuasive they practically force your feet to move, and strings swirling in disco-fantasia flourishes (it was, after all, 1978).

But unlike most salsa of the period, there's a riot going on inside the celebration. The percussive and progressive Panamanian singer Rubén Blades sends sharp commentary shooting through several of these original songs, transforming what is typically considered party music into a platform for consciousness raising. Naturally he's coy about it, operating under the cover of often enchanting melodies, and the crazy quilt accompaniments generated by his collaborator, Bronx-born trombonist and arranger Willie Colón. Some songs are utterly straightforward harangues—"Plastico" lampoons the runaway consumerism of American (and Latin American) culture. It begins with garish disco strings, then slams them into an ultracomplex salsa rhythm, as though he's presenting his music as an outright challenge to the Disco Duck. Other tunes make their points more stealthily. "Pedro Navaja" borrows the structure of the Bobby Darin hit "Mack the Knife," spinning the timeless Peter Gay/Kurt Weill tale of a small-time neighborhood operator into a parable of barrio life. (The piece ends with sirens blaring and an ironic "I like to live in America," sung in heavily accented West Side Story–ish English.)

Siembra proved incendiary. It quickly took up residence on Latin radio, and within a year became the top-selling tropical album of all time. Blades and Colón were credited with giving voice to an overlooked sector of American society and bringing topicality to a form often dismissed as exclusively for dancing. The album triggered a wave of similarly spirited (if less trenchant) salsa commentary. The duo split after an unsuccessful follow-up, and both continued to thrive, Colón as a bandleader capable of wrapping dance music in sumptuous orchestrations, Blades in the company of the rock-leaning band Seis del Solar, whose second album, Escenas, is the closest he's come to Siembra's rare alchemy of music and message. That's not to say the subsequent work isn't magical: It's just that Siembra set a seriously high bar.

Genre: World, Latin
Released: 1978, Fania
Key Tracks: "Buscando guyaba," "Pedro Navaja," "Plastico."
Catalog Choice: Willie Colón: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Next Stop: Larry Harlow Orchestra: Hommy
After That: Roberto Roena y Su Apollo Sound: 5.
Book Pages: 93–94