One of many pivotal works of the Seventies, Willie Colón and Rubén Blades’ Siembra has been described as nothing lower than the best salsa album of all time, usually likened to a Latin Sgt. Pepper’s for its groundbreaking songwriting and kaleidoscopic manufacturing. One other favorable comparability, nonetheless, could also be What’s Going On. Like Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, Siembra is explicitly and exquisitely imbued with social commentary and humanism, and required its file label’s leap of religion with a view to even see launch. Having apparently preview-tested the LP for a gaggle of influential radio jocks who unanimously projected its doom, Fania Data was hesitant to unleash Colón and Blades’ formidable conceptual tour de drive on an unsuspecting viewers. The label’s fears would show solely unfounded. Siembra wasn’t only a vital and industrial smash – promoting tens of millions worldwide – it might stay Latin music’s best-selling album for many years after its unique launch.
Hearken to Willie Colón and Rubén Blades’ Siembra now.
Upon revisiting this commanding basic, it’s robust to decipher what all of the early handwringing was about. The Colón-Blades combo had already exhibited an affinity for alternately poignant and sardonic commentary on the struggles of the underclass on their inaugural album collectively, 1977’s Metiendo Mano (the previous’s first since parting methods with longtime vocal accomplice Hector Lavoe). Siembra absolutely embraces this course, openly supplementing its messages with exact preparations and musicianship, and stylistic curveballs that someway by no means miss their mark. “Plástico” units the tone instantly, commencing with a deliciously misleading disco-funk groove earlier than subverting its Saturday Evening Fever-era tease and launching right into a salsa quantity wherein Blades claps again at a life lived solely for superficialities. The album’s Kurt Weill-inspired centerpiece, “Pedro Navaja,” deftly orchestrates police sirens, shifting melodic passages, and a sarcastic West Facet Story nod (“I like to live in America”) towards Blades’ epic multi-verse narrative detailing a story of two road characters, their violent ends, and a superbly wry ethical: “La vida te da sopresas” (“Life gives you surprises”).
Siembra’s most profound achievement, although, is Blades’ compositional sophistication, having written all however one of many album’s seven expansive tracks. Being of combined Colombian and Cuban heritage, and born and raised in Panama earlier than settling in New York and teaming with the Bronx-born Nuyorican Colón, Blades was uniquely certified to transcend nationality and converse to a imaginative and prescient of a unified Latin American voice. Thus “Maria Lionza” – a loving homage to the Venezuelan goddess of nature, peace, and concord – is instilled with a palpable non secular delight. Propelled by placing strings and refrain harmonies, the pressing and mesmerizing “Siembra” (“Sowing”) finds Blades imploring, “Usa la conciencia latino/ No la dejes que se te duerma/ No la dejes que muera” (“Use the Latin conscience/ Do not let her fall sleep/ Do not let her die”) and cites Ramón Emeterios Betances, father of the Puerto Rican independence motion: “Nunca olvides a Betances/ ‘En la unión está el futuro’” (“Never forget Betances/ ‘In the union is the future’”).
Even the lone track Blades didn’t write, Johnny Ortiz’s “Ojos,” addresses a shared perspective: “De America Latina, ojos llenos de verdad” (“From Latin America, eyes full of truth”). Fania had long-framed salsa as a Pan-Latin style; Colón and Blades took it properly past merging musical varieties and advertising, tapping into the soul of a individuals. As Blades as soon as noticed, “Salsa is the folklore of the city. But not of one city but all cities in Latin America.” Siembra’s energy nonetheless stems from this compassion.
Hearken to Willie Colón and Rubén Blades’ Siembra now.
