El Gran Varón

"El Gran Varón" was never meant to be a hit. Willie Colón put it out as the B-side of "La palomilla", on Top Secrets, his 1989 album and his last for the Fania label, and it was never released as a single. Radio kept playing it anyway, and the sleeper became one of the biggest songs of his career, reaching number one in ten countries. The song was written in 1986 by the Panamanian composer Omar Alfanno, who has said it is the biography of a friend from his teenage years. It tells the story of Simón, whose father Andrés rejects her. Simón moves to the United States and begins to transition; when her father visits, he disowns her. Years later Simón dies of AIDS at just 30, and her father's regret comes too late. Isidro Infante, a Puerto Rican arranger, shaped the music for Colón's band Legal Alien. It is considered the first Spanish-language song to deal with HIV and AIDS, and it was banned by many radio stations when it came out. Its legacy is debated: some hear it as a banner for LGBT rights, others as a reflection of the view that treated homosexuality as unnatural. Either way, it opened a conversation that Latin dance music had avoided. Colón later recorded a version that moved Simón's birth and death years forward from 1956 and 1986 to 1963 and 1993, and the song has been covered in salsa, cumbia, reggae and rap. Billboard placed it among the 50 greatest Latin songs of all time.