El Gran Varón: Who Was Simón?

Latino USA

My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For this week’s Latino USA, we’re bringing you an episode from the newly released podcast series from WNYC Studios and Futuro Studios, La Brega, The Puerto Rican Experience in Eight Songs.

Gabby Rivera was 7 when Willie Colón released “El Gran Varón” in 1989. She remembers her father playing in the Bronx. The cinematic arc of the song would stick with her: Simón, depicted as a trans queer person, is shunned by their father and dies alone of what’s assumed to be AIDS. “El Gran Varón” was first banned by some radio stations but became an international hit anyway. Many call it one of the most well-known Latin songs of all time. Its songwriter explains that it was inspired by a rumor about a real-life friend. Only years later did he realize his lyrics contained an eerie prophecy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello dear listener, just a heads up. In this episode there are some curse words and some
0:12.8	hateful language. As kids a lot of us had to sit in the back seat of a car and listen
0:21.6	to our parents, control the radio dial and depending on the decade those music choices
0:29.9	could be anything. For Gabby Rivera growing up in the Bronx in the 1980s she had the
0:38.1	Fanya All Stars. When we went on car rides we went to Florida to visit relatives. My dad
0:48.9	always had his salsa music playing. Gabby Rivera is a writer who's maybe best known
0:56.2	for her work with Marvel Comics. My dad always had his music playing. Latin jazz,
1:02.1	salsa, Motown, you know, he's a child of like the 60s and 70s you know what I mean. And
1:08.9	we had this one song that I would always put on when we left Orchard Beach. That's Gabby's
1:15.1	dad Charlie Rivera. And that was our leaving song for Orchard Beach. We all were packing
1:32.3	up and ready to rock and go back home. There are songs that take him right back to the
1:38.0	island where he spent his childhood. They listen to the classics of course from
1:52.7	Ector Labo to Willie Cologne. One day young Gabby and her dad are in the family's white
2:02.8	minivan when a notable salsa song comes on. You know there's that salsa break right where
2:09.0	all of a sudden it's like and it's like dance right. This was not a bolero. This was
2:20.1	salsa baby. This was good up in dance. It's catchy. It's got a great groove. Then Gabby's
2:27.0	ears start to take in the words. I'm sitting and I'm listening and I hear the lyrics
2:33.1	tell grandma. And this is a seven or eight year old who's trying to make sense of the unusual
2:47.2	story being laid out in this salsa song with the pronouns the singer is using. Like what
2:53.7	is happening to this man to this kid and like it's talking about dresses and putting on
2:59.0	lipstick. His father won't visit him and like all of these things that aren't making
3:08.9	sense. El gran baron or the great man is a song by Willie Cologne released in 1989.
	...

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