Their Tributes

NY Times obituary: “Mr. Lavoe was an incandescent singer, an improviser who used a boyish sound to impart passion. His voice, high and pure, turned the most banal lyrics into pleas, and when he improvised he moved from clipped, abrupt rhythms to a graceful float that made his singing extraordinarily beautiful. His sound and his style became the foundation on which many future salsa singers built.”

Rolling Stone: “Puerto Rican vocalist Héctor Lavoe was a real-life superhero of salsa, a diamond in the rough who could channel the full range of human emotions in a single fleeting note.”

El Gran Mory Ortiz: “As everyone knows, Héctor Lavoe marked the lives of many salsa musicians around the world. Known as the “Singer of Singers,” because singers and other artistic celebrities admired him so much, Héctor Lavoe managed to conquer the world with the wittiness of his songs.”

Wikipedia: “Lavoe is considered to be possibly the best and most important singer and interpreter in the history of salsa music because he helped to establish the popularity of this musical genre in the decades of 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.”

La Fania: “The combination of Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón enriched the world of salsa and set the stage for their collaboration, which lasted seven years. It also gave birth to 10 albums, full of vibrant songs that spoke the language of the street, a type of musical narrative that the public identified with, one that cemented salsa as a genre.”

PBS: ““Todo Tiene Su Final” (“Everything Comes to an End”), “El Día de Mi Suerte “ (“The Day My Luck Changes”) and “Periódico de Ayer” (“Yesterdays’ News”) captured the urban experience in El Barrio, full of intrigue, angst, and heartache, with its joyous musical counterpoint that was made for dancing. They survive today as some of the most successful and lasting musical creations of Latino culture in the United States.”