After the homage to Jorge Luis Piloto, who has also been a collaborator of the group for years, Septeto Acarey is about to come out with another celebratory album, this time dedicated to the other great author and composer of unforgettable salsa songs: the Panamanian
Omar Alfanno .
The album is preceded by this single which takes up one of the most significant songs of Alfanno ‘s work : El gran Varon .
This theme was written This theme was written for Willie Colon and became one of the flagship pieces of his repertoire, so much so that it closed almost all of his concerts.
The song was written in 1986 and was released on Colon ‘s 1989 album Top Secrets , distributed by the legendary Fania label . We are in the second half of the 80s, when the United States first, and then the rest of the world, were shocked by the AIDS virus, and even the world of music began to talk about this topic.
El gran Varon (in Italian it could be translated as “The Big Guy”) tells the story of a transgender, Simon , rejected by his father, a typical “macho” Latin man, as soon as he discovers his tendency, and dies alone and abandoned by a ” strange disease” (AIDS is never mentioned). The song soon became an anthem for LGBT rights, as it also deals with homophobia.
In Mexico El gran Varon achieved such popularity that in 2002 a film inspired by the song was made, entitled Simon, El Gran Varon . Septeto Acarey