A Stranger in His Homeland : * Music: Despite selling more than 8 million recordings worldwide, Willie Colon remains a relative unknown in the U.S.

Sometimes, Willie Colon must feel like a stranger in his own land. With his track record worldwide, he’s certifiable Big Time, but he isn’t accorded commensurate media attention in his native United States.

Colon, a boyish, handsome 41-year-old, started his career early and has produced an admirable wealth of great music since he released his debut album at 16.

He has sold more than 8 million of his more than 30 recordings worldwide and acted in three films, two television shows and three commercials. He has been nominated for eight Grammys, and he personally helped concoct spicy salsa music, with its mincing, syncopated international rhythms and choreographed horns.

Just last week, Colon played 10 sold-out shows over five nights at Kimball’s East in San Francisco, where he and his band, Legal Alien, received rave reviews.

Colon may be a genuine heavy, but radio play of his music is limited mostly to modestly powered Latino stations. And you won’t find his new release, “Honra y Cultura (Honor and Culture),” in most music stores, including the giant Tower Records on Sports Arena Boulevard.

“I guess I’m one of America’s best-kept secrets,” Colon said by phone from a hotel in Palos Verdes earlier this week, where he was recharging his batteries after the tiring week in San Francisco. “I think that as time goes on I will become more popular in the U.S., but it’s going to be slow, along the lines of Tito Puente.”

Luckily for Colon, who plays three San Diego-area shows this week, beginning tonight, at Oz Nightclub in Oceanside, he has given up worrying about reaching broader audiences.

He tried that before, placing two danceable, disco-styled hits in the top 15 on American dance music charts during the mid-1970s, his closest pass at crossover success. He also wrote and arranged music for, and played on, rock star David Byrne’s 1990 album of Latin music, “Rei Momo.” Afterward, Colon said, he felt slightly used, being a sideman to Byrne, along with top Latin musicians such as Johnny Pacheco and Eddie Palmieri.

“I just have a problem totally changing what I’m doing to make a crossover,” Colon said. “There’s a conflict in it for me. What I’ve done has worked. I have such massive Latin American support, to turn my back on that I don’t know how wise that is, or if I want to do it. It took a long time to develop what I’m doing now.”

Colon estimated that 75% of his sales are in Latin America, 25% in the United States. Colon, who was born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, finds himself straddling two cultures. He has made it a point not to forget his heritage as his star has risen.

The song “500 Years” from “Honra y Cultura,” for example, uses the 500th anniversary of Columbus “discovering” America as a jumping-off point for Colon’s commentary on Puerto Rico.

“I am a grandchild of Puerto Rican grandparents,” he said. “In 500 years, Puerto Rico never became a country, though it has become a nation. Puerto Rico originally went to the Spaniards, who gave it up as booty to the U.S. They live under U.S. laws, but they can’t vote for a U.S. president. They have a U.S post office, customs, immigration, but they can’t control their own borders. In those 500 years, they have never been able to choose what they want.”

In another song, Colon comments on the disenfranchisement of native North Americans by Anglo-Europeans.

“It sounds like a love song to a woman named ‘Asia,’ but it asks questions,” Colon said. “As you go through it, you see Asian faces in Mexico, Asian cultures, temples--where did it go? How did it disappear? What happened? Mexico today is Eurocentric. European culture just kind of buried the Asian civilization, although it was highly advanced.”

Yet another of Colon’s commentaries is of a different nature: His 1989 song “El Gran Varon” tells of a father who disowns his gay son and only comes to his senses too late--after the son has died of AIDS.

It’s useful for non-Spanish-speaking listeners to know a little about Colon’s lyrics, because he sings all but a few of his songs in Spanish. Although English was his primary childhood language, he learned Spanish during his teens, and has adopted it as the most effective means of reaching his largely Latin audiences.

As for the music that underlies Colon’s politically charged themes, it has been labeled different things by different writers, from “Afro-Cuban” to predominantly mambo and calypso. But Colon doesn’t feel that most of those labels do his music complete justice.

“The rhythms we play are hybrids, a mix of a lot of different Latin folklores,” he said. “We are not a mambo band. We can start a song with a Cuban rhythm and end it with a reggae or a Colombian cumbia or a Dominican meringue.”

Colon’s music is often referred to as Latin jazz, and it includes a fair amount of improvisation, a hallmark of jazz. But he doesn’t feel his jazz roots run deep. Aside from late jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, Colon’s influences have been predominantly from Latin music and include trombonist Barry Rogers, an influential member of the bands of Mon Rivera and Eddie Palmieri.

By the time Colon’s first album, “El Malo,” was released in 1967, he had entered a musical partnership with Bronx running mate Hector LaVoe that lasted until 1973, produced 14 albums and practically invented salsa, which Colon sees as the Latin equivalent of rap.

“Salsa came from the same kind of situation that rap does,” Colon said. “It was kind of a hybrid of a bunch of different elements. Hector had just come from Puerto Rico and didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak much Spanish, I was a little New York kid. We got together and just started with the same kind of irreverent, rebellious attitude, writing songs about the baddest guy on the block, drugs and sex. Before that, the lyrics and whole attitude of Latin music was, ‘Look at me dance, listen to those drums, I’m cutting sugar cane.’ It was a rural, folkloric emphasis; we changed it to an inner-city kind of culture.”

After Colon and LaVoe parted in 1973, Colon took the first of two extended sabbaticals that have interrupted his musical career. Between 1973 and 1976, and again between 1982 and 1985, he left music to pursue traveling, flying (he’s a licensed pilot) and other interests. He even did a stint in a Venezuelan soap opera.

In the not-too-distant future, Colon sees another such break.

“I plan to kind of wrap it up the next two or three years with musical performing,” he said. If that sounds sort of final, that’s because it might be. “I need to step away every once in a while, but I don’t know if I will come back after the next time.”

Colon has many artistic options outside of music, including a budding acting career. His film credits thus far have been limited to B movies such as “Vigilante,” “The Last Fight” and “Salsa.” But he said he came close to landing the lead role in the movie “Q & A” that eventually went to Italian actor Armand Assante. He also said he turned down the lead in the soon-to-be-released movie “The Mambo Kings” because the pay was too low. That part also went to Assante, and Colon notes, with some disdain, that it is a movie primarily about Cuban music with no Cubans in lead roles.

Meanwhile, Colon hopes to have two new releases out this year: a studio project, and a live recording celebrating his 25th year in music, a year that is rapidly picking up steam.

Besides the successful San Francisco shows last week, Colon’s current 15-day tour drew 1,250 people to each of two shows in Houston and 4,000 for a single performance in San Antonio. The music is peaking just in time for Colon’s three local shows--the last on this tour. Performances include much of the new material from “Honra y Cultura” plus an ample supply of earlier selections.

“It’s a lot better than we expected,” Colon said of the tour. “We didn’t expect to sell out five nights in a row in San Francisco. We would have been happy with two or three. And the band is really coming together, which is one of the good things about these tours where you play every day.”

Willie Colon and Legal Alien play tonight at 8:30 and 10:30 at Oz Nightclub in Oceanside (300 Douglas Drive), Friday night at El Torito pub in Tijuana (643 Avenida Revolucion) and Saturday night at Mission Brewery in San Diego (2150 W. Washington St.). During the Mission Brewery shows, Japanese performance artist Rocco Satoshi will paint large murals during the music.