A Voice for the People : For pioneering salsa bandleader and trombonist Willie Colon, the music isn’t just a hot vibe--it is also an outlet for his deep passions about social issues.

The lure of salsa is in the rhythm--the way the music seduces you, especially on the dance floor, with its unique blend of spicy Afro-Caribbean strains and colorful, big-band punctuation. At its best, this rhythm not only makes you want to move your body, but it also lifts your spirits.

To Willie Colon, however, this music is more than just rhythm. It is also a way to express deeply held feelings about social issues.

For the 45-year-old bandleader and trombonist, salsa is a tool to unite people and elevate cultural awareness. Though the themes of his songs are universal statements about justice, they speak primarily about incidents and conditions in Latin America.

“I enjoy saying things that others don’t dare say in the music,” says Colon, one of the two artists (the other is his former collaborator Ruben Blades) who have done the most to expand the international audience for salsa during the last three decades. “I reached a point [in the early ‘70s] where I had to do something besides make a dollar and make a hit.

“Just like Ruben Blades, I’m more like a storyteller of people from the streets. . . . Different kind of stories [from Blades’], but the same important function of trying to unify our people.”

Colon will try to sell that message of unity in September, when he runs in the primary for the congressional seat in New York City’s 17th District, heading an interracial coalition against Democratic incumbent Eliot L. Engel.

“I organized a bunch of amateurs from the Bronx and Westchester, and we’re going head-on against the whole machinery,” he says.

Colon’s show on Friday at the House of Blues will be his first formal Los Angeles appearance since the release last November of “Y vuelve otra vez” (One More Time), an album that mixes commentaries on the social and economic situation in Puerto Rico with lighthearted tales of romantic encounters in the barrio.

“Social commentaries don’t have to be dull,” he says. “Lyrics can be as [entertaining] as the music.”

Colon has been a force in salsa for so long that it’s hard to picture a time when he wasn’t playing the music. Indeed, he had his first band at age 14.

Growing up in the South Bronx, Colon--whose parents were from Puerto Rico--listened to a new style of Latin music that became such a local sensation that it was given its own new name: salsa.

“It was just a blend of rhythms produced by musicians who had come here from all parts of Latin America,” Colon says in a phone interview from his home in New Rochelle, N.Y. “The old-timers used to complain a lot, saying that this new music didn’t respect traditions. We would say, ‘But, this is salsa . . . quit bugging us.’ ”

The young Colon didn’t see salsa as just a musical direction. It was a way to liberate him and his people from the discrimination surrounding them.

“In those years there was something like an apartheid,” Colon says. “You wouldn’t go outside of the neighborhood. Soon I realized that salsa could do more than make people dance--it would be my wake-up call to my brothers.”

Inspired by Latin music pioneer Eddie Palmieri (see story, Page 62), Colon formed his first orchestra in 1964, and three years later he signed his first contract with the legendary Fania label, developing a tough but likable image. His first record was titled “El Malo” (The Mean One).

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Until 1974, Colon’s lead singer was the late Hector Lavoe, arguably the all-time greatest sonero (a salsa singer who masters the art of improvisation). But it was in the mid-’70s, at the peak of his popularity, when Colon met Blades, then a largely unknown young Panamanian singer-songwriter. The pair began carving perhaps the most glorious chapter in salsa history.

Blades’ intelligent but accessible, story-oriented lyrics found their perfect match in Colon’s complex, challenging arrangements, and their three albums between 1977 and 1982 won legions of new, more sophisticated fans for salsa--a music that had been widely dismissed as lightweight.

“Siembra” (Sow), from 1978, stands as the most acclaimed salsa album ever. Without sacrificing the pulsating salsa rhythm, Colon and Blades served up unusually long, epic songs that carried messages of freedom at a time when most of Latin America was oppressed by military dictatorships.

Blades and Colon parted ways in 1982 at the peak of their popularity, when Blades decided to embark on a solo career. Frustrated, Colon began singing for the first time in his career, vowing that he’d never again be dependent on a singer who might walk away

“I had to start from zero, and it took me many years to feel comfortable,” Colon says.

Blades, who reunited with his mentor for the Grammy-nominated 1994 album “Tras la tormenta” (Beyond the Storm), has nothing but praise for the man who gave him his big break.

Said Blades in a separate interview: “When he was No. 1, he believed in me and gave me the chance to show my music. I’ll always be thankful.”

In his political aspirations, Colon--a strong supporter of independence for Puerto Rico--is following in the footsteps of Blades, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Panama in 1994. Colon ran for Congress in 1994, earning 42% of the vote in a losing primary campaign for the Democratic nomination. He hasn’t yet announced whether he’ll run as a Democrat or an independent this time.

“It would be nice to celebrate my 30th anniversary [as a recording artist] with a win in November,” says Colon, whose dream is to make his home in the barrio once more after he retires.

“I won’t be here [in the music business] forever, so I have to start thinking about the future. And there would be nothing better than to go back to the barrio and help those who started with me and couldn’t continue.”

* Willie Colon and his Orchestra perform Friday at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 10 p.m. $30. (213) 848-5100.