POP MUSIC

-- Buzz McClain

Willie Colon

Dedicated fans with cell phone cameras were out in force at H2O Friday night for salsa legend Willie Colon's farewell tour appearance. This Bronx-born musician, businessman and community activist is only 55, but after 40 years of performing he has decided he's had enough of the road. Let us hope he breaks his promise. The onetime bad boy now has a paunch and has gone gray, but he and his eight-piece band served up his catalogue with power and passion for 90 minutes.

Colon is best known for his pioneering recordings as a trombonist, songwriter, bandleader and producer in the 1970s with the likes of Ruben Blades, Celia Cruz and Hector Lavoe. Although he has experimented over the years with jazz and rock touches, onstage he largely stuck to the fast-tempoed Afro-Latino approach that he filled dance floors with in his prime. On selections including "Idilio" and "La Banda," a red-cheeked Colon feverishly blew his horn and then sang, accompanied by two other trombonists, a sax player and musicians on piano, acoustic bass, timbales, bongos and congas. Crowded together on a small stage, Colon and company created a multi-layered joyous racket of call-and-response vocals, booming brass and intricate beats without their sound's ever descending into chaos.

Colon has long been as interested in melody as the clave beat, and he uses bright vocal choruses adapted from rural Puerto Rican standards. This do-it-all artist showed that he is not bad as a vocalist on the countryish "Ares de Navidad" and lush "Periodico de Ayer." The rap-influenced genre of reggaeton is the Spanish-language sound of the moment, but the vibrant salsa of Colon's ensemble remains anything but passe.

-- Steve Kiviat

Mustafa Akbar

Aquick rendition of "Up for the Down Stroke" never hurt anybody, but there are better ways for a band to add Clintonian touches to a show. At the Black Cat on Friday night, singer Mustafa Akbar gave a nod to the founding father of '70s psychedelic funk by flanking himself with two red-clad, winged, afro-sporting women who looked as if they'd jumped off of the album cover for "One Nation Under a Groove."

The ladies followed choreographed moves that made them seem like robotic mannequins as the local funk/soul vocalist and his band, the Chosen, stirred up the audience with songs mostly taken from Akbar's 2003 disc, "Natural High." The Rastafarian leanings of the record's title track, with its chorus, "It's okay if you wanna get high, but you don't have to get so low," were coolly inspirational, and the easygoing groove of the dance song "Shake (The Party's Live)" was thickened by a breathy falsetto from Akbar -- who has appeared on projects of ESL drum 'n' bass act Thunderball and legendary hip-hop icon Afrika Bambaataa.

Akbar, who performed with rapper Cy Young and singer Muhsinah, was able to move the small crowd during his lively set, but as hard as he tried, he couldn't get the angels, whom he called his "painted ladies," to break form.

The women remained stoic and stiff even during "Dark Berry," when Akbar sang about the beauty of a "statuesque princess" with "mahogany skin" just inches from their faces. They finally succumbed to the rhythm during "I Want U 2," when Akbar's guttural wailing spurred them to rock and sway with the music.

-- Sarah Godfrey