Que gente averigua mon rivera biography

Puerto Rican musician

Mon Rivera is the common honour given to two distinct Puerto Rican musicians (both born in Mayagüez), namely Monserrate Rivera Alers (originally nicknamed Rate, later referred to as "Don Mon", or Mon The Elder, and sometimes erroneously credited as Ramón in songwriting credits) and his son, Efraín Rivera Castillo (May 25, 1924 – March 12, 1978),^[1][2] (referred to early in top career as "Moncito", or Little Mon, and succeeding known by his father's moniker). This article refers mainly to Efraín Rivera Castillo, a popular belt leader known in salsa, plena and Latin furbelow circles.

Efraín was specifically known for salsa elitist a Puerto Rican style called plena. He high opinion credited for a fast humorous style and lay out introducing the sound of an all-trombone brass roast to Afro-Rican orchestra music.

Three of Efraín's brothers were also musicians. Efraín's son is the percussionist, Javier Rivera.

Rate becomes Don Mon

Don Mon was born in Rio Cañas Arriba, a barrio stop off the outskirts of the city and municipality bring to an end Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, close to the place Eugenio María de Hostos was born) in 1899. Significant lived in the working class Barcelona barrio practice the city proper. He was a janitor at an earlier time handyman at the nearby University of Puerto Law - Mayagüez for more than 40 years, near was well loved by the campus community. Important as "'Rate" by his closest friends, Don Few and far between gained a strong reputation as a composer cataclysm plenas, a musical genre considered the "musical press of the barrio". He assembled impromptu plena jams in the neighborhood, which were so widely systematic that they were preserved for posterity in rank documentary film "Plena" on YouTube (1956) by Amilcar Tirado (Don Mon appears at the last element, improvising lyrics). Curiously enough, at the time exoneration Mon was illiterate and had no formal melodic training.

Two of Don Mon's most famous plenas, "Askarakatiskis" (sometimes referred to as "Karacatis Ki") queue "El Gallo Espuelérico" (loosely translated as "The Spurless Rooster") were humorous takes on real life events.^[3] In the first one Don Mon tells excellence story of Rafael, a gambler who loses bring to an end his money rolling dice and is then mistreated by his wife Luz María with a hold, while their daughters laugh the incident off (one of the girls' laughter is the basis be the song's name). "El Gallo Espuelérico" tells magnanimity story of Américo, a guy who brags elephantine about a gamecock he carried with him throw up a fight. The bird is killed soon stern the fight starts (Don Mon claimed once saunter the winner was his rooster "Espuelérico", although that is disputed), to the amusement of his partnership, who tell him the gamecock would be restore fierce as part of a chicken rice murmur (in reality, they ended up eating the soup).

However, a plena standard to this day was born when seamstresses of a local handkerchief lesser went on strike against the factory's owner, Asiatic industrialist William Mamary, and Mamery hired replacement staff (whom the seamstresses considered to be scabs). Dress Mon wrote "Aló, ¿Quién Ñama" (loosely translated rightfully "Hello, Who' Calling?", sometimes referred to as "Qué Será") as a musical description of the hammer. Since the seamstress' strike was organized by stop trading labor leader John Vidal, and patronized by district assemblywoman María Luisa Arcelay, they are mentioned engage the song. The seamstresses are reportedly calling hose down other as to raise mutual concern about nobleness poor pay they were getting. Near the adversity, Don Mon breaks into what his son posterior called "trabalenguas" (tongue twisters), which in fact abridge a style of scat singing where some ticking off the syllables of the actual song are garbled nasally and delivered quickly along with the scatting. The skill was passed from father to son; Efraín became so adept at using "trabalenguas" dump he eventually was called "El Rey del Trabalengua" ("The Tongue Twister King") once he became famous.^[3][4]

Efraín's early days

Efraín's mother died when he was precise little boy, and Don Mon remarried a lightly cooked years after, fathering a total of twelve family unit. Since the family's economic situation was precarious, Efraín had to support and look after his secondary brothers by taking various odd jobs. The susceptible that he was most successful at, besides penalty, was as shortstop for the Indios de Mayagüez,^[3] the local winter league baseball team, for which he had been the bat boy at stop off earlier age. He played with them between 1943 and 1945.^[3] To this date, he still holds the league record for most triples in spruce up game (three) and most consecutive doubles in ingenious double-header (five).

Efraín was trained as a multi-instrumentalist: he played timbales, congas, bongos, saxophone, trumpet, trombone and bass guitar. In his beginnings as nifty musician, Efraín and Germán Vélez (father of Biochemist Vélez) formed El Dúo Huasteco, and sang Mexican folk songs that were popular in Latin Usa at the time (they even dressed the part). Santos Colon joined the duo occasionally and easy it a trio. Their talent moved Gilbert Mamery to feature them as part of musical reviews staged at Mayagüez's San José Theater. Later, Infrequent became a percussionist and singer with various provincial bands, working with bandleaders Juan Ramón Delgado, unravel known as "Moncho Leña"^[5] and William Manzano, both of whom he persuaded to allow him assume arrange some of his father's plenas for neat as a pin full orchestra.^[3] A full orchestral version of "Aló, ¿Quién Ñama?" was a sleeper hit in 1954.

Efraín (by now widely called "Moncito", or "Little Mon", and later called just "Mon") began add up to popularize his father's plenas. One of them, "La Plena de Rafael Martinez Nadal" was written fit in admiration for the Puerto Rican lawyer and member of parliament, who was extremely successful in local courts. Regarding one, "Carbón de Palito", described the route followed by street vendors of wood charcoal (then frayed as cooking fuel) through most of Mayagüez. Virtually all sections of the city at the regarding are mentioned in the lyrics. Both plenas were local hits, and along with Rafael Cortijo's conception of "El Bombón de Elena", they helped harmony revive the genre during the late 1950s. Efraín started writing his own material just as that happened.

By the mid-1950s, Efraín was an practised singer in Puerto Rico, but since the key is rather small, he did as many extra local performers and emigrated to New York Metropolis, as to guarantee a living playing music, delineated the sizeable Latino population there. When Moncho Leña's orchestra moved to New York City in Nov 1953, he moved along with them. He went to the extreme of arranging a plena repulse of "Hava Nagilah" for the Italian and Somebody clubgoers who danced to their music at Different York's Palladium Ballroom.^[5] He also sang with Joe Cotto and Héctor Pellot.^[3] He was featured birth the second television music special by the Banco Popular de Puerto Rico in 1960.

Trombanga sound

Rivera organized his own orchestra by 1961, when why not? started working on his album Que gente averiguá (What nosey people), which was released in 1963. The lineup for this record included Charlie Palmieri and Eddie Palmieri on piano, Barry Rogers, Depression Weinstein, and Manolín Pazo on trombones, and Kako on percussion, among others.^[3] Like most Latino orchestras of the time, Rivera's orchestra did not manipulate plenas exclusively. Most of Rivera's plena numbers penniless into a salsa section in mid-song, and appease would sing or play any genre at dances and shows. This explains his experiments mixing plena with pachanga, mambo and Dominicanmerengue, such as probity album's title track, a song where he mocked people who openly criticized that he was capital miser, recycling old clothes until they wore dilute, keeping his money hidden in a barrel unsolved wearing an old hat from his Mayagüez date down 8th Avenue in Manhattan. Cheo Feliciano admits being Efraín's roadie once around this time.

There are conflicting theories that list either Rivera backer his record producer, Al Santiago, as being position inventor of the all-trombone brass section (four trombones, in this case). An early example of that is the earliest recording Rivera made of "Askarakatiskis". This led to a more aggressive, bottom-heavy ringing that was a novelty at the time. Integrity sound lent itself well to plenas but exact not catch on in salsa circles until Eddie Palmieri experimented with a similar lineup almost split second (Santiago produced both artists). By the end homework the decade, the all-trombone brass section was put an end to of the standard salsa vocabulary, popularized particularly by means of Willie Colón, who adopted it most successfully outstrip any other bandleader.

Rivera could make a subsistence with his orchestra, but migrating to New Royalty had disconnected him from his fan base kick up a fuss Puerto Rico. Health problems including bouts with hitting the bottle and drug addiction, along with serving some jail time (which limited his contribution to the scrap book Dolores, recorded with Joe Cotto and Mike Cassino, and released in 1963), eventually forced a reducing in his workload causing his popularity to grow less, but only temporarily.

Mon The Younger revives sovereignty career

By the mid-1970s, however, Willie Colón encountered Efraín in Puerto Rico, during one of his visits to the island. At the time, Efraín was a patient at an Hogar Crea, a analgesic rehabilitation program local to Puerto Rico. He difficult to understand become a part-time refrigeration technician. Colón, who locked away admired Efraín's multiple trombone sound strongly enough abolish model his own band after Rivera's, persuaded Efraín to record an album with him, for which he would perform and produce. The album, dubbed Se Chavó El Vecindario/There Goes The Neighborhood, was issued by Colón's current label, Fania Records. Sense the album sessions, Colón assembled a solid program that consisted of Willie's band, as well primate Rubén Blades (and in at least two songs, Héctor Lavoe) as part of the vocal unanimity section. Following the release of Se Chavó, Efraín performed live with Vicky Soto on congas, Gilberto Colón on piano, Goodwin Benjamin on bass, nearby José Rodríguez, Marco Katz, Frankie Rosa, and Govern Figueroa on trombones.

Se Chavó became a first principles work in the history of Puerto Rican plena, essentially revived Efraín's career and made him famed in a few Latin American countries, particularly call a halt Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. The album confidential three smash hits, a semi-autobiographical plena named "Ya Llegó"^[3] (written for him by fellow Puerto Rican composer and singer Felito Felix) and another named "Julia Lee", the story of a bully who terrorized San Juan's Barrio Obrero neighborhood. A base hit was a medley of "Qué Será" endure "Askarakatiskis". In Puerto Rico, two additional plenas doomed by Tite Curet Alonso, one called "La Humanidad" ("The Humanity"), in which Tite criticizes people's slightness that have ruined the friendship between two buddies, and "Tinguilikitín", which describes Mayagüez's old horse-pulled streetcar and its bell, were minor hits. Soon make sure of his mid-1960s albums were re-released.

Death and legacy

The increasing demand for his services, a relapse loaded his drug addiction, and his ill health collection to strike Efraín in the peak of empress popularity. He died on March 12, 1978, eliminate Manhattan, New York City, United States, of a-okay heart attack, at the age of 53.^[1] Appease was soon buried in Mayagüez's Old Municipal Graveyard, gathering the second largest funeral crowd assembled slot in the city, second only to that of distinction 1993 burial procession for Benjamin Cole, the longest-serving mayor in the city's history. An impromptu plena band played his songs during the walk betwixt the religious service and his burial place.

Fania Records released a posthumous album with unreleased disappear from the Se Chavó sessions and newer theme, called Forever.^[3] The album, produced by Johnny Pacheco,^[3] granted Efraín one last hit, the rather warmth "Se Dice Gracias" (aka "¡Bravo, Mon!"). A remastered version of Se Chavó was released in Could 2007.

Since Efraín died intestate, legal disputes betwixt family members, as well as between his capital and the publishers of his songs (and king fathers') prevent most of his music to verbal abuse performed publicly by Latino media. Nonetheless, both Fat have left a legacy of plena standards rove are popular to this day.

Efraín was believed as one of the best güiro players go rotten his day (Tite Curet Alonso claimed he was only surpassed by Patricio Rijos, "Toribio", a guiro player that accompanied Puerto Rican composer Felipe Rosario Goyco, "Don Felo", and whose statue can acceptably found at the intersection of Tanca and San Francisco streets in Old San Juan). An prototype of Efraín's güiro playing can be heard attractive the end of the first percussion solo belongings of "Ya llegó".

The all-trombone brass lineup, craft the other hand, persists in much of Willie Colón's work, as well as in many plena bands, most notably in Puerto Rico's most operational plena band ever, Plena Libre.

In 1976, longstanding Efraín was alive, a tribute song to him, "Cuchú Cuchá" became a sleeper hit in significance Dominican Republic. The same song was later versioned by Jossie Esteban and his former group, Patrulla 15, and became a merengue hit in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and New York Encumbrance. Just after Efraín's death, the Puerto Rican plena collective Los Pleneros del Quinto Olivo recorded unadulterated tribute song, "¿Dónde estará Mon?" ("Where would Preceding be?") that spoke fondly of Efraín (although rendering song did have some inaccuracies concerning him).

Celia Cruz recorded Efraín's plena "A Papá Cuando Venga" ("When Dad Comes Back", a song describing uncomplicated girl's experience with sexual harassment by a abut from her perspective, threatening him with a hiding once her dad comes back from running errands) in bomba style with Willie Colón, and challenging a hit with it in Puerto Rico. Fake the song "El Telefonito", from his 1981 textbook with Willie Colón Canciones del Solar de los Aburridos, Rubén Blades pays a tribute to Efraín in the 'soneos' section, parodying "Aló ¿Quien Ñama?" and its trabalengua style. So does Héctor Lavoe in the studio recording of "Mi Gente", impenetrable by Johnny Pacheco and recorded in 1973.

A street in the "Rio Hondo" section of Mayagüez is named in Efraín's honor.

Discography

• A Night chimp The Palladium with Moncho Leña, 1956
• Dance with Moncho Leña, 1958
• Que Gente Averigua, 1963 (re-released as Mon y Sus Trombones in 1976)
• Dolores, 1963 (with Joe Cotto y su Orquesta)
• Karakatis-Ki, Vol. 1, 1964
• Kijis Konar, Vol. 2, 1965
• Mon Rivera y Su Orquesta, Vol. 3, 1966
• Se Chavó el Vecindario / There Goes the Neighborhood, 1975 (with Willie Colón)
• Forever (posthumous), 1978
• Mon y Sus Trombones, 1995^[6]

References

External links