Rebeca Mauleón (born April 16, 1962) is an American pianist, composer, arranger and writer, specializing in
salsa
Salsa most often refers to:
* Salsa (Mexican cuisine), a variety of sauces used as condiments
* Salsa music, a popular style of Latin American music
* Salsa (dance), a Latin dance associated with Salsa music
Salsa or SALSA may also refer to:
A ...
and other
Latin American
Latin Americans ( es, Latinoamericanos; pt, Latino-americanos; ) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their diasporas are multi-eth ...
and
Afro-Caribbean music
Afro-Caribbean music is a broad term for music styles originating in the Caribbean from the African diaspora. These types of music usually have West African/Central African influence because of the presence and history of African people and their ...
.
Career
Mauleón was born in
Santa Monica
Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...
, California in 1962. She began her professional career in her teen years as a performer and recording artist, and worked with many musicians in a variety of musical genres. She has written several texts and articles about the history of Latin and Caribbean music, including ''Salsa Guidebook''.
Since her early twenties, she has performed and recorded with celebrities in the Latin and jazz music scenes, including
Tito Puente
Ernest Anthony Puente Jr. (April 20, 1923 – June 1, 2000), commonly known as Tito Puente, was an American musician, songwriter, bandleader, and record producer of Puerto Rican descent. He is best known for dance-oriented mambo and Latin jazz c ...
,
Carlos Santana
Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán (; born July 20, 1947) is an American guitarist who rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band Santana, which pioneered a fusion of Rock and roll and Latin American jazz. Its sound featured ...
conguero
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
Armando Peraza
Armando Peraza (May 30, 1924 – April 14, 2014) was a Latin jazz percussionist and a member of the rock band Santana. Peraza played congas, bongos, and timbales.
Biography
Early life
Born in Lawton Batista, Havana, Cuba in 1924 (although the b ...
Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson (April 24, 1937 – June 30, 2001) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than four decades, Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent l ...
,
Sheila E
Sheila Cecilia Escovedo (born December 12, 1957) better known under the stage name Sheila E., is an American percussionist and singer. She began her career in the mid-1970s as a percussionist and singer for The George Duke Band. After leaving t ...
,
Steve Winwood
Stephen Lawrence Winwood (born 12 May 1948) is an English musician, singer, and songwriter whose genres include blue-eyed soul, rhythm and blues, blues rock, and pop rock. Though primarily a keyboard player and vocalist prominent for his disti ...
,
Michael Nesmith
Robert Michael Nesmith or Mike Nesmith, (December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series ''The Monkees'' (1966â ...
and others, and as one of very few female band-leaders in Afro-Caribbean jazz.
As a producer, Mauleón has been involved in a wide array of music-related projects, from film and television documentaries to music software companies and instructional DVDs.
Her solo recordings – ''Round Trip,'' '' Latin Fire'' and ''Descarga en California'' – have attained top-ten status on Latin music industry charts. She has appeared at numerous national and international music festivals, including the Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Monterey Jazz and San Francisco Jazz Festivals.
As musical director of
Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman, September 11, 1943) is an American percussionist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 until February 19 ...
's Planet Drum ensemble, Mauleón has performed throughout the U.S., appearing at Woodstock in 1999 as well as on the Conan O'Brien and Regis and Kathy Lee shows. In 2001 she was the recipient of the
Meet the Composer
New Music USA is a new music organization formed by the merging of the American Music Center with Meet The Composer on November 8, 2011. The new organization retains the granting programs of the two former organizations as well as two media progra ...
New Residencies Award, and has also been a Sundance Composers fellow.
She is a professor of Latin American, Caribbean and jazz music as well as composition, and has taught at several universities around the world. Also, she has served as a musicological consultant to National Geographic. Mauleón was appointed Director of Education at SFJAZZ in 2011.
Rebeca's powerful style at the piano and her high-energy musical direction have been dubbed "visceral" (Billboard Magazine), "fiery" (Utne Reader), and critics have lauded her as "one of the hippest band-leaders in Latin music today" (Allmusic).
Milagro Milagro means "miracle" in Spanish.
Milagro may refer to:
Places:
*Milagro, Ecuador, a city
* Milagro Canton, Ecuador, of which the city is the canton seat
* Milagro River, Ecuador
*Milagro, Navarre, Spain, a town and municipality
* El Milagro, Q ...
'' (Polydor, 1992)
* Carlos "Patato" Valdez, ''Ritmo y Candela'' (Redwood, 1995)
* Steve Winwood, ''Junction Seven'' (Virgin, 1997)
: Eighty Years in the Mambo Kingdom," ''Bass Player'', March 2008
*"Andy GarcÃa puts Cuban music in the Spotlight," ''JazzTimes'', July/August 2006.
*''Muy Caliente'', Sher Music Co., 2000.
*"The Roots of Latin Music," ''GRAMMY Gateway'', December 1999.
*''101 Montunos'', Sher Music Co., 1999.
*"
: legado de la música afrocubana," ''Mix En Español'', June 1998.
*''The Latin Pianist'', Computer Software Program, ''PG Music'', 1997.
*''The Latin Real Book'', Sher Music Co., 1997. (Co-Editor)
*"The Heart of Salsa: Exploring Afro-Caribbean Piano Styles," ''Keyboard Magazine'', January 1996.
*"