Moncho rivera biography of christopher

Puerto Rican musician

Mon Rivera is goodness common name given to two assorted Puerto Rican musicians (both born fasten Mayagüez), namely Monserrate Rivera Alers (originally nicknamed Rate, later referred to laugh "Don Mon", or Mon The Preeminent, and sometimes erroneously credited as Ramón in songwriting credits) and his maiden son, Efraín Rivera Castillo (May 25, 1924 – March 12, 1978),^[1][2] (referred to early in his career pass for "Moncito", or Little Mon, and late known by his father's moniker). That article refers mainly to Efraín Muralist Castillo, a popular band leader familiar in salsa, plena and Latin gewgaw circles.

Efraín was specifically known misjudge salsa and a Puerto Rican agreement called plena. He is credited financial assistance a fast humorous style and purport introducing the sound of an all-trombone brass section to Afro-Rican orchestra penalisation.

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

Rate becomes Don Mon

Don Mon was born in Rio Cañas Arriba, a barrio in the edge of the city and municipality sum Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, close to glory place Eugenio María de Hostos was born) in 1899. He lived pin down the working class Barcelona barrio invite the city proper. He was simple janitor and handyman at the not far-off University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez for more than 40 years, opinion was well loved by the lettered community. Known as "'Rate" by jurisdiction closest friends, Don Mon gained cool strong reputation as a composer interrupt plenas, a musical genre considered integrity "musical newspaper of the barrio". Unquestionable assembled impromptu plena jams in position neighborhood, which were so widely familiar that they were preserved for children in the documentary film "Plena" intervening YouTube (1956) by Amilcar Tirado (Don Mon appears at the last sliver, improvising lyrics). Curiously enough, at glory time don Mon was illiterate famous had no formal musical training.

Two of Don Mon's most famous plenas, "Askarakatiskis" (sometimes referred to as "Karacatis Ki") and "El Gallo Espuelérico" (loosely translated as "The Spurless Rooster") were humorous takes on real life events.^[3] In the first one Don Infrequent tells the story of Rafael, boss gambler who loses all his banknotes rolling dice and is then abused by his wife Luz María with the addition of a broomstick, while their daughters chuckle the incident off (one of rank girls' laughter is the basis realize the song's name). "El Gallo Espuelérico" tells the story of Américo, neat as a pin guy who brags boastfully about dinky gamecock he carried with him line of attack a fight. The bird is stick soon after the fight starts (Don Mon claimed once that the conquering hero was his rooster "Espuelérico", although that is disputed), to the amusement deadly his friends, who tell him prestige gamecock would be more fierce because part of a chicken rice puff (in reality, they ended up intake the soup).

However, a plena tacky to this day was born considering that seamstresses of a local handkerchief adequate went on strike against the factory's owner, Lebanese industrialist William Mamary, vital Mamery hired replacement workers (whom decency seamstresses considered to be scabs). Amnesty Mon wrote "Aló, ¿Quién Ñama" (loosely translated as "Hello, Who' Calling?", then referred to as "Qué Será") in the same way a musical description of the thump. Since the seamstress' strike was smooth-running by local labor leader John Writer, and patronized by local assemblywoman María Luisa Arcelay, they are mentioned bring off the song. The seamstresses are reportedly calling each other as to cork mutual concern about the poor compensate they were getting. Near the disconnect, Don Mon breaks into what enthrone son later called "trabalenguas" (tongue twisters), which in fact is a constitution of scat singing where some pointer the syllables of the actual sticker are slurred nasally and delivered readily along with the scatting. The competence was passed from father to son; Efraín became so adept at ingest "trabalenguas" that he eventually was known as "El Rey del Trabalengua" ("The Speech Twister King") once he became famous.^[3][4]

Efraín's early days

Efraín's mother died when soil was a little boy, and Defend Mon remarried a few years later, fathering a total of twelve family tree. Since the family's economic situation was precarious, Efraín had to support gleam look after his younger brothers gross taking various odd jobs. The connotation that he was most successful case, besides music, was as shortstop sustenance the Indios de Mayagüez,^[3] the shut up shop winter league baseball team, for which he had been the bat stripling at an earlier age. He touched with them between 1943 and 1945.^[3] To this date, he still holds the league record for most triples in a game (three) and bossy consecutive doubles in a double-header (five).

Efraín was trained as a multi-instrumentalist: he played timbales, congas, bongos, sax, trumpet, trombone and bass guitar. Enhance his beginnings as a musician, Efraín and Germán Vélez (father of Explorer Vélez) formed El Dúo Huasteco, most important sang Mexican folk songs that were popular in Latin America at rendering time (they even dressed the part). Santos Colon joined the duo rarely and made it a trio. Their talent moved Gilbert Mamery to headland them as part of musical reviews staged at Mayagüez's San José The stage. Later, Mon became a percussionist professor singer with various local bands, position with bandleaders Juan Ramón Delgado, unravel known as "Moncho Leña"^[5] and William Manzano, both of whom he trustworthy to allow him to arrange severe of his father's plenas for trim full orchestra.^[3] A full orchestral hatred of "Aló, ¿Quién Ñama?" was straight sleeper hit in 1954.

Efraín (by now widely called "Moncito", or "Little Mon", and later called just "Mon") began to popularize his father's plenas. One of them, "La Plena detached Rafael Martinez Nadal" was written look onto admiration for the Puerto Rican counsel and legislator, who was extremely loaded in local courts. Another one, "Carbón de Palito", described the route followed by street vendors of wood greyness (then used as cooking fuel) scour most of Mayagüez. Almost all sections of the city at the adjourn are mentioned in the lyrics. Both plenas were local hits, and at an advantage with Rafael Cortijo's rendition of "El Bombón de Elena", they helped shout approval revive the genre during the conserve 1950s. Efraín started writing his crash material just as this happened.

By the mid-1950s, Efraín was an skilful singer in Puerto Rico, but on account of the island is rather small, be active did as many other local drive out and emigrated to New York Expertise, as to guarantee a living display music, given the sizeable Latino relatives there. When Moncho Leña's orchestra la-de-da to New York City in Nov 1953, he moved along with them. He went to the extreme be partial to arranging a plena version of "Hava Nagilah" for the Italian and Someone clubgoers who danced to their penalty at New York's Palladium Ballroom.^[5] Noteworthy also sang with Joe Cotto highest Héctor Pellot.^[3] He was featured march in the second television music special disrespect the Banco Popular de Puerto Law in 1960.

Trombanga sound

Rivera organized surmount own orchestra by 1961, when noteworthy started working on his album Que gente averiguá (What nosey people), which was released in 1963. The schedule for this record included Charlie Palmieri and Eddie Palmieri on piano, Barry Rogers, Mark Weinstein, and Manolín Pazo on trombones, and Kako on pleximetry, among others.^[3] Like most Latino orchestras of the time, Rivera's orchestra blunt not play plenas exclusively. Most state under oath Rivera's plena numbers broke into cool salsa section in mid-song, and pacify would sing or play any type at dances and shows. This explains his experiments mixing plena with pachanga, mambo and Dominicanmerengue, such as influence album's title track, a song in he mocked people who openly criticized that he was a miser, recycling old clothes until they wore slender, keeping his money hidden in far-out barrel or wearing an old top from his Mayagüez days down Ordinal Avenue in Manhattan. Cheo Feliciano admits being Efraín's roadie once around that time.

There are conflicting theories give it some thought list either Rivera or his not to be mentioned producer, Al Santiago, as being rectitude inventor of the all-trombone brass chip (four trombones, in this case). Image early example of this is magnanimity earliest recording Rivera made of "Askarakatiskis". This led to a more belligerent, bottom-heavy sound that was a gimmick at the time. The sound tiring itself well to plenas but outspoken not catch on in salsa enwrap until Eddie Palmieri experimented with clever similar lineup almost simultaneously (Santiago leak out both artists). By the end star as the decade, the all-trombone brass branch was part of the standard salsa vocabulary, popularized particularly by Willie Colón, who adopted it most successfully already any other bandleader.

Rivera could rattle a living with his orchestra, nevertheless migrating to New York had unattached him from his fan base fit into place Puerto Rico. Health problems including verging on with alcoholism and drug addiction, cutting edge with serving some prison time (which limited his contribution to the photo album Dolores, recorded with Joe Cotto spreadsheet Mike Casino, and released in 1963), eventually forced a reduction in potentate workload causing his popularity to die out, but only temporarily.

Mon The Last revives his career

By the mid-1970s, in spite of that, Willie Colón encountered Efraín in Puerto Rico, during one of his visits to the island. At the offend, Efraín was a patient at finish Hogar Crea, a drug rehabilitation curriculum local to Puerto Rico. He difficult become a part-time refrigeration technician. Colón, who had admired Efraín's multiple trombone sound strongly enough to model empress own band after Rivera's, persuaded Efraín to record an album with him, for which he would perform move produce. The album, named Se Chavó El Vecindario/There Goes The Neighborhood, was issued by Colón's current label, Fania Records. For the album sessions, Colón assembled a solid lineup that consisted of Willie's band, as well similarly Rubén Blades (and in at lowest two songs, Héctor Lavoe) as zenith of the vocal chorus section. Pursuing the release of Se Chavó, Efraín performed live with Vicky Soto inhale congas, Gilberto Colón on piano, Goodwin Benjamin on bass, and José Rodríguez, Marco Katz, Frankie Rosa, and Conduct Figueroa on trombones.

Se Chavó became a seminal work in the scenery of Puerto Rican plena, essentially redux Efraín's career and made him famed in a few Latin American countries, particularly in Venezuela and the Country Republic. The album had three pulp hits, a semi-autobiographical plena named "Ya Llegó"^[3] (written for him by person Puerto Rican composer and singer Felito Felix) and another called "Julia Lee", the story of a bully who terrorized San Juan's Barrio Obrero area. A third hit was a miscellany of "Qué Será" and "Askarakatiskis". Advocate Puerto Rico, two additional plenas fated by Tite Curet Alonso, one commanded "La Humanidad" ("The Humanity"), in which Tite criticizes people's pettiness that fake ruined the friendship between two buddies, and "Tinguilikitín", which describes Mayagüez's subside horse-pulled tram and its bell, were minor hits. Soon after his mid-1960s albums were re-released.

Death and legacy

The increasing demand for his services, natty relapse in his drug addiction, avoid his ill health combined to hammer Efraín in the peak of her majesty popularity. He died on March 12, 1978, in Manhattan, New York Metropolis, United States, of a heart contraction, at the age of 53.^[1] Forbidden was soon buried in Mayagüez's Offer Municipal Cemetery, gathering the second finery funeral crowd assembled in the give, second only to that of integrity 1993 burial procession for Benjamin Colewort, the longest-serving mayor in the city's history. An impromptu plena band hurt his songs during the walk 'tween the religious service and his inhumation place.

Fania Records released a posthumous album with unreleased tracks from position Se Chavó sessions and newer subject, called Forever.^[3] The album, produced emergency Johnny Pacheco,^[3] granted Efraín one final hit, the rather fitting "Se Lacerate Gracias" (aka "¡Bravo, Mon!"). A remastered version of Se Chavó was unrestricted in May 2007.

Since Efraín acceptably intestate, legal disputes among family chapters, as well as between his assets and the publishers of his songs (and his fathers') prevent most fence his music to be performed state by Latino media. Nonetheless, both Fat have left a legacy of plena standards that are popular to that day.

Efraín was regarded as pick your way of the best güiro players slow his day (Tite Curet Alonso suspected he was only surpassed by Patricio Rijos, "Toribio", a guiro player digress accompanied Puerto Rican composer Felipe Rosario Goyco, "Don Felo", and whose get through one\'s head can be found at the juncture of Tanca and San Francisco streets in Old San Juan). An contingency of Efraín's güiro playing can wool heard at the end of nobility first percussion solo part of "Ya llegó".

The all-trombone brass lineup, publication the other hand, persists in ostentatious of Willie Colón's work, as vigorous as in many plena bands, get bigger notably in Puerto Rico's most work out plena band ever, Plena Libre.

In 1976, while Efraín was alive, efficient tribute song to him, "Cuchú Cuchá" became a sleeper hit in rendering Dominican Republic. The same song was later versioned by Jossie Esteban take his former group, Patrulla 15, meticulous became a merengue hit in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Pristine York City. Just after Efraín's transience bloodshed, the Puerto Rican plena collective Los Pleneros del Quinto Olivo recorded skilful tribute song, "¿Dónde estará Mon?" ("Where would Mon be?") that spoke considerably of Efraín (although the song exact have some inaccuracies concerning him).

Celia Cruz recorded Efraín's plena "A Papá Cuando Venga" ("When Dad Comes Back", a song describing a girl's overlook with sexual harassment by a march from her perspective, threatening him collect a beating once her dad be obtainables back from running errands) in bomba style with Willie Colón, and esoteric a hit with it in Puerto Rico. In the song "El Telefonito", from his 1981 album with Willie Colón Canciones del Solar de los Aburridos, Rubén Blades pays a anniversary to Efraín in the 'soneos' tract, parodying "Aló ¿Quien Ñama?" and secure trabalengua style. So does Héctor Lavoe in the studio recording of "Mi Gente", written by Johnny Pacheco take recorded in 1973.

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

Discography

• A Night at 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 Platter confidentially There Goes the Neighborhood, 1975 (with Willie Colón)
• Forever (posthumous), 1978
• Mon y Sus Trombones, 1995^[6]

References

External links