by Antonio Mejías-Rentas
Cheo Feliciano
CELEBRATED SlNGERS: Six vocalists from the U.S., Spain and Latin America are this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipients selected by the Latin Recording Academy.
Awards will be presented Nov. 12 in Houston, a day before the Academy hands out its Latin Grammy awards.
The two U.S. singers are from Texas: three-time Grammy winner Vikki Carr, who was born in El Paso, and Houston-born Angelica Maria, who was raised south of the border and whose popularity as a singer and actress earned her the title of “La novia de Mexico”.
Recipients also include Puerto Rican singer Cheo Feliciano, a major figure of the 1 970s salsa explosion in New York. The native of Ponce is the only male among the six honorees.
Two of the singers are from South America: Argentina’s Estela Raval, known both as a soloist and as a member of the group Los 5 Latinos, and Brazil’s Astrud Gilberto, a leading voice of the bossa nova movement known for her recording of The Girl from Ipanema.
The sixth recipient is Spain’s María Dolores Pradera, a vocalist known for such classic singing styles as bolero, ronda and fado.
Angélica María
Along with the six Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Academy announced three musicians to receive its Trustees Award: Venezuelan singer and composer Simon Diaz, Cuban guitarist and composer Juanito Marquez and Jewish-American band~leader and keyboardist Larry Harlow, known in salsa circles as ‘’El Judío maravilloso”.
BACK TO SCHOOL: Last year’s top Latin AndradeGrammy winner Juan Luis Guerra says he’s returning to his Boston alma mater, this time as a teacher.
The Dominican singer-songwriter surprised fans last week by saying he called the Berklee College of Music and asked to start teaching classes next summer. He also hopes to enroll in courses as a student.
Vickki Carr
The 51-year~old musician graduated from Berkley in 1982 with a degree in jazz composition.
ONE LINERS: Mexican director Servando Gonáalez Hernandez, who worked in Hollywood films in the 1 960s, died Oct. 4 at age 85, reportedly a cancer victim: he is best remembered for fi Iming a 1968 student massacre in Mexico City, although his footage never screened publicly and disappeared shortly after it was shot… Univisi6n anchor Jorge Ramos will receive the Award for a Lifetime of Achievement in Hispanic Television Oct. 23, at the sixth annual Hispanic Television Summit in New York… and police in Corona, California, are investigating the theft of a video from the home of Jenni Rivera, in which the popular banda singer appears having sex with an unidentified man… Hispanic Link.
