Nelson Pinedo: El Almirante del Ritmo

Nelson Pinedo — "El Almirante del Ritmo," the Admiral of Rhythm — was a guaracha and bolero singer whose warm, swinging voice made him the only Colombian ever to front La Sonora Matancera, the Cuban orchestra that fed Latin America's dance floors a repertoire of guaracha, bolero, son, mambo, and chachachá for more than half a century.^[1]

From Barranquilla to Havana

Born Napoleón Nelson Pinedo Fedullo on 10 February 1928 in the working-class Rebolo neighborhood of Barranquilla, on Colombia's Caribbean coast, he held a string of ordinary jobs — office clerk, radio operator — and sang with several Colombian orchestras through the late 1940s and early 1950s before music became his living.^[1] On 9 October 1953 he made his debut with La Sonora Matancera, the Cuban ensemble founded in Matanzas in 1924 and steered for more than five decades by guitarist-producer Rogelio Martínez — the same band that launched Celia Cruz and a long line of Caribbean stars, among them Bienvenido Granda, Daniel Santos, Leo Marini, and Alberto Beltrán.^[1]

A Cuban band, a Colombian repertoire

Pinedo's swinging delivery quickly made him a favorite: his recording of "Me voy pa' La Habana" entered Latin American musical history, and in 1954 Havana honored him as its best foreign artist.^[1] He had joined on an unusual condition — that he be free to record works by Colombian composers such as José Benito Barros and Rafael Escalona — turning the world's most famous Cuban band into a vehicle for his homeland's music.^[1][2] Across his roughly five-year tenure he folded Colombian forms — porros, cumbias, and mapalés — into the Matancera book, many re-dressed in Cuban rhythms such as the bolero; among the Colombian songs he carried abroad was Álvaro Dalmar's bolero "Bésame Morenita," later ranked No. 26 on El Tiempo's list of the fifty greatest Colombian songs of all time.^[1]

Why it matters

Pinedo broke a barrier as the first and only Colombian to sing with La Sonora Matancera, and in doing so became one of the earliest Colombian artists to project his country's music onto the international stage.^[1] A beloved interpreter of the guaracha and bolero, "El Almirante del Ritmo" remained a cherished figure of Caribbean dance music until 27 October 2016, when he died in Valencia, Venezuela, two weeks after suffering a stroke, at the age of 88.^[2]