Melina Almodovar

Melina Almodóvar (born Ilsa Melina Almodóvar Sánchez in Santurce, Puerto Rico), also known as La Muñeca de la Salsa and La Chica Del Bling, is a Puerto Rican salsa singer, songwriter, dancer, and entertainer. Known for her high-energy performances and salsa dancing skills, she combines old-school salsa moves with contemporary styles of dancing and singing. She is also credited with establishing the first successful salsa orchestra in the Southern United States, Orquesta Caliente.

Almodóvar was born on June 3, 1979, in Santurce, a barrio of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her family split its time between Levittown and Cataño, Puerto Rico. Her parents, Ilsa Milagros Sánchez Rodríguez and José Luis Almodóvar Hernández, divorced when she was one year old. Her father married Evangeline Garland five years after the divorce, and they had two daughters, Gretchen Evangeline Almodóvar Garland and Carina Cristina Almodóvar Garland.

Almodóvar's father was a bolero singer and, along with his brothers, had a small group called Boleros y Algo Mas. They traveled around Puerto Rico playing music inspired by José José, Marco Antonio Muñiz, Raúl di Blasio, and Camilo Sesto; Almodóvar was named after one of Sesto's hit songs, "Melina". Her mother was a Flamenco dancer who later worked in medicine. Her maternal grandmother, Elia, was a sculptor, painter, and poet who fueled Almodóvar's artistic interests, taking her to plays and concerts from an early age.

After Almodóvar's father died in 1989, her mother married a man from Memphis, Tennessee, and moved the family there. Almodóvar has described her introduction to the United States as a "culture shock" and said that it was hard for her to make friends. She turned to music for solace, and the move became a frequent subject of her songs. Soon after, she received a cassette of songs by Rubén Blades and Celia Cruz as a Christmas gift from her grandmother and discovered that she had a natural ability for tropical music, salsa, and merengue. She also started listening to Memphis musicians such as Al Green, Otis Redding, and The Staple Singers, and she befriended record producer Willie Mitchell's grandchildren, who attended Houston High School with her in Germantown, Tennessee.

Almodóvar was accepted to Berklee College of Music but did not attend. She worked for a short time as a translator and assistant for the Memphis City Council as she briefly considered a career in politics. Later, she studied music performance at the University of Memphis.

At sixteen, Almodóvar started performing around Memphis with bands from various genres, including rock, blues, jazz, and gospel. She was soon approached by a group of music professors from the University of Memphis to start a salsa band. She agreed and was given a repertoire of salsa classics. The band, Orquesta Caliente, traveled across the South to play at events like the King Biscuit Blues Festival and the Beale Street Music Festival. It was the first Latin band to play on Beale Street, and was nominated for Best New Band and Best New Artist at the 1999 Grammy Awards.

Almodóvar began traveling to Nashville on the weekends to perform and write songs with other musicians. However, she soon decided to focus on salsa music and moved back to Puerto Rico. She traveled all over the island, listening to music, experimenting with sounds, and learning how to sing and dance salsa.

"La Chica de San Juan" became the title track of her 2003 album Rumba's SalsaSoul Delight. The album reflected a mixture of tropical and soul rhythms, and employed a Spanglish style of language that emerged with the influx of Latinos to the United States. Almodóvar returned to the United States to promote it. Upon her return, Ramses Arraya—the percussionist for the Costa Rican band Editus, which backed Rubén Blades on his two Grammy-nominated records—asked her to perform on a record he was producing, "Corazón en Clave" (Heart in Clave). She traveled to Miami, Florida, to record the song "Yo Soy la Rumba" (I Am the Rumba), and soon relocated there permanently.

"I am Puerto Rican, and Puerto Rico lives in me, in everything I do," Almodóvar said. "Memphis is also a part of me, and it makes me the artist I am, but Miami is where it all comes together for me. The mixture of all the beautiful peoples of our Latin American countries, it fuels my soul."

In Miami, Almodóvar became a sought-after performer, opening for artists like Tommy Olivencia and La Sonora Ponceña. She has also played with Larry Harlow and Tito Puente Jr., and is part of the Salsa Factory Bunch project by Bobby Cruz. She has also produced the annual Hollywood Salsa Festival in Hollywood, Florida.

• Rumba's SalsaSoul Delight (2003)
• Corazón en Clave (2005)
• Lista Pa Impresionar (2007)
• La Muñeca de la Salsa y Mas (2013)
• Pasión y Salsa Live (2015)

• "Melina Almodovar". AllMusic. Retrieved 4 July 2016.