Gilberto Santa Rosa: An Icon that will Last Forever

Gilberto Santa Rosa, who is also known as “The Salsa Gentleman” and was born in 1950 in Carolina, Puerto Rico, is considered to be, without a doubt, one of the best Salsa singers; however, he is also a bandleader.  In Carolina, he received his elementary and high-school education.  Later on, he got to be interested in music.  When he was 26 years old, he debuted as a backup singer in the Mario Ortiz Orchestra.  A short time after that, he was hired as a leader singer by La Grande Orchestra, with which he stayed for two years.  During this time, he met Elias Lopes, who was the one who helped him to polish Gilberto as a good artist.

Gilberto Santa Rosa is also well-known for having recorded with many music giants, including Tommy Olivencia, El Gran Combo and Willie Rosario.  Moreover, he was able to develop a very particular and personal feature which is improvisation.  This conferred him the possibility of having great success in singing not only tropical, but also romantic music.  In addition, Gilberto was the first tropical Salsa singer in performing at the Carnegie Hall Theater.  In 1990 he was awarded the Billboard Lo Nuestro Award for the Best Male Singer.  Five years later, he acted as Puerto Rico’s Good Will Ambassador in Japan.  There, he sang “Facing the Wind” in Japanese.

Gilberto Santa Rosa relies on an incredible long list of albums, all of them encompassing really good Salsa and romantic box office hits.  Among his most successful album, it is possible to find the one called Expresion including the famous single “Fulana” (What is her name), Romántico (2001), Viceversa (2002) which got to be a complete hit not only among the Latin America community in the U.S., but also in Latin America. Thus, Gilberto Santa Rosa will always be one of the most famed icons in the Latin American music, specifically, among the Salsa and Romantic music singers.