Biography
Manny Oquendo (January 1, 1931 – March 25, 2009) was an American percussionist of Puerto Rican descent. His main instruments were bongos and timbales. [See: "Timbale Demonstration" (Manny Oquendo) and "The Martillo Pattern" (Manny Oquendo).] Oquendo's timbale solos were famous for their tastefully sparse, straight forward "tipico" phrasing. His solos also incorporated the rhythmic language of the folkloric quinto, the lead drum of rumba.
Oquendo grew up in New York, and began studying percussion in 1945. He worked in the bands of tropical and Latin music ensembles such as Carlos Valero, Luis del Campo, Juan "El Boy" Torres, Chano Pozo, Jose Budet, Juanito Sanabria, Marcelino Guerra, Jose Curbelo, and Pupi Campo. In 1950, he became the bongo player for Tito Puente. Following this he played with Tito Rodriquez in 1954 and Vincentico Valdes in 1955. He worked freelance in New York before joining Eddie Palmieri's La Perfecta orchestra in 1962, where he helped develop the New York-style mozambique rhythm. He co-led Conjunto Libre (later simply Libre), with bassist Andy Gonzalez, from 1974, and had a worldwide hit with "Little Sunflower" in 1983.
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
