page_title: Melina Almodovar
section_title: Career beginnings
hierarchical_section_title: Melina Almodovar / Career beginnings
caption_attribution_description: English: Orquesta Caliente Newspaper Clipping
context_page_description: Melina Almodóvar, 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.
context_section_description: 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."
caption: Orquesta Caliente Newspaper Clipping
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