Danny Rivera

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In 2009, Rivera sang “Madrigal,” “Tu pueblo es mi pueblo,” and “Amar o morir” before 1.2 million listeners in Havana (almost all of them wearing all white) at the Paz Sin Fronteras concert organized by Juanes; the concert was seen throughout the hemisphere and in Europe by hundreds of millions of television and online viewers, the biggest Latin music broadcast event ever.

His commitment to a style of song that expresses both personal and social love led him naturally to Cuba, where he has been a frequent visitor. In 2004 he inaugurated the Cátedra Internacional de Artes Plásticas y Música (International School of Plastic and Musical Arts) in Havana. In collaboration with the Cuban Artists and Writers Union (UNEAC), he made a documentary about Puerto Rican cultural traces in eastern Cuba, published in the book "Ecos Boricuas en el Oriente de Cuba". In 2008 he became a naturalized citizen of the Dominican Republic in recognition of his work with the “Dajaos” – the people of the Dajabón area, on both sides of the Dominican / Haitian border.

Danny made international news in the summer of 2001 when he spent thirty days in the US federal prison at Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, accused of civil disobedience in demonstrating for the withdrawal of the US Navy from the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Later that year his prison diary and poems were published in the book "Enamorado de la paz: Diario en la Cárcel Federal" (In Love with Peace: A Dairy at the Federal Prison).

He delved into the rich past of Puerto Rican music, something practically unheard of for Latin pop artists. He signed with the powerful Venezuelan label TH in 1980, and his albums during this period are considered classics, including "Alborada", "Serenata" (with a song that became a standard of his, Don Felo’s “Madrigal,”) and "Danza para mi pueblo", an album of Puerto Rican danzas. He subsequently began his own label, DNA, producing among other titles "Así cantaba Cheíto González", volumes 1 and 2, and an album of Tito Rodríguez’s ballads, "Inolvidable Tito". On 15 September 1987 he performed a spectacularly successful duo concert with Michel Camilo at the Centro de Bellas Artes in San Juan, called "Danny regresa a Ocho Puertas" (Danny returns to Ocho Puertas)

As his work became increasingly socially, spiritually, and historically conscious, he continued recording and touring internationally, but found himself less in step with the Latin music industry. Still, in the late 1980s he signed with Sony Music and recorded the successful album "Amar o morir", as well as "Subiendo y bajando" with Gilberto Santa Rosa, but increasingly he devoted himself to his social projects.

Danny Rivera is often called “the national voice of Puerto Rico,” but his magnificent, passionate way of singing is known all over the Spanish-speaking world. In Latin America, he has been a familiar face on television since 1968. Over the course of a career that reaches its fiftieth year in 2015, Rivera has recorded over seventy albums and is the only Puerto Rican to star at Carnegie Hall in four different decades (1979, 1989, 1999, 2010).

Danny Rivera (born 27 February 1945) is a singer and songwriter born in San Juan and whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is well known in Puerto Rico for his political activism. In 2008, Rivera acquired the Dominican Republic citizenship. After 12 years of work Danny Rivera and Nelson González in 2014 finished work putting new life into the classical bolero - in Spanish. Latin Luminaries Danny Rivera and Nelson González Hit the Heart of the Latin American Song Book on Obsesión (Release 25 March 2014)