Porfi Jiménez

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Porfirio Antonio Jiménez Núñez (born 16 February 1928) is a Dominican-Venezuelan Latin music composer, arranger, and bandleader.

Jiménez is a native of Hato Mayor Province. His father died when Porfí was three years old. His mother gave him a trumpet when he was eight years old; he began playing the instrument at his school functions in 1940 and two years later he turned professional.

Jiménez was 26 years old when he arrived in Caracas, Venezuela. He began performing with a variety of orchestras, including Rafael Minaya, Pedro José Belisario, Billo's Caracas Boys, Los Peniques and Chucho Sanoja. In the early 1960s, he became noted for his arrangements for bolero singers Felipe Pirela and Blanca Rosa Gil. He started his own Latin music dance band in 1963. With lead vocalists Kiko Mendive and Chico Salas, Jimenez' orchestra made its recording debut on the Velvet Company label. He made several albums for them in the late 1960s and mid 1970s, and helped popularize the salsa rage.

Jiménez enjoyed more success in the mid 1980s for Sonografica label, with albums combining salsa, cumbia, and the merengue of his native country. Some of his more popular songs are: La negra Celina, Se hunde el barco, Dolores and Culu Cucú, which reached number one on the Colombian, Dominican and Venezuelan charts. Beside this, he conducts a full 17 piece Jazz Orchestra to promote the big band tradition by featuring his own repertoire and selected works of Thad Jones, Chico O'Farrill and others.

In January 2007 Jiménez was honored in New York City by the United Nations Orchestra, created by Dizzy Gillespie, for his long and storied career in Latin music, which continues to this day, at the age of 81. He is still living in Caracas, Venezuela.

References

• Official site *
• Sacven *
• United Nations homage *
• In Spanish.