Rodney Alejandro

Rodney Alejandro is an American musician, composer, arranger, producer and audio engineer raised in Houston, Texas. A child of a Mexican-American mother and African-American father, Alejandro's bi-cultural background set the tone for his career in music. A product of Houston's inner city neighborhoods, Alejandro grew up in the barrios and ghettos that would enrich his consciousness. Living on the east side, he tasted all the spices of Salsa music, Tejano and life lessons told through Mariachi music. Attending schools in Houston's 5th ward, he was heavily influenced by the sweet sounds of soul, intimacy of jazz and hard hits of hip hop. From an early age music was all around, and his diverse influences only help broaden his music appreciation and creative palette.

Alejandro's professional career began as a senior in high school, with the co-founding of Tejano-pop band Valentino. Valentino was led by David Flores, who departed another Houston band called La Mafia. Alejandro joined the band on keyboards, having taught himself after saving a year to buy his first keyboard, an Ensoniq ESQ-1. He quickly mastered the synthesizer and its capabilities, but his music technique was limited. Texas musician Joel Guzman gave him lessons not only on technique but playing in the Tejano style. Technology was fast becoming the norm in music and Alejandro took the opportunity to learn about MIDI, sequencing, sampling, and other digital technologies available at the time. His keyboard arsenal grew to include an E-mu Emax, Roland R-8 drum machine and a Yamaha C1 music computer, one of the first MS-DOS computers made to run music software. Valentino was known throughout the state as the most electronic band in Tejano, in a genre where traditional instruments of drums, bass, guitars, and accordions were the norm. The band would perform concert using these various technologies, midi sequencing backing tracks, triggering audio samples, and blending electronic pop sounds with the tradition Tejano arrangements. Rodney's reputation grew as a skilled music programmer, and he continued to work on his performance technique. But the calls came to help other artist in their quest to incorporate electronic instruments. Valentino toured in the Tejano circuit with great artist like Little Joe y La Familia, Groupo Mazz, Selena y Los Dinos, La Sombra, and La Mafia to name a few. During these travel he connected with many great musicians and began to collaborate on other projects. A.B. Quintanilla III asked Rodney to come work with Selena contributing arrangement and production services on her song "Amame", on the Entre Mi Mundo project. Tony Guerrero of La Sombra from Chicago, asked Rodney to sequence and program sounds for their projects, and a solo project by the lead singer Gavino Guerrero. Albert "Tiger" Diaz, another singer in the group, recorded a solo project and he too hired Alejandro for arranging and keyboard programing. These relationships would lead to further collaboration many years later.

...
Wikipedia