You might not know his name, but in the world of Latin music Bobby Rivas is a superstar. Oh, and he did a little voice-over work in the Spanish version of the Disney classic, ‘The Little Mermaid’.
“I remember when I was like 20 years old; I did a lot of commercials and infomercials for a production company. One day I was doing something for McDonalds and they wanted me to do an opera song. I started playing around and the [‘Little Mermaid’] producer heard me so they went after me. And that is how I began doing voice-overs. I'm still doing a lot of voice-overs right now for a lot of different movies,” Bobby explains.
Complementary to Bobby's extensive acting and voice-over career has been his involvement in salsa music production and composition since he was six years old, fifty years ago.
“My father is my inspiration. My father used to listen to the big stars of salsa. He was a feature and played [with] the New York Giants [American football team] so he was very involved in salsa music before I was born.”
Bobby was born and raised in El Salvador in Central America with music central to his daily routine for the majority of his life.
“It's been challenging but nothing impossible to do. Salsa music is rich to everyone who has melody in their souls. Music without a melody cannot go on.”
Being a salsa musician, one would think Bobby would have struggled to break into the Western market. But in fact, it was his home airwaves that he struggled to reach the most.
“My biggest challenge in the industry has been relating to my people. When I say my people, I mean the people from my country. And finally it's a dream come true. After several years I've tried and tried to become recognised by the people from South America. And finally last year somebody invited me to play a show in town, in my country and then people got to listen to my music.
"Since then we've had something going on. I feel that is the inspiration for me to keep on going now. I was achieving different markets in Colombia, Venezuela. So now it's my country and I'm happy for that.”
Bobby may only just be breaking the market in his home country now, but some of his most successful music projects have been collaborations with other salsa music industry professionals including Enrique Izquieta.
“The Enrique Izquieta thing came up when I was working in a nightclub here in Los Angeles back in 1986. We played a prestigious festival. Working with so many artists, that was a gift. I was working at the well known nightclub that everybody would go to see the greatest artists at that moment.
“I was working there and we all just became friends having a good time. And the other artists, they collaborated too and made lots of records. Then we started going on and on and on doing some more productions and actually performing at different festivals around the world.”
Bobby’s body of work shows no signs of slowing down either.
“We're working on some projects right now. One of my own and two productions with some other artists. The productions are musical shows. One is for Vegas. Right now I'm passionately into doing more music, music that I am writing, music that I dictate on my regime.
“I would say my next challenge is production and helping the younger and needy musicians who are trying to achieve something in life. Those who really have a dream, like I did, to become somebody, to be somebody in music, to reach a goal in music. That's one of my dreams right now, to help the needy. To help the people who want to achieve a musical dream. That's what I want to do.”
Bobby Rivas is one of the judges of the Brisbane heat of Clave Contra Clave, the Australian Latin music competition, at the Tivoli Saturday Oct12. clavecontraclave.com
