Ramón Orlando

Ramón Orlando Valoy is a merengue musician and son of Cuco Valoy. Ramón Orlando Valoy was born on July 29, 1960 in Manoguayabo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.In the 1970s, after his father Cuco Valoy left the guitar duet Los Ahijados, he formed his first group, Los Virtuosos, with Cuco as the lead singer. Cuco kept the group together renamed as Cuco Valoy y Orquesta (Cuco Valoy and his Orchestra) in which he hired singers Peter Cruz and Henry García. Ramón Orlando went on to form another group during that time. Years later, the Cuco Valoy group broke up and Ramón moved to Colombia to physically separate himself from the Dominican Republic due to his political differences with the Dominican president Joaquín Balaguer. Ramón Orlando then undertook a more ambitious musical project. He and then-famous merengue singers Peter Cruz and Henry Garcia formed La Orquesta Internacional (The International Orchestra), in which Ramón Orlando intended to be the composer and musical director, while Cruz and Garcia were intended to be the vocalists. However, of the first ten "single" songs to be recorded (and released individually), Ramón chose to sing four of them himself, which caused a split in the group. Peter Cruz and Henry Garcia then each formed a short-lived group. Upon the two vocalists' departure, Ramón Orlando quickly hired some vocalists with voices sounding similar to those of Cruz and Garcia in order to perform songs already gaining airplay.Ramón Orlando is also the composer of the theme El venao, which found a large audience in several Latin American countries including Colombia, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Ramón Orlando shares with Juan Luis Guerra the greatest Soberano Award in 1992. He was a nominee in the Latin Grammy Awards of 2005 for the Best Merengue Album (Generaciones) in the tropical category.Ramón Orlando serves as a pastor in a Protestant church.