El diez de septiembre/September 10th

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Photo from villagegreennj.com. Click HERE. 
¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... José Feliciano! (1945- )

A Puerto Rican singer and songwriter who has won 8 Grammy awards and whose song Feliz Navidad is still the #1 played song at the holidays, Feliciano has been a successful musician since the early 60s. Born in Lares, Puerto Rico with congenital glaucoma, which left him blind by the age of 3, Feliciano moved with his family to Spanish Harlem in New York City at the age of 5. He first started playing the accordion, and then his father gave him a guitar. He practiced some 14 hours a day, and at the age of 17 he dropped out of school to play music full-time in the nearby clubs. By 1968 he had his first hit album, Feliciano. More than 35 albums followed. In 2000, Feliciano was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame, and in 2011, he won the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He and wife Susan Omillian, who he met in Detroit in 1971 and dated for ten years before marrying in 1982, have three children: Melissa, Jonathan and Michael. Click HERE to see his performance of Sabor a mí with Gloria Estefan. 

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

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