La India, known also as “La Princesa de la Salsa” (“The Princess of Salsa”), is a singer of salsa. She has been nominated for both Grammy and Latin Grammy awards. Caballero (birth name: Linda Viera Caballero) was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. Her parents moved to New York City soon after her birth, and settled down in the South Bronx area of the city. They moved in with Caballero’s grandmother, a woman who served as an important influence on Caballero’s life. Caballero’s nickname India was given to her by her grandmother because of her dark features and long straight black hair.

In 1985, when Caballero was 14 years old, she was a founding member of the Latin freestyle group TKA and was featured on the cover of TKA’s second single “Come Get My Love.” She left shortly thereafter. Caballero signed a record contract with Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, which planned on marketing her as the Latin version of Madonna (who recorded for sister label Sire Records). After recording the album Breaking Night, Caballero decided that she didn’t want to take that route in her career.

In 1994, La India together with Louie Vega recorded a house-music single “Love and Happiness” (Yemaya y Ochún) that paid tribute to Santería (a syncretic religion based in the Caribbean). This up-beat house track was played heavily in dance club’s internationally. La India’s involvement with Santería drew much criticism. She later recorded Dicen Que Soy (They Say that I Am) which was a 2x gold-certified Billboard hit and included the song “Vivir Lo Nuestro”, a duet with Marc Anthony. Later this same year Combinación Perfecta. was released.

In 2011 India still continues to release new music. India’s latest songs include a duet with Issac Delgado titled, “Que no se te olvide” which has four different versions, one salsa, another an extended salsa mix, one a bachata version, and another a New York Pop version. In 2011, India has also released a new house track titled, “Tacalacateo” which she worked on with Italian DJ, Peppe Citarella. Tacalacateo debuted #13 on the Billboards dance tracks.

Luis Fernando Vega, better known as “Little” Louie Vega, is an American musician of Puerto Rican ancestry. He is one half of the Masters At Work musical production team. He was born to a musician family, as his father, Luis Vager, was a jazz saxophonist, and his uncle was singer Héctor Lavoe of the Fania All-Stars, and he started his DJ career spinning records at the age of 13.

By 1985, Louie who is cousin to Eric Vega, popular event creator and promoter in New York City began playing house and block parties in his local Bronx neighborhood of New York, as well as engineering and mixing. (Erasure’s The Two Ring Circus features his earliest dabblings in the studio.) His first nightclub residency was at the Devil’s Nest, in the Bronx, and later he moved to Roseland, Studio 54 and the Palladium in Manhattan. During the 1990s, Vega was playing at one of the most influential nightclubs for house music, The Sound Factory Bar. By the mid 1990s, the Masters At Work team had Vega spending less time behind the turntables and more time in the studio as part of the team’s remixers.

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