Shanom

Shanom (born Luis Antonio Vázquez) is a Puerto Rican radio personality whom reached the height of his popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. Shanom is best known for his musical parodies, comedy stunts and his political satire. His morning show has been the only radio show to be aired in both Puerto Rico and U.S. simultaneously.

Shanom, has been honored for having launched the career of many new talents in radio. Shanom had the second longest running morning show in the island of Puerto Rico up to 2004 and has received countless distinctions for his charitable work for the handicapped. Shanom corrently continues to produce radio bits and parodies for various radio shows.

As a musician Shanom was very inflential in the development of what was then considered underground genres, such as reggaeton, latin rap and tropical techno music. Shanom produced some of the first ever reggaeton albums but this remained however an underground fenomena, his main interest at the time was the radio parodies for which he was becoming an icon. It was thru his radio show that the first ever commercially produced latin rap album was aired and released when Prime Records hired a young artist known as Vico C. Prior to this, reggaeton and rap was only part of the comedy bits presented by a character played by Shanom in his morning show. Shanom then went on to "make over" his personal presentations and "parties" to include the new developing music thru the skepticall eyes of his fellow dj's. It was here that artists like "Dinamic two", "Evy Queen" and "Falo" found the very first outlets to bring their brand of music into the spot light. Without Vico C, Dinamic Two and Evy Queen the reggaeton genre would probably not exist.

References

* la nueva enciclopedia de medios 2005, editorial navarro, radio personalities
* Gilbert Merle