Jorge Moreno does not doubt it for one second. On the personal side as well as the professional, the Cuban American singer/songwriter describes himself as ‘eclectic’. As seen from the outside, his home in the Miami Springs community resembles a ‘Mexican church’ for its Pueblo style architecture. Once inside though Cuban tiles and Moorish details suggest that the artist is composed of many worlds.

“What people like about my music is that it navigates many styles. I do not have one sound,but many, says the singer, who says to have two musical personalities, one as a very traditional Cuban who likes Beny More, La Sonora Matancera, Xavier Cugat, Los Zafiros and another that embodies rock groups.

This musical eclecticism has been a double edge sword for the Latin Grammy winner as the most promising artist of 2002. “I go from the tropical to rock, but the people that like tropical music can not identify themselves with me anymore than the rockers”, says Moreno, recognizing that wanting to do it all is good from an artistic viewpoint but not the best way to market my music.

” I am not going to sacrifice my art to become a product. If I sell a million records or not, I will continue the same”, affirms Moreno, who after living through the mid decade of the 2000′s the deception of the music thru payolas in the radio and the crisis of the record industry, he enjoys at present a good professional period after winning last month first place for video musical in the International Songwriter Competition. (ISC)

The judges from ISC, made up of prestigious musicians like Peter Gabriel, selected Moreno’s ”Thank You”as the best video and nominated it as one of the best out of 15,000 songs presented by artists from 115 different countries.

“Contemplating my children, I felt grateful and I composed the song”, comments Moreno, who is not too sure how his inspiration came about but he remembers how the idea to produce an original video at minimum cost came about. “Why don’t you record people saying what they are thankful for?” says Moreno of what his producer, the Miamian musician Fernando Perdomo, suggested to him.

During two weeks using a small video camera, in New York restaurants, at the Miami airport, in the Science and Children’s Museum, Moreno recorded multiple testimonials, from models, to children of the rich and famous with a poster that stated what they were grateful for.

Interviewees were thankful for ” the dinosaurs, cool hats, the limbo, low interest rates, imagination and errors” while Moreno sings “Thank You”, with an optimistic message and a sound that picks up the Beatles, the singer’s favorite all time band.

The song “Thank You” has a special meaning for the singer-author. Among the video protagonist is his father, the deceased musical impresario, Tony Moreno.”He gave thanks for his grandchildren”, Moreno points out, telling us that the video was recorded a mere two weeks before his father was diagnosed with a terminal cancer of the liver.

Trying to move away from the tropical music that his father produced, first in his company TH, and later with his own label, Musical Productions, who had under contract important artists of the genre such as Eddy Herrera and Tito Rojas, Moreno was mostly interested in rock. During his high school years, Spanish musician Javier Garcia became his friend and it was him that brought him closer to Latin music.

This is how the alternative Moreno sound surfaced and caught Madonna’s interest who signed the artist to her Maverick records in 2001. When Maverick did not want to record his third video, Mi Sufrimiento, Moreno developed his own version which made the top ten throughout all of 2003 in MTV and was nominated for an award in Lo Nuestro.

Since then he is an independent artist, who sings with his band and does not limit his creativity. A recent video about “This Town” from Moreno recycles one that was recorded by Tito Rojas in 1989. A Spanish version that Moreno recorded of the “Pray for You” theme, of Jaron and The Long Road to Love, will be released next month.

In the meantime, the singer is a ‘present father’. ” My children ride their electric car and I guide them with a rope as I ride my skateboard”, Moreno tells us about his two year old daughter and his son of three and a half

Watch 2010 ISC Best Video “Thank You” by Jorge Moreno