Hernaldo Zúñiga

The Nicaraguan singer/songwriter Hernaldo Zúñiga was born in Masaya on June 2, 1955. While studying law as a college student in Chile, he began playing music and released his first recording, "Producciones Caracol." He began writing original songs shortly thereafter, penning "Ventanillas" at 17 years old and releasing his debut album, 1974's Del Arco Iris, Una Canción, while still a teenager. Cancionero, his second record, followed in 1978. Albums like 1980's Hernaldo, El Original, 1982's A Tanto Fuego, and 1984's Siglo XX followed. One year later, the Mexican pop group Pandora released their own recording of Zúñiga's song "¿Cómo te va mi amor?," which topped the charts in Mexico and received a nomination for "Best Latin Pop Performance" at the Grammy Awards in 1987. (Another Mexican group, Los Horóscopos de Durango, covered the song in 2006, sold a million copies of the single within a year of its release, and received a nomination for "Regional Mexican Airplay Song of the Year" at the 2008 Billboard Latin Music Awards.) Meanwhile, Zúñiga continued releasing albums of his own, with highlights including 1988's Qué Increíble es la Distancia, 1992's Después de Todos Estos Años, and 2007's Nómada. His songs retained their popularity years after their original release, with "En el Mismo Tren" — a track from 1982's A Tanto Fuego — reaching Number 75 on Ecuador's Top 100 Deezer chart in 2023.