India – also known as
La India in the latin music industry. Born on March 9, 1969 as Linda Viera Caballero, in Río Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and raised in the Bronx, New York City, USA.
Worked as backing vocalist on latin-freestyle artists
TKA’s track
Come Get My Love (1986), even featuring on its back cover, when she was 14. Then under the tutelage of producer
John Jellybean Benitez on a couple of tracks including her track
Dancing On The Fire (1988) (with co-producer
Louie Vega who she had been introduced to in her mid-teens, and would later go on to marry in 1990, though divorce in 1996).
Signing briefly to Reprise Records, who supposedly planned on making her the Latin version of
Madonna –Jellybean’s other main find earlier in his career– where both Jellybean and Louie Vega produced her album
Breaking Night (1990).
However, it wasn’t until her major involvement in the music business working with
Louie Vega and
Kenny Dope Gonzalez on various projects mainly in the mid-1990’s whilst in her twenties, for which she achieved great success. The three tracks of note during this time were as
Masters At Work with
I Can't Get No Sleep (1993), and
To Be In Love (1997), along with their
Nuyorican Soul project track
Runaway (1997).
Alongside work on latin-house music into the early 2000’s, she also became more involved in the more purist latin arena around the late 1990’s, and in fact on these projects the name La India was generally used.
Whilst moving her career and concentrating on latin music, she built quite a reputation as ’The Princess Of Salsa’ garnering three Grammy Award and two Latin Grammy Award nominations. She has collaborated with her godmother
Celia Cruz, and many other artists like
Marc Anthony,
Gloria Estefan and even
Tito Puente, releasing several albums of her own.