Darío de Jesús Gómez Zapata also known as El Rey del Despecho (born February 6, 1951 in San Jerónimo

San Jerónimo, Antioquia

San Jerónimo is a town and municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia....

, Antioquia

Antioquia Department

Antioquia is one of the 32 departments of Colombia, located in the central northwestern part of Colombia with a narrow section that borders the Caribbean Sea. Most of its territory is mountainous with some valleys, much of which is part of the Andes mountain range...

) is a Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

n singer and composer of vals

Vals (dance)

Vals is an Argentine tango style, the tango version of waltz. Unlike Argentine Tango and Milonga, there are no stopping figures. The vals is danced in a continuous movement. Not to be confused with the Peruvian Waltz, most widely known as Vals criollo....

, corrido

Corrido

The corrido is a popular narrative song and poetry form, a ballad, of Mexico. The songs are often about oppression, history, daily life for peasants, and other socially important information. It is still a popular form today, and was widely popular during the Mexican Revolution and Nicaraguan...

s and bolero

Bolero

Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...

s. His moniker El Rey del Despecho (King of Heartbreak) derives from the more than one thousands songs about heartbreaking love situations. His most known song is Nadie es Eterno. He was considered one of the ten best singers of the 1990s in Colombia by the TV y Novelas Magazine for his sales of more than six million copies of his 26 albums; seven as tropical artist, ten as lead singer of the duet Los Legendarios and nine as a solo artist.http://encolombia.com/tvynovelas10anos-cantantes.HTM

Early years

As a young boy Gomez loved to sing the ranchera genre while picking up coffee in farms of Antioquia, he was discovered as a young boy. Gómez started writing songs at the age of 14 while working as a mechanic. He was the fourth child of twelve siblings.

Singing career

He was later hired by a group known as Los Legendarios (Spanish for The Legendaries).

Awards

• He has received the Ascap Award in New York City
  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
  
   for his song Nadie es Eterno

Life

Gomez has had four children with his wife. His oldest daughter was killed in 2004 by a stray bullet on a bus in Colombia.

• The Pentagrama de Oro Award