A global sensation behind the drum kit, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez just keeps building his resume.

Hernandez has been called the “most talented and innovative percussionist in the world.” And that was before he won a Grammy in 1997.

Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1963, he was part of a musical family. His grandfather was a trumpeter in a famed Cuban band. The boy got his nickname, “El Negro” (the black), as an affectionate reference from his brother’s best friend in the neighborhood.

As a youth, Hernandez was already displaying a talent for percussion. On a borrowed drum set, he took lessons, first with Fausto Garcia Rivera, who had been trained in America, and then with Enrique Pla, percussionist for the noteworthy Cuban group “Irakere.” Hernandez enrolled at the National School of Arts in Havana while also playing behind saxophonist Nicolas Reynoso.

He left Cuba for the first time as a touring musician, and in 1990, he bolted a tour on a stop in Italy and applied for political asylum in America. Officials in the U.S. thought the country didn’t particularly need another musician, and denied his application. For three years, while battling for a reversal of the decision, he taught percussion in Rome in the Timba Centro di Percussion. In 1993, the U.S. relented and allowed him to move to New York City – but nowhere else. For the time being, he could not travel with groups, only play locally.

Staying in NYC did help turn him on as a studio musician, and he worked with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra. After his travel restrictions were lifted, Hernandez – his reputation earned in the New York studio – was in demand for other projects around the country and world.

His biggest break outside the jazz scene came in 1997, when he was included as a percussionist on the wildly successful “Supernatural” album by Carlos Santana, the work for which he won a Grammy.