Guero Loco aka Mr. GL is a bilingual, educational hip-hop artist focused on helping students to learn another language through rhythm, repetition and motivation. GL learned Spanish while serving in the Marines Corps at the age of 17. He attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California and later became fluent after working with the newly arrived migrants in his home city of Indianapolis. Mr. GL quickly found work as an on-air personality for 3 Spanish radio stations in Indianapolis and as host of a Spanish hip-hop radio show. It was through this exposure that GueroLoco was inspired to become a musical artist himself. Slowly he began to translate his own life experiences into Spanish lyrics and set them to music. He found himself an audience performing in the US and Mexico. As a commercial Spanish hip-hop and Reggaeton artist, he has won 5 Chicago Music Awards and an international IRAWMA award. He has been featured on various Spanish-language media channels including Univision-Despierta America and has toured Mexico various times as a music and educational artist.
Mr. GL began his educational career by working as a middle school ESL/EL instructor at a public school in Indianapolis. During this time, he realized the importance of heritage speakers also being dual literate. He also realized that music could be used as an effective platform for learning. From his work with students, other schools in the area began to ask him to speak to their students. He then reconnected with his first high school teacher, Tom Alsop, the teacher who had actually motivated him to keep going with the language. Together they created a program through Bilingual Nation USA to help students learn Spanish with books, dvd’s, music and live presentations to appeal to students learning a foreign language and for ESL learners to take pride in being literate in their heritage language. Since 2013, Mr. GL has been touring the US and Mexico speaking about the importance of being multi-lingual. He has keynoted and presented for various dual language and world language conferences across the US and this will be his second year as master of ceremonies of the National Spanish Spelling Bee.
In 2014, GL was nominated as Educational Entertainer of the Year at the International Reggae and World Music Awards. When not rapping the Spanish ABC’s or Verb Conjugations, the music that he performs is positive and inspirational. With a contagious passion for bilingualism and music, this Berklee School of Music alumnus is fusing them both together to create a hip way to make learning fun and easy. As students in other countries are learning 3-4 languages before they’re out of high school, GueroLoco understands the importance of making sure that our students don’t fall further behind.
