Greg Landau is a San Francisco-based music and video producer, and an instructor of music and Latin American Studies focused on the social movements that produced revolutionary music and art. He is a five-time Grammy nominee who has produced over 40 CDs and numerous film scores including serving as Music Director of the film La Mission (film)

La Mission (film)

La Mission is a 2009 drama film starring Benjamin Bratt and Jeremy Ray Valdez. It is written and directed by Peter Bratt...

. He also produced the album "Songs from La Mission."

Early life

Landau's parents are poet Nina Serrano

Nina Serrano

Nina Serrano is an American poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Oakland, California. She is the author of Heartsongs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools...

 and filmmaker Saul Landau

Saul Landau

Saul Landau is journalist, filmmaker, and commentator. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.-Career:...

. He was born in Madison, Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin

Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....

 and grew up in San Francisco's Mission District. He co-founded Round Whirled Records with Camilo Landau and Round Media along with his sister Valerie Landau

Valerie Landau

Valerie Landau is an American designer, author and educator. She has filed two patents along with her colleague and mentor Douglas Engelbart. Their most recent patent describes multitouch interface for chorded text entry. The new patent is inspired by Engelbart's early work developing the...

 and works with his father and Haskel Wexler making documentary films in Latin America.

Music career

During the 1980s, Landau toured internationally as a guitarist

Guitarist

A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...

 and tresero with the Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

n Nueva Canción

Nueva canción

Nueva canción is a movement and genre within Latin American and Iberian music of folk music, folk-inspired music and socially committed music...

 group, Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy and Mancotal, and shared stages with Silvio Rodríguez

Silvio Rodríguez

Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez is a Cuban musician, and a leader of the nueva trova movement.He is considered Cuba's best known folk singer and known for his highly eloquent and symbolic lyrics. Many of his songs have become classics in Latin American music, such as Ojalá, Playa Girón, Unicornio and...

, Pablo Milanés

Pablo Milanés

Pablo Milanés Arias is a Cuban singer-songwriter and guitar player. He studied at a conservatory in Havana. He is considered one of the founders of the Cuban nueva trova, along with Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola...

, Mercedes Sosa

Mercedes Sosa

Haydée Mercedes Sosa, known as La Negra, was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout South America and some countries outside the continent. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of nueva canción. She gave voice to songs written by both...

, Chico Buarque

Chico Buarque

Francisco Buarque de Hollanda , popularly known as Chico Buarque , is a singer, guitarist, composer, dramatist, writer and poet...

, Amparo Ochoa and Nicomedes Santa Cruz

Nicomedes Santa Cruz

Nicomedes Santa Cruz was an Afro-Peruvian musician who helped raise public awareness of Afro-Peruvian culture....

 in music festivals and concerts across Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

 and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. He lived and worked in Nicaragua in the 1980s before returning to the US in 1991.

Media production

Landau has produced work with PBS, Disney, Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

, CNN

CNN

Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

, LucasFilm

Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....

, Six Degrees Records, McDonald's

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

 and StarMedia

Starmedia

StarMedia is a leading Latin Internet brand, co-founded in August 1996 by Fernando Espuelas and Jack Chen as the first pan-regional Internet portal for Spanish and Portuguese speaking audiences...

. As Executive Producer at Starmedia, he has produced videos with Christina Aguilera

Christina Aguilera

Christina María Aguilera is an American recording artist and actress. Aguilera first appeared on national television in 1990 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994...

, Carlos Santana

Carlos Santana

Carlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion...

, Los Lobos

Los Lobos

Los Lobos are a multiple Grammy Award–winning American Chicano rock band from East Los Angeles, California. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional Spanish and Mexican music such as cumbia, boleros and norteños.-History:The...

, and Sub-Comandante Marcos. He co-founded Round World Music with Robert Leaver, who owned an eclectic music store in San Francisco. http://www.getthebeat.com/about.html.

He has produced four Grammy-nominated albums: Carlos "Patato" Valdes's Ritmo y Candela and Ritmo y Candela II in 1996 and 1998, and Peru Blue with Pamela Rodriguez

Pamela Rodriguez

Pamela Rodriguez is a Latin Grammy Nominated artist, who is exploring the cross-cultural musical languages within her home city Lima, Peru. She records with the award winning and three time Grammy Nominee producer Greg Landau and together work to find a modern homogenous sound and a connecting...

 in 2006.

He has worked with artists including Buena Vista Social Club

Buena Vista Social Club

The Buena Vista Social Club was a members club in Havana, Cuba that held dances and musical activities, becoming a popular location for musicians to meet and play during the 1940s...

's Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, Susan Baca, Bobi Cespedes, Dr Loco, Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger

Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...

, Omar Sosa

Omar Sosa

Omar Sosa is a composer, bandleader, and jazz pianist.-Biography:Sosa began studying marimba at age eight, then switched to piano at the Escuela Nacional de Musica in Havana, where he studied jazz. Sosa moved to Quito, Ecuador, in 1993, then San Francisco, California, in 1995...

, John Santos, Pancho Quinto, Quetzal

Quetzal (band)

Quetzal is a bilingual Chicano rock band from East Los Angeles, California.-Biography:The band was founded by Quetzal Flores, with the intention of pushing the boundaries of chicano music and is currently one of Los Angeles' most important and successful groups...

, Carne Cruda

Carne Cruda

Carne Cruda is a Post-Latin band based in Oakland, California. The band consists of 5 core members and incorporates frequent guest appearances, and also frequently backs up other artists.-Band History:...

, Los Mocosos, Maldita Vecindad

Maldita Vecindad

La Maldita Vecindad y los Hijos del Quinto Patio are a band formed in Mexico City in 1985. They are pioneers in rock en Español and are one of the most influential rock bands in Latin America....

, poet Piri Thomas

Piri Thomas

Piri Thomas was a writer and poet whose autobiography Down These Mean Streets became a best-seller.-Early years:...

, and David Byrne

David Byrne (musician)

David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...

's record label Luaka Bop

Luaka Bop

Luaka Bop is a world music-oriented record label established by David Byrne, former guitarist, singer-songwriter and producer of the art rock/new wave band Talking Heads. It has been a wholly independent label since leaving V2 in 2006. Previous distribution relationships included Warner and Virgin...

. Landau, Babatunde Lea, and John Greenham composed and produced "The African Diaspora Suite" in 2005 for a permanent installation in the newly-built Museum of the African Diaspora

Museum of the African Diaspora

The Museum of the African Diaspora is a new museum in San Francisco, California, USA, dedicated to the diasporan histories of people of African origin and their influence and adaptation throughout the world....

 in San Francisco.

He composed and produced the film score for Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...

's 2006 documentary film, Who Needs Sleepand Peter and Benjamin Bratt's "La Mission", which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

. He produced Salve a Bahia then Gente! for the Brazilian group SambaDa in 2009, who say he made their work “more fun, more work, more intense.” He also produced work for Mexican singer and songwriter Arturo Ortega. His most recent work was producing a CD with Mexican rockers, Maldita Vecindad, titled Circular Colectivo that debuted with a splash in Mexico In 2011 he produced the CD, Calma, for CUban pianist Omar Sosa, that was nomated for the Latin Grammys in the Instrumental Music Category.

Teaching

Landua received a doctorate

Doctorate

A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 in Communication from the University of California, San Diego

University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...

. He teaches at the University of California at Santa Cruz and he researches the role of music in contemporary societies.

External links