Margie Perez grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the daughter of immigrants from Havana, raised on a diet of classic rock and Cuban rhythms — she knew Johnny Pacheco and Celia Cruz recordings as intimately as she did every Beatles album. That dual musical inheritance shaped a singer who moves comfortably between blues, pop, funk, jazz, and Latin music, all filtered through the New Orleans rhythmic sensibility she absorbed after making the city home.
Perez leads her own band performing original material, and her 2017 release Love Is All was named one of OffBeat Magazine's 50 Favorite CDs of the year, earning three Best of the Beat Award nominations. She's been featured on WWNO's Music Inside Out with Gwen Thompkins, received the Positive Vibrations Foundation's Heartbeat Musicians Award, and in 2020 appeared alongside Harry Connick Jr. on his CBS special United We Sing.
Perez's versatility keeps her in constant motion across the city's Latin and world-music scenes. She co-leads the Latin big band Muévelo and fronts the smaller Margie Perez and Her Grupo Latino, lends her vocals to the Afro-Cuban sacred music of Michael Skinkus & Moyuba and the Kumasi Afrobeat Orchestra, and performs with N.O.B.A.B.E., a collective of New Orleans' female musicians, and The M&M's, a supergroup drawing members from Galactic, Papa Mali, and John Medeski's bands. She has also sung backup for Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli, drummer Stanton Moore, and clarinetist Dr. Michael White, and performs regularly at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and French Quarter Fest.
