Pacheco is widely recognized as a salsa pioneer and innovator and is a 9-time Grammy nominee and was awarded the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by The Latin Recording Academy in 2005.\n', '

Born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, Pacheco inherited his passion for music from his father, Rafael Azarías Pacheco, who was the bandleader and clarinetist of the "Santa Cecilia Orchestra". In the late 1940s, when Pacheco was 11, his family moved to New York City. He continued polishing his musical skills, learning to play accordion, violin, flute, saxophone and clarinet.\n', '

His father, Rafael Azarías Pacheco, was the grandson of a Spanish soldier who arrived during the Spanish reannexation of Santo Domingo. His mother, Octavia Knipping Rochet, was the granddaughter of a French colonist, and the great-granddaughter of a German merchant who was married to a Dominican woman born to Spanish colonists.\n', '

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