User:Buknama

Alex San DiNero, also known as Nero now; has balanced an acting career with a musical career. Nero has worked on feature and independent films, including broadway theatre, musicals, tv shows, and commercials with titles such as Step Up 2, Full Circle, Collide, Auntie Mame, Basement Knokerz, State Farm Insurance, ECOMB (Enviromental Coalition of Miami Beach), Cherry Jem, Delivery Driver, Wachovia, etc.,.

His family, originally from Savannkhet, Laos; was brought to the U.S. and landed in Rochester, NY when he was two years old. Within a few short years, his family migrated themselves to California where they found an incredibly large population of other Lao refugees who settled in San Diego. His parents left San Diego to find a much lower cost of living in Fresno, CA where spent his childhood.

Raised in a very dominant Lao culture with his parents and himself being both first generation Lao in the United States. Alex’s loving parents, Aeth Tapanya and Vilayvanh Tapanya are very well known leaders in the Lao Buddhist Community in Fresno, CA and are currently actively involved with all the cultural events at the Lao Wat’s (temples). Growing up in a very populated Lao community, he learned to speak his native tongue by nature. However, he attended McLane High School where at that time, was teaching Lao as one of their foreign language classes. He studied his native language and is literate in reading and writing Lao.

After serving seven years on active duty with the Navy from the age of 18, Alex decided to settle in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area where he finished his last tour of duty at the DiLorenzo Tri-Care Health Clinic in the Pentagon. A decorated Veteran and hero during his tour, he was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for his rescue work on the Emergency Team during the attacks of 9-11 on the Pentagon. He was one of the medics & rescue workers in the fire and rubble puling out victims and survivors from the terrorist attack.

Alex later moved to settle in Miami where he was able to study it's culture and the hot Latin sounds of Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, and Reggaeton. He was introduced to a veteran Producer and Super Star of the Reggaeton genre, Fantazma (David Otero). They quickly became good friends and started working & performing together. With the mixing, mastering, and producing talents of Fantazma's vision for Nero's future, his career took off in an unusual way. Being heard and spoken of all over the Lao entertainment world as the first Laotion Reggaeton singer. Most Lao-Americans raised in the United States tend to take the usual approach towards of music arts of familiar American genres such as rock, pop, r&b, hip-hop, punk, rap, etc.,. But he stepped outside of the usual boundaries and did the unordinary. This is what makes him "Alex San DiNero"