Giulliana Merello | Four years behind Karol G

Latin pop is the biggest growth area in global music, and it has produced a generation of touring drummers who almost nobody in the English-language drumming press has written about.

Giulliana Merello is one of the best of them. She spent four years behind Karol G — one of the biggest artists in the world in any language — and made the cover of Modern Drummer while doing it.

Who is Giulliana Merello?

Giulliana Merello is a drummer, percussionist and composer originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, now based in New York City, with around twenty years in the industry.

Karol G

From 2020 to 2024 she was Karol G’s drummer — arenas and stadiums worldwide, through the period in which the Colombian artist became a genuine global superstar.

That is a demanding gig in a specific way: reggaeton, Latin trap and Latin pop are programmed genres, so the drummer has to play alongside tracks, replicate a produced sound live, and provide the human energy that makes a stadium move.

Everything else

• Modern Drummer cover, in 2022 — she also visited the magazine’s offices, and the feature is one of the better English-language pieces on Latin pop drumming.
• The 8G Band on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
• Top Queens, an all-female percussion project she founded and leads.
• Back to Back Beat, a drum duo performed literally back to back with Helen De La Rosa.

Drumeo’s voters gave her R&B/Hip-Hop Drummer Of The Year in 2022.

What Giulliana Merello actually does

She plays hybrid, because the genre requires it. Reggaeton’s rhythmic identity — the dembow pattern — exists as a programmed sound. Playing it live means triggers, pads and a very precise relationship with the track.

She has real percussion vocabulary. Not a kit player faking Latin feel: an actual percussionist, which is why the fills and the timbal-derived material sit correctly.

She plays for an arena. Big, simple, physical, and locked.

She builds things. Top Queens and Back to Back Beat are both her own projects. A lot of touring drummers stop at the touring; she has not.

Giulliana Merello’s setup

• Drums — Gretsch, where she is a listed artist. She has also toured on Sonor shells.
• Beaters — Lowboy. A small, specialist detail: Lowboy make wooden bass drum beaters, and they are a favourite of drummers who care about the attack of a kick note rather than just its weight.
• Percussion — Oruga, the boutique Latin percussion maker.
• Electronics. Pads and triggers, as reggaeton and Latin trap require.

Every era, with buy links, is on Giulliana Merello’s Rig Vault page.

Want the sound without the rig?

Two ideas from her rig, and one costs about the same as a set of heads.

Change your beater. A wooden beater gives you a much more defined attack than felt — audible in a mix, and free-ish. It is one of the cheapest genuine upgrades on a drum kit and almost nobody thinks about it.

Then learn the dembow. The reggaeton pattern is the most-played rhythm on earth right now and most rock and pop drummers cannot play it convincingly. It is a week’s work.

For the hybrid side, our electronic drum kit guide covers triggers and pads, and the Gear Guru will spec the rest.

Where to start listening

• Karol G live footage, 2021–2024. The stadium era.
• The Modern Drummer 2022 feature. Genuinely worth reading.
• Top Queens. Her own project.
• Back to Back Beat. With Helen De La Rosa, and much odder.

Final thoughts

The English-language drumming world has been slow to cover Latin pop, which is strange given it is where a great deal of the world’s popular music now comes from.

Merello is a good place to start correcting that: twenty years in, four of them behind one of the biggest artists alive, and building her own projects on the side.

See Giulliana Merello’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Diana Llerena Vasquez — another Latin percussionist reaching a global audience.