Ibrahim Gonzalez’s nickname and alter ego, Mambo Dervish, also served as the most concise description of a man who defied labels throughout his life, which ended last week at the age of 57.

The first part, Mambo, spoke to his love of music, especially Latin jazz, which he promoted on his radio shows and played with various bands throughout his life. The second part, Dervish, was a nod to his Muslim faith and deep spiritual life.

The name, however, still only tells part of Gonzalez’s story. He was a musician, radio show host, spiritual teacher, composer, photographer, writer, journalist, videographer, and cartographer.

As it says on his personal website, mambodervish.com: “Ibrahim Gonzalez has been keeping his involvements with all of his passions moving along as a total lifetime dedication to self discovery.”

In other words, he always had something going on. He liked not being pigeonholed. Gonzalez once said that choosing a favorite artistic medium to work in was like “choosing a favorite child.” (He knew something about that, as well. Gonzalez had five kids and 11 grandchildren.)

In many ways, it felt like Gonzalez, the Mambo Dervish, was just getting started when he abruptly and unexpectedly passed away in his sleep last Tuesday morning.

“We had so many plans,” said his wife, Janet Norquist-Gonzalez, who was with him at the end.

On Monday evening, June 3, Gonzalez and Norquist-Gonzalez attended a fundraising dinner event for an organization the couple supports. After the event, in the middle of the night at their home in Norwood, an area where the couple has lived for nearly 20 years, Gonzalez complained of chest pains and acid reflux-like symptoms, which he often suffered from.

By the time the sun came up on June 4, Gonzalez had passed away.

Word of his death spread quickly through the internet and social media, leaving family, friends and the many other people whose lives he had touched mourning the loss of one of the Bronx’s biggest, most fascinating and unforgettable personalities.

Gonzalez grew up Catholic in East Harlem, the son of Puerto Rican immigrants. From an early age, he proved a precocious thinker and musician.

“He was just really awesome, had a different mind-set,” said Zaida Echadarry, who went to middle school with Gonzalez at Our Lady Queen of Angels in Harlem.

As a young man, Gonzalez converted to Islam. But in the last couple of years of his life, he made an effort to reconnect with many of his old Catholic school classmates, including Echadarry. She described Gonzalez as “one of a kind, a great friend, a heavy, spiritual person, ahead of his time.”

Gonzalez, who was probably best known in the Bronx as a conga-playing bandleader, learned music on the fly in the streets of El Barrio.

“There was always street music going on,” he once said of his childhood. “I would go to sleep listening to the rhythms of the street. It was like my lullaby.”

His stepfather, a “semi-pro” musician, asked him to fill in on the congas for a gig one night and, at age 12, he held his own on stage.

Gonzalez became a student activist at City College of New York and protested tuition hikes. Around that time, he also helped found Alianza Islamica, one of the nation’s first Latino Muslim groups, in East Harlem.

Gonzalez’s career as a musician was put on hold during his 20s when he left New York City to start a family with his first wife. They had five children together, but the marriage didn’t last.

When that marriage ended, Gonzalez was in his mid 30s. He returned to New York focused on pursuing music. He learned from and played with some of the best, including jazz greats like Charlie Palmieri and Ron Carter.

After returning home, he settled in the northwest Bronx. He met Norquist through mutual friends in 1992. Gonzalez and Norquist became closer and the two eventually moved into a beautiful building overlooking Williamsbridge Oval Park. They were married in 2000.

Gonzalez was a mainstay as a radio show host on WBAI, a bastion for progressive and independent news and music, and as an independent producer for Bronxnet. For several years, he led the house band at the Bronx Ball, the borough’s annual showcase gala event.

Although he never hit it big as a recording musician, Gonzalez played in several bands over the years, mostly dedicated to Latin jazz. In recent years, he became more and more focused on filmmaking and videography. In 2008, he did camera work for a film by Melvin Van Peebles.

At the time of his death, he was working on a new cooking show for Bronxnet and had already produced several videos called “Cooking with Chef Julio” and published them on his youtube channel.

To the end, he always had something going on. “Some have referred to him as a renaissance man,” it says on his website, “but the artist prefers to think of himself as someone who is blessed with a love for discovery and is a natural born eclectic.”

Following his death, some 200 people showed up to the viewing of his body in Harlem and more than 100 people attended his funeral service at Woodlawn Cemetery, despite a heavy downpour.

As they carted the plain wooden box that held Gonzalez’s body out of the chapel and into the rain, a makeshift band of musician friends serenaded him with powerful music, as people took videos with their phones and iPads and snapped pictures with their cameras. It was an intimate, eclectic scene befitting of the Mambo Dervish.