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Nuestro Cuatro Vol. 1 DVD

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The first part of the first documentary on the history and music of the Puerto Rican cuatro


Nuestro Cuatro, Vol. 1: 1493-1959
The Puerto Ricans and their Stringed Instruments
NEW EDITION with 30 minutes of extra footage added
Video DVD, 104 minutes, in Spanish with available English subtitles

Produced by the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project
Produced, directed and scripted by Juan Sotomayor, William Cumpiano and Wil Echevarría


Read about Volume 2 here

 

Chapter 1
 
The Jíbaro:
Traces the origins of the jíbaro, an ancient people who created the earliest expressions of Puerto Rican country music.

Chapter 2
A Bouquet of Instruments:
Musicologists, musicians and artisans describe the families of Puerto Rican stringed instruments: the different varieties of cuatros, tiples and bordonúas--and about their most distinguished players.

English subtitles are available on DVD

Chapter 3
The Music of the Fields:
Old cuatro masters show us the different musical genres that were once heard across the Puerto Rican  countryside during olden times. We see a rare recreation of a "baile de seis." The venerated cuatristas Maso Rivera and Iluminado Dávila talk about and demonstrate the different forms of the seis, the music of the "acabes," the harvest-end celebrations, and the use of the cuatro within the sacred rites that were once observed across the countryside.


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Chapter 4
The Golden Age:
A historic narrative of how a feeling of unique nationality is born and spreads across Puerto Rico during the 19th century, and how the Danza, a fusion of country and city music--played on the native instruments--is transformed into emblems of protest and opposition to Spanish colonial repression.

Chapter 5
"Somebody has to go":
"There are too many people here. Somebody has to go." This is a quote from a United States military commander at the beginning of the 20th century. What followed were terrible years of hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues and the economic disintegration of the once-thriving Island following the 1898 invasion-- events which propelled the historic migrations out of the Island. The new emigrants keep the dying musical traditions alive and with them as they take the native stringed instruments and musical memories with them to the new Diaspora in the United States, even as far as Hawaii.

Chapter 6
Native Industries:
Describes the growing impact of the radio on the cultural development of the Island and the cuatro's eventual acceptance as the national instrument. The great master cuatrista Ladislao Martínez keeps the ancient musical traditions alive on the Island, broadcasting his numerous and beautiful compositions on the first radio program on the Island, "Industrias Nativas." The personality, skills and achievements of the great maestro is described on camera by the great elder musicians that once played along with him.

                                
Capítulo 7
The Teatro Puerto Rico:
In Puerto Rico, the new governer of the recently-established Free Associated State, Luis Muñoz Marín --fearing the vanishing of the Island's cultural values--inaugurates a new Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. At the same time, thousands of Puerto Ricans in New York throng to see jibaro troubadours such as Ramito, La Calandria and the Jibarito de Lares, through the numerous ethnic theatres in the great city. Puerto Rico itself now awaits a new rebirth, like the ones that came before, of the traditional music forms, one that will flower anew during the second half of the 20th century and into the current day.

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Nuestro Cuatro Vol.2 DVD

The completion of the Cuatro Project´s documentary on the cuatro and its music:

Nuestro Cuatro, Vol. 2: A Historic Concert
Volume 2                                                                                   

Produced by the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project
Produced, directed and scripted by Juan Sotomayor, William Cumpiano and Wil Echevarría
DVD 95 minutes
In Spanish with available English subtitles

(Read about Volume 1 here
)

 

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This is the conclusion of a two-volume Cuatro Project video documentary that covers the cultural and musical history of the iconic stringed instruments native to Puerto Rico.

NUESTRO CUATRO: A historic concert describes the lasting, sentimental adventure of Puerto Ricans around the world with their small cuatro--an instrument which has been intimately tied to their history and culture for four centuries. The documentary is a moving celebration of the music and the personalities that have been so closely tied to the iconic instrument, including conversations with retired elder cuatro masters; with the renown super-stars who carried what was once a rustic country instrument into the greatest theatres and concert hall of the world; with the most prominent cuatro-maker on the Island; with the young women artists that have been opening a path through what was once an entirely masculine tradition; with the emerging crop of brilliant young players that are now taking the instrument into unexpected directions and who currently are forging a new repertory based on traditional forms.

 The complete documentary, Volume 1 and Volume 2 comprise 12 chapters is now complete with the final work that summarizes the modern history of the "national instrument" of Puerto Rico.

Prologue: The Teatro Puerto Rico
Jibaro music in New York
Summarizes the rise and fading away of the legendary Teatro Puerto Rico of the Bronx section of New York City diring the decades of 1950 and 1960--a fiesta of nostalgia and patriotism lasting twenty years, enjoyed by multitudes of "niyorriqueños," wildly cheerig their local and visiting jíbaro musicians, keeping alive their music traditions while the same ones were vanishing on the Island.

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Chapter 8: The Cuatro and the Nueva Trova
Shows us the roots of the re-awakening during the decade of 1970 of a new passion on the Island for its own native expressions: begun by students and youths searching backwards to rediscover the old musical traditions and bringing them anew into the present, as a display of their protest against cultural colonialism and the Vietnam War.

Chapter 9: The Great Maestros
Live visits with the legendary grand-masters, the Old Guard of the cuatro: Nieves Quintero, Nicanor Zayas, Yomo Toro, Tuto Feliciano, Roque Navarro and Maso Rivera--the last three passing away shortly after the documentary was completed.

Chapter 10: The artisans
Visits with two of the most prominent cuatro-makers on the Island, Jaime Alicea and Vicente Valentín, as they guide us through the process of making their instruments inside their own shops, and expressing their special relationship to the instrument and its traditions.

Chapter 11: From the Jíbaro Orchestra to the Symphony Orchestra
An inspiring musical parade that features the cuatro in the many modalities that it appeared in through time: in a jíbaro orchestra playing 19th century Salon music while in the countryside; in a gathering playing Old Favorites on electric cuatros in a huge Chicago theatre; in a Jazz combo; with a young virtuoso playing the music of Vivaldi and Paganini before a 55-member symphony orchestra; in a duo made up of a conservatory recitalist on classical guitar and a world-renown cuatro player playing a modern Tango by Piazzola; another duo of maestros playing Brazilian Bossa Nova; two young stars playing an Indie Rock ballad inside a cuatro workshop; and more.

Chapter 12: The New Golden Age
A new generation of young cuatro artists emerges, each one taking up the baton offered by the old guard and the current generation of cuatro masters; or who have acquired their skills with the proliferating cuatro schools and community orchestras spread across the Island and across the United States. The cuatro, originally a small, rustic folk instrument created by ancient subsistence farmers on a small Caribbean island, now belongs to the world.

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The Tres Connection

One bird, two wings:

 The Cuban-Puerto Rican Tres connection


 

 

Researcher Ramón Gómez reports:

    According to the producer/collector Mariano Artau, in 1934, Isaac Oviedo visits Puerto Rico with the Sexteto Matancero, with their musical director Graciano Gómez.  They performed several times in the Club Escambrón in San Juan, and among the audience was Piliche. As Artau explains it, Piliche, who was from the Barrio Obrero neighborhood nearby, was a very good guitarist who played with the Trío Lírico along with Pompo y Leocadio.  Somehow he learned of the event and was able to attend several performances. He also managed to strike up a friendship with Oviedo while he was in Puerto Rico  and they found themselves in the hotel he was staying at, talking about the instrument. Oviedo taught him the basic positions and how to manage the montuneo, the distinctive repeating pattern which is the tres' role within the son. The Sexteto performed several times, so Piliche was able to see Oviedo in action more than once. According to Artau, the connection was sufficient for Piliche to become our first tresista on the island . However, its quite probable that in New York City, as early as the twenties, other boricuas could already have been learning the tres, but we are still looking for specific details on that.  Artau also affirms that Piliche's first tres was made by a luthier named Medina - whose shop was near Stop 15 in Santurce.  The same builder also converted the cuatrista Joaquinito Rivera, Jr.'s (1910-1995) four string cuatro to eight strings, as he describes in our video documentary Nuestro Cuatro, Vol. 1.

On the other hand...
Commentary by William Cumpiano:
Mariano Artau's assertion that Piliche learned to play the Cuban tres in 1934 during Isaac Oviedo's visit to Puerto Rico, and that was the starting date of the tres in Puerto Rico--presents us with a problem. Upon close examination of a photograph (dated 1934 also) of the Conjunto of Claudio Ferrer, dated to the time he was in New York City, a musician identified as Rovira can be clearly seen, at right, seated while holding a fully-formed nine-string Puerto Rican tres. So how could the Puerto Rican tres have been invented in Puerto Rico in 1934 when it apparently already existed in New York City?

What might help resolve the conflicting information is the following information which reached us recently (12/04) from the Austrian guitarrist and enthusiast Chris Molisch, who was informed by Efraín Amador, professor of tres and laúd at ISA Institute in Habana, Cuba--who knew Isaac Oviedo personally--that the first trip by Oviedo to Puerto Rico fue was in 1929, not in 1934. If this was real date that Puerto Ricans first saw the Cuban tres in the hands of a legendary player of the instrument, it is fully possible that by 1934 the new instrument had migrated to New York City.

Further below, however you can read of later information we received that seems to evidence that the tres Oviedo brought to Puerto Rico was a now-obsolete nine-string tres, which was picked up by Piliche and became the Puerto Rican standard.



Who was the first?

  
Piliche....or Rovira?

Piliche (right) was said to have learned the tres in Puerto Rico for the first time by Isaac Oviedo's side in 1934, when Oviedo was touring through Puerto Rico. Then he asked Pellino Medina to make him the first nine-string tres (immediately below). But Rovira (above, right) appears with a fully-formed Puerto Rican tres in Claudio Ferrer's New York group in a photograph dated 1934, barely a few months later. Now Figurín (see further below) claims that he learned the tres at Piliche's side and claims to be #2. So who was first...and who was second?


Piliche's tres
Guillermo "Piliche" Ayala's original tres,
made by Pellino Medina
photo courtesy Axel Rivera

 


Interview with Figurín
Fragment of a longer interview with Juan Irene Pérez, "Figurín" made by Lorenzo Valoy (Spanish only)

L.V. - Weren't you also influenced by several Cuban musicians also?
Figurín - A Cuban group, called "Los Matanceros" played here [Those "Mantanceros" were probably the Sexteto or Septeto Matancero directed by the guitarist Graciano Gómez, with Barbarito Diez singing. With its tresero Isaac Oviedo, this group toured the Antilles in the year 1929]. A kid called  Guillermo Ayala got together with this Cuban group. He played guitar, but after seeing them he got the idea of playing the tres. He then went to a man who made guitars and had him make him a tres [ed.: most likely Pellino Medina of Santurce] And since he was a good guitarist, well, from there he learned to play tres, on his own, too. From a guitar to the tres--if you're already familiar with a guitar, you'll find tres chords easy. And he was the first to learn to play the tres in Puerto Rico.
L. V. - Did he learn the tres with those "Matanceros"?
Figurín - Yes. Later, he played with the Sexteto Puerto Rico. They called him "Piliche".
L. V. - At that time Mario Hernández hadn't begun to play?
Figurín - No, not yet. The second person to play the tres in Puerto Rico was me. And then Mario Hernández began to play out and a few others.
L. V. - ¿Like Luis Lija Ortiz?
Figurín - No, Luis Lija Ortiz was from here, from New York. He played with Panchito Riset. And there was another called Cándido Vicentí. He was another tres player who lived and played in New York <
...>

L. V. - Then, what happened to Las Estrellas Tropicales?

Figurín - Well, I played guitar with them, because after I learned to play the cuatro I went on to guitar. When the Sexteto Puerto Rico came out with that tres well, they put it this way: "It would be great if you learned to play the tres..." So I told them, "all right! If I had a tres, I'm sure I could learn it..." Well, they got me the tres, which was actually a guitar with the strings configured like a tres. The tres has three little groups of strings, 2, 2 and 2. And: "Well, here's a tres; let's see you learn it." Then I took it to Piliche, because I didn't know how to tune, and I told him, "Look, Piliche, can you tune me this guitar like a tres, 'cause I'd like to learn to play the tres.". So he tuned the guitar like a tres and told me, "See, now you have a tres." I went home with my tres and began to look for chords on the guitar and the tres, on the guitar and the tres...and that's how I came out playing the tres also.

L. V. - What year was that?

Figurín - Well... in the 30s, 1935, more or less... I kept playing tres with several conjuntos. Later, by chance Piliche had to leave for New York, and recommended me for his post in the Sexteto Puerto Rico, because by then I played well, and he told me,  "Well, you can start with the Sexteto Puerto Rico, I talked to them so you could take my place, because I'm going to New York." They called me, I showed up, I rehearsed with them and ended up playing with them for five or six years.


Pero los dos son tan distintos...

El tres cubano es pequeño, con silueta de una pera--y tiene seis cuerdas... y el puertorriqueño es grande, con cortes de violín--y tiene nueve cuerdas...¿y quieres decir que uno se derivó del otro? Es improbable, no?

Posible resolución:

En Cuba, el tres tomo varias formas de acuerdo con la región. ¡Una de las formas se encordaba y tenía una forma similar al tres puertorriqueño! ¿Sería esta configuracíon la que vió Piliche en 1929 y le describió al artesano Pellino Medina?
Pues, miren las fotos que nos mandó Eric Guarini, editor del Especialito.


Tres cubano de nueve cuerdas en manos de Rafael "Pilo" Ortega, tresero y director de la Ronda Lírica Oriental

 
Tres cubano de nueve cuerdas en manos del tresero
del Septeto Matamoros


Foto de un instrumento similar (no podemos contar las cuerdas) en manos de un músico del Septeto Flores.

 Más evidencia...
Entrevista con el tresista mayor Anastasio Feliciano hecho por Juan Sotomayor en 1994

¿Quién hizo el primer tres puertorriqueño?

Pellino Medina. En el barrio Trastalleres en Santurce.

¿Y como en qué año murió ese señor?

Ese señor murió como en...yo te digo...que murió como en el...antes del 1950.

¿Y como qué edad tendría él?

Era un señor ya de edad, un señor como de setenta años o algo así. Y entonces quedó el hijo.

¿Y el hacía los tres en ese estilo que vemos ahí, que parece un cuatro?

El fue que dejó sus moldes para hacer el tres, que se lo dejó al hijo. El hijo se llama Hilo.

¿Usted no se recuerda los tres antes en diferentes formas, de diferente estilo?

Pues lo que traían y lo que tocaban era un tres que parecía una guitarra española, con seis cuerdas, que lo tocaba Luís “Lija” Ortiz, después vi al Cieguito de Ponce que tocaba con una guitarra eléctrica, que era bien famoso. Que tenía la guitarra americana, eléctrica. Pero bien prepará, con seis cuerdas.

¿Y como usted sabe que Medina empezó con la forma esa?

Porque después yo conocí al hijo, que se quedó con el taller, y cuando él murió, y entonces el hijo me dijo, “mira, ahí yo tengo los moldes q     ue me dejó el papá. Y ahora yo estoy haciendo tres más de esos. Ya a Mario Hernández le he hecho dos tres,  y el que te estoy haciendo a ti,” porque ya me ha hecho dos a mí, uno que se me destruyó por la vejez, por tiempo, y después hizo este.

¿Desde cuando estaba haciendo treses?

Válgame, desde muchachito. Y murió también. El que me hizo este tres, ya también murió, ya como hace dos o tres años [1991-1992].  Me dicen que en Santurce, el único que queda ahora es uno que llaman Guilín [ed. Guilín luego se mudo a Vega Baja y después al Estado de Florida]  Ese estuvo mucho tiempo trabajando en la Gretsch (compañía de guitarras ubicada en Brooklyn, NY), en Nueva York, las guitarras Gretsch, las buenas que salían. Pues trabajaba allí afinándolas, poniéndole los pickups, y poniendo esas cosas. Y después se vino acá y puso una tienda de esas, un taller. Y hace cuatro, hace guitarras, hace tres.

¿Entonces usted sabe que el estilo ese que se le da al tres, que tiene los cortes de violin, que eso también es de Puerto Rico?

Si, eso nació aquí, si.

¿Y las nueve cuerdas que se le ponen?

También fue de aquí. Porque el tres de Cuba era de seis cuerdas nada más. Dos, dos y dos. Pues aquí se inventaron una y por ahí siguieron de rolo.

¿En dónde usted vio el primer tres?

El primer tres lo vi yo en Santurce, en casa de un señor que se llamaba Zapatero.

¿Como en qué año fue eso?

Como el 51, el 52, por ahí. Zapatero. Que tocaba con el Septeto Puerto Rico.

¿Y como usted encuerda el tres?

Con dos primas [ed., cuerdas de guitarra], una tercera; tres segundas; y vuelve y se repite arriba dos primas y una tercera.

¿La tercera va en el medio?

En la [orden] de abajo, va la tercera encima...de las dos primas. Y la última de arriba, la tercera va debajo de las dos primas.

¿Y se afina en la clave de Re y de Do?

Tiene dos afinaciones, la clave de Re y la clave de Do. Porque como la clave de Re sube mucho hay tres que no aguantan el empuje, como digo yo, y (interrumpción)...más bajita la afinación, pero te queda bastante incómodo para ejecutarlo. Y es más, porque esa es la más genuina de las afinaciones. Entonces los cubanos, y to’ esa gente usaban esa guitarras, antes, y era con una sordina. Puestas, pues la quitaban de aquí pa’ ponerlas acá. La bajaban aquí y la subían acá. No es como ahora, que no se usa.

¿No se usa sordina ahora en el tres?

No, y el que toca tres con sordina ahora, no...no es músico. Aqui esta el huesito. Y más pa’ bajo no le puedes poner más na’. Solo uña y dedos. (ríe).

 

 

The Tres in Puerto Rico

The tres in Puerto Rico:

    It's perhaps easy to accept the proposition that Puerto Rican stringed instruments were descendants of ancient Spanish stringed instruments. But it may be harder to accept the concept that one of them was born in modern times with the sole purpose of playing Cuban music. But that's how it was with the Puerto Rican tres.
     On the other hand, the idea of a Puerto Rican
Cuban instrument is not so strange if you consider that during the last two centuries, Cuban and Puerto Rican cultures have frequently and intimately intertwined.
    One of the consequences of this cultural proximity was that the Cuban three-course instrument, created to provide the rhythmic ostinato passages for the Cuban
son and changui, was adopted in Puerto Rico, but adapted with a different and distinctive shape and stringing, while keeping the original modal tuning: thus was born the instrument that has become known as the Puerto Rican tres. 



Listen to the Puerto Rican tres:

Carreteros (requires Real Player) Cuarteto Marcano. The tresista could be one of the following: Luis "Lija" Ortiz or Sarraíl Archilla (c.1945-46)

Alma Borincana (requires Real Player) Guaracha by the Quinteto La Plata, c. 1937, thel tresista probably is Cándido Vicenti


     Starting from the time that U.S. citizenship was imposed on Puerto Ricans at the start of the First World War in 1917, boricuas travelled to New York to better their living conditions. Musicians were no exception. From the beginnings of the 1920s to the end of the 1940s, Puerto Rican musicians recorded music that was in vogue for American recording companies. Most of it was music with Cuban roots designed for the North American market, the Latino market and above all for the Latin American market. At the time it was a very concentrated and controlled industry with musical styles and fads dictated by the entrepreneurs rather than by the musicians, and it was more economical to hire local artists in New York than to carry portable recording equipment to Cuba, Santo Domingo or Puerto Rico. This is why so many ancient son and guaracha recordings exist, predominantly performed by Puerto Rican musicians. Later, native recording industries arose in each of the Latin American countries.
     It is within this context, one where Puerto Ricans were obliged to adopt the tres as an instrument in their repertory. Composers like Rafael Hernández, Pedro Flores, Plácido Acevedo, Pedro "Piquito" Marcano, among others, found themselves composing music within this commercial mold, one which permitted them to express their patrotic sentiments, their pain, their feelings of love--but within a musical base that was essential Cuban. That generation of musicians principally composed guarachas, sones, rumbas, congas-all sharing Cuban roots--rather than seises, villaranes, danzas or plenas: Puerto Rican genres. Given this context, it is quite easy to understand the proficiency that many Puerto Ricans reached with the tres and their role with the music.

      What we have not been able to ascertain what happened first--Did Puerto Ricans develop and use the distinctive Puerto Rican tres for the first time in the great city? There is evidence for this, as well as persuasive evidence that the instrument was first created in Puerto Rico first and later it was exported to New York; So which one was it? Evidence for both possibilities is offered here

The Puerto Rican tresistas

More or less in chronological order, the Puerto Rican musicians that have stood out on the Puerto Rican tres have been:

  • "Piliche" (Guillermo Ayala) 1906-1993, supposedly the first Puerto Rican tresista, originally mentored by the Cuban tresero Isaac Oviedo who first arrived in Puerto Rico on tour with the Septeto Matancero headed by Graciano Gómez

  • Yayito Maldonado - Quinteto La Plata; Sexteto de Pedro Flores; Canario y su grupo

  • ________ Reyes - Cuarteto Marcano (Los Carreteros)

  • Cándido Vicentí - Sexteto de Pedro Flores, Quinteto La Plata

  • Luis "Lija" Ortiz- Sexteto Caravan

  • Juan Irene Pérez (Figurín)
    See more information here

  • Mario Hernández - Los Diablos del Caribe, Sonora Borinquen

  • Yomo Toro - Larry Harlow, Fania All Stars

  • Tuto Feliciano - Cuarteto Yari

  • Máximo Torres

  • Charlie Rodríguez - Orq. Johnny Pacheco

  • Nelson González - Conjunto Folklórico Experimental, Típica 73, Cachao, Marc Anthony. Visit Nelson's webiste

  • Tito García - Sexteto Moderno; Pleneros de Truco

  • Oscar Ríos - Borincuba Oscar Ríos wrote us to add that he also played with Pete "El Conde"  Rodríguez, Conjunto Clásico de NY, El Sabor de Nacho, Mickey Cora y la Orquesta Cabala, Conjunto Caney, Pacheco y su Tumbao, y Cachao.

  • Louis García - Conjunto Canallón, Cheo Feliciano

The marvelous and hard working Puerto Rican tresista Nelson González prefers to play a Cuban tres signed by Cachao. Nelson has won three Grammys and often plays with Marc Anthony. Nelson wrote a great new Tres method.

 


  Puerto Rican tres made by the luthier William Cumpiano, co-founder
of the Cuatro Project, for the Japanese tres player Takashi Shimazaki.
Photo by William Cumpiano

 
The Cuarteto Tropical
photo taken February 17, 1935
Left to right (standing), Fernando "Nando" Lao (second voice); Antonio Marrero (second guitar); Félix Castrillón (first voice); Adolfo "Biriquin" Rivera (tres); Seated:  Axel Rivera (singer and group owner)

 



Conjunto de Claudio Ferrer

photo taken in 1934
Seated in front, left to right, Claudio Ferrer, guitar; ? Rovira, Puerto Rican tres; Oscar Aponte, bongo. Standing: Ernesto Mantilla, maracas; Benito Rullan, bass; Antonio Nieves, wind instruments; Vitin Mercado, trumpet

 

 
The group's tresista, Rovira (see above)

 


El Septeto Puerto Rico
Photo taken circa 1930
Standing, left to right: at the bass: Fernando Pizarro "Nandí", Pompilio Gutierrez "Pompo": singer and maracas, Roberto Maunez; Leocadio Vizcarrondo: secong voice and guitar; Guillermo Ayala "Piliche," Puerto Rican tres: . Seateds: on the trumpet, Juanchín Ramirez; Emilio "Yiyo" Fuentes: bongo.

 
Guillermo "Piliche" Ayala
Tresista of the Septeto Puerto Rico (see photo above)
Supposedly, "Piliche" was the first Puerto Rican tresista. But, was he?
See the evidence here 



Mario Hernández
The best known, perhaps the greatest Puerto Rican tresista that ever lived.

 


Mario Hernández during a concert in Old San Juan with the Sonora Borinquen,
April 2000

Listen to a long solo by Mario during this show
(2.8 Meg Mp3)

Transcription of this solo, a gift from the Austrian tresero Richi Ploder

Next, Mike Amadeo furnishes this priceless video gift of a jam session with the great master.

  

 

Tuto Feliciano

We see here the distinguished tresista/cuatrista puertorriqueño Tuto Feliciano (1926-2005) cin his youth during the 40s, with his rustic tres of his times.

Listen to Tuto with the Cuarteto Yari playing a solo during a performance of the piece titled: Flamboyán  

Obtain a complete transcription of this solo written on staf, another gift from the Austrian tresista Richi Ploder

Another piece with Tuto and the Cuarteto Yari,
Pensando en tí.

Puerto Rican Tres stringing, gauges and tuning:

The Puerto Rican tres has three courses (groups) of three strings each for a total of nine strings.

From the low pitch to the highest, the principal tuning is in

C Major: G, C, E

but often a capo is placed on the second fret, changing the tuning to:

D Major: A, D, F#

The individual strings in each course are tuned in unison or are tuned an octave apart (in this case the higher-octave string has to be a monofilament (plain or unwound string) and the lower octave string has to be a wound string, in order to keep both strings at a similar tension even though one is tuned higher than the other.

However, the precise way the octaves are arranged in each course, or even which courses are in octaves, depends on the custom of the player. The most common arrangement of octaves and unisons within the three courses of the Puerto Rican Tres are: (The capital letters denote the lower octave-and thus the wound--string)

The following alternate Puerto Rican tres tunings were given to us by the expert Brooklyn maker/player Tito Báez:

1- gGg ccc eEe
2. Ggg ccc eeE
3. ggG ccc Eee

The author has also seen the following tuning
4. Ggg ccc Eee


The strings used on the Puerto Rican tres can be purchased in sets from La Bella (#L-730, incorrectly labeled Tres Cubano strings) or selected from boxes of individual steel-string guitar strings available in most music stores in different gauges. The plain or unwound strings are usually high tensile steel monofilament strings, and the wound strings are usually nickel-wound, but can be also bronze wound or silk and steel. A typical set of gauges would be:

High octave g: .011" monofilament
Low octave G: .024" wound
C string: .015" monofilament
High octave e: .011" monofilament
Low octave E: .024" wound

 

 

A jíbaro guitar

A jíbaro guitar is found in New York

 

In 1912,  a wealthy lady donated a small jewel of folk art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was a guitar carved from a single block of wood which she had acquired during her visits to the distant island of Puerto Rico during the nineteenth century. The instrument was decorated with geometric chip-carvings all around its sides and back, done in motifs that recall Ghanaian decorative art.
     The instrument had remained buried in the museum vault during much of the twentieth century, having been exhibited only once, when a illustration was published in a New York magazine in 1971. That issue came to the attention of the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project, and our chief investigator, Juan Sotomayor went to the museum and inquired about it. The curator had to search deeply in the museum's archives to find it. Thanks to the care and protection afforded to it by the museum, it remains today in excellent condition, while most all the native Puerto Rican instruments of its period have vanished, victims of neglect, disdain, ...and termites.

 

Ken Moore, curator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, displays the old jíbaro guitar found in the museum's collection as a result of the Cuatro Project's request. It was subsequently taken out of deep archive and placed in a prominent place on display.

 

 

 

Color photos below courtesy Chris Miekle

 

 

 

The Tres in Cuba

The Tres in Cuba


A contemporary Cuban tres with a cutaway

In Cuba, among the Creole class, the Son arose as a song and salon dance genre featuring the persistent sounds of a plucked string instrument alternatively playing the melodic lead and a four-bar ostinato passage called montuno. This repeating phrase forms a rhythmic foundation for the music. Originally, a guitar, tiple or bandola, played rhythm and lead in the son, but later these were replaced by a native-born instrument, a fusion of the three: the Cuban tres.

The original Son form consisted of melodies derived from the ancient sung coplas of Spain, accompanied by a guitar and an ingenious bass apparatus called marímbola (a hollow box about the size of a television set with an array of attached lengths of clock spring straps that were plucked by a player seated on the box, producing bass tones) or a botija (a large ceramic bottle with a hole in it which is blown like a rum jug). Some experts, however, understand that the direct historic antecedent to the son was a genre called "changúí," still played by some folkloric groups in Cuba.

The son ensemble evolved by growing in size until it included up to six or seven musicians (known correspondingly as sexteto or septeto): guitar, tres, maracas, claves (in the hands of the lead singer) and bongos; variously, one or more trumpets, a second guitarist, and a mar'mbola or botija would complete the grouping. The bass line was provided by the marímbola or the botija, but these instruments would disappear, as the groups became louder and rowdier, in favor of the more sonorous bass fiddle.

The Cuban tres itself began as a rustic native adaptation of the Spanish family of wire-strung instruments that were popular in Spain during colonial times: laúd, bandola and bandurria. The seventeenth century historian Bermudo describes a three-course bandurria which may have set the pattern for the first tres. The earliest are said to have been made from codfish boxes, most likely by African-Cuban dock workers. It was usually played with a tortoise-shell pick. Over time, the tres evolved into an object of refined craft, losing its rustic, mandolin-like form and growing in size, but retaining its bandurria-like pear shaped outline. Perhaps looking for greater sonority, Arsenio Rodriguez and Isaac Oviedo often played tres on a Spanish guitar adapted for three doubled up wire-string courses÷and its neck and scale shortened to ten frets to the body. Today, adapted guitars are the most often-seen form of the tres. When the son was eventually absorbed into the cabaret and dance hall, the instrument's job of playing the montuno over and over was largely taken up by the piano. Since then, the importance of the tres has waned in modern popular music, and can be seen today mostly during revivals of traditional forms.


Great Cuban treseros 

Early in this century, several legendary tresistas [tres players] would emerge: Nené Manfugás, Carlos Godines, Arsenio Rodriguez, Isaac Oviedo, and Eliseo Silveira. They are considered to be national treasures of Cuban music. Known as a bohemian and adventurer, Nené Manfugás brought his music from the hinterlands of Baracoa into the great city of Santiago de Cuba in the late 1880s. He played early, primitive sones that were marvelously rich despite the rusticity of his tres, and in the process propelled the son as a national genre.

Arsenio Rodriguez was a great composer and tresero from Matanzas. Blinded at an early age, he nonetheless developed a unique style that became established as a standard form.



Arsenio Rodriguez

 Listen to an audio fragment of Arsenio playing a solo on his tres, in a 1940 recording with Miguelito Valdéz, titled: Se va el caramelero

Arsenio developed the Son's combo structure, which included the tumbadora drum,  and which would become the indispensable characteristic of the Son and all subsequent derivative forms. During the fifties, his music had fallen out of style in his homeland, and like so many traditional Caribbean musicians, he found a new and eager audience among hundreds of thousands of Cuban and Puerto Rican expatriates in New York City. He left behind a treasury of original compositions when he died in Los Angeles, California in 1972 at the age of 61.

Isaac Oviedo, another great Cuban tresero from Matanzas was born in 1902. During the 1920s he formed the Septeto Matancero, and toured the Caribbean and the United States during the twenties and thirties, leaving a craze behind him as he traveled.


Isaac Oviedo

During the twenties, the Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Piñeiro was another musical powerhouse that spread the Son throughout Latin America. Indeed Piñeiro is credited with having established the Son as a ballroom dance form (most other dances of the time were essentially communal or figure-dances) where a couple danced "solitos" or all by themselves. Around 1977 the surviving members of the Septeto Nacional reunited. The event was documented on film as a tribute to Piñeiro by his now octagenarian band associates.

While all the legendary treseros, sadly, have died off, a crop of top treseros still keep the flame of the son and its derivatives still alive: Three highly regarded living treseros are Francisco "Pancho" Amat, a Cuban with the Adalberto Alvarez y su Son group in Cuba, Also, one of the most technically proficient players on the level of Pancho Amat is Juan "Coto" de la Cruz Antomarchi.  He played w/Elio Reve and is now touring with Cubanismo and his own band.

Other important Cuban treseros are

  • Alejandro "Mulato" Rodríguez - Cuarteto Machín
  • Félix Ganuza - Cuarteto Machín
  • Papi Oviedo - Conjunto Familia Oviedo, Orq. Revé
  • Reyes 'Chito' Latamblet es el tresero a quien se le da la mayor responsabilidad por haber implementado el estilo de "changui" de tocar el tres
  • Niño Rivera - Estrellas del Areito
  • Guillermo Pompa Montero
    tocó con Chito Latamblet, Isaac Oviedo, alumno de Niño Rivera
  • Storch - Cuarteto Caney
  • Francisco "Pancho" Amat - Manguaré, Adalberto Alvarez
  • Juan de Marcos González - Sierra Maestra, Afro-Cuban All Stars
  • Guillermo Céspedes - Conjunto Céspedes
  • Juan "Cotó" de la Cruz Antoniomarchi - grupo Ecos del Caribe

 
Classic shape of the traditional tres cubano diagram: William Cumpiano


The legendary tresero Panchito Solares seated beside the great Ignacio Piñeiro, director of the Septeto Nacion.
Photo circa 1958


Another shot of Panchito Solares and members of thel Septeto Nacional taken in 1962


Tres and tresero from Matanzas, Cuba



Other tres cubano configurations

Vase or tulip-shaped tres


Tresero of the Grupo Típico Oriental
with a tulip-shaped tres


Nine-string Tres Cubano


Left.: Pillo Ortega, director of the grupo Ronda Lirica Oriental,
Right.:
 tresero of the Septeto Matamoros with treses carrying three triple-string courses (totaling nine strings)
   Photos courtesy of Eric Guerini y Benito González

 
Puerto Rican Tresero of the Septeto Flores

Guitarra-Tres


     In Cuba it is very common to convert a Spanish six-single-nylon-string guitar into a three-double-metal-string tres. They call it guitarra-tres. The great Arsenio Rodríguez, as well as Isaac Oviedo used guitarras-tres. The guitar soundbox is larger than that of the traditional tres, which lends it a somewhat larger sound. Presumably, the preponderance of guitarra-tres over the traditional kind is some places is a regional preference.
     But a problem with these conversions arises: the nylon or gut guitar strings place a far lesser tension stress on the instrument than the metal ones do. The greater stress over time overwhelms the guitar's structure and the structure eventually fails and collapses, and the over-burdened instrument has to be retired.
     The most popular way to account for the extra string tension is to add a "trapeze" (called "baticola" in Cuba) below the bridge, which instead of having the string tension dumped on the yielding soundboard, directs the tension to the rigid tailblock at the base of the soundboard. This frees much of the delicate soundboard from carrying all the force and prolongs the useful life of the instrument. Unfortunately, even with the baticola in place, the stresses eventually flex the instrument away from the strings. That is why some builders are now building treses more like steel-string, rather than nylon-string guitars, whose structure anticipates the increased stress and results in a long-lasting instrument.

Stringing and Tuning

The Cuban tres carries three courses (groups) of two strings each, adding up to six strings.

Starting with the string closest to the player, the modern tuning is in C Major:

G, C, E

Frequently a capo is placed behind the the second fret, changing the tuning to D Major:

A, D, F#

Cuban countryfolk use different tunings when playing the genre called Punto Cubano. These are:

F, C#, F#
(This one is called "transportáo al medio" or transposed to the middle)

Otra es:

F,  D,  G
(called "afinación al dos" or double tuning)

  The strings within each course are tuned in unison or in octaves. Within the octave courses the lowest-pitch string is wound (wrapped with a fine metal wire) and the highest is a mono-filament wire string. The mass difference between the two allows them to stay at the same tension while being tuned an octave apart.

However, the precise ways in which the plain and wound strings are configured within each course, or even which courses are unison or octave courses, varies according to custom. The most common configurations of octave and unison string courses on the Cuban tres are as follows: (Capital letters denote the lower-octave--and thus wound--strings)

1-   g/G    c/c    E/e
2-   g/G   c/c    e/e

There are other configurations but they are not seen very often. Among them: 

3-   G/g   c/c   e/e
4.   G/g   C/c  E/e

Las cuerdas para el tres cubano pueden ser seleccionadas de cajas de cuerdas individuales de acero de guitarra disponibles en distinto calibres de tiendas de música-usualmente las más grandes. Las cuerdas sencillas usualmente son de acero ténsil y las entorchadas son usualmente envueltos en hilo niquelado o bronceado, o a veces son una combinación de seda y metal. Los calibres son típicamente los siguientes:

sol octava aguda: .009" sencilla
SOL octava grave: .022" entorchada
do: .011 sencilla
mi octava aguda: .009"sencilla
MI octava grave: .022" entorchada

 

 

The cuatro´s story

 A short history of the Puerto Rican cuatro and its music
by William Cumpiano, coordinator of the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project                            

 

The Cuatro is Puerto Rico's "national instrument." Smaller than a guitar and larger than a mandolin, the cuatro's distinctive, nasal twang has been loved by Puerto Ricans since the early days of Puerto Rico's colonial past.

In its earliest form, it was quite different from what it is today. The "early" cuatro or cuatro antiguo once had a peculiar, keyhole-shaped soundbox and was strung with four single strings made from animal guts--hence it's name cuatro-- or "four." Its tuning and stringing-- originally derived from a primitive modal form of tuning dating back to 15th century Spain-- remained unchanged on the Island for centuries. In this form, the jíbaro country folk living in the remote central hills of the Island, preferred it. The early form of the cuatro persisted across the Puerto Rican countryside up until the middle of the 20th century--and then faded away. 

At the end of the 19th century, however, a different stringing was adopted on the keyhole-shaped instrument. The change first occured among Puerto Ricans living along the more urbanized coastal regions of the Island. It appears to have been an effort to keep up with modern times. Spurring the change was what had become popular all over the Americas at the time: string orchestras (called estudiantinas) from Italy and Spain, touring the United States and Latin America. Their players dressed in brightly-colored costumes and  played loud, strident wire-strung plucked stringed instruments. The Italian groups played mandolins (tuned in fifths) of all sizes and the Spanish played their bright bandurrias and laúdes (all tuned in fourths): all of them jangling with paired courses of wire strings. These bright, impressive stringed orchestras swept through Latin America as a vanguard of modernity and many countries besides Puerto Rico reconsidered the ancient, limited gut stringing of their own native stringed instruments--delicate, quiet things which had remained unchanged for centuries.

Puerto Ricans, predominantly those along the northern coast of the Island "modernized" the limited old cuatro by stringing it with 10 shiny new wire strings--as the transitional 10-string keyhole cuatro seen above in the hands of Eusebio González. His instrument now was arranged with 10-stings arranged in 5 pairs and tuned to the same intervals as the fancy Spanish Nuevo Laúd which many had seen when the Spanish estudiantinas on tour stopped by the Island.

Later in Puerto Rico, around 1915, artisans in the Arecibo region changed its traditional keyhole shape into one reminiscent of a violin, which had become a symbol of upper-class sophistication. In this configuration, the new instrument was heard across the Island. It was during the earliest days of Puerto Rican radio, and the cuatro was heard Island-wide played by the great composer and instrumentalist Ladislao Martínez. His captivating style of playing the cuatro in duo with Sarriel Archilla precipitated its popularity to soar and it soon replaced the older now-obsolete four-gut-string form. The new 10-metal-string instrument with a violin shape kept its ancient name cuatro, however, and in this configuration it has endured to this day as the "national instrument of Puerto Rico."

 


Modern 10-string Puerto Rican cuatro made by Cuatro Project co-founder William Cumpiano at his shop in Northampton MA

 

From early colonial times Puerto Ricans also created other different--and equally beautiful--stringed instruments, but they have largely disappeared from public view. These instruments-- the various small tiples, a vihuela and the large bordonúa-- are just now beginning to enter the public sphere once again, as a result of the efforts of rescue groups such as ours and others on the island.

Traditionally, the cuatro is never heard alone in public as a solo instrument. Its musical role is to always to provide the melody voice in a traditional instrumental ensemble, sometimes called an "orquesta jíbara." Today, the cuatro is usually heard accompanied either by another cuatro (cuatros a dúo) and/or a guitar. While the cuatro playes the melody, the guitar usually plays chordal accompaniment. In the traditional ensemble, the rhythmic percussion is always carried out by a scratch gourd called variously güiro, guícharo or carracho. Today we often hear a set of bongos included in the percussion section, although that is a relatively recent addition, the bongo being Cuban in origin.

     The cuatro was originally made and played by the jíbaro, Puerto Rico´s iconic "mountain-dweller" and subsistence farmer: the original creator of Puerto Rican country music. From its early beginnings, the social function of Puerto Rican "mountain music" was mainly for the accompaniment of religious observances, such as promesas a la virgen [promises to the Virgin Mary], florones or baquinés [wakes for dead children], patron-saint festivals, and rosarios cantados [rosary songs]--as well as during secular events like end-of-harvest celebrations (acabes) and even political campaigns. Those old customs are rarely observed today and the only remaining, truly traditional usage of the cuatro and Puerto Rican mountain music is during year-end celebrations of the Nativity and January observances of the festival of Epiphany. But over time, the cuatro's usage spread into the world of secular mainstream, popular music.

     In the 19th century, the cuatro was heard both in the countryside and the city: in Puerto Rican coastal cities it played the counterpoint in formal salon orchestras during performances of light classical and European figure dance music for the city elites and middle class, while in the countryside it was heard in early "orquestas jíbaras" -- ensembles comprised by the cuatro playing the melody line, the tiny tiple playing the accompanying chords and the large bordonúa playing the deep bass line. These country "orchestras" played creolized versions of that long-hair music the jíbaros could hear emanating from within the fancy salons and theatres in the cities, when they went to the towns and cities to sell their produce at market.

     But the principal role of jibaro instrument string ensembles was to accompany a singer. Since the island's earliest days, the traditional singer or trovador sang lyrics that in reality were poetic verses following the ancient rules and patterns of the ancient décima and decimilla.

     The poetic form known as "décima" has been an ancient form of popular expression in Puerto Rico, recited and song by not only countryfolk of limited formal education, but also of high-literacy city dwellers. But the décima--its verses  adding up to 10 eight-syllable lines--hence its name-- is not native to Puerto Rico: it first became popular in 16th century Spain, and eventually it was adapted--and adopted--by many of the colonies of Hispanic America. In Puerto Rico, the décima was converted into a sung lyric form, usually accompanied by a solo guitar or a traditional cuatro grouping of cuatro and guiro; o cuatro, guitar and guiro. The singer sings his décima to the rhythm of an ancient musical melody and dance form called the seis, played by the traditional instrumental ensemble group. The seis has many variants, each usually named after the region where the variant originated or named after a distinctive characteristic that it may have.

     A form of the décima, but with verses of only 6 syllables, known as the decimilla (small décima) has also been popular across the Puerto Rican countryside through the centuries. When traditional singers strike up a song with its lyrics made up of a decimilla poem the accompanying musicians, instead of a seis, strike up another rhythmic form called aguinaldo , of which there are also many styles which vary with the region of origin. The aguinaldo, with its decimilla lyrics is popularly--but not exclusively--heard during the Nativity and Epiphany seasons.

     One of the ways that Puerto Ricans enjoy their sung décima poetry is during performances where the singer-poet, or trovador, improvises the verses on the spot after being just handed a slip of paper with the expected topic written on it. This requires great mental acuity, because as the trovador sings the improvised lyric, he must follow the strict and complex rules of the décima rhyme structure and syllabification. On top of that, the improvised poem must conclude with the given topic as its last line. This tenth line is called "pie forzado" (obligated ending, or "forced foot"). During the public performance of an improvised décima, the accompanying musicians play a slow seis, in a tempo that gives the improviser time to compose the lyric in his mind as he sings it.

 

The Puerto Rican-Cuban Tres

The Tres in Puerto Rico and Cuba

 
by William R. Cumpiano-Puerto Rican Cuatro Project
  and Ramón M. Goméz-Organización Sambumbia

 with the additional contribution of Benjamin Lapidus-ethnomusicologist and director of Sonido Isleño

We wish to also recognize as an important source an article in the Cuban textbook Instrumentos de la Música Folclórico-Popular de Cuba, Volumen 2, [Instruments of Folkloric-Popular Music of Cuba, Volume 2] about the Tres written by the researcher, Carmen María Sáenz Coopat, who is a collaborator to the Cuatro Project, published by the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Música Cubana [Center for the Research and Development of Cuban Music] 1997, La Habana de Cuba, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales [Social Sciences publishing house],  and which due to the embargo is not available in the United States.
The Tres is generally unknown among many otherwise knowledgeable fans of fretted stringed instruments, yet it is a vital expressive tool that has shaped the sound of Latin American music since the last century.

Note: Cuban tres players often call themselves treseros; while Puerto Ricans playing the tres often call themselves tresistas. We will follow that custom.

LEARN MORE ABOUT:
THE CUBAN TRES
THE PUERTO RICAN TRES
HOW THEY'RE CONNECTED


 A small offering:

  Here is a wonderful introduction to the Tres: the great singer and arranger for the Los Guaracheros del Oriente and for Arsenio Rodríguez, Israel Berrios, sings for us a medley of his arrangements of the standards Temporal and Qué Bonita Bandera, with Charlie Rodríguez on the Tres.


A gift from the Cuatro Project: Downnload a booklet of tres chords that we have prepared in Acrobat pdf format.


Here we offer a translation of Carmen María Sáenz Coopat's research on the Tres for  Center for Research and Promotion of Cuban Music [Centro de Investigación y desarrolo de la Música Cubana]



 

Mario Hernández, arguably the greatest Puerto Rican tresista, at the height of his career.
Photo courtesy Ansonia Records

 

Antecedents
In the early sixteenth century,
the Catholic kings of Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle of Castile, commanded that string instruments be sent in large numbers to their "new" world, along with the Spanish colonists, as tools of religious observation and persuasion. Sailors, besides, must have brought their own tiny guitarillos and tiples, instruments popular among the lower-born in Spain at the time, as valued companions during the long ocean passages.
     The high-born brought their own distinctive instruments: once on land, the conquistadores and missionaries could listen to the familiar melodies of the
stately vihuela and think of their homes far away.
     Later, regional guitar-like instruments sprang up as mixed-race Creoles, native-born whites and African slaves applied their resourcefulness and simple tools to local materials, creating workable replicas of what must have been expensive and scarce originals.

None of these instruments follow a rational artistic pattern in their manner of construction; their low material value results from their being made by the jíbaros themselves, whom most of the time must rely on barely appropriate tools while making them. It would be interesting to point out the process of bifurcation that the previously-mentioned national stringed instruments have followed: within them, the way guitars and bandurrias are made persists, but the lack of tools has influenced their not being able to be made as perfectly as the models that the Spaniards brought from the Metropolis.
                                                                                                                                             Francisco Del Valle Atiles, 1887

In this way, unique native variants of gut and wire string instruments called tiple, bandolina, tres, and cuatro would endure in the Americas long after the Spanish retired back to Europe at the end of the last century.

 

Discography
If you'd like to hear the tres, this discography of selected recordings will help:

  • SEXTETO BORINQUEN: El Auténtico, Vol. 1 (Ansonia 1312)
  • ISAAC OVIEDO: Routes of Rhythm, Vol.3 (Rounder 5055)
  • LUIS LIJA ORTIZ Y SU SEXTETO CARAVAN: No Me Persigas (Ansonia 1601)
  • JOHNNY PACHECO: El Maestro (Fania 485)
  • ARSENIO RODRIGUEZ Y SU CONJUNTO: Montuneando 1946-50 (Tumbao 31)
  • ADALBERTO ALVAREZ Y SU SON: Ay, Que Tu Quieres, Que Te Den? (DM 2002)
  • MARIO HERNANDEZ Y SU SEXTETO BORINQUEN: Para Ti Son Mis Canciones (Artilleria CDC-332)

    Thanks to Eric Guerini, Ramón M. Gómez-Organización Sambumbia,  Juan Sotomayor and the Acoustic Guitar Magazine article: CARIBBEAN MEMORIES by William R. Cumpiano-- for their assitance to this page.