© 2015 delio figueroa - university of florida
TRANSCRIPT
MY MUSIC, MY PLACE: THE GOLDEN ERA OF JIBARO MUSIC AND PUERTO RICAN IDENTITY IN NEW YORK CITY
By
DELIO FIGUEROA
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
2015
© 2015 Delio Figueroa
To my grandparents, who taught me that one’s culture is always with you no matter how far you are from home. To all the Puerto Ricans who migrated to the United States of America in search of a better life and kept their culture alive through folk traditions and music; and to all the contemporary community of Jíbaro musicians around the globe.
¡Bravo!
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This dissertation could not have been completed if not for the guidance, support,
and patience of my family, mentors, friends, and acquaintances. First and foremost, I
would like to thank my mother and father, María de los Angeles and Delio, who always
believed in me and encouraged my talent, and to my sister Bárbara for always making
me laugh. I also want to thank Julia Roncoroni for all her help and patience.
This project would not have been successful if not for the generosity and support
from the Delores Auzene Dissertation Award, and the help of Richard Philips and Paul
Losch at the Latin American and Caribbean Collection at University of Florida.
I owe a great deal of gratitude to my professors and advisors at the School of
Music who have guided and helped me shape this dissertation as well as my academic
career as ethnomusicologist and music educator. A special thanks goes to the chairs of
my committee: Dr. Larry Crook and Dr. Welson Tremura, who were faced with the
daunting task of revising this document. An immense amount of gratitude is reserved for
Dr. Lillian Guerra whose advice and commitment have been instrumental in the forging
of this study and to my development as a scholar and pedagogue. Another great
amount of gratitude goes to Dr. Efraín Barradas who through his teaching made me
realize that I’m not the only Puerto Rican/Latino immigrant in the USA and for always
finding time in his busy agenda to meet up and discuss the progress of my work. I would
like to thanks Dr. Silvio do Santos for his encouragements and for serving as a model in
the development of my philosophical/musical self. Thanks to everyone who believed in
me.
Last but not least to all the Jíbaro and Popular musicians in New York, Florida,
and Puerto Rico who still keep this musical tradition alive, especially Gilberto de Paz,
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Joaquín Mouliert, Luz Celenia Tirado, Tony Mapeyé (José Antonio Rivera Colón), and
Mike Amadeo in the Bronx. Finally, I would like to thank Professor Luis M. Alvarez, for
his invaluable words of wisdom, and Lillian Pérez Marchand for her charisma, kindness,
good sense of humor, and all the insight about how the Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriqueña worked regarding Jíbaro music and Puerto Rican folkloric arts.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4
LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 8
LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 9
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 11
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 13
Background ............................................................................................................. 13 Purpose of this Study .............................................................................................. 18 Importance of the Present Study ............................................................................ 20 Methodology: Field an Archival Research ............................................................... 20 Plan of the Dissertation ........................................................................................... 30
2 JÍBARO MUSIC ...................................................................................................... 32
Background ............................................................................................................. 32 Golden Era of Jíbaro Music (1950s-1960s) ............................................................ 36
Defining Jibaro Music.............................................................................................. 40 Use and Social Functions ....................................................................................... 42 Music and Poetry .................................................................................................... 47 Instrumentation of the Jíbaro Ensemble ................................................................. 55 The Puerto Rican Cuatro: A Portable Piece of Home ............................................. 64
3 PROGRESS, NOSTALGIA, AND THE PROCESS OF POPULARIZING JIBARO MUSIC .................................................................................................................... 77
“Echar pa’ lante” and “Buscando ambiente” ............................................................ 77
The Diaspora (… and the Nostalgia) ...................................................................... 78 Commodification and Revivalism ............................................................................ 84
The State Intervenes in Jíbaro Music...................................................................... 86 Standardization of Jíbaro music .............................................................................. 89 Summary ................................................................................................................ 91
4 MUSIC AND LYRICAL ANALYSIS ......................................................................... 94
“Les voy a dar con los pies” – Baltazar Carrero by Baltazar Carrero from the 78rpm single Alegre ............................................................................................. 94
“Un Jíbaro en apuro” – Odílio González by Dámaso Castro from the album “Canto a Borinquén” BMC-BLP1508 ................................................................. 100
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Summary .............................................................................................................. 108
5 PUERTO RICAN NATIONAL IDENTITY IN NEW YORK CITY: CREATING A THIRD SPACE ...................................................................................................... 110
Spaces to be Puerto Rican in New York ............................................................... 110 Nationalism and Jibaro Music ............................................................................... 114 Nationalism ........................................................................................................... 118 “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico” – Ramito by Flor Morales Ramos from the album
“Puerto Rico es un diamante” ............................................................................ 121
Live performances of Jíbaro Music ....................................................................... 130 Jíbaro Recordings ................................................................................................. 137 Jíbaro Records as Material Culture ...................................................................... 141
The Velloneras ...................................................................................................... 147
6 CONCLUSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS .............................................................. 150
The Jíbaro as Arquetype of Nation ....................................................................... 150 Finding Answers ................................................................................................... 151 Spaces to be Puerto Rican ................................................................................... 154 Further Observations ............................................................................................ 159 Final Thought: Additional Areas for Research ...................................................... 160
APPENDIX
A VISUAL SYMBOLS OF PUERTO RICAN CULTURE ........................................... 162
B LAW DESIGNATING THE CUATRO, AS A NATIONAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF PUERTO RICO AND SYSMBOLS OF PUERTO RICAN CULTURE: ............................................................................................................ 163
C CORE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF PLENA MUSIC......................................... 165
D FREQUENTLY RECORDED SEIS DURING THE GOLDEN ERA OF JÍBARO MUSIC .................................................................................................................. 166
E GLOSSARY .......................................................................................................... 167
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 171
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 180
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LIST OF TABLES
Table page
2-1 Jíbaro Core Music Instruments ........................................................................... 58
2-2 Jíbaro Secondary Music Instruments ................................................................. 58
2-3 Jíbaro Auxiliary Musical Instruments .................................................................. 59
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure page
2-1 3-2 clave ............................................................................................................. 50
2-2 Instrumental introduction of a typical seis con décima ....................................... 51
2-3 Instrumental introduction of an aguinaldo cagüeño ............................................ 53
2-4 Basic rhythmic pattern of plena corrido style ...................................................... 55
3-1 Basic melodic pattern of the seis for Carrero’s “Les voy a dar con los pies.” ..... 95
3-2 Basic rhythmic and harmonic pattern of seis played by the guitar ...................... 95
3-3 Lyrical content of the Les voy a dar con los pies ................................................ 95
3-4 Basic melodic pattern of the seis tumba’o ........................................................ 101
3-5 Introduction to the décima on the cuatro .......................................................... 101
3-6 Montuno/guajeo pattern for the décima on the cuatro ...................................... 101
3-7 Basic güiro rhythm and harmonic pattern of seis tumba’o on the guitar ........... 101
3-8 Clave 3/2 rhythmic pattern ................................................................................ 101
3-9 Lyrical content of the décima ............................................................................ 102
5-1 Cover for the album Puerto Rico es un diamante ............................................. 121
5-2 Basic melodic pattern of the seis marumbá ...................................................... 122
5-3 Basic harmonic pattern of seis marumbá on the guitar ..................................... 122
5-4 Lyrical content of the décima ............................................................................ 122
5-5 Trajes típicos courtesy of Guateque: Ballet Folklórico de Puerto Rico ............. 135
5-6 Nieves Quintero solo recording. ....................................................................... 140
5-7 Example of an early Jíbaro album cover .......................................................... 144
5-8 Example of an early Jíbaro album back cover .................................................. 144
5-9 Example of a more elaborate Jíbaro album cover ............................................ 145
5-10 Example of a more contemporary Jíbaro back cover ....................................... 145
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A-1 Official seal of the Puerto Rican municipality of Morovis. ................................. 162
A-2 Emblem of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña as approved in 1956 ........ 162
C-1 Plenero Drums and Güiro ................................................................................. 165
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Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
MY MUSIC, MY PLACE: THE GOLDEN ERA OF JIBARO MUSIC AND PUERTO RICAN IDENTITY IN NEW YORK CITY
By
Delio Figueroa
August 2015
Chair: Larry Crook Major: Music
Numerous ethnomusicologists have focused their research on Puerto Rican
music specializing in social, political, cultural, and national identity issues. Unfortunately,
little attention has been paid to the study of live performances and audio recordings
from the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in relationship to the development of a nationalistic
self-identification of Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City. The following study
focuses on the 1950s and 60s and the processes through which Puerto Ricans in
diaspora were able to strengthen their national identity utilizing commodified Jíbaro
music.
In this doctoral dissertation, I demonstrate how Jíbaro music and the concept of
the Jíbaro itself strengthened Puerto Rican national identity to the point of becoming an
iconic representation of Puerto Ricanness throughout the diaspora. I also discuss how
Jíbaro music from the Golden Era assimilated other instruments and musical genres
without diluting its character as an expression of Puerto Rican identity. I complement
this by explaining why this is so important to understand the development of a Puerto
Rican national identity.
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To do so, I present a panoramic perspective of the context in which Puerto
Ricans lived in New York during this time period, and the activities in which they
engaged that served as expressions of nostalgia for their culture and national identity.
As part of the process of explaining these social activities, I study the role Jíbaro music
had when demonstrating their appreciation of their culture and identity.
Based on a systematic analysis of Jíbaro music and the practical uses attributed
to it by the diaspora, this study demonstrates how this Jíbaro music was used to convey
feelings of socio-economic improvement, nostalgia, and nationalism in the context of
living in New York City at a time when being Puerto Rican was perceived in derogatory
ways by the dominant communities. It also demonstrates how the iconic figure of the
Puerto Rican cuatro served a role to preserve a Hispanic Puerto Rican based national
identity while creating and communicating a sense of independence, strength, and
struggle. Last, I discuss the role of the informal cultural knowledge brought by the
immigrant and how this served as basis to create spaces to be Puerto Rican.
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
Background
This dissertation focuses on the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in Puerto Rico and
New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, Puerto Rican immigrants
used Jíbaro music as a creative resource to strengthen their national identity in the
context of socio-economic marginalization within American society. They drew on the
importance of the figure of the Jíbaro as emblematic of a uniquely Puerto Rican
traditional way of life linked to the Island’s Hispanic past. The traditional Jíbaro music
repertoire consisted mostly of song forms such as the seis con décima, aguinaldo, and
plena. A four-piece group known as conjunto Jíbaro or Jíbaro ensemble performed
Jíbaro music. The vocal poetry and melodies were sung by the trovador and the Puerto
Rican cuatro (a small guitar-like instrument) led the ensemble and provided the main
musical accompaniment known as the seis. The Spanish guitar was utilized for bass
passages and harmonies, while the güiro (a notched scraper made from a gourd)
served as rhythmic accompaniment. The Jíbaro ensemble provided a sonic and visual
manifestation of Hispanidad highlighting Hispanic Puerto Rican identity.
The elite of the island had promoted the figure of the Jíbaro as a cornerstone of
Puerto Rican national identity since the nineteenth century. According to Francisco
Scarano, during the second half of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth
centuries, the Island’s local elite class masked their voices of opposition to colonial and
foreign rule behind the figure of the Jíbaro. 1 This use of the Jíbaro figure by the local
1 See Sacarano’s The Jíbaro Masquerade and the Subaltern Politics of Creole Identity formation in Puerto Rico.
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elite to represent the Puerto Rican nation took place in two stages. The first occurred in
the second half of the nineteenth century within the context of opposition to Spanish
colonial rule and its oppressive policies. The second occurred during the North
American occupation of the Island in the early twentieth century. In both cases local
Puerto Rican elite employed the figure of the rural Jíbaro peasant to voice their
discontent and to call for national independence as the elite sought to maintain the
privileged status that they enjoyed. It was through this elite-led activity that the Jíbaro
figure first became an icon of the national identity of Puerto Rico as well as a symbolic
representation of resistance to foreign rule. It is worth mentioning that the elite’s (mainly
of Hispanic heritage) creation of the Jíbaro national icon emphasized the European
elements of Jíbaro peasantry, creating a white Hispanic peasant version of themselves
as the appropriate figure to represent the nation. In so doing, they minimized the
importance of Indigenous and African populations of their nation. During the Spanish
colonial regime, and early North American rule, the Jíbaro was conceived and
understood by the Puerto Rican elites as the white rural peasant of European origins.
During the second stage of utilizing the Jíbaro as reflecting Puerto Rican’s white
Hispanic identity and heritage, the elite were able to gain the sympathy of the Puerto
Rican masses: landless, mostly illiterate rural peasants who depended on the sugar
cane monopoly generated by the “industrialization” brought by the United States. By
using the Jíbaro as representative of their Hispanic self, the elite, with the general
support the Puerto Rican masses, were able to legitimize the Hispanic identity of the
island in contrast to the North American foreigners. During the first quarter of the
twentieth century when Puerto Rican society “needed” to be civilized and modernized
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by the North American progress through the Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine
in order to reap the benefits of modernity, the Puerto Rican elite created a space to be
Puerto Rican in between the US rule and the Puerto Rican bi-oppressed masses
(oppressed by US policies and the Puerto Rican elite themselves). Through the
construction of the image of the Jíbaro they created this space based on a utopic
reading of their Spanish past, with a strong emphasis on Hispanidad that allowed for the
elite to gain a certain degree political power as well as the sympathy of the Puerto Rican
masses.
During the 1950s, the Common Wealth government led by Luis Muñoz Marín
created the country’s Institute of Culture through which the Jíbaro figure was reframed
into a national symbol that highlighted a more nuanced and accurate tripartite
understanding of the racial and ethnic roots of the nation to include Indigenous, African,
and Hispanic elements. While European, African, and Indigenous heritage was
acknowledged, the Hispanic/European elements of the Jibaro continued to be privileged
as the core of the tradition.
Traditional Jíbaro music became a vehicle for representing this tripartite heritage
in a hierarchical way. Hispanic heritage was shown to be evident in the majority of
musical and poetic elements of Jíbaro music: use of the Spanish language, the Iberian-
influenced singing style, the Spanish-derived poetic form décima espinela, the
prominent role of plucked stringed instruments, and the European-based harmonic
language. These were the elements that were conceptualized and defined as core to
the tradition. Indigenous heritage was acknowledged as being represented through the
use of the güiro scraper and the sporadic use of Arawak-derived words that had been
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incorporated into Puerto Rican Spanish. Lastly, the African element was represented in
Jíbaro music through the occasional incorporation of drums: the bongó (of Afro-Cuban
derivation) or the Puerto Rican plena drums. Jíbaro music also utilized elements of
African derived music in its melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical language in a somewhat
camouflaged manner.2
The Jíbaro musical ensemble itself came to be understood as comprising the
three main ethnic/racial heritages of Puerto Rican society (in no small part through the
efforts of Partido Popular Democrático and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña) but
the hierarchy in which the instruments of the ensemble were represented in the music
reinforced a definite sense of Hispanidad. By highlighting European/Hispanic elements
as core and marginalizing the African and the Indigenous elements as peripheral, Jíbaro
music as a national symbol projected the image of Puerto Rican identity as
predominantly white Hispanic with supporting Indigenous and African elements.
As Lillian Guerra argues in her study of Puerto Rican national identity (1998) the
appropriation of the Jíbaro by the Island’s elite was subject to the ideas, feelings, and
interpretations of history and reality that emanated from the socioeconomic, cultural,
and intellectual crisis they experienced as a result of the impact of North American
colonial policies. Having this as starting point helps us understand the image of the
Jíbaro that the Puerto Rican immigrants brought with them in the mid twentieth century
to New York. Just as the early twentieth century Puerto Rican elite looked to their
Hispanic past to identify themselves as distinct from the largely Anglo colonizers from
the United States, the Puerto Rican immigrants of the 1950s and 1960s in New York
2 See the works of Angel G. Quintero and Luis Manuel Alvarez.
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looked to the figure of the Jíbaro to distinguish “themselves” as unique in a multicultural
diasporic context.
The Jíbaro in New York can be understood as a continuation of the struggle of
Puerto Ricans to find themselves under colonial rule. In a diasporic context the Jíbaro
served as a link to the Hispanic Puerto Rico they had left behind. Their sense of
Hispanidad was already conditioned as the privileged component of Puerto Rico’s
tripartite heritage, the part that represented the “true” Puerto Rican proposed by the
Common Wealth government. In this context the figure of the Jíbaro served as both a
symbol of resistance to US oppression while at the same time could be conceptualized
as uniting Puerto Ricans from different background regardless of age, skin color, or
political affiliation. In the diaspora, the archetype of the Jíbaro became representational
of “the best” of what it was to be Puerto Rican. And “the best” was one that privileged
the Hispanic while minimizing the African and Indigenous heritage of the island.
This conception of the Jíbaro then, is the one that was carried from Puerto Rico
to New York during the mass migrations of the 1950s and 1960s. The Jíbaro, although
tri-ethnic, was understood in the diaspora as mostly white Hispanic, if not of absolute
European heritage. It is in the diaspora that the Jíbaro once again acquired new
meanings. In New York the Jíbaro became an icon of Puerto Rican uniqueness
involving a type of Hispanidad in a context where Puerto Ricans sought to distinguish
themselves as Puerto Rican from not only the dominant Anglo-American culture, but
also from African American minority and from other Latin American immigrants. In New
York, they transformed Jíbaro music into a style full of nostalgia, resistance, and a
utopic view of the Hispanic roots of their island of Puerto Rico.
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Below, I present a historical background that provides a starting point for my
arguments followed by an explanation of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, the purpose
and importance of this study, and the methodology used to collect my data.
Purpose of this Study
There are two main purposes on the present study. The first one is to critically
analyze how the recordings and live performances of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music
strengthened Puerto Rican national identity in New York. The second one, explores why
Jíbaro music from the Golden Era was able to assimilate various non-Jíbaro music
styles and instruments while at the same time retaining its Puerto Rican identity?
Jíbaro music from the Golden Era served a distinctive role in the strengthening of
Puerto Rican national identity in the New York diaspora. Four main topics (themes) are
identified as recurrent in the discourse of the Jíbaro music produced during the 1950s
and 1960s. These four themes are: (1) A desire to “echar pa’ lante” or “buscar
ambiente”3 (2) nostalgia4, 3) a utopic nationalism in reference to the Island as a nation5,
and 4) The construction of a Third Space or Puerto Rican spaces.6 These themes
represented the experiences of the newly arrived Puerto Rican immigrants as they
3 These are two common popular phrases to describe the desire to achieve financial success in life.
4 Longing for the motherland (Island) and the desire to return someday.
5 Following Turino’s differentiation of “nation” and “nation state”; Puerto Rico is a nation but not an autonomous state. The way “nation” is used in this sense refers to a differentiation between a general way of life tied Puerto Rican culture and the one dominant Anglo from the United States. Then the concept is understood from the perspective of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Turino defines nation as “an identity unit whose members define themselves as a nation in relation to having or aspiring to their own state by the logic of contemporary nationalist discourse”. A state then is defines as “the government-centered institutions and social relations of formal control and welfare, backed by a claim to the legitimate use of force within a given territory; this, together with claims of territorial autonomy, define it as an entity.”
6 Term I chose to describe the feeling of Puerto Rico is where I am. This concept goes beyond geographical and racial boundaries. It is the creation through recreation of a culture situated in a geographical place by selecting what they believe is “the best” or what represent them the best about themselves.
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started to settle in New York. I argue that, through the lyrical content of the songs (the
four themes listed above), the importance of the sounds and images in constructing
Jíbaro identity, Jíbaro music became the most prominent medium for “being Puerto
Rican” in a foreign, diasporic context.
In this chapter, I venture even further by suggesting that among migrant groups,
music is highly valued because it functions to reinforce a common cultural identity and
because it serves as a connecting factor linking them to a real and imagined homeland.
I argue that, along with food/eating habits, language, and religious practices, music is a
core cultural expression of national identity among migrant communities7. Music is the
pivotal point in the reinforcement of national identity in cultures that appreciate and
incorporate musical practices in their daily lives. The musical practices of the diaspora
can be actual musical traditions imported from the homeland or adaptations of what
they conceptualize as “their” music including creative reinterpretations of their music.
These practices of reinterpretation are, in a way, problematic in that they bring about
many questions of originality and novelty, issues too expansive to be covered in this
dissertation. Here, I focus on a specific group of immigrants, Puerto Ricans in New
York, and how they have used, practiced, produced, and consumed Jíbaro music to
create their identities in the diaspora.
7 An important source for the relationship between Puerto Rican food and Jíbaro music is found in Had Iris Lugo-Pagán de Slosser doctoral dissertation “The Symbolism of food among New York Puerto Ricans. Deborah Pacini Hernández and Paul Austerlitz also highlight the connections between language and traditional music as a tool for cultural preservation in relationship to bachata and merengue music respectively among Dominican immigrants in New York and Puerto Rico. Lastly, Thomas Turino in his definition of cultural cohorts in “Music as Social Life” describes the symbolic associations between food,
language, religion and music in culture.
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Importance of the Present Study
Glasser (1995) encourages Puerto Rican social historians and scholars to
research the history of Puerto Rican communities in the United States. As an immigrant
to the continental United States, I have taken that charge to heart hope to bring light to
the various ways that Jíbaro music has been used as a resource to be Puerto Rican in
“America.” My research contributes to the field of ethnomusicology by studying the
musical practices and the meanings associated with them in a diasporic context. My
research also benefits the fields of US History, and Puerto Rican and Latino studies
since it contributes to the understanding of the experiences and social practices of
Puerto Ricans, who, despite being citizens of the United States, have suffered from
severe oppression and discrimination in this country.
I argue that during the 1950s and 1960s in ‘New York Jíbaro Music became
largely a commodified category of music that served as a mechanism to highlight Puerto
Rican issues of national identity. During these two decades, the peak of the Great
Migration (Duany, 2003), Puerto Ricans in New York experienced a boom of Jíbaro
Music (live and recorded) that served to create and re-create a utopic Puerto Rico that
many migrants felt they had left behind. During this period, migration to the mainland
United States was contemplated as a salvation to the economic difficulties present in
the Island. Within this context, Jíbaro music served as an iconic representation (visual
and aural) of what being Puerto Rican meant for many Puerto Ricans in New York.
Methodology: Field an Archival Research
Field and archival research for this dissertation took place over a period of five
years (2009-2014), in three different places: (1) New York City, (2) Kissimmee, Florida,
and (3) over ten cities in Puerto Rico. My involvement with Jíbaro music started as a
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musician, in Puerto Rico, in 2005 when I participated in a government-sponsored
program to learn how to build Puerto Rican tiple doliente8 in order to preserve the
island’s folkloric traditions and lutherie9. Thus, this study is based, to some extent, on
the perspective of a “cultural insider”; yet, the primary research method that I employed
is conventionally ethnomusicological (i.e. founded in ethnographic field work by an
outsider to learn about the meaning of musical culture from the culture bearers’
perspectives).
This research included interviews with Golden Era Jíbaro music performers,
producers, and consumers. Specifically, this research involves interviews with: (1)
Puerto Rican musicians who lived in New York and Puerto Rico during the Jíbaro music
Golden Era and whose art was influenced by Jíbaro music; (2) Puerto Rican musicians
who were not alive during the Jíbaro music Golden Era but whose art is influenced by
music created during that period, (3) producers of recorded Jíbaro music during the
Golden Era, and (4) Puerto Ricans who were active consumers of recorded Jíbaro
music during the Golden Era but did not participate in performing it or producing it.
I conducted interviews with informants ranging from amateur to master musicians.
Most of these interviews were recorded and later transcribed for analysis. Although I
conducted the interviews with specific questions in mind, I allowed the informants to
guide the interview process. In this way I was able to understand which aspects of the
Jíbaro music tradition the informants considered important. In addition to participant
observation and open-ended interviews, I conducted a survey of Jíbaro music
8 A small size five-string guitar like music instrument from Puerto Rico
9 The art of making musical instruments in the traditional Puerto Rican fashion
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recordings that, in conjunction with the assistance of my informants, allowed me to
study and learn more about how to perform Jíbaro music.
I dedicated the summer of 2012 to spending time in the rural areas of Puerto
Rico, particularly in the northern central part of the Island, known as La Cordillera
Central, which spans from the town of San Germán to Toa Alta, including Mayagüez,
Arecibo, Barceloneta, Manatí, Orocovis, and Morovis. In the Metropolitan Area, I based
my studies in Río Piedras, at the main campus of the University of Puerto Rico. In Old
San Juan, I researched the National Archives of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
I also researched in the Miramar area, at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico and
at some well-established record stores in the area like the Catedral de la Música and
Viera Discos). Lastly, I visited the town of Fajardo, on the east coast of the Island, to
interview Golden Era Jíbaro artist Joaquin Mouliert. While in Puerto Rico, I interviewed
several important performers of Jíbaro music who were active during the Golden Era of
Jíbaro music in New York as well as contemporary Puerto Rican artists. I also
interviewed elderly individuals who had migrated to New York during their youth and
lived in the diaspora during the time span of the 1940s up to the late 1970s and early
1980s and then returned to the Island. Puerto Ricans directly involved in the music
business that I interviewed included record store owners, distributors, and
representatives of music labels. Finally I met with and interviewed a number of scholars
and professionals who have studied issues involving Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora, or
the Puerto Rican folk arts, including Jíbaro music.
During the fall of 2012, I focused my research on Central Florida, particularly on
the city of Kissimmee of Osceola County. Since the early 1980s, this area of Florida has
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become a favorite destination for Puerto Ricans from the mainland and Puerto Ricans
from the Island in search of a comfortable/suburban life. Florida has the advantage of
being geographically close to Puerto Rico, which facilitates the back and forth traffic
common to the Puerto Rican community. In Central Florida, I worked with the same
groups of people that I had worked with in Puerto Rico during the previous summers,
with the exception of the scholars and professionals involved in the research of Jíbaro
music. In Kissimmee, I based my research mostly in two places: the Mary Lou Music
Center and the Rancho Latino Restaurant.
The Mary Lou Music Center is a record/musical instrument store of which the
owner is the widow of the man who founded Mary Lou Records in New York in the
1950s. She and the local Puerto Rican musicians who hang out at the store were able
to inform me about the record label business during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in
New York. I visited her store a total of three times. During those meetings, we had
conversations while there were little or no clients. These conversations lasted hours and
included the opinions and experiences of some the costumers—mostly Puerto Ricans
who had previously lived in New York or the Northeast coast. During one of those
conversations, a customer suggested that I should also visit the Rancho Latino
Restaurant, where I could find live “authentic Jíbaro music from the Island.”
Live music at Rancho Latino Restaurant occurs on Friday, Saturday, and some
Sundays, depending on the occasion (largely based on the Catholic Calendar or the
tourist season.) At this restaurant I was able to meet many Jíbaro music artists and
audience members who appreciated this music. Most of the audience members were of
Puerto Rican origin with the exception of a few spouses who were accompanying their
24
partners to enjoy Puerto Rican food and music. Some of the people I spoke with had
migrated from the north to Florida “huyendole al frío,”10 while others came directly from
Puerto Rico. All of them where more than willing to narrate their stories and experiences
related to their love for Jíbaro music and their pride in Puerto Rican national identity.
From October 2012 to January 2013, I went back to New York City in order to
work with elderly immigrants who never returned to Puerto Rico after migrating. In New
York, although I briefly stayed in Harlem and later in Washington Heights, I focused my
research on East Harlem, also popularly known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio. I chose
El Barrio as the center of my New York fieldwork because of the history associated with
this area of the city and because the majority of my interviewees lived there at some
point in their lives or continue living there. I started working in El Barrio on Third Avenue
and 119th Street, at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CUNY) after
I met Alberto Hernández Banuchi, the associate director of library and archives at the
Boricua Rhythms conference (at The University at Albany, SUNY) on October 2012.
Alberto and his staff guided me to archived material at the Center and also pointed me
to Casabe Housing (located at 121 Street at Lexington Avenue), where I could interview
elderly Puerto Ricans who had migrated during the 1950s and 60s and had remained in
the diaspora.
At Casa Casabe, Miguel Otero, director of the Nutrition and Health program,
introduced me to a community of about 50 Puerto Ricans who had migrated during their
teenage years to New York. Members of that community put me in contact with more
Puerto Ricans, including many folk musicians, who were more than eager to share their
10 Colloquial way of saying in Puerto Rican Spanish “running away from the cold weather” in reference to look a weather similar to the tropical one found in Puerto Rico.
25
knowledge and their anecdotes with me. They were enthusiastic about making their
contribution to the knowledge and the history of Puerto Rican heritage in New York City,
hoping to enhance awareness of Puerto Rican national identity in the diaspora. Such
enthusiasm points up the importance of my research, and strengthens my hypothesis
regarding the functions and attributed values of Jíbaro music and traditions for the
Puerto Rican diasporic community.
In New York, I also visited the owners of several record stores that were founded
during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music. In El Barrio, I visited El Barrio Music Center
located on Lexington Avenue between 115th and 116th Streets. There I was able to
interview the owner and his wife. Although they were not the ones who opened the
business during the 1950s, they were able to tell me about the history of the store, the
role it played in the neighborhood, and the changes that they have encountered
throughout the years. In the Bronx, I visited the Casa Amadeo Record Shop (Old Casa
Hernández; founded by Rafael Hernández’s sister, Victoria), located at 786 Prospect
Avenue. Casa Amadeo is the oldest Latin music store in the South Bronx, situated in
the Manhasset building (recognized as a historic monument by the New York City
government). At Casa Amadeo, I met composer and owner Mike Amadeo, one of Mike
Amadeo’s sons, and half a dozen Puerto Ricans who spend their free time there,
listening to and talking about music, and discussing the most recent events of the
Puerto Rican community in New York and the latest gossip from Puerto Rico. In
Brooklyn, I visited the Williamsburg area, where I was able to conduct interviews at the
Albino Record Shop on Moore Street and at Shiree Records on Graham Street, owned
by Harry, the brother of the owner of Mary Lou Music Center previously mentioned
26
above.
Finally, I interviewed several Puerto Ricans who are in charge of cultural centers
that promote Puerto Rican culture and arts in New York City. I contacted members of
these groups months in advance, while living in Florida. I knew about their work and
missions, via their websites, and contacted them to set up appointments when I was
planning my visits to New York during winter. The first person I spoke with was Aurea
Mangual, who was in charge of the Festival Folklórico de Puerto Rico in New York and
was able to put me in contact with various Jíbaro music performers and with people
interested in supporting Puerto Rican culture and national identity awareness. Leticia
Rodríguez, the executive director of La Casa de la Herencia Cultural Puertorriqueña11 in
El Barrio, introduced me to Puerto Rican cuatro and tres player Luis Cruz. He is one of
the most respected musicians of the Latin music scene in New York and director of the
Jíbaro music workshops at La Casa. While in New York, I was able to study cuatro
performance with Luis, who warmly included me in his lessons and invited to me to
participate in Jíbaro music performances in El Barrio.
My fieldwork questions varied from group to group depending on the geographic
location of the research, age of the participants, music proficiency, and level of formal
education. I usually started by introducing myself and explaining my research and why I
believed their contribution was important to my project. I organized my questions into
four general topics: (1) background information, (2) music, (3) social interaction, and (4)
identity.
11 La Casa de la Herencia Cultural Puertorriqueña (La Casa) is a not-for-profit, community-based, cultural institution, founded in 1980 to advance, disseminate and preserve the cultural heritage of Puerto Ricans in New York City.
27
My initial ethnographic questions where aimed at getting to know particular
participants, their motivations to migrate, and when they moved to New York. I would
ask them about their living conditions, their experiences at home, school, and their
neighborhoods. I was also interested in their jobs (when applicable), what they did
during their leisure time, and what religion they practiced, if any. I would wrap up these
introductory questions by asking how they dealt with el difícil12 and asking them if they
had any other information or experiences that they would like to share with me.
In regards to music, I inquired about the occasions and places where Jíbaro
music was performed and listened to. If participants had attended one of the many
Jíbaro music performances that took place during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, I
would ask about their experience, the organization of the event, and the preparation
involved in saving for the tickets to after parties. I also asked about recorded music –
how it was merchandized and how accessible it was to purchase-- and what value was
placed on owning records of Jíbaro music. I concluded my musical questions by asking
participants if they played any musical instruments or participated in live music
performance, including church activities and parrandas.
My social questions where aimed at understanding the social events and
activities that involved the use of Jíbaro music as a uniquely Puerto Rican practice and
what values were attributed to those meetings and the music played or performed live
during these events. I would start by asking when Jíbaro music was most often
preformed, on what type of occasion, and why. I asked how they celebrated the
Christmas season, Las Navidades, and how important that celebration was to them as
12 “El difícil” is a colloquial term meaning “the hard one” in Puerto Rican Spanish. It implies the difficulties
in learning the English language.
28
Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. I also asked about the role of Jíbaro music during the
holidays and the instrumentation used during the celebrations. I asked if the parrandas
were practiced in New York and how they were organized and took place in an
urban/economically tight context. During these sets of questions, I asked which Jíbaro
artists were their favorites, which were the most popular and which songs, if any,
captured the emotions and experiences of the diaspora. I would use their answers and
comments to help frame my questions about Jíbaro music and its relation to Puerto
Rican national identity. In that case, I asked about their feelings when they heard a
Puerto Rican cuatro, a seis, or a Jíbaro music song. I also asked if they felt a
connection to Puerto Rico when listening to Jíbaro music and if they felt the same when
listening to a bolero interpreted by Puerto Rican artists. In addition, I asked about
differences between Jíbaro music and other folk musical genres of Puerto Rico in
relation to Puerto Rican identity. Finally, I would ask what they brought with them when
they came from Puerto Rico other than their material personal belongings. Then, I
would proceed to explain my definition of Cultural baggage and ask what they thought
their cultural baggage was. I asked if what they brought with them was beneficial to
them and if it served to strengthen their notion of who they were.
In terms of identity, I asked my interviewees about their place of birth. In the case
of being born in Puerto Rico or in the mainland United States, I asked whether they felt
Puerto Rican or “American”. In the case of second generation Puerto Ricans born in
New York, I asked about the role their parents played in strengthening their Puerto
Rican identity and if music played a role in that process. I also asked about social
activities that reinforced their sense of Puerto Ricanness. Another question I asked was
29
if they considered puertorriqueño and boricua as synonymous. Lastly, I asked if by
listening or by performing Jíbaro music they felt closer to their roots and to Puerto Rico,
and how this was different with popular Cuban influenced Latin music like boleros and
Salsa.
From the answers to these four sets of questions, I was able to identify four
broad recurring themes in Jíbaro music that served to strengthen Puerto Rican national
identity: 1) the desire to leave Puerto Rico in search of a better life, 2) the nostalgia that
occurs after disappointment in New York City, 3) an effervescent sense of nationalism
due to the diaspora experience, and 4) the creation and concept of a Patria Mobile
(Puerto Rico is where I am/I am Puerto Rico). To prove my hypothesis that Jíbaro music
served to strengthen Puerto Rican national identity, I took three musical samples from
the lists of music that my interviewees told me were popular during the Golden Era of
Jíbaro music and analyzed them, taking into consideration their musical and lyrical
aesthetic, attributed value, and the context in which these songs were recorded.
In addition, through sound recording transcriptions and analyses of songs, I am
able to correlate the meanings that my informants have associated to the aural and
visual components of Jíbaro music recordings and how these meanings have served to
strengthen Puerto Rican identity in the diaspora in New York.13 I describe the functions
and symbolic meanings of costumes, musical instruments, and the other visual and
aural elements that were used to represent the figure of the Jíbaro. I also describe the
musical instruments that are part of the Jíbaro music and their hierarchic role within
13 All translations presented in this dissertation are mine, unless otherwise indicated. An extensive list of song texts is included as an appendix with this dissertation; these are important to my study because they exhibit the four themes listed above, which served as the pillar to the reinforcement of Puerto Rican identity in the New York diaspora.
30
music played by the ensembles. Since most, if not all, of the terminology used among
Jíbaro music performances and consumption is in Spanish, I include a glossary at the
end of the dissertation for clarification of terms.
Plan of the Dissertation
A personal goal of my research is to bring new perspectives and enthusiasm to
the study of Jíbaro music and the folkloric arts of Puerto Rico for the Puerto Rican
communities around the globe. I believe that the knowledge acquired by studying the
processes of how the folkloric arts of a nation are re interpreted and reevaluated in the
diaspora can serve as pedagogical mechanism for social change. Following Paulo
Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I hope the study of Jíbaro music in diasporic
contexts can serve as a tool to understand (and to explain) the socio-cultural challenges
suffered by the Puerto Rican immigrants in the United States.
I have organized this dissertation into five chapters. In Chapter 1, I describe
migratory patterns of Puerto Ricans to the United States, I introduce traditional Jíbaro
music as a type of popular (rural peasant) music of Puerto Rico and I suggest its
importance as a symbol of Puerto Rican identity in the New York diaspora. Also in this
chapter, I refer to the need for this study, its importance, and methodology. In Chapter
2, I describe the formal qualities of Jíbaro music, analyzing its aural and visual
components by studying their function, describing the musical instruments, ensembles,
costumes, and symbolism, and its development during its Golden Era. In Chapters 3
and 4, I analyze four common themes in Golden Era Jíbaro songs. In Chapter 3, I
discuss immigrants’ desire to succeed economically (often the engine behind the
migration process). I also describe how the immigrants traverse the nostalgia product of
the diaspora.
31
In Chapter 4, I cover nationalism as a national identity strengthener reflected in
Golden Era Jíbaro music and discuss the concept of the spaces to be Puerto Rican. I
base my analysis of these fourth themes on: a review of the interviews mentioned
above; a study of song lyrical content and visual elements in record covers; and
transcriptions of Jíbaro music created during the Golden Era. In Chapter 5, I synthesize
and conclude by re-examining the importance of Jíbaro music as a strengthener of
Puerto Rican identity in the New York diaspora. I also present answers to my research
questions by summarizing the data gather from my interviewees. I conclude by
suggesting areas for future research and making observations about my fieldwork.
32
CHAPTER 2 JÍBARO MUSIC
Background
On July 1898, during the Spanish-American War and as part of the expansionist
movement that had already culminated in the conquest of the U.S. West and Southwest
territory, U.S. forces launched their invasion of Puerto Rico. With little resistance, U.S.
troops were able to secure the Island in less than a month. In December 1898, through
the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Spain formally surrendered Puerto Rico (and also
Cuba, parts of the West Indies, Guam, and the Philippines) to the United States. In
1917, the Jones Act of the U.S. Congress granted U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans
born on the Island. In 1952, Puerto Rico became a Commonwealth (unincorporated
territory) of the U.S., with limited self-government in local matters such as taxation,
education, health, housing, culture, and language. Yet, the U.S. federal government
retained jurisdiction on most state affairs. Cultural and economic influences from the
U.S. have continued to exert an influential effect on Puerto Rico to date.
After being conditioned by more than a century-long colonial relationship, most
Puerto Ricans continue to believe that their economic existence is dependent upon the
United States government. This perspective has often been fostered by the Puerto
Rican government, based on political/economic interests of governors and the private
sector at different times. Puerto Ricans’ perspectives regarding the Island’s political
status are closely linked to concerns over economic relationships with the U.S.
So, while Puerto Rican independence movements have on occasion received
partial support on the Island, the majority of Puerto Ricans still support their special
status as a U.S. commonwealth and in 2012 voted in favor of U.S. statehood in a
33
nonbinding referendum. Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans desire to choose their own political
and economic future and the current colonial status can only be changed by an act of
the United States Congress, regardless of the results of any plebiscite or referendum.
The political, social, and economic conditions generated by U.S. colonial influence
have fueled migratory patterns from Puerto Rico to the United States mainland. While
an elite of Puerto Ricans had already settled in the U.S. during the Spanish colonial
rule, the influx of Puerto Rican workers to the U.S. became more significant at the end
of the Spanish-American war (1898) and particularly large after World War II (Whalen,
1995). U.S. political and economic intervention concentrated wealth in the hands of
American corporations and displaced Puerto Rican workers (Padilla, 1992; Guerra,
1998). After World War II, in an attempt to reduce unemployment rates and a growing
population, Puerto Rican policymakers promoted labor programs for Puerto Ricans in
the U.S.; in this way, Puerto Ricans became a source of low-wage labor to the United
States (Whalen, 1995; Guerra, 1998; Duany, 2002).
The aftermath of the Great Depression, which was deeply felt by the Island’s lower
class, coupled with the availability of labor jobs in the U.S. mainland, the aggressive
promotion of migration by the Puerto Rican government, and the advent of air travel
raised the average yearly migration of Puerto Ricans to the United States from 18,000
in the 1930-1940 period, to 151,000 in the 1940-1950 period, to 470,000 in the 1950-
1960 period (Whalen, 1995). Currently, Puerto Ricans represent 9.2% of the U.S. Latino
population, the second largest group after Mexicans (US Bureau of Census, 2010). The
actual number of Puerto Ricans in the United States could be as high as 5 million (US
34
Bureau of Census, 2010). In New York specifically, Puerto Rican immigration went from
61,463 in 1940, to 187,420 in 1950, to 612,574 in 1960 (Whalen, 1995).
Although Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, they traverse major geographic,
cultural, and linguistic borders when they migrate between the Island and the
continental U.S. (Duany, 2002). Past studies on Puerto Rican migration to the United
States have focused mostly on demographic and financial aspects of the diaspora,
emigrational patterns, and issues of discrimination. Few studies have concentrated on
how Puerto Ricans in the diaspora have been able to preserve and reinvent their
national identity through cultural expressions such as literature, food, music, dance, and
religious practices. Research on the importance of Puerto Rican music, in particular
Jíbaro music, in the creation and re-creation of national identity in the Puerto Rico and
the diaspora in New York is scarce.
Contemporary scholars like Ramón López have studied Plena Music, its origins
and uses in Puerto Rico but have not addressed (yet…) the impact of this Puerto Rican
musical genre in the diaspora. Pedro Malavet has focused his studies on Puerto Rican
popular music like Salsa and Trio music but the Jíbaro music has not been fully
covered. Angel Quintero Rivera and Luis Manuel Alvarez have indeed studied Jíbaro
music from a musicological perspective focusing primarily on the music itself but leave
unexplored the various uses and attributed meanings associated with Jíbaro music.
Although the work of these scholars has been very influential and useful in the
development of my argument, their publications do not address directly issues of Jíbaro
music and national identity.
35
Juan Flores deals with issues of Latin identity, diaspora, and Nuyorican music and
arts by focusing on contemporary musical expressions like Salsa and Hip Hop. In a
sense, he approaches the subject of Puerto Ricanness from a larger Latino identity
point of view. A similar case applies to the work of Frances Negrón-Muntaner, who
investigates issues of gender in Puerto Rican Pop music, and its implications for
diasporic identity and the Latino experience but gives little emphasis to Jíbaro music.
On the other hand, studies on the uses of music in the Puerto Rican diaspora in
New York have mainly focused on Cuban-influenced dance music. Manuel (1994, 2006)
studies the process by which Puerto Ricans appropriated and re-signified Cuban-
influenced music as a symbol of their own identity in New York. Glasser (1995) explores
the relationship between the social history (between the two World Wars) and the forms
of cultural expression of Puerto Ricans in New York; her focus is on Cuban-influenced
danceable music. While Puerto Rican music has been referred to as essential to Puerto
Rican culture (Glasser 1995, Quintero 1998, Flores 2000, Noel 2007, Moore 2010),
Jíbaro music has rarely been targeted directly in terms of praxis and meaning for the
Puerto Rican diaspora in New York. One exception is Gleason (2003), who pays
attention to Jíbaro music and its association to national pride among the Puerto Rican
diaspora. Gleason’s focus is restricted to the Christmas season, when parrandas (i.e.
visiting friends and neighbors door-to-door, singing cheerful holiday carols) are
performed. Yet, Jíbaro music was not solely performed or consumed during the
Christmas season but on many other occasions when there was a need to strengthen
Puerto Rican national identity. My research complements but fills a gap in this
36
scholarship because it deals directly with Jíbaro music on the island and in the diaspora
and focuses on the Golden Era of recordings in the 1950s and 1960s.
Golden Era of Jíbaro Music (1950s-1960s)
The Golden Era of Jíbaro music took place during the time following the Second
World War, which was a time marked by a high rate of migration of Puerto Ricans to the
East Coast of the United States, particularly to New York. These immigrants brought
with them a wide range of customs and cultural traditions, including music, as part of
their heritage. During the middle decades of the 20th century, Jíbaro artists and their
music became widely known throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States
through live presentations, radio broadcasts, and commercial recordings. This media
and live performance activity ushered in what has been referred to as the Golden Era of
Jíbaro music.
In the words of Peter Manuel: “New York City became a center for Puerto Rican
music largely because of its recording studios, its media infrastructure, and its
concentrated market; indeed, New York has been the largest Puerto Rican city for
several decades” (2006). During the 1950s and 1960s Puerto Ricans in the diaspora
began to affirm the vitality and great value of their culture, which led to the interpretation
of Jíbaro music as an outlet to strengthen their Puerto Rican national identity. In fact,
most of the Jíbaro artists who became well known during this era were already active in
Puerto Rico but it was in New York, thanks to a yearning for “authentic” Puerto Rican
music, that these musicians reached fame and economic success.
The Golden Era of Jíbaro music encompasses the two decades between the
1950s and 1960s when the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans to New York City
occurred. During these two decades Jíbaro music became a commodified product
37
marketed primarily to the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who settled primarily
in the slums of the city. As direct result of faster means of communication, new
marketing tactics, and the constant traffic of Puerto Ricans from and to the Island,
Jíbaro recordings made in New York were commercially successful and popular on the
Island and the U.S. mainland. Indeed, I argue, that target marketing and distribution
among diaspora audiences were key elements of the commercial success of Jíbaro
albums. The Jíbaro music recorded in New York was a commercial activity aimed at all
Puerto Ricans. These recordings were meant to be fun and entertaining while also
evoking nostalgic images of the Puerto Rico that migrants had been left behind.
Through these recordings, Puerto Rican identity was conceptualized as inclusive of all
Puerto Ricans and minimized issues of class, regional geographic origin, and race.
Prior to the early 1950s, recordings of Jíbaro music in Puerto Rico were primarily
of an academic ethnological nature or were recorded by elite dilettantes who wanted to
preserve the “authenticity” of the genre. Puerto Rico’s recordings of Jíbaro music
sponsored or produced by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP) were the
product of an elite with political and economic interests, while the New York recordings,
although indirectly political in nature, were a commodified product aimed at the New
York diaspora in addition the Puerto Ricans in the Island. In other words, the intention
behind the recordings is crucial to understand their purpose. The ICP had an elitist-
hispanophile view on how they were going to “preserve” Jíbaro music; they had a
preservationist approach to their recordings. By consequence, their recordings were
aimed at the Puerto Rican elite in Puerto Rico who were interested in their newly
38
“discovered” culture under the PPD and the ELA.1 Contrastively, the New York Jíbaro
music scene developed in conjunction with the needs of thousands of Puerto Rican
immigrants who were homesick, and identified themselves with the iconic figure of the
Jíbaro. It served as a nostalgic expression of Puerto Rican identity developed in the
diaspora.
But Jíbaro musical activities of the Golden Era also traversed the boundaries of
the Island and the diaspora. During the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, Jíbaro artists were
scouted in Puerto Rico by North American promoters and then brought to perform in
New York venues. These presentations frequently involved a tight schedule of four days
in a row of presentations, mostly from Thursday to Sundays. Jíbaro artists could have
up to 15 to 16 presentations (4 presentations per day, about an hour and a half sets)
during a weekend-long stay in New York. If the audiences and the promoters liked a
specific Jíbaro artist, and considered it a good investment, they were offered a contract
to record two songs: a highlighted single on side A (78 rpm or 45 rpm, vinyl disc) with
second song on the side B. If the single became popular and sold enough copies, a
contract might be offered to record a full-length album. Albums were recorded in New
York or New Jersey studios that rented out their facilities by the hour. Most of these
recording were cut in one take with limited resources for production, and mastering.
Most of the recordings were done with state of the art technology of that time using two-
track recording machines and two microphones for the whole ensemble. During the
mixing and mastering of the recordings, the singer’s voice and the cuatro were
1 For more information about the issue questioning if there was in fact a Puerto Rican culture please refer to “Insularísmo” by Antonio S. Pedreira and the “Problemas de la cultura en Puerto Rico: Foro del Ateneo Puertorriqueño de 1940”.
39
highlighted in the equalization process while the guitar, percussion and any other
secondary or auxiliary instruments like an accordion or claves were “put behind” in the
mix. As a result the core elements of traditional Jíbaro music were sonically highlighted
while the other instruments were audible to the listener but backgrounded in relation to
the more “authentic” and “significant” instruments of the ensemble.
The acoustic privileging of core Jíbaro instruments and voices matched the visual
representations of the Jíbaro figure on album covers. For example albums covers by
Jíbaro artists like Ramito, La Calandria, Chuito el de Bayamón, and Maso Rivera, to
name a few, more than often included color photos with the artists dressed in Jíbaro-
associated clothing, holding Jíbaro musical instruments, and depicted in front of a rural
background setting. As Jíbaro music grew in popularity and became more influential in
the broader Latin music scene of New York and on the Island, improved techniques of
recording where adopted in order to obtain a more professional/refined sound.
Advanced technology of the time such as multi-track recording and magnetic
tape made possible the incorporation of sound samples of roosters and other farm
animals to give a sense of authenticity to the music by creating an aural association with
Puerto Rico’s rural-soundscape. Stereo Jíbaro music recordings also became available
improving their sound quality as the nuances of the music could be clearly heard and
served as a training aid to aspiring cuatro and guitar players who wanted to participate
in the Jíbaro music scene.
In conclusion, the Golden Era of Jíbaro music was a period in which the music
associated with the Jíbaro became a commodified product for the nostalgia-hungry
Puerto Rican communities of New York during the 1950s and 1960s. During this era
40
Jíbaro music and the Jíbaro ensemble, both in terms of sound and visual imagery,
became codified into a standard format that continues until today. Also during this
period, and due to the commercialization process, many diverse religious meanings and
other attributes of the Jíbaro music tradition were forgotten, reducing Jíbaro music
primarily to associations with the Christmas season. This is important to mention
because this disassociation is a direct consequence of the diasporic commercialization
of the genre. As immigrants selected what they believed were “the best” of Puerto Rican
culture, the traditions were adjusted to fit the needs of their new context.
In this sense, Jíbaro music recordings and live performances served as
opportunities to create and recreate links that strengthened Puerto Rican culture,
traditions, and national identity, among the Puerto Rican diaspora. Jíbaro music, along
with other Puerto Rican musical genres and styles, food, clothes, and literature, served
to join in festive spirits Puerto Ricans who were lacking a sense of belonging in the
foreign Anglo culture and giving space to an “Island in the City.”2
Defining Jibaro Music
Jíbaro music refers to the cultural traditions of music that came to be associated
with the Jíbaro (rural peasants) of the Island of Puerto Rico during colonial times.
Substantially based in musical and poetic practices and forms inherited from Iberian
traditions, Jíbaro music emphasizes the use of string instruments, singing, and dance.3
The most commonly used musical instruments in Jíbaro music are the human voice, the
2 Term borrowed from Dan Wakefield’s novel with the same name (1957).
3 In Puerto Rican folklore in general, and even more so in Jíbaro music, cultural traces from the various emigrant groups that make up the heritage of the Puerto Rican society are present: (1) the European, with the Iberian being the predominant one; (2) the West African; (3) the Arawak3; (4) the Latin American; (5) and the Northern American.
41
Puerto Rican cuatro, the Spanish classical guitar, and the güiro. The context in which
Jíbaro music is traditionally performed involves festivities based on the Catholic
calendar or during organized contests or activities to promote Puerto Rican culture.
During the late colonial period, the elite social classes in Puerto Rico used these
rural-based traditions to represent the folkloric soul of Puerto Rico. The use of the
Jíbaro and its music to represent Puerto Rican national culture developed in the context
of anti-colonialism that saw local elites in search of a national identity for the Island to
distinguish it from Spain and direct Spanish heritage. Identifying a more localized Puerto
Rican identity, Jíbaro music was commonly referred to with nicknames invoking
geographical and class associations: “música campesina” (countryside music) “música
de campo adentro” (music of the deep countryside) “música de la montaña” (music of
the mountains). It was also referred to in terms that associated it with courage “música
brava” (brave music) or as being the typical or vernacular music for a cultural area
“música típica” (typical music).
These names suggest certain attitudes and geographic indices that symbolize
the various meanings of Jíbaro music to Puerto Ricans. For example the adjective
brava could be interpreted as the courage and the bravery needed by the singer to
improvise on the spot during the performance of a seis con décima or a controversia.
Campesina, de campo adentro, or de la montaña are adjectives that link the tradition to
the rural geography and lifestyles of the island in contrast with urban Puerto Rico.
Lastly, the típica adjective is used to denominate what is characteristic or typical of a
certain area of Puerto Rico. It represents the peculiarity of a region (rural), group
(countryside peasant) of a nation (Puerto Rico). In summary, the adjectives used to
42
describe Jíbaro music exalt the “rural” lower classes as the “authentic” Puerto Ricans
and link the music and its style to Puerto Rico as a nation and to Puerto Rican national
identity. Jíbaro music then is not just an expression of the Puerto Rican countryside
peasant but also, more importantly, a visual and aural symbol of the Puerto Rican
nation.
In the following section I will discuss Jíbaro music’s social functions and musical
fundamentals. I will also list the primary, secondary, and auxiliary musical
instrumentation, the types of ensembles (which are linked to specific occasions), and
the repertoire that makes up this musical tradition. To conclude this section, I will briefly
cover some of the theoretical aspects of the aesthetic of Jíbaro music.
Use and Social Functions
Jíbaro music developed into a uniquely Puerto Rican musical expression through
the syncretism or criollización of musical elements coming from the Iberians, Arawak
natives, and West Africans that populated the island. These multiple influences are the
foundations for the aural and aesthetic formation of Jíbaro music. Traditional Jíbaro
music consists of several styles, developed mostly in rural Puerto Rico through cultural
exchanges between the groups previously mentioned. In addition, the Jíbaro music
produced and recorded in New York incorporates elements from the popular music of
the 1950s and 1960s. To describe the cultural process of mixing various musical
traditions, which took about four hundred years to develop, the concept of
Transculturation, coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortíz in 1940, is useful
(Ortíz, 1947, Duany, 2011).
Transculturation is a gradual process by which a cultural group adopts traits of
one or more other cultural groups and culminates in the creation of new cultural
43
traditions altogether. This term appropriately describes the initial development of Jíbaro
music in Puerto Rico and its continuing development in New York. It encompasses the
commodification process of the genre while at the same time goes beyond
national/geographical borders. The Jíbaro music produced and recorded in New York
during the 1950s and 1960s surpass Richard Waterman’s (1948) definition of musical
syncretism that described the process of “blending” African and European music in the
Americas. Jíbaro music reflected more than just musical syncretism because it was
already a creole (Criollo) musical genre mixed or “blended” with other creole Latin
American musical elements as well as Euro American elements. Applied to Jíbaro
music of the Golden Era, transculturation encompasses the many cultural influences of
Jíbaro music and the transnational nature of New York’s Jíbaro music including the
diasporic “back and forth” (va y ven) movement of the Puerto Rican migrants as
described by Duany (2002). Transculturation also helps understand the way that Jíbaro
music developed in the context of religious life in Puerto Rico.
Luis Manuel Alvarez, Puerto Rican historian, professor, and ethnomusicologist,
explains that the primary context of Jíbaro music during colonial times was to
accompany the festivities associated with the Catholic calendar (personal
communication, 2012). Catholicism (both official Roman Catholicism and Popular
Catholicism) has been the dominant religion on the Island since colonial times.4
However, Popular Catholicism on the island outside of the official strictures of the
church freely combined elements from Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, African-
4 The Catholic majority is rapidly being challenged by rising Protestantism on the Island. Protestantism in Puerto Rico and the diaspora is a direct product of the US occupation and US-government-promoted missionary work on the Island.
44
related religious beliefs including Cuban Santeria, creating a transcultural mix of
spiritual beliefs and practices. For example, in rural areas of Puerto Rico churches and
priests were frequently unavailable and santos5 or homemade altars were sites for
religious practices that involved the veneration of saints in ways that combined multiple
religious traditions. Similarly, in the diaspora context of El Barrio in East Harlem, Puerto
Ricans who wanted to attend church had to go to Protestant services due to the lack of
Catholic churches in the area (de Jesus, 1969). While Puerto Ricans participate in
Protestant services and church activities, they frequently continue to follow the Roman
Catholic calendar. Cultural expressions are important elements of this mixed popular
Catholicism.
This popular approach to Catholicism and its importance to Puerto Rican culture
is nowhere more evident than in Jíbaro Music. Jíbaro music is closely tied to events of
the Catholic calendar like Epiphany, Patron Saint festivities, and to church sanctioned
rituals associated with weddings, baptisms, and funerals just to name a few. It is
particularly important in events that take place during the Christmas season. Although
largely linked to contexts that were religious, Jíbaro music is not a sacred repertoire
linked to a specific liturgy, but is used to accompany popular religious festivals. For
example, aguinaldos and seises are closely associated with leisure time activities during
social gatherings, are danceable, and have their origins in the medieval Catholic folk
traditions of Spain. As mentioned, one of the most important events in which Jíbaro
music is utilized is during Las Navidades (i.e. Christmas season). Christmas season
begins on Thanksgiving Day and last until the celebration of Las Fiestas de la Calle San
5 Santos or saints are wooden carved figurines that represented mostly saints and in a lesser degree
other characters from the Bible.
45
Sebastian (i.e. the festivities on Saint Sebastian Street) during the last weekend of
January, in Old San Juan. During Las Navidades, the parranda takes place consisting
of adult carolers going door-to-door, singing aguinaldos and playing musical instruments
like the güiro, guitar, Puerto Rican cuatro, and maracas. The aguinaldos repertoire
originated in traditional Spanish songs and developed into a romanticized secular style
in colonial times in Puerto Rico. In the mid 19th century, when many rural Jíbaros
migrated into the capital city of San Juan, they began playing this music for wealthy,
upper class families during the Christmas season. As compensation for their aguinaldo
serenades, the Jíbaros received offerings of foods, drinks, and sweets (Alonso, 1845).
During the 20th century, urban Jíbaros began to sing aguinaldos in groups known as
trullas derived from the term “patrulla,” which refers to the patrol of the Spanish Civil
guard, which roamed the streets to control people and keep order (El Museo del Barrio,
Education and Public Programs Department, 2013).
The tradition of singing aguinaldos is still practiced today and it is common to see
groups named parranderos6 pay surprise visits to friends, family members, and
neighbors and carol until early in the morning during the Christmas season. These
surprise attacks of songs and musical performance, known as asaltos (assaults or hold
ups), are meant as joyful pranks to wake the family or owners of the home and bring
them joy and Christmas cheers.
For many urban Puerto Ricans, specific Jíbaro melodies themselves are closely
associated with the parranda during specific festivals and holidays and hearing the
melody triggers indexical memories of friends and family as well as emotions linked to
6 The parranderos are a group of people who participate in the trullas.
46
their youth. Many of the festive songs from the Christmas repertoire focus on the
customary exchange of food or drink for music during a parranda. The Jíbaro music
played in the context of a parranda evokes memories of traditional Puerto Rican foods,
drinks and, the joyful context in which these celebrations takes place. In contrast to the
more fixed national symbols, like the Puerto Rican flag, the shield, and the national
anthem, Jíbaro music is fluid, dynamic, and represents a site for a variety of
interpretations and re-interpretations. Its musical and lyrical elements are continuously
recomposed and restructured in order to represent current Puerto Rican issues and
identities.
This fluidity is appropriate in the sense that Jíbaro music represents the Puerto
Rican nation by defining what is considered its authentic culture, a concept that will vary
from person to person because there is not a single interpretation of what being Puerto
Rican means. Unlike the national symbols imposed by the state like the flag and seal,
Jíbaro music links more directly to the community and their desire to define and express
their identity through music. This is reinforced on multiple levels and combines links
between Jíbaro music, the parrandas, and Puerto Rican food, drinks, and other cultural
traditions. Such links are also reinforced in the media through television ads, radio
shows, and imagery of billboards. In this way, Jíbaro music serves to reinforce and
create what it means to be Puerto Rican.
The Jíbaro musical tradition in its original rural contexts was passed from person
to person, from generation to generation by oral transmission, in an informal manner
common to folk music cultures throughout the world. According to Jíbaro artist Joaquin
Mouliert, the oral tradition of performing seis con décima served as an educational tool
47
of religious and secular instruction among a largely non-literate population as it helped
to spread the word of Biblical anecdotes as well as historical and mythological texts
ranging from Greek philosophy to Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Romantic literature; all
of this with a twist of folklore and Jíbaro wit7. It was not until the mid-1950s, within the
context of a revivalist movement led by the Music and Folklore programs of the Instituto
de Cultura Puertorriqueña, that there was an official interest in rescuing and revalorizing
Jíbaro music (Alegría, 1978). This is when Jíbaro music began to be formally taught in
classes with the support of government sponsored texts and pedagogical publications.
The official sponsorship of Jíbaro music had a strong impact on how this music was
taught/learnt, performed, recorded, and understood by the public. This impacted the
general understanding of how Jíbaro music should sound and be performed and
influenced the transfer of this tradition to New York City during the time of the Golden
Era.
Music and Poetry
According to renowned Jíbaro musicians Luz Celenia Tirado, Joaquín Mouliert,
Luis Crúz, and Tony Mapeyé, the seis con décima, aguinaldo, and plena were the three
most popular styles performed and recorded during the Golden Era of Jíbaro Music
(personal communications). My informants identify these styles as the core of the Jíbaro
Music repertoire that was recorded. Although linked to religious festivities, Jíbaro music
also conveyed and embodied the nostalgia felt by the Puerto Rican diaspora in the
States. In this section, I describe the formal characteristics of a) seis con décima, b)
aguinaldo, and c) plenas using music notation to convey information about the
7 From personal interview during the 2013 summer in Fajardo, PR.
48
melodies, harmonies, and rhythms that characterize the recorded Jíbaro music tradition
of the Golden Era. These descriptions are based on the analysis of more than fifty
recordings of Jíbaro music made in New York during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as
ethnographic field recordings of contemporary Jíbaro music in New York, Florida, and
Puerto Rico. I also studied in detail the vinyl record collections of my main interviewees,
in particular Tony Mapeyé (PR) and Mike Amadeo (The Bronx). Other sources of the
recorded history of this music were the music libraries of the University of Puerto Rico,
Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, El Centro (Hunter College) the University at
Albany SUNY, and the Latin American Collection and Music Library at University of
Florida. Detailed musical notation from Francisco López Crúz, and The Cuatro Project
also contributed to my process of transcribing the recorded Jíbaro music.8
The seis con décima complex features both musical and linguistic elements. The
seis (musical accompaniment) and the décima (lyrical poetic form of ten lines) elements
are combined in performance and include many sub-styles that are determined largely
by the specific musical accompaniment to the song. All of the sub-styles employ the
seis concept as a melodic/rhythmic ostinato foundation over which the lyrical content is
expressed. There are more than ninety identified types of seis.9 Based on the mood of
the song and the lyrical content, the trovador (singer) and the cuatro player determine
which style of seis to use. The lyrical content must conform to the rules of the décima
espinela. The décima espinela is a very strict style of Iberian poetry featuring verses of
ten octasyllabic lines with the rhyme scheme: abbaaccddc. The first four lines are called
8 Francisco López Crúz writings served as basis for the notation of the music examples. The Cuatro Project website contributed in the identification and bibliographic information about the variety of seis and aguinaldos found in the 1950s and 1960s recordings.
9 See appendix C for a list of the most popular recorded seis during the Golden Era.
49
primera rondilla (first round) and the fifth and sixth lines serve as a transition to the
remaining four lines called the segunda rondilla (second round). The seis con décima
can be performed in any major or minor tonality, depending on the taste and abilities of
the singer and/or the context of the song. The lyrical content determines the specific
type of seis accompaniment and the tempo used during the performance. An
experienced cuatro player knows how to determine the tempo of the song based on the
ways in which the seis has been traditionally performed.
In the following illustrations I present normative descriptions of three basic
introductory segments to illustrate how the main genres of recorded Jíbaro music (seis
con décima, aguinaldo, and plena) are performed. The tempo and the specific tonalities
used are left to the performer’s discretion. The first illustration is the seis con décima. I
based my notations of the seis con décima on work done by Francisco López Crúz. I
decided to use his work because it accurately describes the way this seis has been
performed in Puerto Rico for decades and it also represents the way it was recorded
(excluding the improvisational aspect of the genre) during the 1950s and 1960s in.
Ornamentations vary from recording to recording but the intervallic relationships remain
similar if not the same.
Francisco López Crúz describes the seis itself as the ‘backbone of Jíbaro music
(1967). Rhythmically, the seis can be organized in binary or ternary meter. The majority
of the seis can be notated in 2/4, while the remaining can be notated in 6/8. Behind the
rhythmic structure of every seis the clave pattern stands out as evidence of Afro-
Caribbean influence (Alvarez, 1992). This two-measure rhythmic ostinato forms the
foundation for the percussive accompaniment in Jíbaro music played by the bongó,
50
guitar and the güiro. All of the accompaniment parts line up with the 3-2 clave (Figure2-
1) forming a fixed polyrhythmic layer of sounds over which the trovador and cuatro
improvise
Figure 2-1. 3-2 clave
Another characteristic shared by the most types of seis is the use of short
repetitive harmonic cycles featuring a few common chords. Two of the most commonly
found progressions feature tonic, subdominant, dominant chord sequences (I-IV-V), and
the so-called Andalusian cadence i-bVII-bVI-V. The I-IV-V and the Andalusian
progressions typically form four-measure ostinato patterns that repeat for the duration of
the song. The first progression, although characteristic of seis in major keys, can also
be used in minor keys (i-iv-v).
The formal organization of the many styles of seis is very simple. The most
common form consists of strophic form (i.e. using the same melody and harmony for
each sung stanza of a décima) with a recurring instrumental section between stanzas.
This is modeled on a recurring two-part cycle alternating instrumental and vocal
sections. In performance, the full form of the seis con décima is: Instrumental
introduction followed by the first décima, instrumental interlude and second décima,
instrumental interlude and third décima, and so on. During an improvised live setting the
seis con décima would involve an indeterminate number of décimas. On records, the
form of the seis con décima tends to be limited to four stanzas of décima each with its
instrumental introduction (A, A’, A’’, A’’’) and an instrumental coda to finalize.
51
One last element of all styles of seis is the pre-existing melody played by the
cuatro during the instrumental introduction. These specific melodies identify and define
each sub-style of seis. Each seis melody is usually two to four measures long. Figure 2-
2 illustrates a typical seis con décima to give a sense of how its many components
work.
Figure 2-2. Instrumental introduction of a typical seis con décima
52
The second most popular recorded genre of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music is
the aguinaldo. The aguinaldo, along the villancico is the core of the Cancionero
Navideño (Christmas repertoire) of the Puerto Rican tradition. The aguinaldo is in duple
meter with triple as well as syncopated duple subdivisions. The poetic meter of its lyrical
content is hexasyllabic (six syllables per line) and its poetic form bears the name of
decimilla (literally a little décima). Aguinaldos are set in major or minor keys depending
on the mood expressed in the lyrics. Typically, a joyous aguinaldo would be played in a
major key at a fast tempo, while ones with sacred themes would be set in a minor key.
Depending on the geographical location of the Island (or in the diaspora) the same
melodic structure and rhythmic elements might be set to different lyrics and given
different sub-genre titles. Figure 2-3 presents a type of aguinaldo known as an
aguinaldo Cagüeño. It derives its name from the town of Caguas. In this example we
can see the level of syncopation characteristic of this type of aguinaldo.
The third most common genre of recorded Jíbaro music from the Golden Era is
the plena. Plena developed in the early 20th century in the marginalized slums of the
urban areas of San Juan and Ponce. Emerging in a multiracial context, highly
influenced by the predominantly Afro-Caribbean descents who lived in marginalized
slums, plenas are highly rhythmic and traditionally use drums known as panderos or
plenero and güiro as its core musical instruments. During the Golden Era of Jíbaro
music, plena songs were incorporated into the Jíbaro tradition under the name of plena
jíbara.
53
Figure 2-3. Instrumental introduction of an aguinaldo cagüeño10
Unlike its traditional manifestation that emphasized voice and drum
accompaniment, the plena jíbara adapted it to a setting in which the Puerto Rican
cuatro was the core instrument and relegated drums to the role of background
accompaniment indicating that the drums in the foreground may have been “too African
sounding” in relation to the codified “authentic Jíbaro” sound. It is worth mentioning that
the Puerto Rican cuatro itself carried pre-established Hispanic Puerto Rican
associations that identified its sound and timbre as exclusively Puerto Rican, while the
plena drums were closely associated with the music of the streets in a similar manner to
the bachata in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo government (Pacini
Hernández, 1995).
10 The “x” in the rhythmic pattern of the guitar, represents a stroke with the thumb of the right hand to mute the strings while pressing the chord with the left hand.
54
The plena jíbara recorded in New York during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music
was significant because it partially modified previous prejudices against the use of any
drums in Jíbaro music. Plena jíbara can be interpreted, depending on the listener, as a
plena song masked as an aguinaldo with drums, or as an aguinaldo with plena
percussion in the background. This discussion is important for understanding Jíbaro
music as attempting to incorporate Afro-Puerto Rican heritage into an essentially Ibero-
Puerto Rican tradition. With the inclusion of plena drums in the Jíbaro music repertoire
of the Golden Era, Jíbaro artists were following the government-sponsored ideal of
representing the tripartite heritage of Puerto Rican culture. This symbolically speaks to
the idea that Jíbaro was conceptualized as a national emblem for all Puerto Ricans
during the 1950s and 1960s. It is important to note that the ethnic hierarchy proposed
by the ICP and the Common Wealth government of the Island was aurally present in the
Jíbaro recordings of the Golden Era: the Hispanic European influence was highlighted
through the dominant positions of the Spanish language and the cuatro, while the Taíno
and African influences were relegated to the background of the mix. It is also important
to mention that the incorporation of plena drums in Jíbaro recordings and this particular
type of Puerto Ricanness reinforcement was occurring in the diaspora context.
The core instruments of traditional plena music are the drums (pleneros) and the
güiro11. Although the plena drums consist of the three individual drums, the sound and
the layers of rhythms they create are conceptualized as a whole (i.e. as a drum
ensemble). The drum that provides the basic rhythm and provides “the call” to for the
other drums to begin is the punteador. The seguidor provides the lower tones and a
11 See appendix C for illustration of plena drums and the Puerto Rican güiro.
55
steady base. The requinto, smaller drum, is used to improvise. The güiro serves as a
bonding element and compliments the stratified polyrhythms of the drums. The on
Figure 2-4 provides a notated illustration of the corrido rhythmic pattern.
Figure 2-4. Basic rhythmic pattern of plena corrido style
Instrumentation of the Jíbaro Ensemble
The Jíbaro ensemble was codified around the turn of the 20th century as a
quartet of instruments including two plucked strings (cuatro, guitar), a pair of maracas or
güiro, and a singer. Prior to this time there were a variety, depending of the resources
available, of regional variations in instrumental groupings used by Jíbaro musicians that
included different string, wind, and percussion instruments. The codification of a
“typical” Jíbaro ensemble went hand in hand with the emergence of the Jíbaro as a
symbol of national identity.
The Jíbaro musical ensemble itself contains a hierarchy of instruments. Some
are considered primary (or core), and others are secondary or auxiliary. Musicians and
56
listeners conceive the primary musical instruments in Jíbaro music as visually and
aurally unique and culturally significant to Puerto Ricans. The secondary instruments
are those that are treated as optional to the tradition or that have fallen in disuse.
Musical instruments that have been incorporated in Jíbaro recordings during the Golden
Era that are used for ornamental purposes are considered auxiliary.
I have categorized the Jíbaro musical instruments based on the hierarchical
importance among the instruments of the Jíbaro ensemble, their traditional use, both in
live and recorded performances, and most of all in the way the instruments are
interpreted and valued among Puerto Ricans (on the island and in the diaspora) in
terms of national identity.
The core musical instruments of the Jíbaro ensemble are the human voice, the
plucked chordophones of the guitar family (especially the cuatro), and the scraped
idiophone percussion instrument known as the güiro. The specific combination of
musical instruments utilized in Jíbaro music gives the music a unique timbre and texture
that itself expresses Jíbaro identity. These instruments provide melodic, harmonic, and
rhythmic accompaniment for the voice. Although most Jíbaro ensembles use the same
basic instrumentation, individual groups specialize in specific forms of seis and there is
a great amount of variation in the ability of performers to improvise.
A total of twenty musical instruments have been documented for the Jíbaro
music tradition in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora. They are presented in tables bellow
according to the Hornbostel/Sachs classification system of musical instruments. Jíbaro
music instruments in the tables are organized into: core, secondary, and auxiliary. The
type, characteristics and role of instruments are also given. Also, the instruments are
57
grouped according to their common practice, use, and cultural symbolism starting with
the core instruments (Table 2-1), followed by secondary instruments (Table 2-2), and
auxiliary instruments (Table 2-3). This last category presents musical instruments
foreign to the live/improvised performance tradition of the Island, but commonly found in
Jíbaro recordings from its Golden Era.
58
Table 2-1. Jíbaro Core Music Instruments Name Type Description Musical Role
human voice
aerophone Human singing voice Lead singer
cuatro chordophone A medium size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale length of 20 1/8'' with 10 strings in 5 courses of double strings (3 sets tuned in unison and 2 sets tuned in octaves)
Melodic leader and lead soloist
guitarra (Spanish guitar)
chordophone A large size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale of 25 3/5" With six courses of 3 metal strings and 3 nylon strings
Harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment
güiro idiophone A pre-Columbian hollowed gourd with horizontally carved slits scraped with steel comb.
Rhythmic accompaniment
Table 2-2. Jíbaro Secondary Music Instruments Name Type Description Musical Role
tiple (doliente)*
chordophone A small size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale length of 14 1/2'' with 5 strings. High pitched melodic voice in a stringed Jíbaro ensemble.
Optional melodic leader/soloist when there is no cuatro available
tiple (requinto)*
chordophone A smaller size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale length of 11 1/2'' with 3 strings
Optional melodic leader/soloist when there is no cuatro available
Tiple (con macho) or tiplón*
chordophone A small size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale length of 20 1/2'' with 5 strings (4 courses of string with a fifth string peg like the North American banjo
Optional melodic leader/soloist when there is no cuatro available
bordonúa* chordophone A large size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with an approximate scale length of 24 1/2" with 6 or 5 strings
Optional harmonic/rhythmic accompaniment
59
Table 2-2. Continued Secondary Musical Instruments Name Type Description Musical Role
vihuela* chordophone
A large size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a an approximate scale
length of 24 1/2" scale length of with 12 or 10 strings in 6 or 5
courses of double strings. Similar to the bordonúa.
Optional baritone
melody to contrast
the cuatro
maracas* idiophone Of pre-Columbian origin. A hand shaken pair of dried gourd rattles
with dried seeds inside.
Rhythmic
accompaniment
bongó membranophone
A pair of single-headed drums with conical shape joined together
horizontally. The large drum is approximately 9 inches in diameter
while the small drum is about 7 inches in diameter
Rhythmic
accompaniment
Note: *Denotes instruments no longer common in the Jíbaro ensemble
Table 2-3. Jíbaro Auxiliary Musical Instruments Name Type Description Musical Role
mandolina chordophone
A small size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale length of 13
7/8'' with 8 strings in 4 courses of double strings tuned in
unison). In High pitched melodic voice in a stringed Jíbaro
ensemble.
Melodic leader and lead
soloist when there is no
cuatro available
tres
puertorriqueño chordophone
A large size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale of 20 7/8"
With nine strings in 3 courses of triple strings (the edge courses
are tunes in octaves. The center course in tuned in unison.
Harmonic/rhythmic
accompaniment
steel string
guitar chordophone
A large size guitar (fretted-plucked lute) with a scale of 26 3/5"
With six courses of metal strings.
Harmonic/rhythmic
accompaniment
acordeón aerophone
A free-reed instrument of rectangular body shape that works
with the compression of its bellows. It can be diatonic (with
buttons) or chromatic (with keys). On the right side of the
instrument the melody is played, while the left is used for
accompaniment.
melodic leader and second
voice along the cuatro
trompeta aerophone A lip-vibrated, chromatic brass instrument with three pistons Melodic ornamentation
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Table 2-3. Continued Name Type Description Musical Role
clarinete aerophone Consists of a wooden or plastic closed-tube with a single
beating reed Melodic ornamentation
cencerro idiophone A claperless steel animal bell hit with a wooden stick. Rhythmic accompaniment
pleneros membranophone
An African derived instrument that consist of a trio of single-
headed drums with the same height but different diameter. Each
drum work as a single rhythmic unit, and each drum is
played/hand held by an individual
Rhythmic accompaniment
61
As indicated above, the primary musical instruments of the contemporary Jíbaro
ensemble are the voice, cuatro, guitarra (Spanish guitar), and güiro. The timbre of the
voice in Jíbaro music is distinctly nasal and is similar to the “canto jondo” in Flamenco
music from Southern Spain as well as the Guajiro tradition of central Cuba. The cantaó
(one who sings memorized songs) or trovador (one who sings improvised songs) can
be of any age or gender as long as he/she is in concordance with the style of the seis
previously chosen by the performers or the audience. It is well appreciated when a
singer puts emotion into the lyrics and the introductory ay-le-lo-lay25 and emphasizes the
inflection of certain syllables and words. Most important is the ability of the singer to
improvise on the spot based on a pre-determined topic known as a pie forza’o26. The
insertion of names, places, or catch phrases between the lyric’s structures is also
valued. One feature of Jíbaro singing is the limited tonal range, which usually does not
exceed the octave. Extreme falsetto or bass are not used in Jíbaro music. Most Jíbaro
ensembles only have one singer with the exceptions of the use of two singers for
improvisational challenges known as controversias27 or during cadenas28 in which
25 Musicologist and writer Peter Bloch attributes the Jíbaro musical exclamation “la-le-lo-lai, or lai-le-lo-lai, or ay-le-lo-le-lo-le” as also existing among farmer workers in Castile, Murcia, and Almería in Spain. He hints at a possible Moorish/North African influence on the folk music of Puerto Rico. On the other hand, Manuel Alvarado Nazario in “El Elemento Afronegroide en el Español de Puerto Rico” states that this exclamation comes from the penetration of afro-negroid (possibly from the Yoruba language) linguistic elements in the rural areas of the Island.
26 A pie forza'o is a previously chosen octasyllabic verse in which the whole décima will be based. The pié forza’o serves as a mandatory topic that has to be improvised upon and developed by the trovador.
27 The controversia is a style of seis con décima were two or more Jíbaro singers engage in a type of argument or friendly challenge in which each one of them should be very creative at the time of improvising their décimas in order to win the respect of the audience and other fellow musicians. This type of “competitions” is very well appreciated in the Jíbaro traditions and it is supposed to distinguish between amateur and experienced/professional trovadores.
62
singers alternate their décimas. During a seis con décima,29 there is only one vocal
melody at a time. An exception can be found during the last phrase of the décima
challenge, where all the singers sing the melody of the pie forza’o at once to reinforce
the lyrical content of that last phrase.
Jíbaro musicians are not just in dialogue with each other while performing but
also interact closely with the audience. This is part of the cultural experience of Jibaro
music that is maintained on the Island and in the diaspora. In a more abstract way,
Jíbaro music is also in constant dialogue with the historical past and the political
present. On Jíbaro music recordings from the Golden Era, Jíbaro artists, as well as the
personnel involved in the recording process, capture the interactive relationships
between musicians and audience, their relationship/dialogue, and the art they
represented with the Puerto Ricans who consumed and enjoyed their recordings.
The cuatro is the leading instrument, and the cuatrista (cuatro player) is in charge
of selecting and beginning every song to be performed by the Jíbaro ensemble. A key
that suits the singer is selected in advance by the trovador and the cuatrista. The cuatro
has primarily a melodic role and is in charge of playing the seis, which is the core of the
whole Jíbaro repertoire. In addition to articulating the seis, the cuatro also provides
counter melodies to the vocal line, creating an antiphonal dialogue between the singer
and the cuatrista. Also the cuatro player is expected to be able to improvise fast
28 The cadenas (chained) is a style of sung décima that follows a specific melodic and rhythmic structure different, but similar from the seis. This could mean two things: the style of singing were the song is sung as being chained (like a dragging effect) or the 10th verse is used the 1st of the upcoming round of décimas.
29 The name seis con décima comes from the use of a seis as a melodic base or ostinato, and the use of a décima Espinela as lyrical content for the song. Both the poetry and the music are equally important
and co-depend on each other to successfully achieve a true authentic representation of the art.
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phrases and lengthy solos. Cuatristas who can make the instrument “sing” are highly
valued.30 The high-pitched sound produced by the paired strings of the cuatro is also
linked to the soundscape of the Island’s countryside and the instrument itself has
become a symbol of Puerto Rican national identity, similar to the national flag, a
garita31, or a coquí32. The nationalization of the instrument is so prevalent in Puerto Rico
that a law was passed on the Island to denominate it a national musical instrument (Law
number 154, 2003).33
The guitarra, Spanish, or classical guitar (used all over the world) is a
descendant of the European vihuela brought to the New World by the Spanish during
the early colonization of America. The vihuela was commonly used in Puerto Rico until
late 19th century. Written records do not make clear the exact role of the vihuela among
the Jibaro during colonial times and its use likely varied according to regional locations
in the Island. Recent research done by the Cuatro Project34, a virtual organization of
Puerto Rican cuatro makers, players, and folklorists suggests that the vihuela and
another stringed instrument, the bordonúa, were frequently used interchangeably. In the
Jíbaro ensemble the bordonúa served as a harmonic instrument, while the vihuela
30 I borrowed the concept of the “singing cuatro” from cuatro makers and cuatro players. They have told me that they want the instrument to actually “sing”. Cuatro makers select the right woods so the instrument is acoustically balanced in order “para que el cuatro cante” – Jaime Alicea, PR. In the case of the cuatro players, they look for expressiveness and technique in order for the instrument to sing well. “Que el cuatro cante” – Luis Crúz, NY
31 A garita is a small tower with narrow and long windows, which is located in strategic points of a
fortification with the intention to protect and defend the soldiers.
32 A coquí is the onomatopoeic name for a minuscule amphibian natural of Puerto Rico, which produce
nocturnal intermittent sounds (koh – kee).
33 Please refer to the appendix for examples and illustrations that represent the Puerto Rican cuatro as a aural and visual symbol of Puerto Ricanness/national identity.
34 www.cuatro-pr.org. See also “Cuerdas de mi tierra” by Juan Sotomayor Pérez.
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played the baritone melody. Eventually the bordonúa fell into disuse and the vihuela
assumed the harmonic role in the ensemble, while the cuatro and típle were in charge
of the melody. It was not until the late 19th century that the guitar (with gut strings)
replaced the older bordonúas and vihuelas in providing the harmonic support in the
ensemble. Since that time, the Spanish guitar has been an essential part of the Jíbaro
ensemble and is used almost exclusively for harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment
and only rarely functions as a soloist melodic instrument. The guitar’s role is essential in
providing the harmonic structure for the improvisations of the singer and the solo
virtuosity of the cuatrista. In addition to keeping the harmony, the guitar creates a
syncopated rhythmic structure that complements the rhythm of the güiro (and vice
versa)35.
The Puerto Rican Cuatro: A Portable Piece of Home
Although there are similar plucked stringed instruments that developed from the
Spanish vihuela in various Latin American countries, the Puerto Rican cuatro, is
uniquely Puerto Rican. Professional cuatristas insist that a true cuatro must be made of
precious wood from Puerto Rico by the hands of a well-known cuatro maker. It is also
expected that the cuatro player be able to identify the types of woods used in the
making of the cuatro, the whys of the selection of the woods (i.e. balance and tone),
place of origin of the woods, and have a close connection with the cuatro maker. It was
only recently that Puerto Rican cuatros were built outside the island. Cuatros mass-
produced in the Far East are considered by Jíbaro artists as of lower quality (cartón
35 Refer to Figure 2-2
65
presa’o) and are only acceptable as a student or backup instrument (pa’ coger pela)
during a performance.
The Puerto Rican cuatro, more than being another musical instrument from
Puerto Rico, creates a virtual link to the idealized heritage/connection to Hispanidad and
Island. During my fieldwork in New York I experienced many situations that serve as
example of this type of idealization. Once I was participating of a Christmas celebration
at the Casa de la Cultura Puertorriqueña in El Barrio. There was music at the event and
I was asked to join in and play the güiro. We played danzas puertorriqueñas (which are
part of the standard instrumental Jíbaro repertoire). It wasn’t just that danzas that we
were playing set the mood for an imagined/ideal Puerto Rico. It was more than that; the
danzas were being played on a Puerto Rican cuatro. We were all engaged in the music
but it was the sound of the cuatro that legitimized the Puerto Ricanness of the
repertoire. I argue that it would have been inconceivable to create an authentic space to
be Puerto Rican if the danzas would have been played utilizing violins or other
instruments such as a piano or an electronic keyboard. It was the Puerto Rican cuatro
that was serving as a link to strengthen Puerto Rican identity in the diaspora, while at
the same time it also served as link to a sense of Hispanidad.
The Puerto Rican cuatro has been officially recognized as representing Puerto
Rico as a nation. This is clearly stated in the 2003, Puerto Rican law # 154 that defines
the cuatro as one of three national musical instruments of Puerto Rican. The law in itself
recognizes and declares, in this particular order, the Puerto Rican cuatro, the pleneros,
and bomba drums as national instruments of the Common Wealth of Puerto Rico and
symbols of Puerto Rican culture. The hierarchy and the leading role of the Puerto Rican
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cuatro as representational of Puerto Rico’s Hispanic heritage and national identity can
be easily perceived by the amount of detail and affection dedicated to the stringed
instrument in the content of the law. While the Puerto Rican cuatro gets almost two
pages of descriptions, history, and symbolic value; the plena and bomba drums only
merit one sentence barely mentioning them as “of great value” to Puerto Rican culture.
As a side note, there is no mention of the Puerto Rican güiro as representational of the
native, pre-Columbian, inhabitants of the Island.
The law recognizing Puerto Rico’s national musical instruments is a
contemporary example of what Jíbaro music has become after the Golden Era. Jíbaro
music became a visual and sonic symbol, in which under its umbrella, fitted “the best” of
what it meant to a Puerto Rican by highlighting Hispanic Puerto Rican. Elements of
other musical genres and style like the arrangements, instrumentation, and foreign
harmonies were adapted to become representational of Puerto Rico in a diasporic
context. This flexibility and valorization of what it meant to be Puerto Rican in a host
country contributed to the success (and decay) of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in
New York as representational of Puerto Ricanness.
The guiro, also known as “el instrumento vegetal,” is one of the musical
instruments conceptually and historically linked to the Arawak natives of Puerto Rico
and was used prior to and during the early decades the European colonization (Campos
Parsi 1976:5; Rosario 1976:124; Kunn 2014:152). Early accounts of the instrument by
Spanish missionaries and later accounts by American anthropologists, describe the
güiro as having a “horrible scratching” sound that the Puerto Rican natives incorporated
in every one of their festive activities. Today, the güiro in Jíbaro music is in charge of
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the rhythmic section and works in tandem with the guitar to keep the beat and to provide
ornamentation in between rhythmic phrases known as “repiqueteos” or “flirteos”.
Among the secondary musical instruments used in Jíbaro music, some were part
of older regional expressions that fell into disuse in the early 20th century because of the
standardization and modernization of musical-instrument building techniques, and the
predilection for modern sounds and instruments. The standardization of musical
instruments took place during the late 1950s, early 1960s in Puerto Rico when Jíbaro
musicians began participating in contests held by the government and private sector
enterprises that used Puerto Rican culture as their main resource of advertisement.
According to Joaquín Mouliert, who has been called to judge many Jíbaro music
contest, including the ones organized by the Bacardí Corporation in Puerto Rico, and
the Puerto Rican government, during these popular contests Jíbaro musicians were
required to adhere to strict rules, which dictated specific dress codes and determined
the musical instruments that could be used on stage. The jury, who in most cases
where the ones who made the rules, made it mandatory to perform Jíbaro music with
just voice, cuatro, guitar and güiron although was a certain amount of flexibility in the
rules. In some contests, the bongó was allowed as part of the Jíbaro ensemble. The
reasoning behind the rules of these Jíbaro contest was to preserve the tradition as pure
and uncontaminated of foreign elements that threatened the “purity” of Puerto Rican
culture. In this case, the bongó was not seen a threat but an affirmation of the tripartite
ethnic groups that encompassed being Puerto Rican under the Common Wealth
government ideology.
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Technological advances also led to the modernization of certain musical
instruments and the decay of others. For example, steel strings became a substitute to
gut strings and mechanical tuning machines replaced tuning pegs in all the plucked
instruments of the Jíbaro ensemble. Thanks largely to the efforts of López Crúz to
“rescue” the cuatro from falling in disuse and to promote the instrument in urban
settings, the cuatro itself became the instrument of choice for both live and recorded
Jíbaro music displacing the various types of típles (which varied in size and tunings)
across the Island. This, in part, due to the effort to standardize Jíbaro music on behalf
the entities who were in charge of “maintaining” Puerto Rican culture.
The cuatro with steel strings was able to project more sound than the típle, which
had a limited sonic range due to its shape, size, and scale. The family of the típles (the
típle dolente, the requinto, and the típle con macho or tiplón) suffered a similar fate as
the four-gut-strings cuatro by falling in disuse. However, the tiples were not successfully
“rescued” on a national scale through such modernist reforms, as was the case for the
cuatro. While there is evidence of some típles adopting steel strings around the 1940s,
this was limited to certain regional traditions (Reyes-Zamora 2006). Audio recordings
that feature the instrument are also scarce in comparison with cuatro recordings. This is
due probably because in recordings the Puerto Rican cuatro was easier to amplify its
sound than the típles because of its size and its double strings.
It was not until the late 1990s that a significant movement led by José “Pepito”
Reyes-Zamora revived a popular interest in the tiples by fomenting, through
government-sponsored initiatives, típle building workshops, audio recordings, historical
research, and efforts to notate and publish method books on the instrument’s
69
performance techniques. Today, although more popular than before, the típle continues
to play a only a secondary role Jíbaro music in comparison to the cuatro and it is mostly
used as part of urban folk ensembles, like rondallas and tunas. It is also used for
pedagogical purposes as an introductory musical instrument for young musicians before
graduating to the more important cuatro.
Instrument building techniques also witnessed technological advances as the
Jibaro ensemble was being codified as a national ensemble. The availability of
industrialized machine-produced guitars, their accessibility, and their price also
influenced the decline of the older vihuela and bordonúa. Due to these various
circumstances, the Spanish guitar displaced all other harmonic instruments that were
used for accompaniment of Jíbaro music.
The secondary percussion instruments used in Jíbaro music are the maracas
and the bongó. The maracas, when used in the Jíbaro ensemble, play a role similar to
the güiro, and in a few occasions these two instruments play at the same time during
on-stage presentations. When this occurs, the güiro takes the lead rhythmic role while
the maracas keep a steady beat. Their use together is more popular in informal settings
like parrandas or during domestic performances (when the performers tend to use
whatever instruments are available to them). It is important to mention that the maracas
used in Jíbaro music are modeled on the indigenous Arawak maracas, which have the
seeds inside of a small gourd with a stick inserted through the gourd serving as a
handle. This type of maracas is distinct from the leather and wood maracas used in
Cuban son many other types of Latin American music. The use of the Arawak-
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associated maraca reinforces claims that Jíbaro music draws from an authentically
indigenous Puerto Rican heritage.
The bongó is different from the other secondary musical instruments used in the
Jíbaro ensemble in that Puerto Ricans do no claim it as an indigenous instrument. The
bongó has Afro-Cuban origins and was a 20th-century addition to the Jíbaro ensemble.
During the first years of the foundation of Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña a handful
of Puerto Rican folklore purists argued that because the bongó was not part of the
“original” Jíbaro tradition it should not be incorporated the music.36 They went so far as
to claim that it contaminated the genre with unwanted African elements. During the
Golden Era of Jíbaro music this line of thought changed and the bongó, and even other
percussion instruments like congas, were accepted as part of the Jíbaro ensemble. This
was in part due to the influence of Cuban music on Jíbaro music and the commercial
need for Jíbaro music to compete with other Latin American genres for retail sales and
radio airplay. Many Jíbaro musicians like the sound of the bongó as an addition to the
rhythm section of the ensemble as it tightens the percussion sound and helps articulate
the beat for dancing. It also contributed in the notion of a multi-ethnical Puerto
Ricanness in the diaspora. In a more complex sense, this merging of musical elements
and instruments can be understood as a way to embrace all that is understood as
Puerto Rican under one musical genre; Jíbaro music.
36 Héctor Campos Parsi, in the seventh volume of La Gran Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico, page 33-36, describes the incorporation of the bongó in the Jíbaro ensemble as a commercial maneuver, creating a division between, the “pure” revivalist Jíbaro music sponsored by the ICP and the PPD from the one produced commercially in New York during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music. However, he forecast that in the future it would be very probable that all Jíbaro ensembles will have a bongó. Campos Parsi says: “Los puristas se oponen a tal introduction [the bongó], pero son señales de nuetro tiempo el que esta práctica (y la de añadir “bajos” electrónicos) es cada vez más común en la television, y en conciertos al aire lobre, en plazas públicas, durante las fiestas patronales en los pueblos. Esprobable que todos los grupos típicos contengas la menos un bongó en el future cercano.”
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During the Golden Era of Jíbaro music it was common to experience live
performances that incorporated the bongó, congas, and even an electric bass in some
presentations. This depended on the budget of the production and availability of
instruments and musicians. Since the recordings of the Golden Era, the bongó has
become an essential, almost indispensable part of the Jíbaro ensemble, making it very
rare to have a musical social gathering, live presentation, or Jíbaro recording without it.
To add to the core and secondary instruments used in Jíbaro music, various
auxiliary instruments have been incorporated from other musical traditions. These
instruments are drawn largely from other Latin dance musics like the Cuban bolero, and
Venezuelan joropo. Some auxiliary instruments (specifically, the acordeón, trompeta,
clarinet, cencerro, and pleneros) are used mostly for ornamental purposes to create
contrasts of timbre and to create associations to other Latin American and Hispanic
music genres.
For example, the mandolin or mandolina has been used in Puerto Rican music
for centuries in tunas and rondallas, and was preferred instrument for the upper class
women in colonial times. During the 20th century the mandolin has also been used for
“classical music” and jazz ensembles popular under North American influence on the
island. The mandolin, occasionally substitutes for the cuatro when the instrument is not
available. The best example that illustrates the use of the mandolin in Jíbaro music is
among Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City during the mid-20th century. Due to
the lack of economic means, Puerto Rican musicians were frequently unable to bring
their instruments to New York and resorted to the mandolin, which was easily available.
Although it has a higher pitch that the cuatro the mandolin is quite similar in terms of
72
plucking technique and timbre, making the instrument a logical choice for Puerto Rican
musicians who did not have access to a cuatro.
The Puerto Rican tres, was developed in Puerto Rico as a modified version of
the Cuban instrument of the same name. As the rhythm sections of Latin popular music
ensembles grew in size, there was a need to compete with the volume of the
percussion; so the size of the tres got bigger and more strings were added. The Puerto
Rican tres eventually featured a body larger than the classical guitar and included three
courses of strings. The tres, as a folkloric instrument in Puerto Rico, has been used as a
substitute for the cuatro due to their similar plucking technique and timbre qualities.
Another reason for adding the tres to the Jíbaro ensemble is that it facilitated the
incorporation of popular Cuban music into the Jíbaro repertoire. Nowadays, with the use
of electronic pickups to amplify the sound of acoustic instruments, the triple courses of
tiple strings are used to achieve a sound that resembles but is distinct from the Cuban
tres. The difference is that a certain buzzing can be achieved with the Puerto Rican
instrument (due to the triple courses) that cannot be done with the Cuban one that uses
only double courses. I classify it as an auxiliary instrument because its use in the Jíbaro
ensemble depends on the performer, the venue, the audience, the type of music, and
the occasion.
The steel stringed guitar, as in the case of the mandolin, has been used out of
necessity and accessibility. Puerto Rican immigrants in the United States adopted this
type of guitar due to its easy accessibility.37 In Hawaii, where there was also a large
37 In the United States the steel stringed guitar is the default guitar when referring to acoustic guitar. This type of guitar is used in many styles of popular music from the States (i.e. folk, country music, early rock, blues, pop, blue grass, etc.) The Spanish or Classical guitar is primarily used for “Classical” or instrumental music and has limited role in popular music.
73
migration of Puerto Ricans during the first decades of the 20th century, the ukulele has
been incorporated in Jíbaro music as the result of the interaction of the Puerto Ricans
immigrants with the local community of musicians. In the Pacific archipelago of Hawai’i,
the locals refer to Puerto Rican Jíbaro music as Kachi-Kachi (Sólis, 1989, 1995). The
accordion, (both the diatonic and the chromatic) has been used in live and recorded
Jíbaro music both in Puerto Rico and in New York.
Although not as common as the cuatro and guitarra duo, the accordion offers the
advantage of being able to play the melody as well as the accompaniment at the same
time. One of the most well know uses of accordion in recording is the double album
collection “Valses Criollos Volumen 1 & 2” by Modesto Rosario. In these instrumental
recordings the cuatro and the accordion take turns performing the melodies and each of
them play their own respective solos accompanied by guitar and güiro. Although these
recordings consist mostly of waltzes except for one Puerto Rican danza it is considered
to be Jíbaro music by record distributors as well as for consumers because of the
instrumentation and the aesthetics of the music. In addition, all the record stores I
visited in Puerto Rico, Florida, and New York marketed these albums as Jíbaro music.
These albums could be found among other Jíbaro classic like the ones from Chuito el
de Bayamón and Ramito, and along the more contemporary ones like Edwin Colón
Zayas and Quique Domenech. This link to Jíbaro music and Puerto Ricanness in
general is reinforced through the albums cover that makes reference to countryside
images of Puerto Rico eluding the lifestyle of the rural communities of the Island.
Other appearances of the accordion can be found in some of Ramito’s
recordings. The role of the accordion is limited to ornamenting the melodies performed
74
by the singer and the cuatro and keeping a simple harmonic accompaniment by
doubling the chords played on the guitar. It is believed that the accordion was adopted
in Jíbaro music as part of the German commercial exchange in the Island during the
late 19th and early 20th century (López 2008, López, Cepeda; 2012). The diatonic
accordion, as principal melodic instrument it is more commonly found in plena music of
the urban areas of Puerto Rico than in rural Jíbaro music.
The trumpet and the clarinet, instruments found in plena and common in Cuban
music, have also been incorporated in the Jíbaro music repertoire as ornamental
instruments that play an antiphonal role with the singer and the cuatrista interchanging
melodies. The trumpet and clarinet became popular in Jíbaro music ensembles when
the genre, as part of commercial strategies of record labels during the Golden Era of
Jíbaro music, became intermixed with Cuban elements and instrumentation in order to
be able to compete with the music styles that where in trend during the 1950s and
1960s like the bolero, plena, guaracha, mambo, rumba, and later salsa. The cencerro
and the plena drums have also been incorporated in the Jíbaro music ensemble as part
of the rhythmic section.
It is important to note that most of the plena repertoire recorded during the 1950s
and 1960s was marketed under the umbrella category of Jíbaro music. Jíbaro artist like
Ramito, Baltazar Carrero, and German Rosario recorded the vast majority of the plena
repertoire of the 1950s and 1960s under the designation plena Jíbara (López, 2008).38
Under this category most of these plena songs were labeled as aguinaldos since in
some cases, the structure and form of the songs are similar, and the drums were barely
38. What makes plena jíbara different from the regular one is the prominent use of the Puerto Rican cuatroover the pleneros drums.
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audible because they were “put behind” the melodies and the harmonies in the mix
during the recording process.
Ramito, in his own words when interviewed by Peter Bloch, tells us more about
the plena jíbara and how it was recorded. In the interview, Ramito describes plena
music as being of Arawak (Indian) origins; “it descends form the Indians’ drum signals
and actually belongs to the mountains” (Bloch, 1978:22). Yet the African factor has
been powerful in shaping it, as we know it today. Composer of plenas César Conception
indicates that the plena might have Spanish roots too, as there exist Spanish folk tunes
astonishingly similar to the plena. Ramon López describes the plena jíbara as the
encounter of the rural aguinaldo with the urban plena.
One last musical instrument added to the Jíbaro ensemble is the electric bass,
which primarily doubles the bass line played by the guitar in order to enhance the
foundation of the harmony. It is worth mentioning that Jíbaro composer, trovador, and
guitarist Joaquín Mouliert commissioned the fabrication of a bass instrument that plays
the role of the electric bass but is, in fact, a bass cuatro/guitar like instrument tuned in
fifths, similar to a cello. The use of this music instrument can be considered a novelty
since its use is only limited to his Jíbaro ensemble Ecos de la Montaña.39
In the following chapter, I explore the reasons for mass migrations of Puerto
Ricans to New York and how this was expressed by through Jíbaro music. I also
analyze two songs that illustrate the role Jíbaro music recorded during its Golden Era
played in conveying a variety of topics representational of the immigrant experience,
39 Personal interview with Joaquín Mouliert, Fajardo, PR summer of 2012.
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which at the same time reinforced their Hispanidad and strengthened their Puerto Rican
national identity.
77
CHAPTER 3 PROGRESS, NOSTALGIA, AND THE PROCESS OF POPULARIZING JIBARO MUSIC
“Echar pa’ lante” and “Buscando ambiente”
Echar pa’ lante (to move forward) and buscando ambiente (searching for better
socio-economic opportunities) are two common Puerto Rican expressions of the desire
to improve one’s present economic situation. The phrase Echar pa’ lante embodies the
desire to move up a step on the proverbial economic ladder, to improve one’s life with
the hope that future generations will have better opportunities. Buscando ambiente, on
the other hand, implies the context of the individual’s situation; this latter phrase
represents the search for a better social, political, and economic context in which one
can live with security, joy and freedom. These two phrases were repeated over and over
to me when I asked my interviewees about their motivations to move and settle in New
York during the 1950s and 1960s. The Puerto Ricans who migrated to New York City
during the middle decades of the twentieth century did not move in search of religious
freedom or to escape contexts of war and violence, like many other diasporic
communities in the United States; they came to “America” in search of the American
Dream. They left Puerto Rico (with help from the local Puerto Rican government) in
search of jobs and economic opportunities that the United States offers.
The case of the Puerto Ricans is a complicated one in that they migrated within
the boundaries of their own nation-state1 to a location that was, at the same time, a
foreign land. In contrast to other diasporic groups in the United States, Puerto Ricans
come to the mainland as U.S. citizens holding American passports. Puerto Ricans are
foreigners in their “own country,” or at least their “country” outside of their island.
1 As discussed in the first chapter, Puerto Rico is a non-incorporated territory of the USA.
78
Anthropologist Jorge Duany, who has studied back-and-forth migration between the
Island and the mainland, describes Puerto Ricans as a “nation on the move” (2002). In
this case, the term nation does not designate a geographic place within delineated
boundaries but refers to a group with specific language, customs, and culture. My use of
the term is consistent with Thomas Turino’s definition of nation as “a culturally and
linguistically unified group with the right to its own state” (2003, 172). For over one
hundred years, Puerto Ricans have been constantly cruzando el charco2 (crossing the
pond) with the hopes of achieving the success that seems impossible on the Island.
The Diaspora (… and the Nostalgia)
The Puerto Rican diaspora does not follow the conventional understanding of
diaspora because, although hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans saw themselves
forced to migrate to Los Niuyores,3 the flow from the mainland to the Island is always bi-
directional; Puerto Ricans come and go, depending on their economic situation. That is
the case of many Jíbaro musicians who travel back and forth between Puerto Rico and
the United States, according to their musical schedule. Like their diasporic brothers and
sisters, Jibaro musicians call both places “home”—la de acá y la de allá.4
The word “diaspora” comes from the Greek word “diaspeirein,” which means to
disperse, to scatter. A diaspora is defined as “a group of people who live outside the
2 “Cruzando el charco” is a colloquial phrase used to describe the trip, regardless of the medium (boat or plane) to visit the United States mainland. Literally translated, it means, “crossing the pond.” Figuratively, it refers to crossing the Atlantic Ocean from the Island to the mainland, and the reverse.
3 A colloquial term in Puerto Rican Spanish to refer not only to New York but often to anywhere in the USA regardless of geographical location.
4 Literally translated would be “the one from here and the one from there”. Being the “one from here” the “real one” and the “one from there” the one for job related occasion.
79
area in which they had lived for a long time or in which their ancestors lived”.5 This
definition characterizes many of the scattered immigrants that have an idea of their
place of origin but cannot return to that place, whether it be because of uncertainty or
political reasons. Many African Americans can trace their ancestry to Africa, but do not
know exactly which region. Many Cubans in Florida long for a return to their land from
which they fled when the Cuban Revolution. However, Puerto Ricans can always return
to Puerto Rico, as long as they can afford it.
In identifying the relationship between diasporic communities and the symbolism
and values attributed to their music, Kenneth S. Habib states that “In the framework of
dislocations from home, music factors formidably into the negotiation, construction, and
development of personal and social meaning within and with respect to the new places
of residence. In particular, the sonic, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual capabilities of
music combine in powerful ways to engage memory, to arouse aspiration, to evoke
community, and to define identity in new geo-cultural contexts”.6 Philip V. Bolham adds,
“in diaspora, music contributes to the construction of identity in contrastive ways,
shoring up the representation of self and negotiating interaction with otherness.7
During the middle decades of the 20th century, the majority of Puerto Ricans who
migrated to the United States were of rural origins or of low economic status and did not
have the means to return to the Island if things didn’t go well in their search of the
American dream. Most of them, after migrating, could not get the job they were
5 Merriam Webster Dictionary Online, s.v. “Diaspora,” accessed November 24, 2014, http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/diaspora, 2014.
6 "Diaspora." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2014
7 Philip V. Bohlman. "Diaspora." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2014
80
promised by the local government when they were still in Puerto Rico or could not find a
well-paying job because of lack of knowledge of the English language and/or racial and
ethnic discrimination. In any case, most of the jobs that were available were low-paying,
so most Puerto Ricans became trapped in the New York area, particularly in the ghetto
known as El Barrio, in the Lower East Side (Loizaida), in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg (Los
Sures), and eventually, in the Bronx (El Bronz).
This sense of being stuck in New York and the hardships of returning to Puerto
Rico fostered a feeling of nostalgia for the homeland that grew strong among the Puerto
Rican immigrants. The nostalgia for a Puerto Rico left behind became a common
sentiment among Puerto Ricans from different towns, social classes, races and
religions. Indeed, nostalgia became the most prominent sentiment expressed in the
lyrical content of many Jíbaro songs and Jíbaro music became the preferred medium to
express this nostalgia during the Golden Era. Nostalgia for a bygone Puerto Rico is
expressed in Jíbaro music as a way of demonstrating love and attachment to the land
left behind, reinforcing the idea of Puerto Ricanness, and strengthening the bonds of
national identity among the Puerto Rican immigrants in New York. In other words,
through shared Jíbaro music (and the strengthening of their national identity), New York
Puerto Ricans developed a special type of cultural nationalism.
The use of Jíbaro music to express nostalgia emerged among the Puerto Ricans
themselves, who migrated and found the poetic and musical elements of Jibaro music
(décima espinela and traditional seis) perfect mediums for expressing nostalgia, sorrow,
and desires to maintain Puerto Rican identity in their new surroundings. Music
combined with festivities, traditional food and alcohol, at religious rituals, social
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gatherings and dances to create social spaces filled with Puerto Ricanness. Since
Jíbaro music served as social medium par excellence for expressing the Puerto Rican
diaspora’s experience and nostalgic feelings, it also served to create and re-create
Puerto Rican national identity by bringing “Puerto Rico” closer to Puerto Ricans through
the musical practices of performed and recorded music.
Why did the Puerto Rican’s in the diaspora choose Jíbaro music as the main
medium to express their nostalgia and strengthen their Puerto Rican national identity,
and not any other type of Puerto Rican folk music, like the danza or plena, or any
number of Pan Latin American music genres, like the bolero? Puerto Rican guitarist,
researcher, and professor of music at the University of Puerto Rico, Luis Manuel
Alvarez, explains that Jíbaro music became the preferred medium to portray the
nostalgia due to its close associations to Puerto Rican rural background, culture and
folklore, and the popular Catholic rituals.8 Prior to the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, the
Cuban-derived bolero had been an important medium for expressing nostalgia felt by
Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Three of the most well-known bolero songs expressing
this are: “Lamento Boricano,” by Rafaél Hernández (1929); “En mi Viejo San Juan,” by
Noel Estrada (1943); and “Soñando con Puerto Rico,” by Bobby Capó (1950). At a first
glance, it could be argued that there is nothing particularly Puerto Rican about these
classic bolero songs except for their lyrical content. The bolero, although enjoyed by the
Puerto Rican community in Puerto Rico, New York, and in other Latin countries, was a
problematic choice for expressing Puerto Rican national identity because it was
demonstrably of foreign provenance (Cuban) and hence was perceived as lacking a
8 From personal interview during summer 2012.
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direct and authentic connection to the Puerto Rican land. In this matter, Ruth Glasser
explains “Puerto Ricans on the island and the mainland did not adopt Cuban music [the
bolero] wholesale to the detriment of their own traditions but incorporated it into an ever-
evolving repertoire of available cultural materials” (1995: 6). Following Glasser, I
suggest that Puerto Ricans incorporated the bolero into their own Jibaro traditions.
Jíbaro music had a stronger connection to the Puerto Rican contexts than the bolero
had, and it was indexically linked to the deeply resonant values of popular Catholicism
that were so culturally intertwined with Puerto Ricans. As mentioned in Chapter 2,
immigrants brought with them many of the customs and social practices of popular
Catholicism when they came to the United States. This was part of their cultural
baggage that represented a vast storehouse of knowledge and social practice that
defined who they were and how they identified themselves. Jíbaro music was an
important part of this cultural baggage. While it could be argued that such practices are
incompatible with and hindered the assimilation of immigrants into the dominant Anglo
culture of the U.S., Jíbaro music served as a cultural resource for immigrants as they
constructed an idealized past, while at the same time it provided a forum for expressing
their current situation as immigrants. Further, I suggest that Jíbaro music created a
space to be Puerto Rican in the diasporic context. In the following section, I describe the
fieldwork I conducted with members of Puerto Rican communities in the US and on the
Island. Through this fieldwork, I identified a deep appreciation for what was
conceptualized as “true” Puerto Rican (referring mostly to the idealized conception of
the rural nature of Puerto Rico as a nation), a desire to experience Puerto Rico’s natural
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resources (“volver pal campo, la playa…), but most importantly the codification of the
values that my interviewees considered Jíbaro traditions (prominently Jíbaro music).
Their diasporic understanding of what it was “to be” Jíbaro went beyond the
costumbrísta description of the term as the rural peasant of European origins in a
sense. The Jíbaro, from the diaspora perspective, was understood as existing beyond
any particular ethnicity, being inclusive of the three major ethnic groups as proposed
and supported by the Puerto Rican government during the 1950s. The Jíbaro then, was
projected as a symbol for all Puerto Ricans who can identify with any of the three ethnic
heritages previously mentioned. This understanding of the Jíbaro created a more
inclusive concept of how Jíbaro music should sound and which instruments could be
used when recording or performing it as long as the core elements of the traditions
maintained their dominant position. This meant that the Hispanic component of Puerto
Rican identity, as proposed by the PPD and the ICP, continued to be highlighted over
indigenous and African components. The fact that plena and other African influenced
music (like Santeria) was Jíbaroized during its Golden Era is a good example of
accommodating African components into the music on Jíbaro terms.
In other words, throughout my fieldwork, I was able to understand the
development, values, and meanings attributed to the Jíbaro as a concept and symbol of
Puerto Rican identity in a diasporic context. I also was able to understand how this
process is reflected in the recordings produced during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music
creating a new modern medium to express their Hispanidad. This activity created a
sonic space to be Puerto Rican in New York.
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Commodification and Revivalism
Over the course of the twentieth century, Jíbaro music was transformed from a
regional folkloric/religious expression into a standardized format to preserve and
promote the Jíbaro tradition and then into a commercial product. This process
developed broadly in two different but independent processes: a folkloric revival in
Puerto Rico and commercial development through the media in New York. Although
different in specific practices and intentions, these processes were intertwined and
symbiotic in terms of values attributed by the consumers and participants of Jíbaro
music.
Prior to the peak of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, the Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriqueña (ICP) had worked to revive the tradition and support it as an authentic
“pure” form of Puerto Rican heritage so that it might not be forgotten or diluted by
foreign influences. The standardization of the Jíbaro as symbol of Puerto Rico and its
national identity was a gradual process propelled by the efforts of the ICP in the 1950s
and 1960s to set the mold for a tripartite (mostly Hispanic) view of Puerto Rican culture.
The Jíbaro ensemble and its image were standardized through ICP sponsored contests
in the Island. This staged standardization was informally transported through migration
to New York where it was incorporated as the backbone of the Jíbaro recording
industry. Jíbaro recordings from the Golden Era in New York also contributed to the
standardization of genre in terms of sound, arrangements, and the aesthetic of live
performances and album covers. As a result of this, an image was constructed of the
Jíbaro as a Hispanic, paled skin peasant from the rural areas of Puerto Rico who plays
Puerto Rican cuatro or guitar. Most of the album covers from the Golden Era of Jíbaro
followed the visual aesthetic of the Jíbaro created in part by the Island’s government.
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Modern technology and an avid desire to “rescue” and protect Jíbaro music from
foreign influences led to a standardization of the genre in terms of its aesthetics,
repertoire, and instrumentation. Another factor that contributed to the standardization of
the genre was the large collection of recordings that emerged in direct relation to the
Puerto Rican migration to the United States during the late 1940s until the late 1960s.
The recordings from the Golden Era of Jíbaro Music helped solidify and give added
prestige to an already established medium that reinforced Puerto Rican national
identity.
The media’s role in the standardization of the Jíbaro repertoire included the
preference for certain types of seis con décimas that were believed to be more popular
than others and the development of a specific sound aesthetic aimed at recreating the
countryside ambiance of the Puerto Rican peasants. The setting of the musical/poetic
form of the seis con décimas was also standardized into a recording format of four
stanzas with a cuatro solo/interlude between after stanzas one and four.
This standardization previously mentioned in recorded Jíbaro music also involved
how Jíbaro artists portrayed themselves on album covers and in live performances
giving evidence of the relationship between the revivalist movement sponsored by the
Puerto Rican government and the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in New York. The Jíbaro
who were portrayed on most album covers during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in
New York were particularly crafted, from the background setting, clothing, and props, to
look as if they were photographed while playing music on a farm in Puerto Rico. The
pictures and liner notes that often accompanied full-length albums (LPs) contributed to
this standardization process and portrayed how modern Jíbaro artists should look while
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conveying the idea that the music on the recording came straight from the Island. These
recordings helped to shape the image of the Jíbaro and Puerto Rico as a romanticized
rural paradise to which the diaspora could return someday.
The State Intervenes in Jíbaro Music
In Puerto Rico, the revival of Jíbaro music was mostly in the hands of
government agencies and commercial interests. The lead agency in preserving and
promoting Puerto Rican culture was the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. Before the
ICP was established in 1955, Governor Theodor Roosevelt Jr., who nicknamed himself
“el Jíbaro de la Fortaleza” (Clark, 1975) promoted folk arts in Puerto Rico as a way to
strengthen local Puerto Rican cultural traditions. Once Luis Muñoz Marín’s government
gained power over the Island’s insular political affairs in 1952, the state efforts in
rescuing Puerto Rican culture started with the creation of the Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriqueña by virtue of Act No. 89 of June 21, 1955, as amended, as a government,
corporate and independent entity. Its mission was to establish and implement public
policy related to the preservation, promotion, enrichment and dissemination of the arts,
humanities and cultural values of the people of Puerto Rico for a broad and deep
knowledge and appreciation of them.
The ICP had fourteen main programs aimed at the preservation and promotion of
Puerto Rican culture:
1. The Archive and Library,2. Research (mostly archeological and anthropological3. Historic Program4. Museum and Parks5. Acquisition and Conservation Historic and Artistic Objects of Value6. Fine Arts7. Music8. Theater9. Popular Arts
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10. Publications and Recordings11. Town’s Culture12. Films and Documentaries13. Puerto Rican Studies, and14. Study Grants.
Of all these programs three of them were directly involved with music. The
Archive and Library Program served as main archive for everything related to Puerto
Rican past including its pre-colonial history and its history during the Spanish and
American rule on the island. As part of the program, the “Archivos de Música” (music
archives) was the department in charge of preserving all Puerto Rican music.
The Music program of the ICP was charged to promote Puerto Rican musical
activities in all of their manifestations and sought to stimulate interest in and
appreciation of live music performances. Although this program was intended to include
all Puerto Rican music (folkloric, popular, and art music), Jíbaro music played a
privileged role in the building and strengthening of a Puerto Rican culture. During the
effort to rescue the folkloric musical arts, Jíbaro music schools were created to provide
formal musical education. Construction workshops were created to teach how to build
the musical instruments used in Jíbaro music, and contests were organized to take
place yearly in order to select the best performers and instruments that were made.9 On
the other hand, Puerto Rican music and dance styles associated more closely with
African heritage such as bomba and plena were relegated to a secondary level of
cultural expression in the events organized by the ICP and municipal governmental
agencies. Sponsors of cultural events placed more emphasis on Jíbaro music than any
9 Personal interview with Joaquin Mouliert, Fajardo, PR summer of 2012.
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other Puerto Rican folk music, when representing Puerto Rican culture on stage (Dávila,
1997).10
Jíbaro contests took place regionally in order to find the best trovador or cuatrista
of the Island. These contests were intended to keep the culture “alive” and free of
foreign (North American) elements that were perceived as a threat to the Hispanidad of
the Puerto Rican culture. As a result, these contests directly standardized the Jíbaro
repertoire, sound, and image as Jíbaro artists had to submit to the requirements in order
to be considered authentic by the judges while demonstrating originality and innovation
at the same time. These standards or rules led to a pressure to use certain instruments
like the cuatro instead of the tiple and to stop using instruments like the bongó because
of the African associations and discrimination toward drums in Jíbaro music.
Autochthonous musical instrument workshops and contests were held every two years
with the intention to locate “the best” artisans and promote the making of quality
authentic musical instruments.
During its first eighteen years, the ICP also produced a collection of recordings of
folkloric music, which was gathered through field recording efforts throughout the Island.
The ICP was in charge of making all of the material gathered for their musical
collections available to the public.11 In addition, the ICP produced and commissioned
new music, of all genres, in order to promote and preserve Puerto Rican culture. This
10 During my field research in New York and Puerto Rico about a third of my informants admitted not knowing the difference between bomba and plena or they believed it was just one musical genre instead of two. This lack of musical knowledge caused them shame and they asked me not to mention their names when writing about the topic. Only one interviewee, in New York, explicitly told me that “los tambores” the drums, referring to the Puerto Rican African heritage didn’t represent her.
11 The ICP collection of publication and recordings is located in the Archivo y Biblioteca General del Instituto de Cutltura Puertorriqueña in Old San Juan. Trough out the years, the ICP has made commercially available to the public some of their notated and recorded musical material from their collections.
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program was aimed at facilitating public access to the collection’s material and to
generate funds to sustain their programs. Contrary to the recordings produced in New
York during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, which had direct commercial goals, the
records from the ICP were primarily meant to preserve and promote Puerto Rican
culture and national identity. I will further analyze Jíbaro recordings in Chapter 4.
The music produced by the ICP under direct state sponsorship had two main
purposes that contributed to the solidification of Puerto Rican national identity. The first
one was to preserve Puerto Rican cultural expressions and archive them for future
reference. The second one was to define a tripartite conception (European, Native, and
African) of Puerto Rican identity (Alegría 1978: 8-9).12 This concept was epitomized in
the image of the Jíbaro, an image that was also appropriated by Luis Muñoz Marín and
his Partido Popular Democrático to win the first elections for an insular government in
1952. Thanks to the influence and importance posted by the state to the ICP, the Jíbaro
served as a representation of Puerto Rican national identity in and outside the Island.
Standardization of Jíbaro music
After briefly describing the role of the state, and its preservationist approach to
Puerto Rican arts, including Jíbaro music, I now center the discussion of this section on
the two repertoires of Jíbaro music that were solidified in live performance and
recording as result of such intervention: vocal and the instrumental repertoires. The
vocal Jíbaro tradition is the most popular, emblematic, and “authentic” according to the
people interviewed during my fieldwork in New York and Puerto Rico. This tradition
consists mostly of improvised sung seises con décimas and aguinaldos. Villancicos,
12 See appendix for illustration of the ICP emblem.
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cadenas, and bombas (also referred to as seis bombea’o) of Iberian origins (not to be
confused with the Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance of the same name) also form part
of this repertoire, which is accompanied by the typical Jíbaro ensemble.
I suggest that the vocal tradition of Jíbaro music has gained an iconic level of
acceptance in the development and strengthening of the Puerto Rican national identity.
It has become such a strong aural representative of Puerto Rican national identity
because of its many layers of meaning attributed to the sound, musical practice, and
tradition during the “Golden Era” of this music.
The instrumental repertoire of Jíbaro music has existed in the Puerto Rican
tradition for centuries. Manuel A. Alonso who was the first in describe an “Orquesta
Jibara” in “El Gíbaro” asserts that the seis, referring to rural instrumental music, can be
considered the main vehicle of expression of the Puerto Rican mountain dwellers. The
main repertoire consists of seises (without décimas), aguinaldos (without decimillas),
instrumental arrangements of villancicos, Puerto Rican contradanzas (danzas), valses,
polkas, minués, marchas, pasodobles, fox trots. Traditionally, in rural-informal settings,
instrumental and vocal music would have been performed as part of the event with the
vocal repertoire serving as a showcase of the event and instrumental selections
performed as interludes. In terms of live performances and under the leadership of Dr.
Francisco López Crúz (1907-1988), the ICP created “Jíbaro Orchestras” ensembles to
perform during Puerto Rican cultural events that included government sponsored
activities, and sacred/popular shows during the Passover period and Christmas
seasons.
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Although Puerto Rican commercial recordings of instrumental Jíbaro music has
been available since 1932 thanks to the efforts of cuatro virtuoso and director Ladislao
Martínez (1898-1979) and his Grupo Aurora, it was not until the popularity achieved by
the state sponsored live performances and recordings with the ICP that instrumental
Jíbaro music became more commercially available. The repertoire of the instrumental
Jíbaro music recordings consisted of música de salón (hall music), similar if not identic
to the one performed during live events but adapted to the Jíbaro ensemble and
aesthetics. Transcultural Latin American musical genres like Cuban guarachas and
boleros have also been re-arranged to fit the instrumental repertoire of Jíbaro music
ensembles.
It is important to mention that although the “Orquestas Jíbaras” performed
instrumental Jíbaro music, or instrumental music that later became an essential part of
the Jíbaro repertoire, the performers of this music did not wear typical Jíbaro attire like
in the vocal tradition. This was, rather, a concert style of instrumental Jíbaro music with
performers dressed in coat and tie. The use of the Jíbaro attire would become more
emblematic of the style during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in New York. I attribute
this difference in the use of the Jíbaro attire to the need of the Puerto Ricans in the
diaspora to strengthen their bond to the motherland and their affection in recreating
what they left behind when the migrated to the United States.
Summary
Jíbaro Music refers, above all, to the cultural traditions of music associated with
the rural peasant of Puerto Rico. Cultural nationalism sponsored by the Puerto Rican
elite in control of the Common Wealth government has played a prominent roe in the
creation of the Jíbaro as symbol of Puerto Rican identity. Jíbaro music is predominantly
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vocal accompanied by plucked stringed instruments for the melodies and harmonies,
and percussion musical instruments for the rhythmic section. The Puerto Rican cuatro
plays a predominant role not only by the, construction, virtuosity involved in the
improvisational and performance aspects of the music of it but also in term of the
symbolism associated to nature and rural Puerto Rico. Equally, the décima espinela, the
aguinaldo, and the plena jíbara serve as main musical genres within Jíbaro music and
serve to express the Hispanidad of Puerto Ricanness.
Jíbaro music in its traditional context plays an important role in the celebrations
of the Catholic calendar festivities. With the establishment of the Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriqueña in 1955, the Jíbaro, as symbol of the “true” Puerto Rican, became a
representative image of the tripartite heritage (European, Arawak, and African)
sponsored by the government. Without the limitations imposed by the ICP the
government, the commodified Jíbaro music from the Golden Era became a musical
representation of the tripartite model imported from the Island. The language of the
lyrics, and the stringed instruments serve as links to the Ibero-European heritage. In
that same line of though, the güiro, then represents the Arawak influence, and the
inclusion of the bongó the African one. Jíbaro music in the diaspora became more fluid
in the inclusion and incorporation of foreign instrumentations, forms, harmonies, styles,
etc. All of these incorporations were representational of the creative/re-creative model of
“choosing what is best” from the homeland to adapt the tradition to the host country
environment. During the Golden Era of Jíbaro Music, this tradition was further impacted
by a transucultural process in which elements from Cuban influenced Latin music were
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adopted while retaining its value, symbolism, as an expression of Puerto Ricanness
among Puerto Ricans in the diaspora.
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CHAPTER 4 MUSIC AND LYRICAL ANALYSIS
In the lines below, I present two Jíbaro songs from the Golden Era that illustrate
the desires of Puerto Rican migrants to leave the Island in search of a better life, and
the nostalgia that developed as a result of the disappointment they encountered in New
York. The particular Jíbaro recordings that I analyze were chosen from those
recommended by my informants. The songs to be analyzed are: “Les voy a dar con los
pies,” by Baltazar Carrero, and “Un Jíbaro en Apuro,” by Odílio González. In Chapter 4,
I will analyze the song “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico,” by Ramito, which illustrates the
patriotic/nationalistic feelings that developed among Puerto Rican’s living in the
diaspora.
“Les voy a dar con los pies” – Baltazar Carrero by Baltazar Carrero from the 78rpm single Alegre
Baltazar Carrero “El Jíbaro de Rincón” (1915 – 2008) didn’t start singing Jíbaro music
until he was 30 years old. In 1946 he migrated to New York as a businessman. His
brother was an accountant and helped him settle in the city. In 1948, he started singing
Jíbaro music and by the end on that year he was already well known in New York’s
Puerto Rican Jíbaro music scene. Baltazar recorded his first single in 1950 and, due to
the high demand for his talent, signed with Ansonia Records, the biggest record label of
the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, at a rate of $1,200 cash per LP, a large amount by
those days standards.1
1 http://www.cuatro-pr.org/node/223
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Figure 3-1. Basic melodic pattern of the seis for Carrero’s “Les voy a dar con los pies.”
Figure 3-2. Basic rhythmic and harmonic pattern of seis played by the guitar
Figure 3-3. Lyrical content of the Les voy a dar con los pies
Hay que buscar el progreso Hay que ir a Nueva York
Mañana cojo el vapor Saben que me voy a eso
Allí se encuentran los pesos En la calle, bien lo sé
Muchos billetes de diez Y en momento oportuno A los billetes de a uno
Les voy a dar con los pies
You must search for progress You have to go to New York Tomorrow I take the vapor
You know what I’m going for There, you find dollar bills On the streets, I know well
A lot of ten dollar bills And at the right moment
I will kick away The one dollar bills
Sé que a los primeros pasos Van a hacerme morisquetas,
Medios pesos y pesetas Y no les voy a hacer caso No voy a estirar el brazo Para uno, o dos, ni tres
Esos yo los dejaré Porque yo no les intereso A los billetes de a peso Les doy así con los pies
I know that on my first steps I am going to be moked
I will ignore Half and quarters of a dollar
I won’t beg for Neither one, or two, or three
I won’t pay attetntion to those Because that is not my concern
I will kick away The one dollar bills
Señores, no quiero verlos Que se me quiten delante
Gentlemen, I don’t want to see them Keep them away of my sight
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Musical form:
Introduction of the seis tumba’o in E major (8 measures)
First rondilla
Brief instrumental interlude (8 measures)
Second rondilla
Brief instrumental interlude (4 measures)
Third rondilla
Formal cuatro solo (12 measures)
Fourth rondilla
Cadence to end
Que no soy tan ignorante Para doblarme a cogerlos
Mi tiempo no he de perderlo Por que yo sé que después
Por recoger a la vez Me cargaré de menudo
Que los coja otro más rudo Que yo les doy con el pie
Because I’m not that ignorant To bend over and grab them
I won’t waste my time Because I know that later
If I pick them I will be loaded with change Let someone else get them
Because I will kick them away
Los chavos, los dejo quietos Ni de vecinos los quiero Habiendo tanto dinero
¿Quién va a coger chavos prietos? Ni siendo en rollos completos
Creo que los miraré Esos yo los dejaré
Porque nos sobra el ambiente Yo que soy inteligente
Les doy así con los pies
I leave alone the cents I don’t even want them as neighbors
With so much money around Who is going to settle for pennies?
Not even in rolls I will ignore them
I will not pay attention to those Because there is more than enough Ambiente; me, being so intelligent
I will kick them away
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“Les voy a dar con los pies” is based on a seis set in E major. In the recording,
there is a single male voice, a cuatro, a muted trumpet, a Spanish guitar, a güiro, and
the bongó. The vocal melody is simple and limited to an octave range (F# to f#). As
expected in Jíbaro music, the voice quality of the singer is open with nasal inflections
that recall the canto jondo andaluz of Southern Spain. The cuatro leads the instrumental
sections while the muted trumpet creates an antiphonal effect, alternating between the
voice and the cuatro. The use of trumpet and bongó reflects Cuban influence in New
York during the Golden Era and exemplify the idea that the use Cuban influences did
not destroy Puerto Rican musical traditions but served as resources for musicians to
explore Puerto Ricanness in a diaspora context.
The harmony provided by the guitar and cuatro features a simple ostinato
progression based on the chords of tonic, subdominant, dominant, and dominant
seventh in the first inversion: I – IV – V – V7. For the ending cadence there is a simple
counterpoint in which the cuatro plays B, C#, D#, E, while the guitar plays B, G#, F#, E,
at the same time. This piece follows the standardized form of four décima stanzas of ten
lines each, with an instrumental introduction of eight measures, brief instrumental
interludes between the décimas and a short cadence from the dominant to the tonic to
conclude the song.
The lyrical content of the song directly adresses the issue of migrating to New
York in search of a better economic situation. The “pie forza’o” of the décima (“I will kick
away the one dollar bills”) refers to an imagined ability to ignore small change and even
small dollar bills, because there will be enough money in New York to satisfy the wishes
of the future immigrant. The song, an invitation to migrate to New York in search of
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money, projects a slight sense of arrogance on behalf of the singer because he is
positively sure he will not need small denomination dollar bills once he is settled in New
York. Although the lyrical content can also be understood as satirical or even unrealistic,
the truth is that the vast majority of Puerto Ricans who migrated to New York City during
the 1950s through the 1960s moved there in search of that dream of earning big
American dollars bills—in search of ambiente.
The introductory décima sets the tone for the entire song with the initial line “You
must search for progress.” During the time this song was recorded, Operation
Bootstrap, a local governmental initiative to transform the economy of Puerto Rico from
an agricultural to industrial one, was taking place. The term “progress” itself became a
trendy word and was synonymous with achieving economic success at both the
personal and national levels in Puerto Rico. But, as the second line indicates, progress
was not attainable within industrial Puerto Rico, but was to be found “al otro lado del
charco,” in New York. Per the lyrics, the “ambiente” in New York is better than the one
on the Island, so the singer will take a ride to the Big Apple. There, he will earn “big
bucks” (“ten dollar bills”) and will get rid of smaller money (“one dollar bills”). The singer
never mentions exactly how he will earn those big bucks, but assures listeners that he
will find them on the streets. This image illustrates the naïveté of many Puerto Rican
immigrants who believed that money would fall from the sky in New York, that jobs
would be plentiful, and that employers would be looking to hire Puerto Ricans.
In the first line of the second décima, the singer acknowledges the possibility of
an initial struggle to make big money, a time when he will only earn medio pesos y
pesetas (half dollars and quarters, i.e. smaller money); but this will not change his
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convictions. Again, with some arrogance, the singer states he will not care for (“no voy a
hacer caso”) and/or he will not stretch his arm out when handed smaller amounts of
money.
In the third décima, he states that he does not want to see them [small bills] or
have them in front of him. He is not ignorant enough to bend to get them and to settle
for smaller amounts of money. This statement possibly refers to the stereotype held by
Puerto Rican elites’ or city–dwellers’ that all Jíbaros (rural peasants) are ignorant and
will bend to their will for a few dollars or bribes of alcohol. The singer then states that he
does not have the time to stop to pick up pennies from the street; he will leave them
there for someone who is worth less than he is.
After the cuatro solo, in the last décima, the singer states that he will refuse to
even get close to small amounts of money because “With the amount of money around
(in New York), who is going to settle for pennies?” Going even further, the singer would
not even look at them if they were presented to him in money rolls. The singer wraps up
his overall statement of how well he will do after he migrates by saying that, in New
York, there is plenty of ambiente. At this point he positions himself as already
successfully emigrated. He, who is so intelligent, will kick away all the small currency.
The lyrics to this seis con décima gives us insight into some of the motivation and
mentality behind the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to New York during the middle
decades of the twentieth century. This popular Jíbaro song presents migration as the
ideal solution to personal economic struggles and highlights the illusion that economic
situations in the New York metropolis will be better than in Puerto Rico. The song also
portrays the notion that once Puerto Ricans migrate to New York, life would be easier
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and money would no longer be a problem (to the point of being able to ignore small
dollar bills). It also deals with the stereotype dumb/smart dichotomy that it is associated
with the figure of the Jíbaro: people around him perceive him as dumb while he sees
himself as smart. Lastly, the song lyrics continuously stress the good ambiente that
prevails in New York City, implying that everyone there is successful. The kind of
sentiments reflected in this song shifted once there was a considerable amount (a
couple hundred thousand) of Puerto Rican immigrants in New York, and reality did not
resemble such illusions of success in the Big Apple. This reality check would soon lead
to lyrical expressions of nostalgia, which became the main theme for many Puerto
Ricans in the diaspora. Although knowledge about the poor living conditions in New
York slums increased, Puerto Ricans continued their mass migration for at least a
decade more, before immigrant living conditions generally began to change for the
better.
“Un Jíbaro en apuro” – Odílio González by Dámaso Castro from the album “Canto a Borinquén” BMC-BLP1508
Odílio González “El jibarito de Lares” (1939 - present) started his Jíbaro artist
career at very young age in his native town of Lares, Puerto Rico. He achieved great
success and recognition performing Jíbaro music during the 1950s in New York and
Puerto Rico. In 1962 he crossed over to Latin American Popular music first by
expanding the instrumentation of his Jíbaro ensemble eventually retaining just the
Puerto Rican cuatro in his orchestra. Although retaining the stage name of “El jibarito
de Lares”, the arrangements and selection of his repertoire were mostly focused on pan
American Latin music relegating Jíbaro music for the Puerto Rican audience mostly
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during the Christmas season. Today, Odílio is known throughout Latin America and is
one of the most influential Jíbaro singers alive.
Figure 3-4. Basic melodic pattern of the seis tumba’o
Figure 3-5. Introduction to the décima on the cuatro
Figure 3-6. Montuno/guajeo2 pattern for the décima on the cuatro
Figure 3-7. Basic güiro rhythm and harmonic pattern of seis tumba’o on the guitar
Figure 3-8. Clave 3/2 rhythmic pattern
2 Guajeo is an Afro Cuban term to describe an ostinato consisting of two-or-four-bar phrase most often consisting of arpeggiated chords in syncopated patterns. In Afro Cuban music the guajeo is mostly played by the tres or piano. According to the Oxford Music Online a guajeo is a repeated two- or four-bar phrase, which is played by the piano as an accompanimental ostinato; in this context guajeo is synonymous with the term montuno.
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En la carta que te escribo Papá te voy a implorar
Que me mandes a buscar Desde el país donde vivo
Me encuentro como en castigo Aquí en estos Nueva Yores
Para tropiezos mayores No sé ni “J” en inglés A todo contesto “yes”
Y de hambre, me dan dolores
In this letter I write to you I beg you daddy
To send someone to pick me up From the country where I come from
It feels like a punishment Here in these New Yorks And to make it even worst I don’t know any English I reply “yes” to everything
And from hunger I feel pain
La otra noche en el “East Side” Caminaba muy sereno
Y aparecen dos morenos Dicendome “Give me light” Sin saber, yo, lo que hay Me puse a darles candela
Allí bailé una zarzuela De un tremendo puñetazo Rodé como un calabazo
Y hasta me acordé de abuela
I was at the East Side the other night I was minding my own business When two black guys appeared
Asking me to give them light Without knowing what was happening
I started an argument I danced a zarzuela
From a punch I received I rolled like a pumpkin
And reminded me of my grandmother
Despues de este sufriemiento Me dirigí a dormir
Perdí el número al subir Y entré en otro apartamento Un hombre muy corpulento
Tan fuerte como Sansón Me dió tremendo empujón
Diciendome “little guy” Quiero que me digas “why?” Entra usted en mi habitación
After all that suffering I headed up to sleep
I lost my number going up And entered another appartment
A very strong man As strong an Samson Pushed me really hard Telling me “little guy” I want you to tell me
Why you enter to my room?
Aqui para terminar Hoy me despido de ti
Si no me sacas de aquí ¡Ah! Loco voy a parar Pues no sé caminar
Ni tampoco sé el idioma Quiero volver a la loma De mi barrio de Cupey
Donde no hay ese “subway” Y cojo la vida en broma
Here to wrap up Today I say goodbye to you
If you don’t get me out of here I’m going to become insane
Since I don’t know how to get around Neither know the language I want to go back to the hill Of my Cupey neighborhood Where there is no subway
And I can live joyfully
Figure 3-9. Lyrical content of the décima
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Musical form:
Introduction of the seis in C major (8 measures)
First rondilla
Brief instrumental interlude (8 measures)
Second rondilla
Brief cuatro solo with bongó accompaniment (8 measures)
Third rondilla
Cuatro solo (16 measures + 2 measures introduction to the fourth décima)
Fourth rondilla
Outro (4 measures – recapitulation of the seis)
In terms of instrumentation, structure, and aesthetics, this recording (like
Carrero’s “Les voy a dar con los pies”) is a good example of the type of seis con décima
standardized during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music. The structure of this song is based
on the seis tumba’o, a type of seis that shows a marked influence by Cuban music (i.e.
in the use of a son montuno rhythm, guajeo, 3/2 clave feeling, although the claves
themselves, the instrument, is absent in the recording). The seis tumba’o is known for
its syncopated rhythm that provides a kind of back and forth movement producing a
musical misbalance. It seems like it is marching backwards, or like the music is
zigzagging or limping. According to one expert, “from this ‘tumbo’ comes its grace and
donaire”3 (López Crúz 1967, 43). In addition, the tumba’o could also be understood in
the sense of the rhythmic “swing” in relation to dancing. This musical “swing” is linked to
3 Seis tumba’o es todo aquel que se caracteriza por su ritmo sincopado. La síncopa presta al movimiento de la música un aparente y delicioso desbalance. Parece como si se marchara al revés o como si la música fuera dando tumbos o cojeando. De ese tumbo, de ese vaivén, nacen si gracia y donaire.
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and conceptualized with the colloquial phrase “fulano(a) tiene tumba’o” (that person has
tumba’o) to denote a skillful dancer with good sense of swing or rhythm. This is
important because this sense of swing relates directly to New York’s Latin dance music
scene that was influenced primarily by Afro-Cuban dance styles popular in the 1950s
and early 1960s and that predated the advent of pan-Latino salsa.
“Un Jíbaro en apuros” is set in the key of C major. The musical instruments
featured in the recording are voice, cuatro, guitar, güiro, and bongó. The vocal melody
is quite simple and limited to less than an octave of range, extending from G down to B
only to lead to the tonic at the end of each verse. As in the vast majority of the
recordings of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, the voice of the singer is high pitched and
with a distinctly nasal timbre. The cuatro leads the instrumental parts of the song and
provides the melodic ornamentation and improvisation characteristic of the genre. The
cuatro is accompanied by the bongó, which plays an important role in all the
instrumental breaks and in the solo section.
Careful listening to the recording reveals details about the studio techniques of
production. First of all, the quality of the sound is more technically advanced than most
other seis recordings of the time. These studio techniques were being used in other
contemporary types of US popular music like the emerging rock ‘n’ roll, country, R&B,
and other styles. For example, the voice has an echo or reverb effect added to enhance
the quality of the sound, while the cuatro part has been overdubbed and the bongó
drums are given a prominent position in the mix of the sound. The emphasis on the
position of the bongó can be attributed to dominant influence of Cuban music at the time
and the commercial goals of the recording in order to make it more appealing to the
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consumers. The only instrument that suffers from loss of distinct quality in this recording
is the guitar, which, except for its bass notes, is rather difficult to hear.
Harmonically, the song is based primarily on two chords: the tonic (C) and the
dominant (G). Among the musicians interviewed, this kind of simple harmonic
tonic/dominant progression is referred to as first and second positions, respectively, the
first position being the tonic (I) and the second, the dominant (V). In songs that utilize
the subdominant (IV) chord, like our previous example, musicians refer to this as the
third position on the guitar. During the verses, some dissonances occur in the
interpolation of the cuatro montuno/guajeo pattern and the guitar harmony.4 These
dissonances often pass unnoticed because of the fast tempo of the phrasing or the
differences in register and pitch. In addition, these dissonances are resolved to
consonant chord tones almost immediately. Dissonances are frequently used as
passing notes to vary the bass line and make it musically more interesting. This is a
common practice linked to the improvisational nature of Jíbaro music and the dialogue
created between the instruments.
Lyrically, “Un Jíbaro en Apuros” is not based on a pie forza’o. Instead, the song’s
narrative develops from in the form of a letter written by a newly arrived young Puerto
Rican male immigrant to his father in Puerto Rico. In the recording, the singer presents
himself in first person as the author and narrator of the letter/story. In the story, a Puerto
Rican rural immigrant writes a letter to his father, asking him to please send someone
from Puerto Rico to rescue him from the confusion and sadness he is experiencing in
the metropolis. Unfortunately for the Jíbaro in the song, his stay in New York has
4 See illustrations # 9 and #10.
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become a form of punishment in need of intervention. This cry for help implies that the
father would have the resources to assist the immigrant, which was probably not the
case for the many Puerto Ricans who did not have a “father/savior figure” to ask for
help. Most immigrants were poor and did not have the means to migrate back to the
Island/ the ability to help relatives financially.
One of the main concerns expressed in the song is the problem of not being able
to communicate effectively in English. Lack of English proficiency was at the root of
many the problems and limitations experienced by Puerto Rican immigrants, including
(but not limited to) hunger and interpersonal ineffectiveness. In the second décima, the
singer recalls a violent incident that occurred to him on the East Side (probably of
Manhattan). The exact location of the event is not given, but it could be inferred that it
was in or close to El Barrio since this was the strongest of the Puerto Rican enclaves in
the city. Judging from the nature of the incident and the similarity to many of the stories
that I was told by my informants, it is likely that the incident described in the second
décima might have happened on the western border of El Barrio, close to Harlem. It is
important to keep in mind that El Barrio is also referred to as East Harlem. Historically
there have been confrontations (problems of gangs and battles over “turf”) between the
African American community of Harlem and the Puerto Ricans in the El Barrio. In the
song, the singer mentions that two morenos (black men) approached him and asked for
a lighter. Since he did not understand what they wanted, he responded in a way that
appeared to them as disrespectful mockery. This situation escalated into a fistfight that
he ended up losing. After the fight, he tried to get back to his apartment and wound up
getting lost within his own building. In this case, we can see the “clumsiness” often
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associated with the Jíbaro described in a derogatory way and observe the chain of
misfortunes that follows the Jíbaro, no matter where he goes. Also, not being able to
find his own apartment right away suggests that he is still new in the neighborhood and
that it has not been too long since he arrived to the city. In both cases, the story reveals
stereotypes associated with the Jíbaro—he faces conflict but keeps persevering and in
the end, one way or another, he succeeds (although his success comes with loss).5
Another important aspect of the song’s recounting of the event is the way that it
was handled. According to the story, the Jíbaro enters the wrong apartment by mistake.
When he arrives, a strong man of unspecified ethnicity opens the door and says to him
in English “Hey! Little guy” (the actual singer on the recording, Odílio, is actually quite
short) and then continues in Spanish to ask “Quiéro que me digas Why? ¿Por qué entra
usted a este apartamento?” In this case we cannot identify if the strong man at the door
is a Puerto Rican who has been living in New York long enough to have incorporated
English as part of his language, or an American who has learned Spanish by living
among Latinos in this Spanish-speaking neighborhood. In either case, the use of
Spanglish6 is incorporated into the text, exemplifying the bilingual, phonetic and
linguistically hybrid phenomenon associated with the Puerto Rican/New York
immigrants, later referred to as Nuyoricans.
In the last décima of the song, the Jíbaro bids farewell to his father, reiterating
the request for him to send someone to his rescue and saying, “if he does not, he will go
5 For more information of this see chapter four, the Juan Bobo tales, on Popular Expression and National Identity by Lillian Guerra.
6 Term attributed to Puerto Rican poet and writer, Salvador Tió (late 1940s). According to Tió “Espanglish” is the overlapped use of Spanish and English at the same time. Spanglish is not a language itself, but rather a mix of Spanish and English lexical items and grammar.
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crazy.” The narrator reportedly does not know “how to walk” or speak the English
language. He wraps up the song by saying that he’d rather be back in his Cupey
neighborhood (in Puerto Rico) were there is no subway and life can be taken as a joke.
Once again, this brings us back to the stereotype of the lazy Puerto Rican, who speaks
loudly, gets drunk, plays cards and dominos, gambles, and spends all day swinging in a
hammock.7 At least in Puerto Rico, according to the singer, one can be happy and enjoy
life regardless of how one poor might be.
Summary
“Les voy a dar con los pies,” by Baltazar Carrero, and “Un Jíbaro en Apuro,” by
Odílio González reflected and gave voice to the feelings of the Puerto Rican
communities in the diaspora during the mid-decades of the 20th century. After the U.S.
invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, and the development of the agricultural monopoly over
the sugarcane business, options for rural peasants on the island were essentially
reduced to either working in the sugar cane fields or begging for money. There were no
strong educational initiatives and no feasible ways to profit from owning land. Poor
Puerto Ricans were compelled to look for a better life somewhere else. Taking this
situation as an advantage, and in an effort to reduce the high unemployment rates, the
local Puerto Rican government, in association with North American corporations,
developed programs to draft Puerto Ricans on the Island to work on farms and in
sweatshops, under conditions that no other minority would accept. Seduced by
advertisements from the Puerto Rican Department of Labor, foreign job agencies, and
7 Insert description of the rural Puerto Rican peasants by one of those early 20th century anthropologists.
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hope of employment, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans migrated to the U.S. in
search of the American Dream.
These two examples of Jíbaro songs from the Golden Era chronologically
recount two of the main ideas behind the mass migration: the search for ambiente and
the regret and nostalgia for homeland that developed after leaving the Island.
Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans kept migrating to New York and creating their own cultural
space in their new home. In the next chapter, I will analyze several musical examples
suggested by my informants to further demonstrate how, out of the nostalgia and regret,
an effervescent patriotism grew in the diaspora, with a strong sense of Puerto Rican
national identity and pride. Such patriotism frequently exceeded Puerto Rican
nationalism on the Island in what I term an exaggerated musical nationalism that served
as a core element of sustaining Puerto Rican cultural traditions in the diasporic context.
The projection of an ideal Puerto Rican nation became part of the cultural baggage of
the Puerto Rican immigrants.
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CHAPTER 5 PUERTO RICAN NATIONAL IDENTITY IN NEW YORK CITY: CREATING A THIRD
SPACE
Spaces to be Puerto Rican in New York
Puerto Ricans in New York, have created, expressed, and sometimes
exaggerated their Puerto Rican national identity. They created and maintained ties that
bond the diaspora with the homeland as they distinguish themselves (in their Puerto
Ricanness) from Puerto Ricans on the Island. Often, Puerto Ricans who left the Island
were almost traitors by Puerto Ricans who did not migrate. Because of this, it became
imperative for Puerto Ricans in/of New York to demonstrate more publicly their patriotic
feelings and pride in their national identity. In a sense, this strengthening of Puerto
Rican national identity could be explained as Puerto Ricans’ desire to prove themselves
in contrast to the context of the host country, the Latino experience in the States, and
the Puerto Ricans on the Island. Puerto Ricans went to great lengths to show that, even
though they had left the Island, they were still Puerto Rican.
A third space emerged from Puerto Ricans’ need to strengthen their national
identity in New York. This third space was a sociocultural space that is not Puerto Rico
but rather Puerto Rico in New York. This is a place created to strengthen ties to things
Puerto Rican and to create a new Puerto Rico, based on a diasporic context and utopic
conception of the past. This third space was created when Puerto Rican communities
incorporated the traditions of their homeland into the context of their host country.
The creation of this third space, which allows being Puerto Rican in a diasporic
context, grows from the desire to preserve, practice, and express Puerto Rican identity
in a way that one’s love for the homeland cannot be questioned, while at the same time,
expresses a sense of pride in their “survival” in the host country. The third space is the
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result of transnationalism: “the processes by which immigrants build social fields that
link together their country of origin and their country of settlement” (Duany, 2011).
These processes of transnationalism embedded Puerto Rican customs within the
dominant Anglo-American culture of the host country, creating a third space: a Puerto
Rico in New York. An example of this was the construction of casitas in abandoned lots
throughout New York City. These casitas became centers of social gathering for Puerto
Ricans and the larger Latin community and linked Puerto Rican culture to the current
diasporic reality, creating/recreating a “rural” space within the City, a space to be truly
Puerto Rican.
Another example of this can be found in Nuyorican literature. Nuyorican poet,
Tato Laviera, illustrates this in his poem NuyoRícan:
Yo peleo por tí Puerto Rico, ¿sabes?
Yo me defiendo port u nombre, ¿sabes?
Entro en tu isla, me siento extraño, ¿sabes?
Entro a buscar más y más, ¿sabes?
Pero tú con tus calumnias
Me niengas tu sonrisa
Me siento mal, agallao
Yo soy tu hijo,
De una imigración
Pecado forzado,
Memandaste a nacer nativo en otras tierras
Por qué, porque eramos pobres, ¿verdad?
Porque tú querías vaciarte de tu gente pobre,
Ahora regreso, con un corazón Boricua, y tú
Me descprecias, me miras mal, me atacas mi hablar,
Mientras comes de McDonalds en discotecas americanas
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Y no pude bailarla salsa en San Juan, la que yo
Bailo en mis barrios llenos de todas tus costumbres,
Así que, is tú no me quieres, pues yo tengo
Un Puerto Rico sabrosísimo en que buscar refugio
En Nueva York, y en muchos otros callejones
Que honrar tu presencia, preservando todos
Tus valores, así que no me
Hagas sufrir, ¿sabes?
English translation:
I fight for you, Puerto Rico, you know?
I defend myself for your name, you know?
I enter your island, I feel foreign, you know?
I enter searching for more and more, you know?
But you, with your insults,
You deny me your smile,
I feel bad, indignant.
I am your son,
Of a migration,
A sin forced on me,
You sent me to be born a native of other lands.
Why? Because we were poor, right?
Because you wanted to empty yourself of poor people.
Now I return, with a Boricua heart, and you,
You scorn me, you look askance, you attack the way I speak,
While you’re out there eating McDonalds in American discotheques,
And I couldn’t dance salsa in San Juan, which I
Can dance in my neighborhoods full of your customs.
So that, if you don’t want me, well, I have
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A delicious Puerto Rico where I can seek refuge
In New York, and in lots of other alleyways
That honors your presence, prevailing all
Of your values, so that, please, don’t make
Me suffer, you know?
As Juan Flores explains, “such text, structured for their emotional force around
the clash between an imaginary and a “real” Puerto Rico, and between the jarring
identity claims of “here” and “there”, abounds in ‘Nuyorican’ literature” (Flores, 2000).
Appreciation for Puerto Rican culture with less emphasis on the geographical location of
the homeland, or threats to cultural survival, is the prevailing impulse in the creation of
that third space to be Puerto Rican. That sense of being “in between” led to a desire to
creating this third space for being Puerto Rican. In his poem Amerícan, Laviera is doing
more than criticizing the way some Puerto Ricans from the Island perceive Puerto
Ricans in New York. He illustrates the creation of this third space where an “imagined
Puerto Rico” in New York, serves as equal, and in his case, even better than the “real”
Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rico in New York, the third space, becomes the “real” Puerto
Rico when the actual one is less desirable than the imagined.
For the creation of this Puerto Rico in New York, the representation of real and
symbolic elements were linked to the idea of Puerto Rico and provided new values over
the geography of the Island. Many of these symbolic elements are associated with the
Jíbaro tradition. For example, the use of the Spanish language, folk stories, tongue
twisters, colloquial sayings, traditional cuisine and alcoholic beverages, the pava hat,
design elements relating to rural architecture, and very importantly, Jíbaro music. The
music, more than anything, served to strengthen Puerto Rican national identity and
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became the main link uniting the Puerto Rican community of the diaspora. Under the
Jíbaro label, this type of music served as an umbrella for the inclusion of other Puerto
Rican and Latino musical genres and styles. Privileging the Jíbaro, other Latino musical
styles were molded to conform to the stylistic aesthetics of Jíbaro music. This
symbolically represented all of Puerto Rican and links to wider Latino identity under the
Jíbaro banner as other music genres were conceptualized in relation to the Jíbaro.
Nationalism and Jibaro Music
In addition to literature, food, popular religious rituals, and other musical genres,
Jíbaro music plays a prominent role in the process of fomenting the national sentiments
of Puerto Rican identity. Even when Jíbaro music is not the only music played or
performed at Puerto Rican cultural events, it frequently plays a prominent role as the
most identifiable sonic representation of Puerto Rican identity. Jíbaro music is
distinguishable from other Puerto Rican folk genres (danzas, bomba, and plena), from
popular genres like Salsa, and Trio music, because of the meanings historically
embedded in the Jíbaro figure itself.
Thanks to the efforts of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña under the
sponsorship of the Common Wealth government during the 1950s and 1960s, the figure
of the Jíbaro acquired a series of meanings and values that became representative of
the “best and purest” elements that (according to the elite) represented Puerto Rican
identity. As mentioned earlier, this ideology presented in the figure of the Jíbaro the
tripartite heritage (European, Native, and African) that validated Puerto Rico as a unique
culture, different from the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture of the United States.
Under this scheme, Puerto Rican folk musical genres like bomba or plena
represented only a portion of what was understood to be Puerto Rican (i.e. African
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heritage). In contrast, the Jíbaro and its music was conceptualized as a style that
encompassed all of Puerto Rico since it was projected as a living symbol of the
intercultural mix of the three ethnic/racial heritages of the country. Nonetheless, the
Hispanic/European aspect of the Jíbaro was always highlighted. In the diaspora of New
York City, this Hispanic focus was used to navigate the racial standards and inequalities
imposed on Puerto Ricans living in the United States.
These schemes and ideologies resonate deeply with Puerto Rican’s sense of
identity in the diaspora. The Jíbaro then became an archetypal concept of how the true
Puerto Rican should be (ideas going back to the romanticized and elitist literature of the
costumbrísta style); as such, the music of the Jíbaro stands as a strong reinforcer of
Hispanidad as essential to Puerto Rican national identity. Such romanticized notions of
national sentiment are themselves linked to broader issues of cultural nationalism.
Cultural nationalism involves expressive practices like music and literature to
create emblems that come to represent the nation and are used to inculcate sentiments
about national identity (Turino 2003: 175). Cultural nationalism has been an important
part of the development of Puerto Rican national identity since the 19th century when
the insular and Criollo classes of Puerto Rico were fighting for governmental and
economic autonomy from Spain. During the 20th century the Jíbaro peasantry and their
music and lifestyles were romanticized and became emblematic of Puerto Rican
national identity when the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) adopted the figure of the
Jíbaro as an emblem of their party in order to gain the sympathy of the rural poorly
educated peasants (Scarano 1996, Guerra 1998, Muñoz Marín, 1978). The figure of the
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Jíbaro was not restricted to visual matters as the music of the Jíbaro was also an
important element of the Jíbaro identity.
Jíbaro music as part of the Jíbaro folklore symbolizes Puerto Rican culture and
Puerto Rican national identity in part because of the “invention,” in Hobsbawmian terms,
by the sponsorship of PPD government and the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. An
“invented tradition” according to Hobsbawm is taken to mean a set of practices,
normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature,
which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which
automatically implies continuity with the past (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). In this
sense, through government sponsorship in the 1950s, the Jíbaro a symbol of Puerto
Ricanness and anti-Spanish colonialism since the mid nineteen century, became the
living emblematic representation of the Puerto Rican Criollo product of the mixing of
European, Arawak, and African cultures.
Ethnomusicologists have long identified music’s potential for establishing and
expressing cultural identity through social interactions. Music captures, evokes, and
expresses feelings associated with those interactions creating connections with certain
times, places, occasions, and themes. Jíbaro music, as a genre and part of Puerto
Rican cultural life, is a music traditionally associated with the Island’s peasant culture
dating back to the late 18th century and continuing through the late 19th and early 20th
centuries when most peasants lost their land to Spanish- and North American-owned
plantations and then became a rural proletarian population.
The image of the Jíbaro, a term referring to this peasantry, has played a vital role
in the creation and re-creation of Puerto Rican national identity. The Jíbaro figure has
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become an archetypical representation of nature, resistance, and purity. It represents
nature in the symbiotic association to a Hispanic motherland, and the rural lifestyle;
resistance in repudiation to foreign landlords, and the search of freedom from the
oppressive working conditions. On the other hand, it represents purity in terms of race,
morals, religion, and culture. Jíbaro aesthetics, themes, and lifestyle, in addition to its
representation in literature and the visual arts, are also represented through music.
Jíbaro music contains elements, musical and extra-musical,1 that link the idea of the
land (Puerto Rico) with its inhabitants. It is in this sense that Jíbaro music has not been
fully studied to actually establish a direct connection between the roles of Jíbaro music
in the lives of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora to create an important part of their national
identity.
I claim that Jíbaro music helps link notions of the island’s physical
geography/landscape to the ongoing development of a national sentiment. There are
four ways in which this association is established through Jíbaro music among Puerto
Ricans in the diaspora. 1) Genre and Style Naming. The naming of specific genres and
musical style elements of Jíbaro music frequently invokes the name of the town where
they originate or for which they are associated. This creates a linguistic geographical
link. For example: seis cagüeño relates to Caguas, a town in in the southeastern part
Puerto Rico. 2) Aural/Timbrical. The Puerto Rican cuatro has a unique timbre (quality of
sound) that is easily identifiable and has become an aural emblem of the country in the
similar way that the flag is a visual emblem of the country. 3) Lyrically. Very often Jíbaro
1 In the broad sense, “musical” includes lyrics, timbre, singing styles, combinations of instruments and their sounds, etc. Extramusical refers to everything that is associated to the genre like rural lifestyle, freedom, independence, clothes, and context in which this music is performed.
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lyrics contain geographical associations by citing cities, neighborhood, national parks,
and other important features of the landscapes from the Island. These lyrics can trigger
flashbacks of memories associated to those places or could lead to the imagination of
those places. 4) Symbolic nature of materials of instrument construction. Originally,
Puerto Rican cuatros were built using native woods from Puerto Rico. The link between
the instrument and these native raw materials were (and still are) romanticized as
deeply Puerto Rican in nature. In this romantic view, each hand made Puerto Rican
cuatro carries a little bit of “actual” Puerto Rico in its materiality.
Nationalism
Although Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, they cross a significant geographic,
cultural, and linguistic border when they migrate to the mainland of the United States.
This displacement contributed to the reconfigurations of their national identity. Puerto
Rican identity in the diaspora implies the formulation of a local “self” as distinct from the
conceptualization of the "other," embodied by the predominant U.S. culture in ways
applied as political, economic and cultural forces over local lifestyles. This formulation
has traditionally required Puerto Ricans in the diaspora (archetypically speaking), in
New York) to conceive a construction of their identity that emphasizes what is
"essentially Puerto Rican" as separate from that which appears as "essentially the
other." Puerto Rican national identity then creates a distinct sense of being independent
and self-sufficient from the influence the United States exerts over Puerto Rican politics
and culture, and the possible threats that this influences poses. In a sense, the adoption
of the Jíbaro as representative of Puerto Ricanness in a diasporic context can be
attributed to a defiant/anticolonial attitude toward the United States and a desire for
autonomy, not just political, but economic and cultural as well.
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There are multiple definitions of nationalism, each anchored in different notions of
the concept of nation. In today’s terms, a ‘nation’ can be defined as a culturally and
linguistically unified group with the perceived rights to its own sovereign state. Thomas
Turino defines nation as “an identity unit whose members define themselves as a nation
in relation to having or aspiring to their own state by the logic of contemporary
nationalist discourse” (2003,174). A nation, unlike a state, is not necessarily a political
entity. Turino further explains: “[a state] comprises the government-centered institutions
and social relations of formal control and welfare, backed by a claim to the legitimate
use of force within a given territory; this, together with claims of territorial autonomy,
define it as an entity” (2003, 174). Contrary to a state, a nation is not defined by its
territorial boundaries but by a negotiation reached among the political status of its
communities, based on their self-identification, language, race, religion, and culture.
In the case of the Puerto Rican diaspora, nation becomes, not the geopolitical
situation of Puerto Rico as a common wealth of the United States, but an abstraction of
Puerto Rico’s ‘best qualities,” a Puerto Rican utopian ideal image, equal to or better
than the nation left behind. Therefore, for immigrated Puerto Ricans, the “old Puerto
Rico” becomes a nostalgic notion of the past, which simultaneously fuels the creation of
a “new” Puerto Rico in the diaspora.
Jíbaro music played an important role in expressing the nostalgia felt by the Puerto
Rican immigrants in New York because the music was already closely associated with
Puerto Rican national culture, ideas about freedom from foreign control, and love for the
motherland. Jíbaro music was and is also very important for Puerto Rican immigrants in
New York in that it allows them to create this “new Puerto Rico” or new space to
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celebrate their national identity in a diasporic context.
In this way, Jíbaro music serves directly and indirectly as an example of cultural
nationalism. Cultural nationalism “is the semiotic work of using expressive practices and
forms to fashion the concrete emblems that stand for and create the 'nation’, that
distinguish one nation from another, and most importantly, that serve as the basis for
socializing citizens to inculcate national sentiment” (Turino 2003, 175). Puerto Ricans in
New York during the Golden Era of Jíbaro Music incorporated a variety of elements that
represented what it meant for them to be Puerto Rican. This incorporation of various
elements was present in Jíbaro music’s live performance and commercial audio
recordings. Visual symbols of Puerto Ricanness, like the pava2, the machete, farm
animals, the national flag, and Puerto Rican folk instruments were clearly visible on the
illustrated covers of Jíbaro recordings. These nationalistic symbols were meant to
create a connection to a utopic rural Puerto Rican past, and, at the same time, served
as a guide, as a standpoint to create a diasporic third space: Puerto Rico in New York.
Equally important were the aural qualities that defined Jíbaro music as indelibly Puerto
Rican in both recorded and live formats.
In the following sections, I begin with a music analysis of the recording of “No
cambio a mi Puerto Rico” by Jíbaro singer Ramito, one of the most popular Jibaro
singers of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music. The analysis highlights the way recordings of
Jibaro music were used to expresses nostalgia for homeland and to create new senses
2 A pava is a straw hat for outdoors with the purpose to protect its user from the sun. The Kenneth E. Behring Center at The Smithsonian Museum of American History describes the pava as “the traditional hat used by sugar cane cutters, coffee pickers, and other agricultural workers. It is emblematic of the Jíbaro (a Puerto Rican from the countryside) and the rustic traditions of the island's folkways. The pava is so closely associated with the notion of authentic Puerto Rican culture that when Luis Muñoz Marín founded the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) in 1938, the party adopted the pava, as its symbol”.
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of Puerto Rican national identity. Then, based on my fieldwork, I recount how live
performances of Jíbaro Music took place in order to recreate the various ways in which
Puerto Ricans found opportunities to “feel” and “be” Puerto Rican in New York. Finally, I
focus on the production of Jíbaro records themselves, their recording processes, their
covers, and the attributed meanings and values these records had among Puerto
Ricans in New York in the creation of that third space in which to be Puerto Rican.
Figure 5-1. Cover for the album Puerto Rico es un diamante. (Photo courtesy of author)
“No cambio a mi Puerto Rico” – Ramito by Flor Morales Ramos from the album “Puerto Rico es un diamante”
Ramito “El cantor de la montaña”, was born Florencio Morales Ramos in the Bairoa
neighborhood in Caguas, Puerto Rico (1915 - 1989). Without Ramito’s contribution to
Jíbaro music, the genre would not be what it is today. For more than fifty years, Ramito
was active in bringing Jíbaro music to audiences around the world. Thanks to his music,
hundreds of trovadores and Jíbaro music artists (including myself) have been inspired
to preserve and cultivate Puerto Rico’s traditional folk music. Among the biggest of
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Ramito’s contributions to Jíbaro music is the variety of styles and the number of albums
he recorded during his career.
Figure 5-2. Basic melodic pattern of the seis marumbá
Figure 5-3. Basic harmonic pattern of seis marumbá on the guitar
Figure 5-4. Lyrical content of the décima
Yo no cambio mi bohío Ni mi plena, ni mi seis Por el Empire Estate
En esta nación del frio Porque es más bello el plantío Y el monte con sus verdores
Allá cantan ruiseñores Desde el Yunque hasta los picos
No cambio a mi Puerto Rico Por sesenta Nuevayores
I don’t trade my bohío Neither my plena or my seis
For the Empire Estate Of this cold nation
Because the plantain crops are prettier And the mountains with their greenery
There, the nightingale sings For El Yunque to the picos
I don’t trade my Puerto Rico For sixty New Yorks
Si el país en donde nací Sufre mil calamidades
No cambio mis Navidades Por “Christmas” de otro país
Aunque allá sienta desliz En mi país siempre hay flores
Aquellos son mis primores Aquello sí es un Edén
No cambio mi Borinquén Por sesenta Nuevayores
If the country where I was born Suffers from thousands of calamities
I don’t trade my Navides For another country’s Christmas
Even when I feel anguished There are always flowers in my country
Those are my darlings That there is an Eden indeed I don’t trade my Borinquén
For sixty New Yorks
No cambio a Caguas señores Ni aquel San Juan sin igual
Por Albany, la capital Del inmenso Nueva York Ser Jíbaro es un honor
Y aunque pase mil trizares
I don’t trade Caguas, misters Neither that San Juan like no other
For Albany, the capital city Of the vast New York
To be a Jíbaro is an honor Even when I encounter thousands of setbacks
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No hago ese cambio; señores Tal como lo justifico
“I don’t change” mi Puerto Rico Por quinientos Nuevayores
I don’t commit to that trade, misters Right as I justify it
I don’t change my Puerto Rico For five hundred New Yorks
En el invierno fui viendo Como nevó poco a poco Como cachipas de coco Del cielo estaba cayendo Loco me estaba volviendo
Al ver aquello, señores Que el frio me dio trizares Sentí en mi alma desdén
No cambio a mi Borinquén Por cuatro mil Nuevayores
During winter I was able to see How it started to snow little by little
Like coconut flakes That were falling from the sky
I started going insane When I saw that, misters
The cold weather was breaking me into pieces I felt emptiness in my soul I don’t trade my Borinquén
For four thousand New Yorks
Spoken words: ¡Anda! No, no cambio a Puerto Rico. No lo cambio Latino. No puede ser… No cambio mis gallinas del pais por pollos americanos.
English translation: Go ahead! I don’t trade my Puerto Rico. I don’t trade it, Latino. I cannot be… I don’t trade my country’s hens for American chicken.
Musical Form: Introduction of the seis marumbá in G major
First rondilla
Cuatro solo
Second rondilla
Brief cuatro interlude
Third rondilla
Second cuatro interlude with solo and spoken words
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Fourth rondilla
Cadence to end
The melody and harmony of “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico” is based on a seis
marumbá set in G major. This recording maintains the traditional Jíbaro ensemble
standardized by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña during the 1950s in Puerto Rico:
a singing male voice, Puerto Rican cuatro, Spanish guitar, and güiro. The timbre of
Ramito’s voice is nasal with a melodic range of less than an octave. His recorded voice
sounds loud, probably the result of a studio technique of close miking in order to
resemble the acoustic singing voice of the trovador when singing without a microphone
during a live performance. The Puerto Rican cuatro typically plays a secondary role
when performing a seis con décima based on a seis marumbá. The late Puerto Rican
cuatrista virtuoso Efrain Vidal explains that in a seis marimbá, “The singer is in charge
of the melody while the cuatro plays an ostinato.” 3 The cuatro only assumes a more
active role during the interludes between sung décimas, and during the main solo
between the third and the fourth verses. The harmony provided by the guitar follows a
“waking bass” pattern based on a progression of the tonic, subdominant, dominant, and
dominant in first inversion: I – IV – V – V6. For the ending of the piece, the cuatrista
plays a short cadence moving in a forward motion from the dominant to the tonic going
from D through E and F# to arrive in G.
3 2004 interview with David Morales and William Cumpiano from the Cuatro Project. http://www.cuatro-pr.org/node/186.
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In terms of form, “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico” follows the established standard
arrangement of four décimas with interludes between each verse and with an
instrumental prelude and postlude, and a cuatro solo. This standardized format was the
result of the Jíbaro contests in Puerto Rico sponsored by the ICP and then was adapted
by the recording industry during New York’s Golden Era, in order to keep recordings
within a standard duration of three to four minutes long. Such industry standards were
applied to many other repertoires including the recordings of popular Latin American
songs. In contrast to the recorded format, a Jíbaro music live performance, in particular
a controversia, would as long as was needed according to the musicians and audiences
wishes because of the improvisational nature of the genre (Bofill-Calero, 2012).
The lyrical content of the song is based on the comparison/contrast between
New York and Puerto Rico in terms of culture, visual appeal, weather conditions, and
sentimental values. Through the description of a utopic rural Puerto Rico, the lyrics of
the song create a sense of longing. The comparison values the precious but humble
Puerto Rican-associated elements by rejecting the richness and modernity that
characterizes New York. The lyrics contrast the difficulties encountered by the
immigrants of New York with the ideal natural environment of a Puerto Rico left behind,
while at the same time strengthening the idea of a fierce nationalism as basis for a
Puerto Rican national identity in the diaspora. The décimas, sung primarily in Spanish,
incorporate English words in the fourth line of the second verse and in ninth line of the
third verse. It is also important to note that, although the pie forza’o is “No cambio a mi
Puerto Rico,” Ramito handles it with flexibility and lyrical freedom, changing its semantic
meaning while sticking to a main point of not trading his motherland for New York City.
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Ramito goes straight into the main point of his song in the first décima: he will not
trade his homeland for New York, ever. Here, Ramito makes allusion to a pre-colonial
Puerto Rican identity by calling his homeland bohío, the Arawak native word for
domicile/home (a term now incorporated into standard Spanish in Puerto Rico). By
calling his homeland bohío (and, indirectly, making reference to more than five hundred
years of Puerto Rican history), Ramito establishes himself as a contemporary Puerto
Rican with a strong sense of the country’s indigenous past. Ramito does not trade
bohío, his plena and/or his seis (two distinctive musical traditions of Puerto Rico) for the
Empire State building. Ramito appropriates both plena and seis as symbols of his
undeniable Puerto Ricanness, which to him is more valuable than one of the most iconic
architectural feats of New York City (a symbol itself of progress and economic success).
The presentation of plena and seis as musical symbols of Puerto Rican identity give
evidence to the fact that Jíbaro music became a mechanism to appropriate/incorporate
elements of Afro-Puerto Rican heritage under a Hispanic umbrella.
Ramito describes the United States as a cold nation in terms of its weather and
also, metaphorically, in reference to the lack of warmth of its inhabitants (accepting and
possibly implying a stereotype that Puerto Ricans, and Latinos in general, are hot
blooded and passionate). Finally, Ramito describes the natural beauties of Puerto Rico,
which he would never trade, not even for sixty New York Cities.
In the second décima, Ramito acknowledges the pain that comes with being
Puerto Rican but again delivers the message that he would not trade his homeland for
the United States. Ramito contrasts one of the most emblematic festivities for Puerto
Ricans, Las Navidades, to “another country’s” (presumably, the United States)
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Christmas. He uses the English term in a pejorative way, implying that the way Anglo
Americans celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ is less worthy than the way Puerto Ricans
do. After making such an emphatic statement, he argues that no matter how bad things
are in Puerto Rico, he would never trade his traditions (Las Navidades) for foreign
customs. He also points out that, even when anguished or in the midst of “a thousand
calamities,” he would still choose his Puerto Ricanness because in his homeland there
are always flowers and natural beauties, as in the Garden of Eden. This comparison (to
the Garden of Eden) creates a sense of holiness, implying a Puerto Rico created by
God. Ramito concludes this décima with the pie forza’o of “I do not trade my Borinquén
for sixty New Yorks. This reinforces the earlier established association to a pre-
Colombian Puerto Rican past by calling the island by its Arawak name of Borikén, which
has been loosely translated as “Land of the Proud Lord (Tierra del Altivo Señor).”4
In the third décima, Ramito makes his point again, by contrasting Puerto Rican
cities (i.e. Caguas, his birthplace, and San Juan) to geographical sites in the United
States (i.e. Albany and New York City). Ramito describes San Juan as sin igual, literally
“like no other.” This phrase can be interpreted as an indexical association both to a
geographical location and also to an older nostalgic/nationalist bolero, “En mi viejo San
Juan.” This older bolero by Noel Estrada had become a statement of Puerto Ricanness
more than three decades prior to the recording of Ramito’s song. The song is a bolero
that narrates the nostalgia of a Puerto Rican immigrant who dies wishing to return to his
4 There is no agreement in the translation of Boriken from Arawak to Spanish or English. Ruben del Rosario in Breve Enciclopedia de la Cultura Puertorriqueña (1976, p. 65) argues that some scholars have romantically calls it the land of the holy or highness. Rosario also explains that in contemporary use Puerto Rico and Boriken or Borniquén are synonym but their connotation is different. Puerto Rico it is use for society, and governmental organization, while Borinquén refers to landscapes, what it is autochthonous, to the roots of the Puerto Rican people.
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beloved San Juan. A few years after recording “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico,” Ramito
recorded “En mi viejo San Juan” as a bolero Jíbaro (i.e. a bolero in lyrical and formal
qualities but set to the standard Jíbaro instrumentation), making it an instant success
among the Puerto Rican diaspora. After establishing this aural-geographical link,
Ramito states that he would not change Puerto Rico’s capital city for Albany, the capital
of New York. He also mentions that to be a Jíbaro is an honor, no matter how much one
might suffer in New York or miss one’s homeland.
Before reaching the pie forza’o of the third décima, Ramito introduces English
into his narrative. The use of English within a very Hispanic form of poetry like the
décima espinela can be understood as an appropriation of the “other” or “foreigner”
language to reinforce its message in a multilingual environment. The intent of this
appropriation might be stated as, “I’m using your language so you can understand that I
would not trade my Puerto Rico for five hundred New York Cities.” The effect of this
linguistic code switching is to promote deeply rooted nationalistic feelings in a diasporic
context.
Before the last décima, Ramito adds spoken commentary during the cuatro solo
as he calls for a sense of Latinidad among Puerto Ricans in the diaspora: he introduces
an analogy of not trading ‘his’ Puerto Rican hens for foreign chickens. On a literal level,
the phrase relates to the business practice of importing chickens from the United States
into Puerto Rico in frozen packages. At another level, the expression can be understood
as a dichotomy between what is alive and vibrant—i.e. the stereotypical Latin liveliness
and warmth—and what is dead – i.e. the stereotypical Anglo-Saxon coldness. The
expression creates a contrast between what is valuable to Puerto Rican identity (i.e.
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being like a hen) versus what is valuable to Anglo-Saxon culture (i.e. frozen chickens).
The comparison might sound harsh, or even violent, to foreign ears, but colloquialisms
of this type (like not trading hens for chickens, or not trading chinas por botellas5) are
common in Puerto Rican culture.
In the last décima of the song, Ramito metaphorically describes how coconut
chips (snow) falling from the sky, an unbelievable and disconcerting experience, nearly
drove him insane. He then relates how the winter and the cold weather made him sad
and homesick. Because of that sadness and nostalgia, he would never trade his Puerto
Rico/Borinquén for even four thousand New York Cities. In the recording, as a last
statement that reinforces his position, Ramito repeats this last verse, asserting that he
would not trade his Island for any New York City.
As the analysis of “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico” demonstrates, Puerto Rican
musicians used Jíbaro music to express nostalgia for their homeland and to strengthen
Puerto Rican identity. It is worth mentioning that Ramito lived in New York City for
eleven years during the Golden Era of Jíbaro music, dividing the majority of his Jíbaro
musician career commitments (and a large portion of his personal life) between the
United States and Puerto Rico. “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico,” like many other Jíbaro
songs of the time, illustrated this split in Ramito’s life and also promoted an effervescent
nationalism rooted in Puerto Rican folklore and cultural traditions that evoked a rural
utopic past associated with natural and sacred elements.
5 Oranges in Puerto Rican colloquial Spanish are known as chinas. Chinas por botellas then, it is referred to denote a bad trade. In English a similar saying would be to why fix something if it is not broken. In the case of this décima, Ramito questions himself paradoxically why he would change something that is good for something of a lesser quality.
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Like “No cambio a mi Puerto Rico,” traditional Jíbaro décimas were often written
in first person and used second person to address the audience. Most décimas were
written from the point of view of an immigrant and reminded other (Puerto Rican)
immigrants of their roots and important traditions meant to unite them as a nation in
diaspora. Décimas capitalized on their lyrical content (including the use of metaphors
and terms that evoke a pre-colonial past) and the aural association of the Jíbaro
ensemble with the notion of Puerto Ricanness to voice the nostalgia experienced by
immigrants and also to strengthen their national identity (a prominent bond for Puerto
Ricans of different creeds, skin tones, and economical status in New York City). In
contrast to other folkloric Puerto Rican musical genres,6 Jíbaro music was able to reach
a broad audience. On the one hand, this was due to government sponsorship of the
genre; on the other hand, this was based on Jíbaro music’s introduction of symbols and
ideals to which the majority of Puerto Ricans could relate.
Live performances of Jíbaro Music
Live performances of Jíbaro music in New York can be traced to the first decade
of the 20th century. Bernardo Vega, a cigar maker from Puerto Rico, recounts, “The
leisure activities of Puerto Ricans in New York were confined to the apartments where
they lived. Birthdays, weddings, of course, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and
Epiphany were all celebrated at home. Neighbors and friends were invited” (1977).
During the social gatherings known as charangas, Puerto Rican musicians entertained
6 Puerto Rican contradanza was popularly perceived as fashionable and evoked the Spanish colonial oppression of the 19th century. By then, bomba and plena faced discrimination by some sectors of the Puerto Rican and North American societies, as they were associated with having African origins. European immigrants were not the sole performers of Jíbaro music, as opposed to the traditional discourse of the elite—the majority of the Puerto Ricans lived in a non-racially segregated society. Differences in Puerto Rican culture were mostly based on wealth, not skin color, as opposed to racial profiling within the United States.
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by playing danzas, danzones, aguinaldos, and other common Latin American musical
genres. As explained by Vega, musical performances took place during social
gatherings like charangas and also during the celebration of sacred Catholic holidays.
Like many other styles of Latin American music, Jíbaro music was danceable, of
festive character, and an essential part of popular interpretations of sacred rituals.
Jíbaro music, however, differed from popular Latin music in that it served the purpose of
preserving and reaffirming Puerto Rican culture by providing a sense of closeness to a
popularly established Puerto Rican ideal. In this way, Jíbaro music had an added
cultural value for the Puerto Rican immigrants. In other words, while various types of
Latin American music was intended for dance/amusement and to facilitate social
interaction, Jíbaro music added a distinctly Puerto Rican experience that evoked
memories of the homeland and inculcated a strong sense of Puerto Ricanness to the
festivities.
As the number of Puerto Ricans in New York grew exponentially during the mass
migrations after World War II, the demand for live performances of Jíbaro music
increased. In addition to taking place in family gatherings and sacred events, Jíbaro
music performances started taking place in large public venues aimed at gathering as
many Puerto Rican and other Latin (i.e. Hispanic American) audiences as possible. The
commodification of live Jíbaro music (and the overall demand for live Latin
entertainment) led to a proliferation of performances of the music for the masses. It
should be noted that a similar “development” of the style was happening on the island
as Jíbaro music was being “put on stage” by means of contests sponsored by Puerto
Rico’s Common Wealth government.
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In New York, Spanish-speaking communities—a majority of whom was of Puerto
Rican origin—were the primary audiences for live Jíbaro music performances.7 Large
public performances usually took place in movie theaters or social clubs. As the
demand for Jíbaro music grew, the producers and presenters of cultural events started
to look for Jíbaro talent in El Barrio and Puerto Rico. Local Jíbaro talent (from El Barrio)
usually performed during weekend afternoon matinees while Jíbaro artists from Puerto
Rico were typically highlighted during nighttime shows. During a four-day schedule that
included the weekend (Thursday through Sunday) a Jíbaro artist could perform up to
four times a day (16 shows total) to sold out capacity. Tickets to Jíbaro music shows
were affordable for the working class and lines to purchase them were often as long as
a whole New York City block (about 100 meters). Four of my informants recalled waiting
in long lines to purchase a ticket to enter the Teatro Puerto Rico for Jíbaro live
performances. According to what they told me, people in lines were friendly and
courteous and shared jokes and sometimes even flasks and bottles with liquor “to keep
warm from the weather.” 8
One of the many Jíbaro artists whose career skyrocketed in New York was Odílio
González (whose song “Un Jíbaro en Apuro” was analyzed in Chapter 3). According to
Colón Orona, González was 16 years old when he first visited the New York (2012). His
Trans Caribbean air flight from San Juan to New York cost $45.00 and lasted eight
hours. He had his New York debut for a largely Puerto Rican audience at Teatro Puerto
Rico in the Bronx, on January 1956. During his first presentation, Piquíto Marcano, his
7 From personal interview with Cristina Molina in Arecibo, PR on the summer of 2012. “La mayoría de la gente que iba a esos shows eran Puertorriqueños”.
8 From personal interviews with Victor and Ilda Molina in New Jersey (winter of 2011), and with Luz Maldonado and Cristina Molina in Arecibo, PR (summer of 2012).
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producer, gave Odílio Jíbaro clothes including a pava hat just before going on stage.
According to Odílio’s accounts, during the performance, the audience demonstrated
their appreciation by throwing quarters. By the end of his first weeklong tour, Odílio
performed a total of 21 Jíbaro shows earning the amount of a hundred dollars. He also
had the expenses of the trip and lodging covered by Marcano. By the end of the same
year, he engaged in another New York tour from November 27th to December 5th. By his
seventeenth birthday, he started recording Jíbaro music in New York
Another well-respected Jíbaro artist, who worked on many occasions with Odílio
González, is Luz Celenia Tirado. She is a poet, composer, singer and arranger, whom I
interviewed and performed with during the summer of 2012 at the San German’s Patron
Saint Festivities in Puerto Rico. In our interview, Luz Celenia told me about her
experience during her first trip to New York as a Jíbaro artist. She first moved to New
York (El Barrio) during the sixties buscando ambiente (i.e. in hopes to make a living with
her musical career).9 Her first daytime job was at a perfume factory located in lower
Manhattan. A few months later, she got a job at BMC records, a Puerto Rican record
label located in Long Island. At the label’s warehouse, she was in charge of the
inventories. Later on, under that same label, she recorded her first album. On the days
when she was scheduled to perform Jíbaro music at the Teatro Puerto Rico, she would
get out of her daytime job at around noon in order to get to the Bronx on time. Jíbaro
presentations, along with other types of Latin music, took place from Tuesday to
Sundays. Presentations were scheduled in two-hour sets starting from 2:00 pm and
lasting until 10:00 pm. She told me that Jíbaro artists scheduled to perform in the Teatro
9 From personal interview in the summer of 2012, Mayagüez, PR.
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were allowed to keep a variety of different attires for the various presentations they gave
on the same day. A male Jíbaro artist would have three to four different scarves and
waist sashes ready to change between presentations. Female Jíbaro artists would have
different dresses and jewelry-like accessories, so as not to repeat the attire used on
stage. Luz Celenia described what she used to wear during her performances as trajes
típicos (typical clothing). There is no “traje típico” per se that is authentic to the way rural
musicians on the island originally dressed. Rather, the Jíbaro traje tipico that she
described represents a romanticized recreation of the clothes originally worn by the
working class rural peasant of the Island. As part of a performance tradition, the Jíbaro
traje típico attire for male and female performers was first standardized as part of the
Puerto Rican government sponsorship of and intervention in the staging of Jíbaro
contests in popular festivities, festivals, fairs, and media. The illustration below
represents the stylized costumes.
The traje típico attire of the Jíbaro was (and still is) based on this staged version of the
work clothes used on rural farms and sugar cane fields in Puerto Rico. Describing from
top to bottom, the male attire consisted of a pava hat, a long-sleeve shirt, a bright scarf,
long pants, and a colorful sash around the waist. Some male Jíbaro artists fashioned
their attires to appear brighter and more extravagant. In some early cases, male Jíbaro
artists performed barefoot. During latter times, they performed using formal shoes or
work boots. Another accessory that was essential to the Jíbaro attire was the machete.
The machete symbolized the main tool used by farmers and sugar cane cutters to
perform their work. It also represented bravery and manliness, as it served to end many
a troublesome argument in rural Puerto Rico. Lastly, the machete represented
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autonomy, as it was the weapon rural peasants used to fight colonial oppression (first
from the Spaniards and then from the United States). The female attire was not as
flamboyant; women very often wore pava hats and long colorful dresses (similar to
Flamenco dresses). They also performed with buttoned-up shirts and long colorful
skirts, coordinated with regular shoes. In contrast to the males, female attires appeared
rather modest and did not include the machete. It was not fashionable, nor tasteful for
female Jíbaro artists to perform wearing pants as the “traje típico” was the standard.
Figure 5-5 Trajes típicos courtesy of Guateque: Ballet Folklórico de Puerto Rico
During Jíbaro music performances at the Teatro Puerto Rico, the stage was also
set to simulate Puerto Rican rural scenery. Often, stage props included fake palm trees
and curtains painted as part of an ocean and beach scene. At other times, props and
scenery were more representative of the rural panorama of Puerto Rico, with painted
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mountains under clear blue skies. The Puerto Rican flag was also present almost in
every show, and sometimes even live roosters and hens were brought on stage, to give
a sense of rural authenticity to the Jíbaro performance. All these props were planned
with the intention of recreating a Puerto Rico in the middle of New York.
For these live performances, a Jíbaro ensemble was positioned on stage in such
way that the cuatrista could lead the seis (the melodic and rhythmic core of this music
genre). A Jíbaro ensemble usually featured one singer (or two in case of a staged
controversia) positioned downstage center as close as possible to the audience with
rest of the ensemble upstage (near the back) in a single, slightly curved line near the
back wall. The order of the musicians, from left to right (from the audience’s point of
view) consisted of the cuatrista, the guitarist, the bongó player (if present), and the güiro
player. The musicians always stood during performances, with the exception of the
bongó player who was seated (due to the performance practice typical of the
instrument). Other non-core instruments, like accordions or trumpets, would be located
between the cuatrista and the guitar player when used. When asked about the use of
foreign musical instruments in Jíbaro performances and recordings, Celenia
commented that those instruments were only used to ornament the piece in order to
make it more pleasant for the listeners.10 In this sense, foreign instruments were used
solely as ornaments, since the core of the Jíbaro ensemble consisted of the singing
voice, cuatro, guitar, and güiro.
Luz Celenia also shared her memories about performances of improvised, non-
staged parrandas during the Christmas season. Parrandas frequently took place in the
10 Regarding the use of foreign musical instruments in Jíbaro music, she commented: “Se buscaba adornar la pieza musical para que caiga mejor al oido del oyente.”
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halls of the Puerto Ricans’ apartments in El Barrio and in the Bronx. During those
parrandas, the musicians played Jíbaro music with their traditional musical instruments.
As for attire, the musicians wore winter clothes adorned with pavas to represent their
Puerto Rican identity. A Jíbaro artist was not considered a respected Jíbaro without
formal attire.
Other off-stage venues for Jíbaro music included small-scale commercial sites
such as bodegas, record stores and even in butcher shops. These locations provided
venues for improvised performances that took place year-round, mostly after the
businesses were closed for the public and people from the neighborhood gathered at
the locale to drink and socialize. During these informal “jams,” a variety of Latin popular
musical styles was performed along with Jíbaro music. Latin popular and Jíbaro
musicians were acquainted with each other’s repertoire and the boundaries between
them were blurred as they went back and forth between genres and styles. Jíbaro
artists were expected to perform a wide variety of Latin associated popular music and
non-Jíbaro Latin musicians were expected to also perform Jíbaro music. Just as live
performances of Jíbaro music were important and very meaningful for the diaspora,
Jíbaro recordings also played an important role in the strengthening of Puerto Rican
national identity.
Jíbaro Recordings
The 1950s and 1960s were decades of great change for many American
minorities, including the Puerto Ricans in the United States. It was a time of new
technologies and the civil rights movement. Immigration started to be perceived as a
national problem, and the Latino impact on the United States became a pressing issue
reported in the media. This was when the Golden Era of Jíbaro music was solidified as
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a commercial product aimed at the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in New
York and the millions who lived on the Island.
Sealing a deal to record an album with a record label was a major highlight for
Jíbaro artists. It legitimized and solidified their performance career and earned them
important extra income to supplement other work. In a more abstract way, Jíbaro artists’
recording deals also served to preserve what was considered an autochthonous
musical expression exclusive to Puerto Rico. While the Puerto Rican government
simultaneously sought to preserve the tradition through state sponsored means, the
commercial activity of the Golden Era helped to both preserve and modify a musical
tradition that otherwise could have been lost in a diasporic context.
Right after sealing a deal to record with a record label, a Jíbaro artist would work
on previously selected material and go into the studio with the intention of recording ten
to twelve songs as fast and cheaply as possible, usually in one take. The album
producer, who was also the booking agent, often reserved studio sessions during the
nighttime and early morning, just before sunset, in order to reduce recording expenses.
There was little time to rehearse; so live performances were used as de facto
rehearsals for studio recordings that would take place afterward. Jíbaro recording artists
often wrote the lyrics of the décimas they would record in advance during airplane
flights from Puerto Rico to New York. Very often the record producer would have a
selection of in-studio session musicians that would accompany an already known Jíbaro
artist. Jíbaro recording session musicians were locally known musicians of the New
York Latin music scene. But the musicians and production team for these recordings
were not exclusively Puerto Rican. During the recordings, there was typically a mix of
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Anglo and Hispanic sound engineers and/or back up musicians and most of the
auxiliary musicians were of Cuban heritage. In nearly all cases, however, the cuatro
players used to record Jíbaro music were Puerto Rican.
An excellent example of an in-studio session musician is Nieves Quintero, one of
the most recorded Puerto Rican cuatro players ever. Quintero led many Jíbaro
ensembles that served as backup a vast majority of the records produced during the
Golden Era of Jíbaro Music. He has accompanied well-known Jíbaro artists including
Ramito, La Calandria, Chuito el de Bayamón, and many others. It could be argued that
most of the sound associated with the Golden Era of Jíbaro Music in New York is due to
Nieves Quintero who brought a contemporary approach to the Puerto Rican cuatro.
Besides serving as ensemble leader for many Jíbaro music recordings, he has also
been a successful solo artist, recording mostly instrumental pieces of his own
authorship and a variety of well-known danzas and mazurkas.
Producers of Jíbaro music tended to market their recordings as both authentically
traditional and as modern. By claiming that Jíbaro records were authentic, producers
and record labels tried to convey a sense of “brought from the country side of Puerto
Rico” to their listeners in order to create a link between the current living situation of
Puerto Rican immigrants and their homeland left behind. By presenting Jíbaro records
in modern crossover styles influenced by Cuban and other Latin American popular
musics, Jibaro music was elevated to equal status with the music of other cultural
groups and simultaneously appealed to record buyers who were not Puerto Rican. In
this case, we can see how Jíbaro music, which continuously grew and gained new
followers during the Golden Era, was heavily influenced by Cuban popular music and
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other Latin American styles. Incorporating non-Jíbaro instruments and a variety of
styles, Jíbaro crossover recordings expanded the traditional repertoire and the
ensemble of Jíbaro music. While commercial Jíbaro music evolved in this way, it
nonetheless continued to highlight associations with the rural-agricultural life and
Catholic religious values of the Jíbaro. Even later, when adapted to what would become
known as salsa, recordings of Jíbaro music would continue symbolizing Puerto
Ricanness and serve as a strengthener of Puerto Rican national identity.
Figure 5-6. Nieves Quintero solo recording. ( Photo courtesy of author)
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Jíbaro Records as Material Culture
Jíbaro records were meaningful in three ways: (1) physically, (2) aurally, and (3)
visually. By physically, I refer to the concrete object that can be grabbed, carried, and
collected—an object that occupies a physical space and can be quantified as material.
In this sense, Jíbaro albums were significant for Puerto Ricans in New York because
they could be acquired over time in order to create a personal collection. Among the
Puerto Rican community, a record collection gave prestige to the owner since it was
interpreted as a demonstration of love and pride for Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican
culture. Large collections also conveyed the economic standing of the owner. These
collections served as aural and visual artifacts of a utopic Puerto Rico left behind.
Record collection owners treasured them as they provided status among their
community and a sense of greater Puerto Ricanness in the diaspora community in
general.
During my fieldwork, I spent hours going over the Jíbaro music record collections
of the individuals I interviewed. Each record had a story associated with it. It was as if
these individuals were showing me family pictures that transported them to that place
they call home. Jíbaro album collections often occupied a shelf, placed prominently in
someone’s living room. Each album was covered with plastic film in order to protect it
from the negative effects of the environment. Although some of them were in bad
shape due to their age, they seemed as valued and treasured as a family album of
photographs. Limited editions, local and independently released records, or hard to find
copies are the highlights of these Jíbaro record collections.
Jíbaro music record collections represented more than just visual displays to
impress visitors; they were also actively played on the phonograph to fill the acoustic
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space with Jibaro sounds. As one of my interviewees in Brooklyn told me: “¡Los discos
son pa’ escucharlos!” These records are meant to be heard. These albums were used
to make social gatherings more pleasant and to make the guests literally feel at home
(in Puerto Rico,that is). By playing and listening to Jíbaro music records, Puerto Ricans
were able to transform their modest apartments in El Barrio into soundscapes of Puerto
Rico. Moreover, Jíbaro recordings also allowed for repeated listenings of particular
songs, which helped Puerto Ricans memorize the lyric content of their favorite décimas.
For musicians, Jíbaro records also served as pedagogical tools in learning Jíbaro
music in New York. Traditionally, Jíbaro music is learned as an oral tradition passed on
and learned informally by musicians. In Puerto Rico, Jíbaro musicians learned primarily
by interacting with older or more experienced musicians. In the diaspora, Jíbaro
recordings served as resources for upcoming musicians to learn Jíbaro music and help
keep the tradition alive.
The visual nature of records (the cover art) is one of the most interesting aspects
of Jíbaro albums. The front side of Jíbaro album covers typically portrayed Jíbaro
musicians dressed in the traje típico clothing associated with the figure of the rural
Jíbaro with a background representing an actual Puerto Rican rural landscape. As
previously discussed, the Jíbaro album covers and their images were often planned and
staged by the record labels’ producers. The covers served as windows into an imagined
Puerto Rico, often utopic in nature. Among the second generation Puerto Ricans whom
I interviewed, most were born in New York during the 1940s and 1950s and had never
actually visited the Island. In interviews, they frequently spoke of the importance that
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Jíbaro albums covers played when they were growing up. These albums covers
represented the Puerto Rico of their parents and grandparents.
For instance, one of my interviewees was Raymond Vazquez. He was born in
Manhattan in the early 1960s but did not actually visit Puerto Rico until he was a
teenager. Although his native language was Spanish, and he and his family identified
themselves as Puerto Rican, he had no idea what Puerto Rico looked like beside the
memories his parents and relatives shared with him. However, it was through Jíbaro
albums covers that he was able to construct a fixed image of Puerto Rico in his mind.
For him, Puerto Rico was imagined as a rural paradise full of sugar cane fields,
Flamboyan trees, roosters, cattle, and humble, happy people. Puerto Ricans on the
Jíbaro albums covers were typically depicted as happy individuals singing and playing
musical instruments. In some other cases, they were also portrayed enjoying food and
drinks during family gatherings taking place in humble wooden houses. That was the
imagined Puerto Rico for the kids of the diaspora.11
11 From telephone interview with Jíbaro guitarist and cuatro player Raymond Vázquez during Summer 2012 in Puerto Rico.
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Figure 5-7. Example of an early Jíbaro album cover. (Photo courtesy of author)
Figure 5-8. Example of an early Jíbaro album back cover. (Photo courtesy of author)
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Figure 5-9. Example of a more elaborate Jíbaro album cover. (Photo courtesy of author)
Figure 5-10. Example of a more contemporary Jíbaro back cover. (Photo courtesy of author)
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The visual images and written matter on the back covers of Jíbaro records were
also important in educating many immigrants about what the Jíbaro tradition
represented for Puerto Rico’s national culture. In almost all cases, and in particular in
albums by Ansonia Records, the back covers included written explanations and liner
notes (both in English and Spanish) about the content of the album and the many ways
that a particular Jíbaro artist represented a true Puerto Rican Jíbaro tradition. Newly
released Jíbaro records would become an essential part of a musical library that served
as a gateway, or spatial machine (similar concept as a time machine) that linked the
Puerto Rican immigrants with their traditions, culture, and ways of life. These record
collections were material possessions that gave prestige to their owners as they
strengthened patriotic identity among their fellows Puerto Ricans.
Jíbaro records became like an “extended family album” for those who had never
visited Puerto Rico. In reality, Puerto Rico did not quite look as it was portrayed on
Jíbaro albums. In fact, the ‘casitas’ where Puerto Ricans lived in New York City were
quite different (both in structure and living arrangement) from the Puerto Rican
Metropolitan area, characterized by tall buildings and massive traffic.12 In reality the
urban environment from which the Puerto Rican immigrants came was radically different
from the casita. Driven by the displacement, product of the American sugar cane
business in the Island, the rural peasant was forced to migrate to urban slums that
12 Casitas, located on city-owned land targeted for development (specifically, in El Barrio, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and the South Bronx), are an effort to recreate a Puerto Rican space in the New York City. Casitas generate opportunities for Puerto Ricans in NY, whose experience has been one of displacement rather than assimilation, to take control of their immediate environment, and to rediscover and reconnect with (sometimes even create) their cultural heritage. Casitas are community-based projects that transform vacant lots into valuable community spaces. Functioning as social gathering centers for the neighborhood, they are protected places where children can safely play and adults can garden, converse, and play dominoes and music away from the sounds and bustle of the city. In a sense, it is a space within the city to get out of it.
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circumscribed the metropolitan area of San Juan, the capital city. There, poor
proletarians lived in inhuman conditions and migration to the USA was seen as the only
viable option for escaping.
The Jíbaro records of the Golden Era of this music in New York helped to create
an imaginary Puerto Rico free of all the troubles and economic vicissitudes that
originally led to the mass migration of Puerto Ricans. The Puerto Rico created by the
Jíbaro record covers was a Puerto Rico that highlighted what most Puerto Ricans, in the
diaspora and on the Island, wanted: happiness, economic stability and a peacefully
shared homeland. Puerto Ricans in the diaspora took or kept what they considered the
best of their traditions and culture and expanded upon it to create their Puerto Rico in
New York. The covers of most Jíbaro albums were meant to also highlight a broader
sense of pride in being Puerto Ricans by mixing Jíbaro and non-Jíbaro elements that
symbolized Puerto Rican national identity and culture. Among those symbols were the
Puerto Rican flag, the pava, the bohío, the coquí, autochthonous trees, horses, cattle,
roosters, and machetes. All of these visual elements represented the life of rural
poor/proletarian groups in Puerto Rico, the main population that migrated to New York.
These elements also stood for the political and economic autonomy that most Puerto
Ricans craved.
The Velloneras
In Puerto Rican colloquial Spanish, a jukebox is called a vellonera. The term
comes from the word vellón, which means 5 cents. In other words, the jukebox was
called vellonera because it cost 5 cents for the machine to play a song. The velloneras
were located in commercial businesses and used by their owners to entertain patrons.
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Puerto Rican business owners played mostly Puerto Rican and Latin music in order to
provide a familiar and friendly atmosphere to keep patrons at their businesses.
Velloneras could be mostly found in bodegas, barbershops, candy stores, and
record stores; yet, other types of businesses carried them and used them to provide a
family atmosphere, too. For example, I was told by one of my Puerto Rican informants
that one of his uncles owned a butcher’s shop in El Barrio, and he played Puerto Rican
and Latin music all day long from a vellonera. With music from their homeland spilling
out onto the sidewalk, Puerto Rican pedestrian passers-by would feel invited to come in
and spend some time (and their money) at the business. Jíbaro music served to draw
attention from possible Puerto Rican customers, and it also was a way to strengthen
bonds of national identity as, just like many other businesses in the area where music
was involved, this butcher shop was a place for after-hour social gatherings (involving
sharing, games, and musical activities like the ones practiced in Puerto Rico).
This type of social activity in a locale that was a business during the day and a
social club after hours served as a way of providing safety since it kept people gathered
at all times in or around the establishment. A female interviewee informed me that, in
most cases, single women were not frequent patrons of establishments that had a
vellonera for entertainment. She told me “those places were for men.” A well-respected
Puerto Rican woman frequented a bodega or a butcher’s shop just to do business. It
was not considered appropriate for a single woman to attend one of those businesses
and stay listening or preforming music, and, much less, socializing with men after hours.
The velloneras played a significant role in using Jíbaro and Puerto Rican Latin
music as a tool to bring Puerto Ricans together and strengthen their Puerto Rican
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identity. Businesses that provided music to their Puerto Rican patrons provided a space
for patrons to feel and “be” Puerto Rican in an Anglo-dominated urban business context.
In my personal experience, during my fieldwork in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx,
Puerto Rican businesses that provided Puerto Rican music “transported” me to Puerto
Rico and were more inviting than places that had no music. The places with music
facilitated socialization where Spanish was the first, and in some cases the only
language spoken. These commercial spaces helped create spaces to be Puerto Rican
in New York.
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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS
The Jíbaro as Arquetype of Nation
After concluding my fieldwork, I go back to the main questions that motivated me
to carry out a research of this type: How did Jíbaro music and the concept of the Jíbaro
strengthen Puerto Rican national identity in the New York City diaspora? How was this
musical tradition utilized as a way to connect immigrants to a homeland left behind as
they confronted a new environment? The following lines explore my conclusions, field
observations, and possible further areas of research.
Through ethnographic and historical work I have discussed how the Island’s elite
portrayed the rural peasant and their discontent with economic and political issues and
constructed the Jíbaro as a figure to represent of Puerto Rico in their struggle to combat
foreign control and occupation. I have also discussed how the Partido Popular
Democrático (PPD) appropriated the image of the Jíbaro as their emblem in order to
appeal to the Island’s proletarian class and gain their vote. Once the PPD established
their power as a sovereign government under a Common Wealth under the United
States law, they began a campaign to “rescue” and preserve Puerto Rican culture.
With the inauguration of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), Jíbaro was
chosen as appropriate to be the all-inclusive archetype of what it meant to be Puerto
Rican by privileging the importance of the Hispanic/European elements over
indigenous, and African related elements. The de facto establishment of the Jíbaro as
representative of the Puerto Rican nation and culture reinforced the archetype of the
Hispanic rural male representing the “true patriot,” and cultural keeper of the homeland.
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The idea of choosing rural peasants as representative of a nation it is not unique
to Puerto Rico. This idea has been around since the late 18th century in Europe when
modern nation states emerged out of older monarchical feudal regimes. With the desire
to define their nations in relation to other sovereign states, elites (including artists,
literary figures, musicians and scholars) searched for the cultural roots of their nations
among the rural peasantry. Based on such romanticized ideas, nationalist projects led
by elite intellectuals included the selection of what they deemed appropriate cultural
traditions to represent their nation. Following this basic pattern, the Jíbaro, and Jíbaro
traditions were chosen by Puerto Rican elites to represent Puerto Rican national
identity. 1 During the mid-19th century, the Jíbaros were conceptualized not only as
landed rural peasants, free of the contamination of the metropolis, cosmopolitanism,
and modernity, but also as the appropriate alternative to the landless sugarcane
workers—largely of mixed and African heritage—who actually represented a majority of
the population. The choice of the Jíbaro allowed the elite in Puerto Rico to avoid the
unpleasant legacy of slavery, racial discriminations, and the realities of urban poverty.
Finding Answers
The Golden Era of Jíbaro music was a period in which Jíbaro recordings and live
performances bloomed in New York City and then on the Island. This period of activity
extended roughly from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, when salsa music displaced
1 Examples of this type of archetype who represents a homeland in the Americas are found in the
Argentinian Gaucho, the Charro singers of Mexican Mariachi, or the Western Cowboy of the United States of America. All of these archetypes are represented by rural males and that project masculinity, appreciation for freedom, and love of their country. Among the symbolic elements that identify such archetypes are: their hats, farm animals, the outdoors, food and drinks, and, their music. These archetypes have their similarities and differences; but in musical terms they all represent their homeland with tonal/danceable music styles performed by ensembles that utilize stringed instruments to accompany singing.
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Jíbaro music among Puerto Ricans in New York and the diaspora. Although there was
already an active urban Jíbaro music scene in Puerto Rico, which encompassed local
live performances and radio shows, it wasn’t until the mass migrations of Puerto Ricans
to New York that Jíbaro music became a commercial product available for popular
consumption via recordings. This commodification of the genre allowed the audiences
greater access to Jíbaro music in the diaspora and at home, while at the same time was
essential to the development of the Golden Era of Jíbaro music in New York.
Although other popular Afro-Cuban influenced musical genres like the bolero and
guaracha dominated the nascent Latin record industry and live musical entertainment in
New York, Jíbaro music flourished as a parallel Puerto Rican musical option that
influenced and was influenced by Cuban derived styles. Cuban trio musicians would
perform Jíbaro music for Puerto Rican audiences and Jíbaro musicians would
incorporate Afro-Cuban elements and instrumentation into their music. What
differentiated these two, sometime overlapping musical styles, was the intention and the
values attributed to them by the musicians and their audiences. While popular Afro-
Cuban influenced Latin music was valued as social dance music among pan-Latino
audiences, Jíbaro music was valued as something uniquely Puerto Rican with sacred
and deep cultural meanings.
Jíbaro music was so associated with Puerto Rican culture that record collections
became material objects of value and pride, which strengthened conceptual links to a
Puerto Rico left behind and created a utopic representation of Puerto Rico. Jíbaro
record collections also served to educate second generation Puerto Ricans in the
United States about their Puerto Rican heritage. The album covers and the literature
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found on the back of the LPs sleeve contributed in three main ways to strengthen
Puerto Rican national identity. These album covers contributed to the creation and
recreation of Puerto Rico in the diaspora in visual terms. They also contributed to the
image of the Jíbaro as archetypical representative of Puerto Rico while the sound
recorded on vinyl provided an aural matrix for the listener to reconnect with an idealized
Hispanic Puerto Rican past.
The most recurrent themes in the recordings during the Golden Era of Jíbaro
music included migration as a solution to the socio-economic problems of Puerto Rico,
resistance to assimilation into the dominant Anglo culture through the use of Spanish,
consumption of Puerto Rican food and drinks, and the mockery of “fake” Puerto Ricans
who assimilate into Anglo socio-economical models power of New York City. Another
important theme in Jibaro recordings is the heightened sense of nostalgia for a Puerto
Rican past that results from being in a foreign land.
By studying these topics through music analyses of selected seis con décimas, I
found that the Puerto Ricans who migrated to the United States not only brought with
them their personal belongings, but that they also brought with them intangible cultural
baggage. Cultural baggage includes feelings, ways of interpreting social contexts,
customs, traditions, rituals, religion, food, drinks, games, popular tales, sayings, riddles,
dances, and music. As part of the cultural baggage brought by the Puerto Rican
immigrants to New York, Jíbaro music played an important role in uniting the community
by creating a common element unique to the Puerto Rican community that attempted to
minimize distinctions of racial identity, skin color, social class, or creed. In other words,
Jíbaro music, by incorporating elements of other Puerto Rican folkloric musical
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traditions like Puerto Rican danza, bomba, and plena, as well as elements from other
Latin American music traditions, attempted to represent the Puerto Rican community as
a unified one with links to other Latin American communities.
Cultural baggage and the practice that comes as product of it contributed to the
creation of a Third Space that allowed for the creation of an imagined utopic Puerto
Rico in New York were only the “the best” elements of Puerto Rican culture were
chosen. Phenomenon like the casitas throughout New York City exemplify the physical
construction, in this case, of actual geographic locations, of taking back from the
oppressor and building an outdoor place to gather and participate in Puerto Rican social
and cultural activities. These activities included teaching and performing and Puerto
Rican music and dance. In other words, the casitas served as cultural places that
allowed one to act and feel Puerto Rican.
At the end of my fieldwork in New York, Florida, and Puerto Rico, I discovered
how important the Golden Era of recorded Jíbaro music in New York was in articulating
Puerto Rican national identity. I was able to understand the role the commodification of
Jíbaro music played in the development of a Puerto Rican national identity in a host
country. Jíbaro music was a gateway to reconnect with a homeland left behind and at
the same time, a medium to reinvent oneself as a Puerto Rican from “del otro lado del
charco”.
Spaces to be Puerto Rican
To better understand my interest in explaining how Jíbaro music from the Golden
Era assimilated other musical instruments and instrumentation in New York without
diluting its character as an expression of Puerto Rican identity, I need to address the
question of why this occurred. Jíbaro music held particular appeal to Puerto Ricans in
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New York precisely for several reasons. First, prior to the Golden Era, Jíbaro music had
already been conceptualized as authentically rooted in the rural, peasant culture of pre-
Americanized Puerto Rico. As such, the music contrasted with and symbolically
contradicted the urbanized, unwelcoming, alien environment and economic value
system that Puerto Ricans experienced from the 1940s on in New York.
Second, Jíbaro music was simultaneously constructed, promoted, and sponsored
as an example of Hispanic heritage of the island by the Puerto Rican government
interested in promulgating a Hispano-centric understanding of Puerto Rican identity.
Ricardo Alegría, founding head of the PPD's Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña was the
director of a series of programs that presented Puerto Rican national identity as the
outcome of a hierarchy of races and cultures. This acknowledged Indigenous, African,
and European heritage but established a hierarchy in which African/black contributions
were seen as minimal, Indigenous elements given secondary importance, and white
Spanish/European traits were valued as the most important. Within this hierarchy,
Jíbaro music was conceptualized as white and Hispanic.
Spanish, Indigenous, and African elements were not conceptualized as equally
significant nor were they equally valued. In so doing, Alegría (as Dávila, 1997 and
others like Guerra, 1998, Duany, 2002-2003, and Flores 2000 have argued) stood in a
long line of government-connected or government-backed elite intellectuals on the
Island who rejected the equality of non-European traditions; they also created a
pleasant, pleasing and politically accommodationist vision of the nation’s identity by
selecting the landed peasant (largely of Hispanic heritage) and not the landless
sugarcane worker (largely of mixed African heritage) as the central figure to represent
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the nation. For political reasons, they wanted to ignore, put aside, and erase the fact
that landless sugarcane workers were the majority of Puerto Ricans. As Guerra has
noted in the last chapter: Conclusion: Puerto Rico as Colony, as Case Study (1998),
recognizing that the government wanted to ignore the presence of landless workers
would serve to remind everyone that working-class Puerto Ricans were defined by their
class activism, their labor movement radicalism, the legacies of slavery and their
poverty (a poverty produced by the very policies and government structures that Puerto
Rico's local native elite had either facilitated or put in place). Throughout the 1950s, the
Common Wealth government of Puerto Rico continued to back economic and political
policies that promised progress but, in fact, produced poverty. For these reasons, then,
Island-sponsored, Island-backed Jíbaro music was intended to be understood and
enjoyed as a white, Hispanic tradition. Within this fundamentally Hispanic construction,
Jíbaro musicians could incorporate indigenous and African elements symbolically
without contesting the style’s basic Hispano-centric orientation.
When Puerto Rican musicians moved to New York along with more than a million
other Puerto Ricans, Jíbaro music became a strategic resource among immigrants as
they confronted new racial ideologies and struggles for civil rights that characterized the
United States during that period. No longer was the identification with the Jíbaro an
expression of solidarity with top-down, elite-driven forms of identity backed by the
Partido Popular Democrático; it was suddenly a means for fighting new social and
economic forces that Puerto Rican immigrants found equally repressive and culturally
alienating.
These repressive elements included 1) policies that favored dominant Anglo
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culture and promoted white segregationist agendas that demonized Puerto Ricans (and
all Latin Americans) as non-white, potentially criminal, "dumb," and undeserving of US
citizenship;2 and 2) an environment in which Puerto Ricans faced the rejection and
scrutiny of African Americans who saw them as competition for jobs and economic
opportunity (Morales, 1986).3 In this new environment, many African Americans were
also biased against Puerto Ricans and saw them as dumb because many did not speak
English even after decades of US colonialism. Piri Thomas' memoirs Down these mean
streets (1967) reflects on the repressive environment confronted by dark skinned Puerto
Ricans in New York prior to the Civil Rights Movement.4 Jorge Duany has also written
on the identity of Puerto Ricans of this period caught up in the bind of having a US-
conceived racial identity imposed on them by both their white oppressors and their black
neighbors.5
In the end, the "white Hispanic" tradition of Jíbaro music represented a refuge
from these imperial identities and other forms of socio-cultural rejection. It empowered
and appealed to New York Puerto Ricans because in Jibaro music, they found
themselves at home. More than equal with their neighbors, they were better than
anything that Americans could be; they were just as cultured, just as civilized and either
just as white or better because they were anti-racist. In fact, they were multi-ethnic and
2 For a visual (and musical) representation of this stereotype, please refer to the 1957 Broadway musical and film West Side Story.
3 Chapter 3 Black-Puerto Rican Competition in New York City: The Inevitable Systemic Outcome
4 Examples of Anglo culture, which promoted a segregationist agenda that demonized Puerto Ricans as non-white, and position them in the same oppressed position as African American, refer to chapter Babylon for Babylonians, Not for me, and How to Be a Negro Without Really Trying.
5 Chapter ten Neither White or Black, The Representation of Racial Identity among Puerto Ricans on the Island and in the U.S. Mainland in The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move.
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hence raceless. In this environment, Jíbaro music became a form of resistance to their
new environment, even as it accommodated to the elite Island framework from which it
was born.
By the mid-1960s, you find the answer to why Jíbaro music had reached the
limits of appeal, the limits of its Golden Era: the political culture of New York changed as
Puerto Ricans increasingly became radicalized and willing to fight for greater rights
through the civil rights movement; a key point in this was also their experience in the
Vietnam War in the 1960s, the first truly desegregated of all US wars. After service,
many Puerto Rican men returned to the Northeast more "anti-imperialist" than ever. The
Jíbaro representation no longer fit who the younger generations of Puerto Ricans were
by the last years of the 1960s. This was a time of political mobilization for minority
rights, the creation of the Young Lords and the Brown Berets, and the emergence of
salsa music.
By the 1980s and 1990s, even these forms of expression and activist
mobilization had worn out their usefulness. It is then that the casitas become a means
of returning to the Jíbaro tradition but for new reasons, with a contemporary
understanding of who and what Jíbaro music meant. In the casitas, bomba and music
are considered part of Jíbaro music and classes include these African-derived forms as
well. The casitas themselves are, as Lillian Guerra6, and others like Juan Flores7 have
argued, an effort to colonize the colonizer: to take territory from the New York
government / the US (the oppressor) and claim it as Puerto Rican and a part of Puerto
6 Refer to the Introduction, The Dynamic of Identity and the Role of Historical Memory from Popular
Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico.
7 Refer to chapter four “Salvación Casita” Space, Performance, and Community from Bomba To Hip Hop.
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Rico. In this scenario, Jíbaro music flourished once again as an instrument of cultural
resistance.
Further Observations
Jíbaro music is still alive and well. Places like La Casa de la Cultura
Puertorriqueña still hold weekly Jíbaro music lessons; independent artists also hold
private lessons. In El Barrio and other neighborhoods where Puerto Ricans concentrate,
there are music stores with sections exclusively devoted to Jíbaro music, including
some of the Golden Era records mentioned throughout this paper and other great hits.
Jíbaro musical instruments and attires can also be found in some of these music stores.
These stores also have loud speakers that they use to play their music and attract the
attention of passers-by.
Another significant way in which Jíbaro music is still present in New York is
through cultural events, like concerts, that follow the Catholic calendar (e.g. take place
on Easter or Christmas, etc.). Music at these concerts is often a combination of Jíbaro
music and other popular styles, like bolero and guarachas and attract a great number of
attendees (often people who have been mildly, or even never, exposed to Jíbaro music
in the past).
One last way in which Jíbaro music stays alive is through the Internet. The web
has facilitated interaction between Jíbaro musicians in many different cities (like
Chicago, New York) and countries (U.S. and Spain). Internet also offers videos and
other forms of tutorials that facilitate Jíbaro music learning (usually challenging in the
past). Moreover, the Internet allows artists, like Edwin Colon Zayas and jazz musician
Miguel Zenón, to commercialize their records using applications like iTunes and Beats.
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Final Thought: Additional Areas for Research
The commercialization of Jíbaro music during its Golden Era in New York City
was crucial in the creation of a Puerto Rican identity that transformed the idea of the
rural Puerto Rican peasant into a transnational icon of the cultural values that
represented what meant to be a “true” Puerto Rican. Commercial recordings from the
Golden era also spurred the development of Jíbaro music styles of playing which
became more refined, complex, and open to contemporary/popular musical trends.
Further areas of research that I identified as result of my investigation included
the need to study the role of the Jíbara (the female Jíbaro musician) during the Golden
Era of this music in a mostly male dominated scene. Another area of research that is
needed is the study of how the black Puerto Rican population dealt with having a mostly
European derived symbol (the archetype of the Jíbaro as conceived by the PPD and the
ICP) as representing their Puerto Rican culture and identity. A final topic to explore
would be is the development of salsa music during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a
response to the Jíbaro archetype and its music.
There are many things that still need to be understood about Jíbaro music but an
aspect that cannot be denied is the role this music played in the development of a
Puerto Rican national identity in the diaspora. The Golden Era of Jíbaro music and the
industry that developed in New York as a result of the commodification of the genre
redefined Jíbaro, and its association to Puerto Ricanness, in terms of national identity,
social experiences, racial relationships through common shared musical experiences.
The Jíbaro music of the Golden Era served as the cultural bridge that answered the
many issues linked or associated with issues of race, Hispanidad, and Puerto Rican
identity general.
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This Jíbaro music was inclusive not only in terms of musical contributions (i.e.
musical instruments, styles, arrangements) but also racial as it encompassed an illusory
inclusion of the three most influential ethnicities of Puerto Rican culture. Although this
music allowed the Afro-Caribbean and Arawak influences, the Hispanic associations
dominated as it was highlighted by the industry creating an ethnic/cultural space in the
multicultural, and often intolerant of new immigrant groups that prevailed in New York
during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The Hispanidad of the genre contributed in the process
of self-finding of Puerto Rican immigrants in New York. Lastly, Jíbaro music from
roughly two decades that encompassed its Golden Era, served to voice the socio-
cultural experiences of the Puerto Rican diaspora as well as it reinforced their sense of
themselves as Hispanic-Puerto Ricans.
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APPENDIX A VISUAL SYMBOLS OF PUERTO RICAN CULTURE
Examples and illustrations of the Puerto Rican cuatro as aural and visual
representational symbol of Puerto Rican culture and identity:
Figure A-1. Official seal of the Puerto Rican municipality of Morovis.
Figure A-2. Emblem of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña as approved in 1956
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APPENDIX B LAW DESIGNATING THE CUATRO, AS A NATIONAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF
PUERTO RICO AND SYSMBOLS OF PUERTO RICAN CULTURE:
Ley Núm. 154 del año 2003
(P. de la C. 2998), 2003, ley 154
Para declarar el Cuatro Puertorriqueño, al Pandero de Plena y al Barril de Bomba como Instrumentos Nacionales del E.L.A. y Símbolos de la cultura puertorriqueña.
Ley Núm. 154 de 27 de junio de 2003
Para declarar el Cuatro Puertorriqueño, al Pandero de Plena y al Barril de Bomba como Instrumentos Nacionales del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico y símbolos de la
cultura puertorriqueña.
EXPOSICION DE MOTIVOS
La necesidad de expresión musical por parte de los pobladores de Puerto Rico en el Siglo XVI, combinado con la dificultad de adquirir instrumentos musicales tradicionales para aquella época fueron los factores presentes en lo que sería el nacimiento de nuestro Cuatro Puertorriqueño. Usando técnicas para construir instrumentos musicales heredadas del indio Taíno, el modelo de la guitarra española, y los recursos disponibles al jíbaro de la época, se crearon los primeros cuatros.
Con el paso del tiempo, el cuatro evolucionaría, convirtiéndose en un instrumento de diez cuerdas, que se afina y toca de forma totalmente diferente a la vihuela árabe, la guitarra española o al cuatro venezolano.
El cuatro puertorriqueño es un instrumento musical de cuerdas perteneciente a nuestro folklore. Aunque no está oficialmente reconocido por ninguna Ley, el cuatro se reconoce como el Instrumento Nacional de Puerto Rico. Entre los ritmos musicales, comúnmente escuchados en la época navideña, que son acompañados por el Cuatro Puertorriqueño se encuentran los aguinaldos: y los seis. También son acompañados por el Cuatro las danzas, las mazurcas, las guarachas los pasodobles y los boleros.
Originalmente, el cuatro Puertorriqueño era "cuadrao" y tenía cuatro cuerdas. En la actualidad el Cuatro tiene un total de diez cuerdas, aunque en realidad se trata de cinco cuerdas, ya que se agrupan por pares. La primera corresponde a la nota "SOL", en la escala musical. Esta tiene un espesor de .011. La segunda cuerda corresponde a la nota "RE". Esta tiene un espesor de .014. La tercera cuerda corresponde a la nota "LA". Tiene un espesor de .022. Existen dos variantes para la tercera cuerda.
Se pueden utilizar dos cuerdas del mismo espesor .022 como normal. Como segunda alternativa se utiliza una tercera .022 con una primera .011. Esta segunda
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alternativa se conoce como requinto. La cuarta cuerda se conoce como la nota "MI". Se utilizan dos cuerdas de diferente espesor: una cuarta con espesor de .032 y una segunda .014. La quinta cuerda es la nota "SI'. También utiliza dos cuerdas de diferente espesor. Una quinta con espesor .042 y una tercera .022.
Además del Cuatro Puertorriqueño, existen otros dos instrumentos que representan igualmente nuestra cultura: el Pandero de Plena y el Barril de Bomba. Estos instrumentos están muy arraigados en nuestra idiosincrasia y han tenido una influencia marcada en nuestra música. Por esa razón esta Asamblea Legislativa considera necesario declararlos por ley como Instrumentos Nacionales del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.
DECRETASE POR LA ASAMBLEA LEGISLA77VA DE PUERTO RICO:
Artículo 1. -Título
Esta Ley se conocerá como "Declaración del Cuatro, al Pandero de Plena y al Barril de Bomba como Instrumentos Nacionales del Estado Libre Asociado".
Artículo 2. -Declaración
Se declara al Cuatro Puertorriqueño al Pandero de Plena y al Barril de Bomba como "Instrumentos Nacionales" del Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico. Artículo 3. -Vigencia
Esta Ley comenzará a regir inmediatamente después de su aprobación.
Presidente de la Cámara Presidente del Senado
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APPENDIX C CORE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF PLENA MUSIC
Figure C-1. Plenero Drums and Güiro
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APPENDIX D FREQUENTLY RECORDED SEIS DURING THE GOLDEN ERA OF JÍBARO MUSIC
duple metric triple metric
seis fajardeño seis llanera
seis con décima seis araucano
seis bayamonés punto cubano
seis de Andino seis chacarera
seis mapeyé seis joropo
seis montebello seis huapango
seis milonguero
seis celinés
seis chorrea'o
seis del Dorado
seis enramada
seis bombea'o
seis milonga
seis bolero
seis tango
seis español
seis gaucho
seis pampero
seis del llano
seis canto jiondo de Vieques
seis montuno
seis guaracha
seis guaguancó
seis habanero
seis tumba'o
seis antillano
seis de Comerío
seis mariandá
seis Villarán
seis marumbá
seis de controversia
seis yumac
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APPENDIX E GLOSSARY
“Buscar ambiente” To search for better socio-economic opportunities.
“Cartón prensa’o” Literary means pressed cardboard. Derogatory way to refer to plywood.
“Echar pa’ lante” To move successfully forward in life
“El difícil” Colloquial way to refer to English language and the “difficulty” of learning it
“Huyendole al frío” Literally, running away from the cold weather. It is a common Puerto Rican expression to move from a colder, nothern state of the United States to a warmer, southern one. It also applies when moving from a cold weathered state to Puerto Rico.
“Pa’ coger pela” To use and abuse something. In our case, to use and abuse a cheap musical instrument.
“Repiqueteos” or “flirteos” Are the ornamentation in between rhythmic phrases on the güiro
Aguinaldo Song genre throughout Hispanic America that is usually sung around Christmas and that involves gifts of coins, candy, food, or drink in exchange for music
American Adjective that express geographic or racial origin. In our case it is applied to people from the United States of America
Bomba Afro-Puerto Rican traditional music and dance genre. It is African-derived music that has roots in West African, and Afro-French cultural expressions and European (colonial) dances
Boricua Adjective used to identify a Puerto Rican regardless of the place of birth. Comes from the native name of the Island, Borikén.
Cadenas Style of sung décima that follows a specific melodic and rhythmic structure different, but similar from the seis. This could mean two things: the style of singing were the song is sung as being chained (like a dragging effect) or the 10th verse is used the 1st of the upcoming round of décimas.
Cancionero navideño Puerto Rican Standard Christmas repertoire Cantaó Person who sings only previously memorized
décimas instead of improvising them on the spot like the trovador
Casitas Social/urban phenomenon developed in New York in an attempt to claim abandoned land by recreating Puerto Rican rural
Conjunto Small musical ensemble
Conservatorio de Música Puerto Rican Conservatory of Music
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de Puerto Rico
Controversia Style of seis con décima were two or more Jíbaro singers engage in a type of argument or friendly challenge in which each one of them should be very creative at the time of improvising their décimas in order to win the respect of the audience and other fellow musicians
Coquí Onomatopoeic name for a minuscule amphibian natural of Puerto Rico, which produces nocturnal intermittent sounds (koh – kee).
Cordillera Central The main mountain range of Puerto Rico
Corrido Sub-type or rhythmic pattern of plena music
Criollización Creolization. It is the process of transforming and appropriating imported elements creating a new local hybrid. In the case of Jíbaro music, it is the adaptation of European and Anglo musical styles, genres, and instrumentation to the Island context and socio-economic conditions creating a unique Puerto Rican version of those elements.
Danza Puertorriqueña Puerto Rican dance and musical genre that emerged in the mid-19th century and shared many traits with the Spanish contradanza and Cuban habanera.
Décima espinela Medieval ten-line verse form from Iberian origins attributed to Vicente Espinel
Decimilla Compact version of a décima with ten hexasyllabic verses
Diaspora The condition and experience of a group of people living outside of their homeland and remaining connected to it in meaningful ways.
El Barrio Latino Spanish or East Harlem, Manhattan
El Bronz The Bronx, New York
Estado Libre Asociado Political definition of Puerto Rico. Common Wealth (of Puerto Rico)
Garita Small tower with narrow and long windows, which is located in strategic points of a fortification with the intention to protect and defend the soldiers.
Guajeo An Afro Cuban term to describe an ostinato consisting of two-or-four-bar phrase most often consisting of arpeggiated chords in syncopated patterns.
Guajiro Cuban countryside peasant.
Hispanidad Pride of having Hispanic heritage
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
Government Agency in charge of preserving and promoting Puerto Rican culture.
Jíbaro Adjective used to refer to Puerto Rican countryside peasants.
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Las Navidades Christmas season in Puerto Rico. This period begins the night of Thanksgiving in November and ends in mid January with the festivities of the Calle San Sebastian in Old San Juan.
Latino Person of Latin-American origin living in the United States familiar with the struggles of being an immigrant
Loizaida Lower East Side, Manhattan
Los Sures South Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Nuyorican Adjective used to identify a person born in New York of Puerto Rican ancestry
Parrandas Christmas caroling tradition in Spanish-speaking America
Parranderos Those who participate in parrandas
Partido Popular Democrático
Political Party founder and in favor of Puerto Rico as a Common Wealth of the United States of America
Pie Forza’o Previously chosen octasyllabic verse in which the whole décima will be based. The pié forza’o serves as a mandatory topic that has to be improvised upon and developed by the trovador.
Plena Puerto Rican music genre developed in the early 20th century, which mix elements of Hispanic and Afro-Caribbean musical and dance traditions
Puertorriqueño Adjective used to identify a person born in Puerto Rico or of Puerto Rican ancestry. It differs from Boricua in the sense that it does not have implicit aboriginal associations.
Rondallas Musical/instrumental ensembles of medieval Iberian origins consisting of plucked stringed instruments
Rondilla Strophe of four octasyllabic verses
Santos Small/portable wooden representations of Catholic saint used in in-home altars.
Seis Melodic base or ostinato of which the majority of the Jíbaro repertoire is based.
Seis con décima Comes from the use of a seis as a melodic base, and the use of a décima Espinela as lyrical content
for the song. Both the poetry and the music are equally important and co-depends on each other to successfully achieve a true authentic representation of the art.
Third Space It is a virtual space, which allows being Puerto Rican in a diasporic context. It is the result of building social fields that link together the utopized Puerto Rico and the host country (the United States)
Trovador Person who sings improvised décimas espinelas in
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a Jíbaro ensemble
Tunas Similar to Rondallas but the players dress up in medieval clothes, sing, and dance in contrast to just perform instrumental music.
Villancico Popular Christmas song genre in Spanish-speaking America
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Delio Figueroa was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. In 2000, he completed an
Associate of Arts degree in Computer Science and Programming at the University of
Puerto Rico. In 2005, he graduated from a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education, at the
Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico (in San Juan, Puerto Rico). In 2008, he obtained
a Master of Arts degree in Music Education, from The Steinhardt School of Culture,
Education, and Human Development at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in
Musicology/Ethnomusicology from the University of Florida in the summer of 2015.
His current research interests involve folk musics of immigrant communities, the
correlations of actively listening to music and mood, and music education/music making
as a tool for social justice. In his spare time, Delio enjoys spending time with his family
and friends, hand making Puerto Rican típles, and fixing rescued accordions and
harmonicas. He also likes film and Polaroid photography, being outdoors, a late
afternoon stroll in the park, and making pizzas.