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Rafael Cortijo

In the annals of Afro-Antillian music the name Cortijo is synonymous with the heartbeat rhythms of the music of the common people of the islands with a strong acknowledgement of its African roots. He played specifically for them and never forgot his ancestry or where he came from; they in turn have never forgotten him or his contribution to their culture. Music legend Rafael Cortijo was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, on 11 December 1928. He was a significant figure in the history of Latin music and noted as a percussionist, (timbales, conga, bongo, maracas and other percussion), bandleader and composer. He was the musical hero of the common folk of Puerto Rico and Latin America; admired for his qualities as a creative and talented musician. He took the bomba and plena out of the slums and with his all-black band, and introduced them into all levels of society in Puerto Rico and abroad. His early childhood was filled with the sounds of the drumming and singing of pleneros like Cornelio and Maria Teresa. He learned how to make the timbas from them; the barrel drums which he used to entice a young vocalist Ismael Rivera to join his descargas at the beach. For the next three decades, these close friends lived a life in which they shared the good and the bad… whatever they experienced as individuals, was lived by them both, as one: fame, alcohol and drug addiction and even jail. Cortijo knew that there were several varieties of the bomba cangrejera (crabber’s bomba). With this background and with the experience gained by participating in the traditional street carnivals, such as the Carnavales de San Mateo and San Juan, featuring bombas and plenas, Cortijo was well prepared to organize an authentic bomba and plena group. He developed his own style by including trumpets and saxophones, but kept the flavor of the traditional bomba and plena by means the typical, strong rhythmic base. Cortijo wanted his combo to play music spontaneously and to avoid the inflexible routines of the big bands that kept the musicians fixed on a stage behind their written musical arrangements. Cortijo’s band played standing up, danced on stage, and sometimes even joined the dancers on the floor. Their arrangements were really just minimal sketches as an orderly baseline for the musician’s improvisations. The style ignited the crowd and helped them compete with the big bands of Machito, Tito Rodriguez and Tito Puente.

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