Rafael Cortijo Verdejo

Latin Beat Magazine, Oct, 1998 by Frank M. Figueroa

He was the musical hero of the common folk of the barrios and the caseríos (housing tenements) in Puerto Rico and in the slums of Latin America. It did not matter that he was a flawed hero, with drug and alcohol addiction problems for which he spent time in jail. Poor people everywhere identified with him and his music because it expressed their sorrows, as well as their dreams and aspirations. As befits a hero, Rafael Cortijo was admired for his qualities as a creative musician and for his achievements in breaking barriers. He took the bomba and plena out of the slums and with his all-black band, introduced them into all levels of society in Puerto Rico and beyond its shores.

In his native island, Cortijo is given credit for bringing Afro-Puerto Rican music back from oblivion. By the late 1950s, jazz had made a strong incursion into local music. Cuban rhythms became even more popular among the dancers. In the meantime, the authentic music of Puerto Rico was neglected and the new generation had no access to it. The only versions of the bomba and plena that the young could hear were sanitized white adaptations of this predominantly black Puerto Rican music. Along came the Black Knight, Rafael Cortijo, and embarked on his campaign to restore the authentic bomba and plena to its proper place.

Cortijo always said there were two ways to play bomba and plena. The most authentic one was with panderos, timbas or barriles, cúas, and a coro (singers). The cuás are a pair of sticks used to hit against the side of the drums. A plenero group usually includes five or six musicians. Since the panderos are hand-held instruments, the drummer is limited to the beats he can play with only one hand. That makes it necessary to have several panderos to complement the others. The other way of playing bomba and plena is the stylized, modernized interpretations by hotel bands such as Rafael Muñoz, Pepito Torres, and César Concepción. Cortijo had to make a slight compromise. It was necessary to expand the instrumentation of the typical plenero group to give it the new combo sound. He was unyielding, however, when it came to retaining the slum caserío flavor of his music.

Rafael was born and raised in Santurce's Parada 21, a hot bed of bomba. His early childhood was filled with the sounds of the drumming and singing of pleneros like Cornelio, Celio Náter, María Teresa and Bobó. He learned from them to make the timbas, using empty salt pork barrels and goat skins for drum heads. The homemade drum heads were prepared by shaving the hair from the goat skins using sand and the lip of a glass bottle. These were the barrel drums with which he came to entice a young Ismael Rivera away from his job as a mason to join his descargas at the beach. Rafael knew that there were several varieties of the bomba cangrejera (crabber's bomba). He had heard terms such as cuembé, yubá and leró to refer to them. With this background and with the experience gained by participating in all the Carnavales de San Mateo and San Juan (traditional street carnivals, featuring bombas and plenas, celebrated in Santurce, Puerto Rico) Cortijo was well prepared to organize an authentic bomba and plena group.

The bomba and the plena are the heart of Afro-Puerto Rican music, They arose from the sands of the beaches in Ponce, Isla Verde, Cangrejos and Loíza Aldea. These are the areas where Puerto Ricans of African descent chose to settle. It is as if the beaches with the horizon facing cast were the closest point they could get to the ancestral land. These rhythms, therefore, have a flavor of coconut, and land crabs (jueyes), and they also have the briny smell of the sea. Composer Ramón Muñiz captured this fecling in his lyrics to Seis de Borinquen, a tune recorded by Ismael Rivera. [The author's lyrics are followed by my English version]

Yo tengo un sabor a playa en este cuerpo I have a taste of beach in my body y un sabor a coco que me quema, and a coconut flavor that burns me. una canción nocturna en mi garganta There is a nocturnal song in my throat. manchas de plátano corren por mis venas. Plantain stains run through my veins.

Traigo rumor de olas en mis orejas My ears ring with the pounding of waves y ecos de tambores que arrebatan, and the captivating beat of drums. y un dolor de tristeza en mi sonrisa. I wear the pain of a sad smile.

Tengo la piel morena y me encanta I am proud of my dark skin y por eso yo traigo fuerza en mi cintura, and of my powerful hips. ritmo de amor y en mis manos I have the rhythm of love las maracas alegres de un seis borincano. and in my hands I hold the happy maracas of a Puerto Rican seis.

Cortijo served his apprenticeship playing bongó and congas with Moncho Muley's Conjunto Monterrey and later on, with the Frank Madera and Miguelito Miranda Orchestras. In 1954, he was playing congas with the Mario Román Combo when, suddenly, the leader decided to retire. This gave Rafael the opportunity to organize his own group. He knew exactly what sound he wanted and who were the musicians that could produce it for him. Some of the original members of Cortijo and his Combo were Estéban Papitín on congas, Tomasito Muriel on bass, Eddie Pérez on saxophone, Venezuela on trumpet and Héctor Venero and Héctor Urdaneta on piano. The group's first vocalist-was Sammy Ayala. Singer Ismael Rivera joined the group in 1955.