Ecology - Hawaii Puerto Rican Instruments

Jíbaro Image and the Ecology of Hawai'i Puerto Rican Musical Instruments
Author(s): Ted Solís

Source: Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, Vol. 16, No. 2 (
Autumn - Winter, 1995), pp. 123-153
Published by: University of Texas Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/780370
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Ted Solis Jibaro Image and the Ecology
of Hawai'i Puerto Rican
Musical Instruments
Introduction
Diasporic studies provide the opportunity

for comparative examinations of ethnic groups under divergent geographic
and acculturative conditions, shedding light upon continuity, discontinuity,
vitality, and priorities of cultural values. Puerto Rican identity is para-
digmatically diasporic; much of the richness, sadness and frustration
informing Puerto Rican humanistic production stem from its fragmenta-
tion and dislocation. Hawaii Puerto Ricans are, along with the Nuyoricans
of New York, the most distinctive subgroup of the Puerto Rican diaspora.
Deriving their cultural roots in Puerto Rico primarily from the highland
Jibaro peasants, they came to Hawai' early in the twentieth century as con-
tracted plantation laborers, and today number between 15,000 and 20,000.
The ways in which a distinct Hawai'i form of Puerto Rican musical culture
has developed exemplify the processes of acculturation and ethnic self-
identity among Hawaii Puerto Ricans in general.
Hawaii Puerto Ricans refer to themselves as "Puerto Ricans," rather
than "Hawaii Puerto Ricans"; no phrase comparable to "Nuyoricans" for
New York Puerto Ricans has evolved in Hawai'i. Borinque, sometimes pro-
nounced "BRINkay," is a local Hawai'i word meaning Puerto Rican.'
Another term commonly used, especially when referring to specific
aspects of Puerto Rican culture as represented by the Hawaii community,
is Jibaro. The word is frequently incorporated in music ensemble names
(e.g., "Los Jibaros Modernos," "Los Jibaros Alegres," and "Eva y Sus
Jibaros") and was the name of a weekly community radio program in the
early 1990's, "the Jibaro Hour."
For many Caribbean Island and New York Puerto Ricans, 'Jibaro"is
analogous to "hillbilly" or "redneck." As Manuel states (1994: 257):
LatinAmericanMusic Review,Volume 16, Number 2, Fall/Winter 1995

61995 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin TX 78713-7819
124 : TedSolis
Jibaro music [in Puerto Rico and the U. S. mainland] has...suffered from an
ongoing popular disaffection with Jfbaro culture in general, whose allegedly
archetypicalcharacteristics-including passivity and illiteracy-have come to
be seen as incompatible with modernization.
Under no circumstances, however, does the word convey to Hawaii Puerto

Ricans any of these pejorative connotations. On the contrary, it represents,
for them, some of the other familiar characteristics commonly attributed to
J'ibaros: stubbornness, feistiness, self-sufficiency, hardiness, individuality,
and hospitality. These are the very values which Hawaii Puerto Ricans
hold most dear. Furthermore, their self-conception as Jibaros defines their
world and artistic views.
The largest and earliest Puerto Rican groups, some 5,000 men, women,
and children, migrated to Hawai'i in 1900 and 1901. Until relatively
recently, there has been little contact between Hawai'i Puerto Ricans and
their ancestral homeland. The isolation of Hawai'i Puerto Rican culture
has ensured that it developed differently from cultures of Caribbean and
U.S.-mainland Puerto Ricans. Owing both to isolation and cultural self-
image, Hawai' Puerto Ricans preserve as everyday music older Jfbaro
musical and dance genres as well as performance practices which in Puerto
Rico have either been lost, or preserved in self-consciously revivalist or
"folkloric" contexts. Unique among subcultures of the Puerto Rican
diaspora, Jibaro music in Hawai'i has provided and remained the founda-
tion for popular music and dance.
Hawai'i Puerto Ricans define themselves ethnically through the music/
dance complex, wherein the most potent symbols are certain genres and,
above all, musical instruments. My general hypothesis is that the
maintenance of this ethnic identity involves a filtering legitimization pro-
cess, that is, changes in music and dance must be legitimized by "being
Jibaro." Through musical culture, this community has grappled with the
complexities of its ethnic self-image vis-a-vis broader ethnic identity
categories such as "Hispanic" and 'Latino."
The Migration
The Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association in the nineteenth century was

perennially in search of new sources of labor. Each immigrant ethnic
group, beginning in the 1850's with Chinese, followed by Japanese,
Portuguese, Korean, Filipino, and others, provided plantation laborers,
who within a few years inevitably drifted toward urban areas, demanding
higher wages and better working conditions. Another outside ethnic
group would then be targeted for recruitment to defuse the power of
the preceding assertive group or groups. Puerto Rico was considered a
Jibaro Image and Hawaii Puerto Rico : 125
potentially important source of labor at the turn of the century. The island
had just been devastated by the great hurricane San Siriaco of 1899; crops
and infrastructurewere destroyed.
Jibaros made up the overwhelming majority of the Puerto Rican sugar
labor importationsto Hawaii in the early 1900s. Their small highland coffee
and tobacco landholdings in Puerto Rico had been devastated, and many
left the land for the cities, acceleratingthe process begun earlier in the nine-
teenth century with the encroachment of haciendas and plantations. Their
agricultural expertise and ability to endure hard agriculturallabor made
them prime candidates for recruitmentby sugar emissaries from Hawaii.
In the more than ninety years since the principal migrations to Hawaii,
extensive urbanization and cultural homogenization in Puerto Rico have
blurredits Hispanic-Africanculturalpolarity.The great culturalgap between
the highlandHispanicJibaros and lowlandAfro-PuertoRicans, which existed
at the time of the first migration, has considerablynarrowedin Puerto Rico
itself since that time, firstunder the pressureof large incorporatedplantations
(largely U.S.-owned), and later with industrialization.These processeshad
the effect of drawingJibaros from their individual shareholdings,and ulti-
matelyof urbanizingthe islandand throwingdisparateracialgroupstogether.2
The resultwas the inevitableaccelerationof a physicaland culturalmixing that
had actually been taking place since the early colonial period.
Much of this process bypassed Hawaii Puerto Ricans, who still cling
tenaciously to their perceived Hispanic and Taino Amerindian heritage3
and have implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) rejected overtly African or
Afro-Latin musical and dance features. The musical selection procedure at
every level, whether with regard to genre, improvisation practices, dancing
style, or musical instruments, has been influenced by that general attitude.
For Hawaii Puerto Ricans, overtly Puerto Rican symbols of ethnicity
are relatively limited. Icons of Puerto Rican identity such as the Spanish
language have over the decades eroded; most third- and fourth-generation
Hawaii Puerto Ricans can neither speak nor understand much Spanish.
This has foregrounded the few areas that remain unique symbols of Puerto
Rican identity: a compadrazgo (co-godparent) system, in which the terms
comay(comadre, godmother) and compay(compadre,or godfather) clearly
or
acknowledge religious/familial relationship obligations and mutual respect;
certain popular foods such as pasteles,arrozdegandule,ensaladadebacalao,and
arrozconpolio, which remain of the richly varied Caribbean Puerto Rican
cuisine; and most importantly, music and dance.
Musical Instruments
Except for the most rudimentary instruments (for example, simple flutes,
126 : Ted Sol's
rasping sticks, concussion sticks, and others), which often evolved inde-
pendently through "polygenesis," most musical instruments are suffi-
ciently complex in structure and iconography to maintain a distinct identity
through evolution and dislocations ranging over hundreds and even
thousands of years and miles. For this reason they are among the most
tangible forms of evidence of cultural contacts between and among peoples.
In some cultures, instruments have become so thoroughly identified with
sacred and secular rituals at the deepest levels of self-identification that they
are presented as the symbols par excellence of these cultures.4
The ensemble referred to by some Hawai'i Puerto Ricans as the Trio
Borinqueio or "Borinque Trio" (see photo 1) is used in virtually all Hawai'i
Puerto Rican music and exemplifies that level of self-identification (see
photo 1). The nucleus of this instrumentation has remained remarkably
consistent since the arrival of the first immigrants in 1901: a six-string
Spanish guitar; a giiiro or giiicharo gourd or metal scraper; and a Puerto
Rican cuatro Creole guitar (in traditional and surrogate forms). The giiro
and cuatro are considered quintessentially Jibaro instruments in Puerto
Rico. (The only other instrument frequently substituted for the cuatrowas
the button accordion, discussed below.) The guitar, giiiro, and cuatro (in
Photo1. Plantation trio. L-R: Charles Vegas (b. 1948), modern cuatro;Virginia
Rodrigues (b. 1929), giiro; August Rodrigues (b. 1922-93), guitar. (Photo, T. Solis,
Lawai, Island of Kaua'i, 7/19/91)
JibaroImageand Hawaii PuertoRico : 127
some form or other) have remained at the core of most music-making

within the Puerto Rican community for over ninety years.
In the 1990s, the standard ensemble consists of this same trio (cuatroand
Spanish guitar now electrified) plus an electric bass guitar, and bongoand/or
congadrums. Changes in the form of accretionsto the nucleus have occurred
selectively in reaction to both internal and external circumstances and
continue to the present. The most important influences are: (1) Hawaii
material culture; (2) musical developments among Hispanics in the
Caribbean and the U.S. mainland; and (with regard to one instrument
only) (3) jazz.
Unfortunately, very few instruments remain from the early Puerto
Rican plantation period in Hawaii, nor are many photographs or any
recordings available.5 Few written accounts of musical life either by Puerto
Ricans or their neighbors exist, and only a small handful of people, all of
whom were very young at the time, survive from the early 1900s. For this
reason I have relied heavily upon oral histories and photographs.
The Trioof thePlantations:Early1900s
TheSpanishGuitar.The six-stringed Spanish guitar was little different from

the modern instrument and therefore requires only brief comment.
Somewhat narrower relative to its length, it was typical of the nineteenth-
century guitar and such earlier relatives as the Spanish vihuela.In spite of
the many electronic innovations developed in connection with the guitar
(including the development of solid bodies entirely dependent upon electric
amplification), Hawai'i Puerto Ricans have retained a predilection for
relatively traditional hollow body "acoustic"-styleinstruments with various
sorts of added electronic pickup (with the exception of solid-bodied Ricken-
backer electric lead-tenor guitars, discussed below, and solid-bodied
electric bass guitars, popular from the late 1960's).
The Giiro Scraper.The gourd guiro or giicharo (the two names used in
Hawai'i),6 along with maracas,the only instrument of Amerindian origin
still in common use in Puerto Rican music, was at the time of the first
migration essential in most genres of Jlbaro music and in the various
manifestations of the nineteenth-century danzain Puerto Rico. Today it is
elevated to the status of a cultural icon; the Fiestade Giiiro,for example, em-
phasizes the giiro role in Jibaro music. A well-recognized virtuoso giiiro
tradition exists there (one representativeof this tradition is the late Patricio
Rijos "Toribio," who performed with famous cuatro innovator 'Maestro
Ladi").
The folklore of the giiro associates it with the guayoscraper so essential to
128 : Ted Solis
the preparation of pasteles (a popular quintessentially Puerto Rican tamale-

like dish whose masa, or dough, is made from green bananas). Caribbean
and Hawai'i Puerto Ricans alike believe that the typical wrist motion used
in playing the gfiiro originates in the lithe up and down motion used in
grating plantains against the guayo.
Older Puerto Ricans almost invariably speak primarily of metal, not
gourd scrapers on the plantations. There is some evidence that the gourd
giuiro may not have been immediately available to the immigrants for both
botanical and sociological reasons.
The Puerto Rican marimbo(vine or bottle gourd) is the proper one for
guiiros (as opposed to the higiiera or tree gourd, which provides maracas).
Hawai'i Puerto Ricans make a distinction between "Puerto Rican" and
"Hawai'ian" style gourds. Many older Hawai'i Puerto Ricans know these
Spanish names and state that those marimbo naturally found in Hawai'i
are too soft and used for food, whereas those in Puerto Rico are bitter,
harder, and more suitable for gfiiros. The marimbo's scientific name is
L. sisceraria(bottle gourd); before European contact, its wide distribution
included the Caribbean and Polynesia.
Hawai'ian L. sisceraria, widely used as vessels and musical instruments,
tend in general toward globular or elongated globular shapes (as with
the important ipu gourd used as a gong in traditional hula accompani-
ment and in so many other ways), rather than the elongated oval of the
Caribbean giiiro. In Hawai'i, gourds are primarily used as containers (in
Latin, siscerariameans "drinking vessel"), for which the rounded shape in
general appears more practical, and musical instruments there also tend
to be globular. The particular kinesthetic requirements of scraping,
however, appear to require a long, relatively straight surface or 'long
axis." Puerto Ricans in the Caribbean may have deliberately cultivated
elongated gourds for the scrapers so essential to their music,7 whereas the
gongs and rattles of Hawai'ian music were more suitably provided by
globular and rounded forms.
The elongated variety of gourds required for gfiiro construction thus
appears to be cultivated, rather than wild. The particular conditions of
plantation life (such as long work hours and isolation from suitable areas
for cultivation) may have mitigated against the immediate transplantation
of this tradition of cultivation to Hawai'i. The construction of even such an
apparently simple instrument as the giiiro requires a great deal of time and
care, both in cultivation and construction.
The most common ad hoc substitute for the not-yet-common gourd giiiro,
apparently dating from the earliest days, was tapas (covers), readily
available from old fashioned cans of coffee, shortening and other products,
and scraped together. One musician (b. 1918) remembers that in his
childhood people would say "don't throw that [cover] away; we're gonna use
Jibaro Image and Hawaii PuertoRico : 129
it for a giiro." When people were in the mood for festivities, invariably ac-
companied by music and dancing, the cry "aquitienela tapa!' ("there's a cover
here!," or "we can play music") would often signal a done deal: a scraper
would join vocalist and guitar (and cuatro, if available) in the music. Tapas
continued to be used on an ad hoc basis long after plantation days.
In addition to tapas, cylindrical metal giiiros with open ends were
fabricated from metal containers of lard, kerosene, corn beef, and other
products. Such instruments are, according to some, much easier to make
than a gourd guiro, in which the serrations present problems.
Availability and construction problems notwithstanding, gourd giiiros
are now the norm in Hawai'i, and apparently have been for decades. In
photographs from as early as the beginning of the 1930s only gourd giiiros
appear.8 Perhaps suitable gourds were increasingly cultivated or seeds were
imported. Certainly by then, many Puerto Ricans had left the plantations,
had moved into towns, and had greater access to backyard garden spaces
where such plants could be grown more conveniently. In the 1930s and early
1940s guiros and maracas crafted from gourds grown in backyards were
sold to music stores in downtown Honolulu. Giiiros imported from Puerto
Rico were seldom seen before the late 1960s, when Hawaii Puerto Ricans
began to visit Puerto Rico in small numbers, re-establishing connections.
The Sinfonia Button Accordion. Only one instrument besides the cuatro (or its
surrogate, the tenor guitar) has ever been mentioned, however, as a com-
mon lead instrument over an extended period of time in the plantation trio:
the sinfonia (diatonic button accordion), more generally called acordeonin the
Hispanic world. Such accordions have been present in the New World but-
ton accordion market since the late 1800s.9 Ten-button accordions were
perhaps most common (see photo 2), and accordions were sold early in the
century in plantation stores for as little as three dollars (Norma Carr, p.c.,
1993).
The accordion's use seems to have been largely confined to first and
second immigrant generations. I was aware of only four players in the 1990s,
all at least in their late sixties and children of 1901 immigrants. Because of
its relative loudness, the accordion was seldom played together with the
cuatro. Its harmonic limitations as a diatonic instrument made it difficult to
play the danza (an important dance genre of the early immigrants), which
is sectional and characterized by modal shifts from minor to parallel major,
or harmonically sophisticated versions of the bolero,a later accretion to the
repertory.
Although never rivaling the cuatro in overall popularity, the sinfonz'a
seemed to have developed its own mystique, primarily that of a provider of
up-tempo "happy" music. Its last famous performer in Hawai'i, Charlie
Figueroa, died in April of 1994 at the age of seventy-eight, and those few
130 : TedSolis
Photo2. Charlie Figueroa (1916-94) with "German"style sinfonia:2 bass levers, one
melodic button row, four register stops. (Photo, T. Solils,Honolulu, Island of Oahu
8/9/90)
players remaining seldom perform.'0 No younger musician has indicated

an interest in learning the instrument, and the final demise of this tradition
in Hawai'i appears inevitable.
The Cuatro. The cuatro in some form has always played a fundamental role
in Hawai'i Puerto Rican music. Nevertheless, local limitations of material
culture and organological expertise, plus increasingly apparent perceived
technical limitations brought about reexminations of its practicality. The
various stages of experimentation with physical substitutes and equivalents
(none of which, however, implied any challenge to the general concept of its
preeminence as a lead melodic instrument) reflect repertory and performance
practice changes at different levels: mainstream American popular music,
the mainstream pan-Latin pop recording industry, and changing inter-

pretations among Hawai'i Puerto Ricans of the parameters of their "own"
musical tradition.
The 'Old, "or 'Keyhole"Cuatro.The cuatro of the 1901 immigrant generation

was very different from the modern curvaceous "violin-like" instrument (see
photograph 1). It was, rather, generally referred to in Puerto Rico as cuatro
antiguo (old cuatro). For Caribbean Puerto Ricans, the most famous depic-
tion of this instrument is to be found in the celebrated 1893 painting El
Velorio(The Wake) by Puerto Ricano artist Francisco Oiler. Its general
shape, viewed from the front, is similar to that of an old-fashioned keyhole,
and is therefore in Hawai'i frequently referred to as a "keyhole cuatro." In
photograph 3 we see an ornate "old cuatro" made and held by Miguel
Rodrigues (b. 1904), a musician since the 1910s who occasionally still plays
the instrument. Such cuatros were the most common melodic lead instru-
ment at the time of the 1901 migration and remained so in Hawai'i until the
early to middle 1930s when they were supplanted by the tenor guitar.'
Apparently, courses of both single and double strings were used at different
Photo 3. Ornate old or "keyhole"cuatromade and held by Miguel Rodrigues,

(b. 1904), standing with Tanilau Dias (b. 1908). (Photo, T. Solis, Hilo, Island of
Hawai'i 7/21/90)
132 : Ted Solis
times. Although double courses seem to add resonance and loudness, any
sort of 'logical" Hawai'i evolution from single to double strings (an innova-
tion conceivably introduced by 1921 immigrants, for example) is purely
conjectural; all available photos of old cuatros (the earliest I have found
dates from the late 1910s) show four double courses rather than single
strings.
The old cuatro seems not to have undergone any significant structural
changes (beyond single/double stringing formats) before its replacement by
the tenor guitar in the 1930s. In Puerto Rico, however, it was already
evolving (apparently before the 1920s) into the modern instrument. A 1916
photo of the quintet "Estrellas de Borinquen" shows a narrow "violin-like"
cuatro (Quintero-Rivera 1992, 47).12
This difference between cuatro types is evidence of the communication
and cultural gap which developed between Hawai'i and Caribbean Puerto
Ricans. Immigration to Hawai'i was minimal, casual visits were generally
out of the question for financial reasons, and those who returned to Puerto
Rico usually stayed. There was little mail communication, few plantation
workers owned gramophones at that time, nor were many Puerto Rican
recordings available until the late 1920s.
Julio Rodrigues, Jr. (b. 1931), a prominent musician and astute
observer, remembers that, during his childhood on Kaua'i, only older peo-
ple born in Puerto Rico played the keyhole cuatro; those born in Hawai'i
generally used other lead instruments. The keyhole cuatro seems to have
remained longer in common use on the Hawai'ian outer islands (farthest
from the urbanization and modernization of Honolulu, on the island of
Oahu).
Two questions present themselves: Why did the old cuatro fall out of
favor? and why did the tenor guitar, in particular (hitherto to be referred
to, in Hawai'i fashion, simply as "tenor") take its place? Neither can be
answered categorically, but the reasons offered by Hawai'i Puerto Ricans
are instructive and reflect the acculturation process they were undergoing.
Why was the cuatro replaced? Cuatro performers understandably did
not leave written documentation; musicians and others who have expressed
opinions on the subject are reflecting on, and hypothetically recreating,
their feelings of six or seven decades earlier, when they were very young.
These opinions are of necessity ex post facto, strongly colored by their
knowledge of developments since then.
One musician suggested that "they got tired of the cuatro." Does one tire
of an instrument that fulfills the demands of its role satisfactorily? In-
struments evolve or are supplanted when they no longer fit the needs of
their musical and/or larger supporting communities. Sometimes a
dwindling critical mass of artisans makes them too expensive, their produc-
tion and availability too undependable, or their quality too variable.
Jibaro Image and Hawaii PuertoRico : 133
Another more viable alternative may be readily and/or cheaply available.

Performers may not be aware of the limitations of an older instrument until
having been exposed to the advantages of another.
In the case of the old cuatro, a number of factors may have contributed to
its disadvantages, while providing an alternative. In the 1930s, Puerto
Ricans left the plantations where, in general, traditional immigrant genres
and repertory were played at "house dances." Plantation dances had been
characterized by the close proximity of musicians and dancers, both being
necessarily limited in number by the size of the dance space (most typically,
the combined front parlor/living rooms of plantation houses). Later,
however, when dances were increasingly held in urban clubs and halls of
various types, with larger audiences, powerful sound projection became
much more crucial; in a cause-effect cycle, larger performing ensembles
also required greater sound projection of their individual instruments. In
the early 1930s, however, Hawai'i Puerto Rican bands were completely
"acoustic," without any electric amplification.
Tanilau Dias (b. 1908), an observer and participant in the Hawai'i
musical scene since his plantation childhood days), says it was difficult to
repair and replace keyhole cuatros. Some older people, born in Puerto
Rico, knew how to make them, but their numbers were dwindling; Dias
remembers experiments with kukui, mango, and other Hawai'i woods.
Unlike Puerto Rico, the Hawai'i Puerto Rican musical world has never had
full-time instrument makers nor full-time musicians; even the most respected
instrument craftsmen all worked full-time in nonmusical jobs. As mentioned
earlier, the very long, demanding schedule of plantation work must have
left little time or energy for avocations such as instrument-making.
Julio Rodrigues, Jr., emphasizes specific technical limitations in discuss-
ing the change; he speaks of the old cuatro's short neck, comparing it to
that of the tenor. He points out that the instrument had around nine frets
above the body; this is generally corroborated by an examination of
available instruments and photos. These instruments had two to five more
frets on the fingerboard beneath the place where the neck joins the body. As
it is notoriously difficult to play in that area, the short neck constitutes the
effective playing length.
Technical limitations of the old cuatro may not have been apparent until
performers found themselves exposed to the challenges of new, non-Puerto
Rican musical genres, some of which (boleros, for example, which became
popular from the 1930s onwards) were harmonically sophisticated com-
pared to their Jibaro seises, polcas, aguinaldos, guarachas, puntos cubanos, and
valses. In Puerto Rico, musicians and instrument makers faced that
challenge by taking the cuatro itself along a developmental path. Hawai'i
Puerto Ricans, however, cast aside the cuatro in the early 1930s and did
not reembrace it (albeit in a vastly different form) for nearly forty years.
134 : Ted Solis
The Tenor Guitar. By the mid-1930s younger, Hawai'i-born musicians were

forsaking the cuatro for the tenor guitar, which became the standard lead in-
strument by the end of the decade. Tenors usually had fourteen frets above the
body (compared to the old cuatro's nine), plus four or five more on the body.
Apparently, however, an intermediate period of experimentation led to
the use of Spanish guitars, Hawaiian slide guitars, banjos, mandolins,
dobros, and other instruments. A mid-1930s photograph of the "Ruiz
Rumbadors" (one of the earliest prominent organized ensembles with a
professional name) shows an instrument with a round banjo body and what
may be an attached cuatro neck; certainly the short, wide neck is much
more typical of the old cuatro than the longer, narrower neck of any "nor-
mal" banjo. This may represent an attempt to adapt the cuatro itself (in
spite of its neck and fret limitations) to a readily available body (more dif-
ficult to construct than the neck) or (in the context of this larger ensemble)
to achieve a louder sound.
Puerto Ricans' adoption of the tenor guitar slightly antedates that
development in more mainstream American popular music. In jazz bands
the omnipresent four-stringed plectrum tenor banjo of the 1920s (such as
"The World is Waiting for the Sunrise," "Bye Bye Blues," "Five Foot Two"
and other rapidly strummed banjo favorites) was displaced by the F-hole
"archtop" guitar,'3 a louder instrument capable of being heard in larger
ensembles.
Many erstwhile banjo players played tenor as an interim instrument be-
tween tenor banjo and the six-string archtop guitar on which most jazz
guitarists eventually settled (Eddie Condon being a notable exception).
With four strings tuned in fifths like the tenor banjo (rather than the six
strings tuned primarily in fourths of the conventional Spanish guitar), the
instrument could be played by banjo-playing aspiring guitarists who could
thus remain au courantwithout being obliged to learn a radical new technique.
An increasing number of guitar makers offered tenor versions of various
models. A variety of tenors was thus readily and relatively cheaply
available. The familiarity of the tenor's four-string format may have at-
tracted Puerto Ricans used to four-string (and/or four-double course)
cuatros. The attraction and, to some extent, prestige of a "modern,"
"American" instrument may also have served as an added inducement.
Tenors could be acquired factory-made, or adapted in various ways. In-
struments from which tenors were adapted in Hawai'i included baritone
ukuleles, mandolins, metal-string jazz or nylon-string classical Spanish
guitars, lap steel guitars, and dobros or other "resonator cone" instruments.
The first tenor players appear content to leave the instrument with four
strings; by the late 1930s some musicians were adding strings to create
double courses. By the 1950s, photographs show most tenors with at least
some double strings; four sets of double strings were most typical. Musicians
appear to have seldom played lead on any guitar-like instrument that

did not have four strings or courses (for example, tenors with six strings had
two single and two double strings).
Although very few who played the old cuatro remain, there are more
who remember it from their youths, and still more who are former tenor
players. Most agree that the tenor was tuned in the same intervals as the old
cuatro, in a combination of a fifth and two fourths, for example, D-A-d-g
(from lowest to highest pitches). The tenor banjo and tenor guitar, as
played by "Americans," were tuned, in fifths, to C-G-d-a. According to the
testimony of various musicians, lead tenor players tuned as high as possi-
ble, usually tuning the "top" string (that is, the highest placed string which
4
is, of course, the lowest pitched) first.
Taking into consideration the differences in size between cuatro and
tenor necks, chords on these four-stringed instruments could be formed at
least to some extent similarly. There is considerably more difference be-
tween chord formation on the five-course modern cuatro and the tenor than
there was between the tenor and its predecessor, the old cuatro.
The double strings (some in unison, others in octaves) offered a richer
sound both through "beats" created by slight divergences in pitch, and the
wider variety of overtones. One musician describes it as sounding 'like an
organ." Another musician stated: "Double strings are better. It sounds like
a piano; with single strings you just get 'ting, ting, ting.'"
It thus seems clear that the (1) four strings or sets; (2) tuned partially in fourths;
and to a somewhat lesser extent (3) double strings of the old cuatro were con-
sidered fundamental and desirable, and were carried over to the tenor. The five-
coursed modem cuatro has maintained this predilection for fourths, being tuned
entirely, unlike the tenor, in fourths, B-E-A-d-g, and double courses.'5
Although many of the available tenor brands were used, Martin factory-
made hollow-bodied tenors, and electric solid-bodied Rickenbackers (the
latter whether factory-made as tenors or adapted) became the instruments
of choice and, apparently, of prestige from the late 1930s onwards. The
Rickenbacker's popularity reflects an increasing fascination with amplifica-
tion that began with resonator guitars. The Rickenbacker Company in-
disputably developed the first electric guitar to be widely distributed for a
substantial length of time, the so-called "frying pan" of 1931. By the mid to
late 1930s, Rickenbacker had developed a series of more "normal"-looking
solid-bodied, all electric guitars. These included various models of 'lap
steel," "Spanish," and tenor (see photograph 4), all of which were adapted
by Hawai'i Puerto Ricans (having in most cases first appeared in the worlds
of Polynesian Hawaiian popular music). The relatively piercing, "electric"
sound of the solid-bodied, all electric Rickenbacker with its new and ex-
citing technology was certainly attractive to many musicians. Others
preferred an "acoustic" tenor (with added pickup).
136 : Ted Sol's
Photo4. Boy and His Family Troubadours, 1947. Group composed primarily of
Joseph "Boy"Sedenioand his brothers-in-law.L-R: Sebastian Fernandez, man'mbula
or "boxbass";Luciano Perez, guitar (probably 'running bass");Arthur Fernandez,
maracas;"Boy"Sedeio, Rickenbackertenor guitar; Raymond "Moncho"Fernandez,
giiro; Jack "Tito" Fernandez, guitar; Carmelo "Melo"Fernandez, claves;Anton
"Tony"Fernandez, bongos.(Photo, courtesy of Joseph and Maria Sedefno)
The Rickenbacker was the only solid-bodied tenor ever favored. Ricken-
backers often had removable necks; the necks could be narrowed and the
pegblock widened, to accommodate extra strings. Such was the popularity
of the Rickenbacker that some homemade wooden instruments were based
upon its general design (photograph 5).
TheModern Cuatro.One former tenor player told me that he began using the
cuatro again "because it was more Jibaro." The cuatro to which he referred
was the already-mentioned modern instrument with ten strings (five double
courses tuned in fourths) (see photographs 1 and 6). This instrument had
been evolving in Puerto Rico ever since the migration of 1901, but had
neither been seen frequently, nor made a significant impression upon
Hawai'i Puerto Ricans. When they became more aware of it and its
capabilities and found ways to acquire it, they began switching rather
readily from the tenor. By the 1980s most played the modern cuatro.
Jzbaro Image and Hawaii PuertoRico : 137
Photo5. Raymond Galarza (b. 1930) with wooden tenor guitar based upon the
Rickenbackerelectric made to his specifications(wood, with hollowed and deepened
body) by Johnny "MuMu"Dias. (Photo, T. Solis, Lihue, Kaua'i, 7/21/91)
This process began at the very earliest, in the middle 1960s, apparently
among transplanted Hawai'i Puerto Ricans on the West Coast. Most in
Hawai'i remember the late 1960s and early 1970s as a time of change.
That Hawai'i Puerto Ricans had either not been aware of, or had ignored the
cuatro for the approximately fifty years after it had appeared in some form in
Puerto Rico (and, inevitably, in New York, which had a vigorous and on-
going symbiotic relationship with the home island), is testimony to their
physical isolation. It was clearly the advantages of the five-course cuatro plus
an enhanced "Jibaro"image that stimulated a mass defection from the tenor.
In addition to being "more Jibaro," some practical rationales for this
change given by those who experienced it (in general, those musicians born
in the mid-1950s or earlier) include "better sound," "better chords," and
greater efficiency. The 'better sound" may be due to the larger number of
strings, which adds richness to the overtone structure (in the same way that
double strings were said to "sound better" than single). "Better chords" seems
to imply both the potential of wider and more complex voicings inherent in
five, instead of four sets, and a greater choice of string combinations.
Greater efficiency of movement is the reason most frequently cited by
musicians. With five strings, the left hand need not travel so far up and down
the neck; rather, it can remain in one position, moving the fingers alone.
138 : Ted Solis
Photo 6. George Ayala, Sr., comparing neck of tenor guitar made by Johnny
"MuMu"Dias with that of modern cuatro.(Photo, Solis, Honolulu 8/13/85)
Raymond Galarza, one of the last remaining musicians who has not switched
from tenor to moder cuatro (see endnote 15, and photograph 5), admits that
the tenor is more difficult to play; one must travel up and down its long neck,
and chording demands much greater left-hand stretches (along the length of,
as opposed to across, the neck) than does the modern cuatro. Photograph 6
shows the clear difference between George Ayala's modem cuatro (short and
thick-necked, with nine frets above the body), and his tenor (long and thin-
necked, with fourteen frets above the body), built in Hawai' by the remark-
ableJohnny "MuMu"[Haw.: "one-handed"]Dias. The short neck, which caused
musicians to forsake the old cuatro for the tenor, is now cited as the very reason
they left the tenor for the modern cuatro. The crucial difference, of course, is
the modern cuatro's low fifth string set, which compensates for its shorter
neck and provides a range comparable to that of the tenor with less effort.
One implication of this change from the tenor to cuatro appears to have
been a certain greater emphasis upon fast scalar and single-note figurations
at the expense of the fast parallel chording typical of Hawai'i Puerto Rican
tenor playing. One likely reason is exposure to such musical gestures on the
virtuoso cuatro LPs, which became available somewhat before this
watershed period of the late 1960s. In the words of cuatro-vocalist Angel
Santiago (b. 1929):
We tried to match the tenor to Puerto Rican cuatro records; no way-we
couldn't match up, we wondered what was going on; we couldn't-we didn't
know it, but those guys had ten strings.
Exposure to the modern cuatro coincided with increased physical com-

munication with Puerto Rico. Famous Puerto RicoJibaro musicians, such
as cuatro virtuoso "Yomo" Toro and the late trovador(singer/poetry im-
proviser) "Ramito" (Flor Morales Ramos), performed in Hawai'i from the
1960s, bringing modern cuatros. Beginning in the 1960s, a few people flew
to Puerto Rico in attempts (often fruitless) to re-establish long-lost contacts
with relatives.16 They returned with cuatros, guiros, LP's, photographs,
home movies, and other items important for the transmission of musical
culture. Cuatros were much more readily available on the mainland West
Coast, with which Hawai'i Puerto Ricans were traditionally in close con-
tact; as stated above, they almost certainly appeared among Hawai'i Puerto
Ricans in California first. Its "mid-Pacific" location also made Hawai'i ac-
cessible to Korean-made cuatros, which were even cheaper than those from
Puerto Rico. Apparently, cuatros were visible and available for years
before being adopted. One musician stated that
A lot of people (in the 1960s) had gone to Puerto Rico, and came back with
cuatros as souvenirs. There were lots of cuatros lying around, but no one
knew how to tune them
There was no clear-cut continuity in performing tradition between the

tenor and the modern cuatro, in the way there almost certainly had been
between the old cuatro and the tenor thirty years earlier. The tenor in the
1930s had been adopted by individuals familiar with local keyhole cuatro
models of tuning, repertory, and performance practice. Converting to the
modern cuatro, on the other hand, involved embracing a relatively exotic
instrument whose tuning and performance tradition (though closely related
to their own) had developed independently over six decades, thousands of
miles away in Puerto Rico and New York. Some learned to tune from
Puerto Rico musicians. Julio Rodrigues, Jr., learned in the early 1970s,
from an LP of famous cuatro virtuoso Nieves Quintero, on which one cut
provided (in Spanish) cuatro tuning instructions. Hawai'i modern cuatro
tuning, with only a few exceptions, has become standardized:17 the five
courses in fourths, from lowest to highest pitches, are tuned B-E-A-d-g.
The g, d, and A strings are doubled in unison, and the E and B strings
doubled in octaves.
140 : Ted Solis
PercussionAccretionsto the Trio Nucleus
Of the most essential instruments of the Hawai'i Puerto Rican ensemble,

percussion instruments have created more controversy than any other
group. Except for maracas and giiiros, which as gourds are natural objects
and 'Taino [Indian]," percussion instruments (especially drums) are
iconographically and sonically vivid symbols of the unspoken "Africano"
part of the Hawai'i Jibaro racial and cultural heritage. It is to be noted that
even instruments directly traceable to African models are not acknowledged
as such. Those that have been adopted were in most cases introduced by
Puerto Ricans or Cubans, bringing the matter to close. Neither where these
intermediaries (often servicemen stationed in Hawai'i) obtained the in-
struments, nor the precise history of the instruments is of much interest to
most Hawai'i Puerto Ricans. For them, any discussion of the ultimate
origins of many aspects of Puerto Rican culture opens up a Pandora's Box
of forbidden associations with Africa. As with the modern cuatro, aural
(sometimes perhaps subliminal) awareness of the instruments developed
through imported recordings before they physically appeared and were
played locally.
Palitos (Claves). Such was the case with claves (in Hawaii called palitos, or
little sticks) concussion sticks. The instrument was first heard on widely
popular recordings of Cuban son groups such as the "Sexteto Habanero,"
"Septeto Nacional," and "Trio Matamoros" in the 1920s. By the time 78
rpm records were relatively easily available in Hawaii,'8 however, Puerto
Rican recordings from New York commonly included claves. "Los Borin-
queiios," recording in New York in September 1929, for example, used
both maracas and claves (Spottswood 1990, 1695), as did many other
recording groups in the 1930s.'9
Three mid-late 1930s photographs (which I believe are in chronological
order) of Hawai'i ensembles indicate three stages of the adoption of claves.
The first stage shows a 'Chinese" wood block;, the second, what appears to
be homemade wooden claves;, and the third, typically dark (probably
rosewood) "store-bought" claves. It is likely that these musicians, having
heard claves on records: (1) first tried to imitate the sound with a substitute
(Chinese blocks, frequently used in the jazz band trap set, were available
from music stores); (2) having perhaps seen or heard of "authentic" claves,
made their own (some used sawed-off broom handles); (3) finally created
sufficient demand that music stores began to carry claves imported from the
mainland. Claves were included in many groups from the late 1930s
through the middle 1950s when they gradually faded in popularity.
'Box Bass"(Mar'mbula). The "box bass" (called marimbaor marimbulain the
Jzbaro Image and Hawai'i Puerto Rico : 141
Caribbean) is a metal-tongued lamellophone, or linguaphone best known

in English as kalimba, sansa, mbira and various other regional African names
(photograph 4).20 The instrument in Africa is typically used in self-accompa-
nied vocal music. Almost all New World marimbulas, however, fulfill a
bass function, especially in European-derived music (see List 1968;
Thompson 1971). The vibrating lengths (which determine pitches) of its
five or six flattened metal keys may be individually altered by pulling
them beneath the metal clamp under which they pass.
In practice, the marimbula in Hawai'i was and is considered primarily a
percussion instrument (some people, when first describing it in conversa-
tion, refer to it as a "kind of drum" [the apparent criterion being that its
tongues are struck and plucked rather than scraped]) with some limited
harmonic capabilities and functions.
It is likely that many Hawai'i Puerto Ricans had heard the instrument (as
with claves) on early Cuban son recordings and in some Puerto Rican record-
ings. As mentioned above, its sound and attack are not as distinctive as those
of other instruments in whose company it was heard, and in view of the rela-
tively primitive recording techniques available before WW II, the marimbula
could easily have been overlooked or mistaken for an acoustic upright bass.
Most people, however, agree that the box bass was not commonly seen
until World War II, and that it was introduced by Puerto Rican and/or
Cuban servicemen stationed in or in transit through Hawai'i. Angel
Santiago recalls his first box bass, made and played by a Cuban sailor,
"Alfonso" (mentioned by others in this regard, and also in connection with
the introduction of bongos). Although Hawai'i Puerto Ricans recognize that
the instrument's most recent origins are in Puerto Rico and/or Cuba, the
question of its ultimate origin (naturally, Africa) has never arisen in my
hearing. The fact that Puerto Rico Jibaro groups used and recorded with it
is legitimization enough.
The box bass was popular, although by no means universally included in
musical groups, from about 1945 until 1955, falling out of use around the
same time as did claves. There seems to have occurred a general "slimming"
of ensembles from the peak period of the mid to late 1940s, when groups of
eight to ten musicians were common21 (see photograph 4: 'Boy and His
Family Troubadours" c. 1947). This expansion and ultimate slimming of
ensembles seems to have very loosely paralleled (at an inevitable
chronological distance) such developments in mainland American jazz and
popular music in the 1930s through 1950s. As the electric bass guitar has
monopolized the bass function since the early 1970s, the box bass is
texturally superfluous.
Drums. 'Pots and Pans, Like in theJungle. "Membranophones are the most
controversial of all instruments introduced into the Hawai'i Puerto Rican
142 : TedSolis
instrumentarium. Whereas the typical son clave rhythm could be perceived

as related to Jibaro giiiro and guitar patterns (especially as played in
Hawai'i), and the marimbula function was related to the dated practice of
"running bass" on the guitar,22 there was no organological or textural prece-
dent whatever in 1901 Hawai'iJibaro musical culture for any sort of drum.
The bourgeois urban danza of Puerto Rico, with its associated orquestatzpica,
including snare drum, was very different from the danzas festivas of the
Jibaros, accompanied by cuatro, guitar, and giiiro.
As explained earlier, African-derived genres were very different from
those of the Jibaros, who experienced extensive twentieth-century inter-
racial acculturation in Puerto Rico mainly after the time of the Hawai'i
migration. The bomba(not to be confused with the very different Jibaro seis
bombeao), while popular in coastal areas among the Afro-Puerto Rican
population, had not been diffused to the highlands. Even those Hawai'i im-
migrants who had lived in Ponce (an epicenter of Afro-Puerto Rican
culture), had not embraced the bomba, which is never mentioned as a
genre performed on Hawai'i plantations.23 The coastal Afro-Puerto Rican
plena probably developed from the bomba early in the century, but the
main Hawai'i migration had already taken place; the plena was therefore
unknown in Hawai'i until considerably later. Both the bomba and the plena
are associated with drumming traditions: the bomba traditionally uses
two or three barrel-shaped African-derived drums; and the plena, two to
four panderetas,jingle-less frame (tambourine-like) drums of Spanish origin.
In both these genres, as in so many other Afro-Latin musical traditions,
one or two drums provide an interlocking repetitive background for the
improvisation of another.
The Pandereta.The pandereta was played in Hawai'i from the 1930s until the
1940s. When asked about the instrument, older musicians typically give the
names of one or two pandereta players (by comparison with endless lists of
tenor, maracas, giiiro, guitar, claves, and bongo players). Some of these
accompanied plenas when they were especially popular (perhaps first in-
troduced to Hawai'i at the time of the 1921 immigration, by which time
they had already become quite popular throughout Puerto Rico). Pan-
deretas are mentioned in the singular: there is no indication that they were
played in the stratified "Afro"manner (for example, of such modern Puerto
Rican folkloric ensembles as "Los Pleneros de la 21').
The pandereta seems to have served as an advance guard. As a hand
drum and the only "Latin" drum in the immediate experience of Hawai'
Puerto Rican musicians, its playing style provided at least some model for
the performance practice of bong6s, introduced during WW II. Bandleader
and tenor/cuatro player "Boy" Sedefio (b. 1924) remembers teaching
Hawai'i-born Augie Colon (later famous as Latin percussionist with
Jibaro Image and Hawai PuertoRico : 143
Hawaiian "jungle-exotic" combo leader Martin Denny and in Waikiki

shows) to play bongos using pandereta technique.
Bongos. Bong6s, like the pandereta, are ultimately of Iberian origin, having
developed as Cuban rural versions of pailas or timbales(creolized timpanis
used in the urban charangafrancesa orchestras that specialized in danzon).
Bongos first became widely known via Cuban son recordings in the 1920s,
thence spreading to many other genres in Cuba and the rest of the Hispanic
Caribbean. Hawai' Puerto Ricans agree that both bong6s and congas
were introduced during WW II by Puerto Rican and/or Cuban service-
men, remembering Puerto Rican servicemen from Schofield Barracks
coming to Kalihi (an area of Honolulu where many Puerto Ricans live)
during the war to seek out their Hawaii compatriots and sometimes
bringing their instruments. That these musicians sought out local Puerto
Ricans and entered into their world, rather than the reverse, is a crucial
point. An individual Hispanic serviceman could 'jam," using his bong6 or
conga, with local Jibaro-oriented musical groups without the more complex
AfroCuban implications of the drum's typical interlocking composite
rhythms (such as on the mainland U.S. and Caribbean urban context with
other congas, timbales, bells, piano, and montuno structure) becoming
apparent to his hosts. The "Jibaro"integrity of the ensemble would thus not
be compromised.
One musician in his sixties remembers seeing his first bong6 made by a
Cuban sailor during the war. He and his wife reminisced in 1991 about the
way the sailor tuned bongos:
They looked like they were made out of, looked like poi [Polynesian Hawaiian
fermented taro paste] barrels, cut 'em short like that [i.e., truncated] . . . he
took the skin, and he put the rim over. So you know what, now he has the
skin, and he has the rim; now he goes outside and makes a fire, and he put the
bong6s over that, to stiffen up the skin.
This heat technique for drums without built-in tuning mechanisms is well
known and widespread.
Ad hoc instruments were made apparently until demand induced music
stores to carry instruments for sale. Marcial Ayala, Jr. (b. 1934), today
generally considered the leading bongo player in Hawai'i Puerto Rican
music, learned on coffee cans, while another musician recalls teaching his
young brother-in-law by beating on the back of a guitar. To develop a per-
formance style, Hawaii Puerto Ricans listened to recordings and correlated
experiences with Caribbean servicemen musicians and, earlier, with the
pandereta. There is, unfortunately, no aural documentation of that early
makeshift, hybrid style; the earliest group recordings available (from the
early 1940s) include neither bongo nor conga.
144 : Ted Solis
Congas. Congas are even further removed from the Jibaro traditional ex-
perience than bong6s, having not entered the popular Cuban musical
mainstream until the early 1940s with the recordings of tres virtuoso/com-
poser Arsenio Rodriguez (1911-1970), whose orchestra included a full Afro
percussion section tightly integrated with winds. His recordings were not,
however, widely available or popular in Hawai'i. A few congas introduced
by servicemen appeared on Oahu late in World War II. These were single
instruments (as opposed to the complementary tuned pairs becoming more
common in Cuba). The earliest photographs of congas (late 1940s) in
Hawai'i indicate that they were predominantly truncated cone or barrel-
shaped, with skins tacked on in "Chinese" fashion (predecessors in Cuba
of mechanically tuned congas) and were often played with a strap over
the shoulder in the way originally associated with the Cuban carnival
tradition. Such drumming was becoming familiar to the American public
through Desi Arnaz' conga-beating role in the 1939 Broadway hit musical
"Too Many Girls," (Roberts 1979, 84) and various "generic Latin"-motif
Hollywood musicals of the early-mid 1940s. Photograph poses of the time
(late 1940s and early 1950s) reflect the flamboyant hand and body gestures
associated with the instrument's carnival tradition (notwithstanding the fact
that no such tradition existed among Hawai'i Puerto Ricans).
By the late 1940s mechanically tuned cone-shaped drums can be seen.
Barrel-shaped congas with stands and mechanical tuning devices appear in
the late 1950s. These were played first singly, then in the tumba(low) and
conga (high) pairs found in modern salsa bands,24 sometimes in lieu of,
sometimes along with, bong6s.
Congas have, however, never been accepted to the same degree as
bongos. The latter, relatively early, became an important part of the Jibaro
recording ensemble in Puerto Rico.25 Congas, on the other hand, retained
a greater identification with AfroCuban-derived genres, and thus con-
stitute a cross-cultural statement of some potency. They are strongly
representative of the ongoing "modernizing" tendency of some Hawai'i
Puerto Rican musicians to seek Cuban and AfroCuban-derived inspiration
beyond the pale of traditional Jibaro culture. They remain a "fault zone"
that many are loath to cross (the hand-held cowbell is clearly on the far
Afro-side of this "fault";no groups to my knowledge have used it, although
the handful of timbales players since the 1950s have usually incorporated
small bells in the drum set).
Leading musician Julio Rodrigues, Jr., considers bongos "better for
Puerto Rican [i.e., Jibaro] music than conga; conga just gives you basic
beat. ... It plays the same thing all the time." This statement seems to
reflect an inadvertent double standard: it is true that the delicate virtuosic
filigrees of typical Cuban son bong6 playing (as opposed to the more recent
and more rigid salsa style in which the bongo is much less prominent and
Jzbaro Image and Hawai'i PuertoRico : 145
often dispensed with altogether) are far more free rhythmically than those
of the conga, dictated by the recurring tumbaopattern. There is, however,
ample precedent inJibaro music (especially as it has developed in Hawai'i)
for repetitive rhythmic formulae. Unlike earlier years of the Hawai'i
diaspora, in which a great variety of genres, guitar strums, and giiiro
strokes existed, a great homogenization (a characteristic of many areas
characterized by marginal musical retentions) and loss of variety have
taken place. For most medium and fast genres (primarily excepting
merengue),the guitar plays a standardjabanera pattern, the gfiiro, a nearly
inflexible guarachadapattern, and the bass, a standard tumbao. The only in-
strument with much rhythmic latitude in recent years has been the cuatro.
Thus, the conga's rhythmic repetitiveness is most likely used in this case as
a surrogate for what is actually most unacceptable: its unequivocally Afro-
Latin shape and association.
Conclusion
We have seen that Hawaii Puerto Ricans, unique in the complex world of
the Puerto Rican diaspora, do not flee the 'Jibaro" label, but, rather, em-
brace it. ThisJibaro identity implicitly and sometimes explicitly rejects the
celebration of the 'two-race" model of pan-Puerto Rican identity now so
important in government tourism promotion and national political sym-
bolism. The Jibaro image in Puerto Rico of a poor and somewhat embar-
rassing country cousin has become, far off in the mid-Pacific, nothing less
than the arbiter of acceptability for Puerto Rico's long-departed children.
Thus musical instruments have as always served as a litmus test of material
culture and social change. Collectively (as ensembles) and individually,
they provide evidence of attitudes and cultural priorities, speaking to both
continuity and acculturation. The guitar, giiro, and cuatro have remained
a nucleus from the time of the earliest immigrations, and a sort of cognitive
focal point for Hawai'i Puerto Ricans. The trajectory of their surrogate
forms, as well as accretions to the basic nucleus, however, have also in-
dicated clear response to social change involving a filtration through the
Jibaro legitimization process.
We have seen that the gourd giiro, so fundamental to Jibaro music, was
much less common than ad hoc substitutes on the early plantations. This
directly reflected both differences in Hawaiian botanical material culture,
compared to that of Puerto Rico, and the radically different nature of time
in their new environment. In the time-intensive mass production system of
the sugar plantations, leisure was much more of a premium than in Puerto
Rico, where so many of the Jibaros had been relatively self-sufficient
yeoman farmers. The gourd guiro tradition's renewal indicated the Puerto
146 : TedSolis
Ricans' changing status from plantation laborers to that of urban workers

with sufficient free time to cultivate marimbo gourds of suitable hardness
and shape.
Changes in instrumentation within the cuatro continuum directly
bespoke the growing cultural gap between Hawaii and Puerto Rico, where
the cuatro's development followed very different paths. In Hawai'i,
renouncing the old "keyhole" cuatro for the tenor guitar indicated both an
interest in new, "American" technology and in more complex, harmonically
demanding pan-Latin musical forms, which were proving technically
challenging for the cuatro. That these forms were encroaching upon the old
Jibaro repertory is evidence that mass media (radio and phonograph
records) were compensating for the Jibaros' physical isolation from Puerto
Rico.
Finally, the introduction of percussion instruments such as the claves,
marimbula, bong6s and congas indicate the extent to which the Latin
recording industry served as a kind of racial mediator. Isolated from the full
implications of the original contexts in which these instruments were played
in the Caribbean, New York, and elsewhere, Hawai'i Puerto Ricans could
selectively adapt them as accretions to the Jibaro plantation trio nucleus.
Although Hawaii Jibaros strongly defended and asserted their 'Jibaro-
ness" and Amerindian "Taino-ness" (while both implicitly and explicitly
denying the African part of their heritage), they were unwittingly co-opted
into the acceptance of typically AfroLatin aspects of musical culture and the
expansion of their perceived parameters of the Jibaro tradition. Cultural
conquest thus proceeds apace, music acting the part of the "Trojan horse."
Notes
This research was supported by grants from the American Council of

Learned Societies; the National Endowment for the Humanities; Hawai'i
State Foundation on Culture and the Arts; the East-West Center Arts
Program (Honolulu); and the following offices, colleges and centers at
Arizona State University: College of Fine Arts, Office of the Vice-President
for Research, Faculty Grant-In-Aid Program, Center for Latin American
Studies, and Hispanic Research Center. In addition, I would like to thank
Frank Axelrod of the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras, Nancy King
of the Bishop Museum, Leslie Landrum of the A.S.U. Herbarium, and
Charlotte Taylor of the Missouri Botanical Garden for ethnobotanical
information, and Bob Brozeman, Wallace Rave, and Stan Werbel for
organological information pertaining to guitars.
J'baro Image and Hawaif Puerto Rico : 147
1. Borinquenwas the indigenous Taino Indian word for Puerto Rico;

Puerto Ricans sometimes use it in poetic reference to their island and
to themselves as Borinquenos. In Hawaii's ethnic nomenclatural slang,
Borinqueno has become Borinque, analogous to Yobo("Korean"), Pake
("Chinese"), Bukbuk ("Filipino"), and so on.
2. For an excellent discussion of this process as it applies to musical ac-
culturation see Duany 1984.
3. Caribbean Taino Amerindian ancestry is commonly used by Hawai'i
Puerto Ricans to explain dark skin or "nonwhite"features. Duany
(1994, 69) and Largey (1994, 112) refer to this same rationalizationfor
the Dominican Republic and among Haitian Creoles respectively.
4. See Aning 1977; Berliner 1981; Chenoweth 1964; Kaptain 1992.
5. Plantation workers of that time were very poor, and items of even
limited technology (such as cameras) were much more expensive
relative to average wages than they are today. Of the few commercial
recordings made of Hawaii Puerto Rican music, none appearedbefore
the 1970s. Some relatively crude recordings of dances and radio pro-
grams made in homes and radio stations exist (especially from the
mid-1950s onwards; a few homemade discs exist from the 1940s), but
have been poorly maintained. The few commercial recordings made of
Puerto Rican groups are from the 1970s and later, when the con-
temporary Hawai'i Puerto Rican electrified ensemble was already
entrenched.
6. Although the word giiiro is most common in Hawai'i, older Puerto
Ricans frequently use the word giicharo,unlike younger folk. Alonso's
ElJibaro(1884; written El Gibaroin the original orthography), a classic
Puerto Rican ethnography of the jibaros, mentions in addition to giiiro,
the names carracho and calabazo,neither of which I have ever heard in
Hawai'i. Gourd scraper nomenclature in the Caribbean is as inconsis-
tent as it is rich and varied. Ortiz (1952: 163-178; 330-337) presents
an interesting discussion of Cuban gourd and metal scrapers and their
nomenclature (with comparative material from other parts of the
Hispanic Caribbean). For Puerto Rico, he also mentions the word
giiicharo,which he thinks to be onomatopoeic (cf. Hawai'i plantation
Japanese onomatopoeic kachikachi,a local term often used for Hawai'i
Puerto Rican dance music), based upon the instrument's scraping
sound.
7. Biologist Frank Axelrod of the University of Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras)
herbarium states that he has never seen elongated giuirogourds grow-
ing wild in Puerto Rico (p.c. 1993). The implication is that due to the
long (Pre-Columbian) use of the giiro as an instrument, suitable
gourds have likely been specifically cultivated for centuries.
8. The process described by Lizardo (1988: 251-57) for the Dominican
148 : Ted Solis
guayo (also called giira, less commonly giiiro, which seems to imply
more typically the original gourd version), the characteristic tubular
metal scraper of merengue ensembles, partly parallels that of the giiiro
in Hawaii. The gourd version is rarely seen. Lizardo states that
Ultimamente por la dificultad de conseguir los Bangafios o Giiiros se esta
proliferandoel uso del Guayo en el acompanamientode musica que siempre
hizo el Guiro. (Lizardo 1988: 245)
Finally, due to the difficulty of obtaining bangafios or giiiros the use of the
[metal] guayo is becoming more common in the accompaniment of music
which always used the [gourd] giiiro. (author's translation)
In Hawai'i, the process continued further: an ad hoc replacement (the
metal gfiiro) served as a stop-gap until it became practical to use the
original instrument once again.
9. Hohner accordions, made in Trossingen, Germany, and long domi-
nant in various American ethnic traditions, have been most popular
among Hawai'i Puerto Ricans. They were made in both "German" and
"Vienna/Italian" styles.
10. Figueroa's style and repertoire are well documented (see Solis 1989 and
1994).
11. The following creole Puerto Rican stringed instruments have been
mentioned as having been played along with the cuatro to accompany
the Jibaro seis genre in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico: tiple, requinto,
tres, and bordonua(see Alonso 1986; Batista 1984; Centro de Investiga-
ciones 1981; Sotomayor and Cumpiano forthcoming). Only the first
two were remembered by the oldest Puerto Ricans (octogenarians and
nonagenarians). These instruments appear to be the only traditional
Puerto Rican strings (as opposed to violin, guitar, mandolin, banjo,
and other pan-Euro-American instruments) to have been frequently
used in Hawai'i in a lead capacity.
12. This ensemble appears similar or identical to that cited in Spottswood
(1990, 1690) under the name "Quinteto Borinquen," in which case the
player is pioneer cuatro recording artist Joaquin Rivera.
13. Joseph "Boy" Sedeiio (b. 1924) remembers making a pandereta,(Puerto
Rican jingle-less tambourine) from the body of a banjo, the neck of
which had been removed. That a banjo had become so dispensable
may indicate the instrument's falling prestige at that time.
14. There is ample precedent for this practice, both in art and folk tradi-
tions of string music. In Luis Milan's famous El Maestro (1535), an in-
struction book and anthology of music for the vihuela de mano, (a
forerunner of the Spanish guitar), his tuning instructions are:
Subireys la prima tan alto quanto lo pueda suffrir:y despues templareys las
otras cuerdas al punto de la prima . . . y templada desta manera estara bien
y a su verdadera entonacion (Milan 1975, ii).
Raise the first [string] as high as it can be; and afterward, you will tune the
other strings to the note . . . of the first [string]. . . . And tuned in this way,
[the vihuela] will be fine and at its true intonation.
American folk guitarists, in the absence of a fixed referent tuning

pitch, often tune the "highest" (in elevation, although lowest pitched)
string until it ceases buzzing when plucked, and then proceed to tune
the other strings in intervals relative to this referent.
15. Tenor player Raymond Galarza (b. 1930) of Kaua'i has never switched
to the five-coursed modern cuatro and says that he likes to kid modern
cuatro players that "the real cuatro is uno, dos, tres, cuatro; you guys
playing cinco. I'm [i.e., with the four-string tenor] the only real cuatro
player; I'm the last of the Mohicans" (see photograph 5).
16. The demand for such trips has increased to the point that chartered
tours from Hawai'i are now organized for local Puerto Ricans every
two to three years. Many are retired from government and plantation
jobs and were the beneficiaries of improved labor and retirement con-
tracts negotiated from the 1940s onwards.
17. Some musicians who formed their styles during the tenor era have
maintained tenor (and, by implication, old cuatro) tuning and (within
the limits dictated by the very different necks of the cuatro and tenor)
performance practice. A few, for example, use only the four highest-
pitched strings, which they tune (from lowest to highest pitches) with a
fifth and two fourths, rather than the pure fourths of the modern five-
course cuatro.
18. Tanilau Dias, a radio technician who worked part-time as a musi-
cian/bandleader, tells of receiving short-wave radio broadcasts from
Havana in the 1930s and ordering 78 rpm records directly from the
disk jockey.
19. Precedent for such an instrument in the "ancient" Hawaiian hula
tradition exists (hardwood la au concussion sticks); however, the typical
syncopated 3/2 or 2/3 clave rhythmic patterns could be readily related
to the rhythms of the omnipresent guarachada guitar strumming pat-
terns (see notes to Solis 1994) of Cuban origin assimilated into Jibaro
music before the Hawai'i migration. Thus, the rhythmic groundwork
for claves had been well prepared by the time of its actual arrival in
Hawai'i.
150 : Ted Solis
20. The word marimbain Euro-American usage denotes a xylophone with

individual resonators beneath each key. The words marimba, mbira,
kalimba, timbila, mbila, madimba, and madinda are all derived from the
same Bantu root, which encompasses both xylophones and
lamellophones.
21. For examples of this type of expanded 1940s-type ensemble, see selec-
tions 12 and 19 of compact disc Puerto Rico in Polynesia (Solis 1994).
22. The term "running bass" is used by Hawai' Puerto Ricans for the
technique of plucking a bass line on guitar while (usually) interspersing
strums. During the period of larger groups including multiple guitars,
one guitar would typically emphasize this function while the other(s)
were limited to strums.
23. See Solis 1989 selection "El Negro Bemb6n" for vivid verbal and sonic
descriptions of contemporary Hawaii Puerto Rican reactions to the
Afro-Puerto Rican bomba as played by Puerto Rican servicemen.
24. Double congas in a cabaret setting had appeared in Cuba well before
this: a photo of the Orquesta Casino de la Playa (courtesy Walfredo de
los Reyes, Jr.) taken in Havana c. 1945 shows the immortal singer
Miguelito Valdes sitting on one of a two-conga set.
25. Cuatro virtuoso/composer "Maestro Ladi" (Ladislao Martinez Otero)
was recording with bong6s in the 1940s and Jibaro cultural icon
"Ramito," whose records have been enormously popular in Hawaii for
decades, by the early 1950s.
Bibliography
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quefia, Inc.
Alvarez, Luis Manuel
1992 "La Presencia Negra en la Musica Puertorriquena." La
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Berliner, Paul
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Carr, Norma
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Ecology - Hawaii Puerto Rican Instruments

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Ecology - Hawaii Puerto Rican Instruments

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Jíbaro Image and the Ecology of Hawai'i Puerto Rican Musical Instruments

Author(s): Ted Solís

Diasporic studies provide the opportunity

LatinAmericanMusic Review,Volume 16, Number 2, Fall/Winter 1995

Under no circumstances, however, does the word convey to Hawaii Puerto

The Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association in the nineteenth century was

some form or other) have remained at the core of most music-making

The Trioof thePlantations:Early1900s

TheSpanishGuitar.The six-stringed Spanish guitar was little different from

the preparation of pasteles (a popular quintessentially Puerto Rican tamale-

players remaining seldom perform.'0 No younger musician has indicated

the mainstream pan-Latin pop recording industry, and changing inter-

The 'Old, "or 'Keyhole"Cuatro.The cuatro of the 1901 immigrant generation

Photo 3. Ornate old or "keyhole"cuatromade and held by Miguel Rodrigues,

Another more viable alternative may be readily and/or cheaply available.

The Tenor Guitar. By the mid-1930s younger, Hawai'i-born musicians were

appear to have seldom played lead on any guitar-like instrument that

Exposure to the modern cuatro coincided with increased physical com-

There was no clear-cut continuity in performing tradition between the

PercussionAccretionsto the Trio Nucleus

Of the most essential instruments of the Hawai'i Puerto Rican ensemble,

'Box Bass"(Mar'mbula). The "box bass" (called marimbaor marimbulain the

Caribbean) is a metal-tongued lamellophone, or linguaphone best known

instrumentarium. Whereas the typical son clave rhythm could be perceived

Hawaiian "jungle-exotic" combo leader Martin Denny and in Waikiki

Ricans' changing status from plantation laborers to that of urban workers

This research was supported by grants from the American Council of

1. Borinquenwas the indigenous Taino Indian word for Puerto Rico;

American folk guitarists, in the absence of a fixed referent tuning

20. The word marimbain Euro-American usage denotes a xylophone with

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