Andrés 'El Jíbaro' Jiménez - Puerto Rico's folk music icon

From plena to salsa to reggaeton, Puerto Rico is a Caribbean musical powerhouse. In the first of a series of reports from the island, Ian Malinow meets ‘jibaro’ music legend Andrés Jiménez and discovers an independence movement.

Most of the world’s countries have at some point in their history spawned a timeless artist who has become a voice for the masses. The United States has Bob Dylan. Argentina has Mercedes Sosa. Britain had John Lennon. Cuba has Silvio Rodríguez. And the list goes on and on.

Many would say they’ve enriched their nation’s cultural and musical traditions through their music and poetry, as they battle against social injustices and recount the history of the oppressed.

Since 1898 Puerto Rico has been governed by the US, its people have freedom of movement between the two nations, but do not have the right to vote. While some Puerto Ricans would like their island to become a fully-fledged state of the US, others are demanding independence. One of the leading voices in this movement is Andrés Jiménez, better known as ‘El Jíbaro’.

Jiménez, the island’s most widely acclaimed singer-songwriter of traditional Puerto Rican folk music, shows another side to the nation that gave us pop legend Ricky Martin, hit crooner José Feliciano and the self-proclaimed reggaetón king, Daddy Yankee.

The 61-year-old has been a proud troubadour of Puerto Rican ‘jibaro’ music all over the island and in the US throughout his successful four-decade musical career. With over 30 albums under his belt, a 2008 Billboard Music Award for his album ‘Mi Parranda’ and a loyal cult following that keeps growing every day, Jiménez shows no signs of slowing down. Aside from jibaro music, he has also recorded Nueva Trova (protest songs) and salsa.

“As a Puerto Rican folk music singer, I represent the combination of our musical influences drawn from the Taíno, Spanish and African cultures,” said Jiménez, a native of the small mountain town of Orocovis, a two-hour drive from the capital San Juan. The origins of Puerto Rican ‘jíbaro’ (or peasant, country) music can be traced back 500 hundred years.

When Christopher Columbus reached the shores of the New World, he was about to set in motion the creation of an effervescent, ever-evolving musical movement that still exists today in ‘La Isla Del Encanto’ (The Island of Enchantment). While the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors nearly drove the Taíno and other indigenous peoples to oblivion in the name of God, colonizers also brought with them their musical traditions, most importantly - the guitar. Furthermore, they brought slaves from Africa to work on sugar and coffee plantations, who also contributed to the development of this new sound with an array of traditions and rhythms - the foundations of Puerto Rico’s popular folkloric genres.

As a result, the ‘guiro’, a gourd-like Taíno instrument that it is still used in today’s ‘conjuntos’ (bands), played with African percussion and the 4-stringed cuatro guitar, gave birth to the traditional folk music of Puerto Rico - aguinaldo, seis, decimas, danza, bomba and plena.

“Those first 400 hundred years were marked by a fusion of many music and vocal styles – musicians drew inspiration from the Taíno, from Spain’s guitar and religious chants, African rhythms and even Arabic vocalization techniques,” Jiménez explained to Mondomix on a clear and sunny December morning in San Juan. “In coastal towns, African musical influences flourished through bomba and plena, while in the countryside you feel the European and Arabic elements more strongly.”

Jiménez’s rich and textured musical brew is the result of the fusion of these distinctive cultures, and he also draws in jazz and Latin American rhythms such as Argentina’s ‘milonga’, Colombia’s ‘vallenato’ and Venezuela’s llanera’. For Jiménez, the main ingredients of a traditional Puerto Rican ‘conjunto’ are cuatro, guiro, guitar, bongos and conga, and from there he says you can improvise and add a horn section or even experiment with an accordion to spice up the arrangement.

Most recently, Jiménez is promoting his new CD/DVD, ‘Fiesta en la Montaña’ a 13-track greatest hits release filmed and recorded in his home studio in Orocovis. Its title track is a 70s-style ‘salsa gorda’ that’s a reaffirmation of Puerto Rican nationality, featuring Charlie Aponte, one of the fabled lead singers of El Gran Combo.

El Gran Combo – La Soledad

Also featured is a swinging tribute to ‘bomba’ maestro Rafael Cepeda, as well as a beautiful Nueva Trova song titled ‘Mi Barrio’ and several ‘aguinaldo’, ‘plena’ and ‘seis chorreao’ tracks.

Troubadours like Jiménez sing odes to life, romantic love and love of country. His incisive and patriotic lyrics often reflect his passion for everything Puerto Rican, and his lifelong fight against colonialism.

“The purpose of my music is to explain that Puerto Ricans were born and evolved on a Caribbean island under very particular conditions and that we disagree with many of the rules and regulations implemented here by the U.S. government…we are a force of resistance,” said Jiménez, “and I will continue to spread this message in my music until I die.”

With the demise of the multi-national record companies and the rise of online music networks, Jiménez bought a small piece of land up in the mountains, built a recording studio and launched his own independent record label two years ago. “The music world as we knew it has changed dramatically,” he reflects. Today he’s using new models and technologies to reach his fans worldwide, but above all, he wants to keep the music real.

“We’ve always wanted our music to be real, to speak about the experience of a nation, of a people as a community - one that has lived under difficult circumstances for over 500 hundred years.”

Whether or not ‘El Jibaro’ lives to see his wish come true remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: his calls for freedom will be heard long after he’s gone.

Ian Malinow

Puerto Rico’s Ismael Rivera sings a tribute to San Juan’s La Perla district.

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