The Countryside Enters the Bronx

How the Puerto Rican cuatro carried jíbaro mountain music into hard New York salsa.

The cuatro belonged to Puerto Rico's jíbaro countryside: a bright lead string voice for seis, aguinaldo and mountain repertory. Yomo Toro brought that sound into New York without treating it as a museum piece. On Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe's 'Asalto Navideño,' the cuatro met trombones, congas and barrio salsa, joining Christmas tradition to the modern city. The result was not folklore pasted onto salsa; it was Puerto Rican rural identity acting as contemporary material. A mountain instrument entered the Bronx and found that it already belonged there.

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