This selection of songs covers a span of sixty decades, music genres and Puerto Rican and Nuyorican experiences of migration and life in the United States. Through their lyrics and styles these musicians and performers trace different stages of Puerto Rican migration to the US, the return to Puerto Rico, the settling in Nueva York and apparent assimilation, and the new US-born generations. Florencio Morales Ramos “Ramito” was a trovador, folklorist and performer of jíbaro music born in Puerto Rico in 1915. Ramito, known as El cantor de la montaña, built his career as a performer embodying the jíbaro persona through this style wearing a pava hat, white pants with belt, and a handkerchief tied across his neckline. His record covers often featured him holding other elements that allude to this jíbaro persona and Puerto Rican campesino essence: roosters, a cuatro, or a bundle of plantains and a machete juxtaposed over a background image of mountain range and other rural landscapes. In terms of his music, Ramito performed merengues and plenas, as well as décimas. In the 1960s he lived in the United States where he performed in cultural events of the Puerto Rican diaspora until his return to Puerto Rico in 1972. Me quedo en Puerto Rico reflects his regret of migrating to the United States and the travails and struggles he endured.
La Sonora Ponceñas’ Un jíbaro en Nueva York recorded in the early 1970s, narrates the Puerto Rican experience from the perspective of migrating, settling and seemingly assimilating in New York. The song criticizes immigrants who, upon arriving to the United States, forget Spanish and with that his origins.
On Migrating and Testing the US Waters
Me quedo en Puerto Rico, Ramito, 1965
Ramito was a performer, singer, a folkloric character representing the jíbaro. He lived 10 years in New York where he performed in cultural events for the diaspora and the burgeoning Nuyorican community. In this song he laments having left Puerto Rico after following the advice of those who told him to migrate to the United States, soon returning to Puerto Rico and vowing to never leave the island again.
Follow this link to Ramito’s musical catalogue on Ansonia Records, accompanied by articles and a biographical note. And here you can access Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños archival photographs of Ramito in New York City.
Settling en Nueva York
Un Jíbaro en Nueva York, La Sonora Ponceña, 1971
The song lyrics criticize, among many things the assimilation of Latinxs:
Me refiero a los hispanos
Que llegan de Nueva York
Que al tirarse del avión
Se le olvida el castellano
Ayer me encontré a Mariano
Un jíbaro de Jagüey
Que al montarse en el subway
Le pregunté como estaba
Y lo que me contestaba era
I don’t know what you say
Anarcho-Rican Radical Politics and Activism
Dream in Porto Rican/No Money Down, RicanStruction, 1998
An event put together in anarcho-punk DIY, this music video was shot in an abandoned lot in El Barrio on 1998 with the help from the community.
This dual music video by Nuyorican hardcore punk rockers RicanStruction displays their radical contestations against the status quo and the rejection to mainstream music industry capitalist aims. The video features slow paced images of Loisaida street scenes of neighborhood children, adults and elders standing next to or in front of the Puerto Rican flags and of murals of predominant Puerto Ricans flashing every few seconds, as the audio of Malcolm X’s speech “The Ballot or the Bullet” with his critiques of the American nightmare, plays in the background. The song title, alludes to plight of Nuyoricans and the faded illusion of the American dream. As the sampled audio fades and the song starts, “dream in porto rican, freakin dreaming of nightmares,” the urgency and combativeness of the lyrics is also transmitted in the fast-paced hardcore punk rock drum beats and guitar riffs, mixed within Latin percussion breakdowns
Hip Hop Jibarismo and Nuyorican Cultural Activism
To the Hills, Soundboy Cartagena [aka Hip Hop Jibarito], 2020
Singer and performer Soundboy Cartagena, after whom the Bushwick Hip Hop Jibarito mural was painted, developed his style based on the aesthetics commonly associated with a jíbaro with a modern-day twist. Cartagena’s music displays a cultural activism that promotes Puerto Rican nationhood and identity. In To the Hills, Cartagena’s Spanglish and rap-rock-salsa rendition of Eddie Palmieri’s Vamonos Pa’l Monte, Cartagena signs I’m moving to the hills / Leaving the hood, reflecting on his yearning to return to the campo, he invokes the image of a woman who accompanies in that journey where they settle in a country house in the mountains.
