Rafael Hernández Marín was a Puerto Rican songwriter and the author of hundreds of popular songs in the Latin American repertoire. He specialized in Cuban styles, such as the canción, bolero and guaracha. Among his most famous compositions are "Lamento Borincano,” "Capullito de alhelí,” "Campanitas de cristal,” "Cachita,” "Silencio,” "El cumbanchero,” "Ausencia,” and "Perfume de gardenias.”
Operation Bootstrap is the name given to a series of projects which transformed the economy of Puerto Rico into an industrial and developed one. The federal government of the United States together with what is known today as the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company set forth a series of ambitious economical projects that evolved Puerto Rico into an industrial high-income territory compared to the region. Bootstrap is still considered the economic model of Puerto Rico as the island has still not been able to evolve into a knowledge economy.
Pedro Flores born was one of Puerto Rico's best known composers of ballads and boleros.
El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, commonly known as El Gran Combo, is a Puerto Rican salsa orchestra based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2012, it was often considered Puerto Rico's most successful musical group. The group received the moniker La Universidad de la Salsa in Colombia, due to the sheer number of famous salsa musicians and singers who developed their careers with it, who started with the group, or who were occasionally backed up by the band and La India.
Raphy Leavitt was a Puerto Rican composer and founder of the salsa orchestra, La Selecta.
Pedro Ortiz Dávila, better known as Davilita, was a popular Puerto Rican singer of boleros and patriotic songs. He was the first artist to record the Rafael Hernández standard "Lamento Borincano".
Luis Felipe Rodríguez, better known as Felipe "La Voz" Rodríguez, born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, was a singer of boleros. He is regarded as the most popular Puerto Rican male singer of the 1950s based on record sales and live audience records. Many of Rodríguez's recordings are often considered to be classics in Puerto Rico.
Ángel Santos Vega Colon, aka Santitos Colón, was a Puerto Rican bolero and mambo singer, born in Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico and raised in Mayagüez. He was also known by the moniker: "The Man with The Golden Voice".
"En mi Viejo San Juan" is a composition by Puerto Rican composer and singer Noel Estrada. Interpreted by numerous singers and translated into various languages, the song is "widely known around the world". There are musical interpretations in German, English and French. Over 1,000 distinct recordings of the song have been made worldwide.
The history of Puerto Rico began with the settlement of the Ortoiroid people before 430 BC. At the time of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1493, the dominant indigenous culture was that of the Taíno. The Taíno people's numbers went dangerously low during the latter half of the 16th century because of new infectious diseases carried by Europeans, exploitation by Spanish settlers, and warfare.
Carmín Vega is a Puerto Rican singer and comedian. She has been called "the woman with a thousand voices and a thousand faces".
The Popular Democratic Party is a political party in Puerto Rico that advocates to continue as a Commonwealth of the United States with self-governance. The party was founded in 1938 by dissidents from the Puerto Rican Liberal Party and the Unionist Party and originally promoted policies on the center-left. In recent years, however, its leaders have described the party as centrist.
Carlos Fernando Chardón Palacios, also referred to as "Fernando Chardón", was the Secretary of State of Puerto Rico from 1969 to 1973 and the Puerto Rico Adjutant General from 1973 to 1975.
Emilio S. Belaval was a lawyer and Supreme Judge and writer from Puerto Rico. He graduated from the University of Puerto Rico. His 1935 work Los cuentos de la Universidad, including the essay Los problemas de la cultura puertorriqueña, dealt with ideas of Puerto Rican identity with Beleval favoring one centering on "its own geography" rather than any universalism. This aspect is said to place his views at variance to Antonio S. Pedreira's Insularismo, despite the works having some similarities and being published close together in time. Some of the works by Belaval were made into theater productions by his countryman, playwright Leopoldo Santiago Lavandero.
"Lamento Borincano" is Rafael Hernández Marín's acclaimed composition in Puerto Rico's patriotic tradition. It takes its name from the free musical form Lament, and from Borinquen, an indigenous name for the island. Hernández released the song in 1929 to illustrate the economic precariousness that had engulfed the Puerto Rican farmer since the late-1920s' Puerto Rico. It became an instantaneous hit in Puerto Rico and its popularity soon followed in many Latin American countries. Renowned international artists have sung it and featured it in their repertoire.
Trio Vegabajeño was a legendary Puerto Rican popular music trio that existed from 1943 to the early 80s. This group marked an era of popular music in Puerto Rico. When trios were very popular in the Americas, Trio Vegabajeño was considered the ambassadors from Puerto Rico.
Olivia Paoli (1855–1942), born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, was a Puerto Rican suffragist and activist who fought for the rights of women in Puerto Rico. She was the sister of Antonio Paoli, a opera tenor and of Amalia Paoli, a soprano.
Sonido Tré is a latin music trio comprising vocalists Mayda Belén Rivera and Edgar Ríos, and Quique Domenech on Cuatro. All three members were born in Puerto Rico. Domenech studied the cuatro from the age of six. At 11 he entered a five-year program at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture studying the cuatro and music theory. He has been nominated twice for a Latin Grammy. Rivera was a semifinalist on Latin American Idol. The newest member of Sonido Tré is Edgar Ríos. Ríos was a member of the a cappella group Nota, winners of the NBC show The Sing-Off.
You may listen to Luciano Quiñones piano interpretation of Hernandez Marin's "Preciosa" here