Baltazar Carrero,“El jíbaro de Rincón,” was born in Rincón in 1917 to businessman José Salomé Carrero and seamstress Juana Rodríguez. Raised in Mayagüez, he learned to sing décimas with his father who used to play the Puerto Rican cuatro during Three King’s Day and other religious festivities. During his youth, Baltazar would earn some money singing with his friends in school related events. Unable to graduate, he worked in a cookie factory called Galletas Sultana. In 1946, Baltazar briefly left for New York City where he lived with his brother and sister, returning to Mayagüez two years later. It was then, at age thirty, that he began to sing jíbaro music professionally -- up until that point, he had only sung guarachas, merengues y boleros. In Mayagüez, Baltazar and his brother were offered an opportunity to sing at a local radio station. Baltazar rejected the offer, which required him to be there five days a week. He couldn’t commit because he was busy running a cafetín (a small café) that he owned called “El Jovito.”

By the end of 1948, El Jíbaro de Rincón was again in New York City singing in night clubs. These gigs led him to meet Claudio Ferrer, Nieves Quintero, Miguelito Carrillo and Ada Carrillo with whom he began to record albums in 1950 for the labels Cenit, Rival, Riney and Seeco. The first song that he recorded was a décima entitled “Te pego la mano.” Among his early hits were “La mujer mecánica,” “La casa de Yagua'' and “Vendo unos ojos verdes.” Soon thereafter, he released four albums with Ansonia Records: “Baltazar Carrero Siempre peleando Vol. 1,” “Vol. 2,” “Los cupones, Vol. 3” and “Tierra adentro,” which includes Flor Morales Ramos “Ramito,” his brother Juan María “Moralito” and José Miguel Class “El Gallito de Manatí.” According to Baltazar, in an interview conducted by David Morales and William Cumpiano from El Proyecto del Cuatro Puertorriqueño, he was paid $1,200 for each album.

Throughout his career, Baltazar performed at the Palladium, Teatro Puerto Rico and Tropicana, among other prestigious locations in New York City. After the mid 1960s, Baltazar focused on the various small cafés that he had established in New York City and Puerto Rico. He passed away in 2008.

Note: This biography is largely based on an interview
conducted by David Morales and William Cumpiano
from El Proyecto del Cuatro Puertorriqueño

“Baltazar Carrero Con Guitarras” is an album of seises, aguinaldos and plenas. It also includes one merengue. Among the seises is the mariandá “Siempre peleando,” a song about a couple that is always fighting/arguing: “I feel like I’m in prison, when we do not fight” sings Baltazar, adding that “the day that we don’t fight/argue, that will be the end of it [of our relationship].” In other words, this is how they show love for one another. “De cualquier maya sale un ratón” is a seis milonga about the importance of avoiding mistakes both in your personal life and in your career as a singer and a composer. In the song, Baltazar references jíbaro singer Germán Rosario as an example of a high-quality performer.

“Toquen un seis bombeao” is in the seis bombeao style, the only seis that is not sung in décimas. Instead, it consists of the declamation/improvisation of a humorous quatrain, known as bomba, which is preceded and followed by a musical interlude. The word “bombeao” presumably links this style to bomba music, an Afro-Puerto Rican musical genre whose first historical reference dates to the late 1700s. In “Toquen un seis bombeao” different men and women declaim bombas in which they make fun of one another by coming up with some hilarious insults. For example, one of the men comments on the ugliness of a particular woman. To this Julia replies: “It was as if I had been cursed when I got here, they made me dance with this big-belly old man.” Among the musical highlights is the use of the accordion, and the recreation of a fiesta jíbara (peasant party) via the inclusion of laughter and brief commentaries by those in attendance.

“Aquí se me dañó Lola” is a seis villarán about Lola, a Puerto Rican woman who, according to Baltazar, as soon as he brought her to the US, “did not want to give him anything.” The singer suspects that she is in love with someone else because it has been “fifteen days” since she gave him “something.” As Baltazar stresses, “se dañó aquí” (she was ruined here). In the song, Lola is portrayed as a user, but the song also gives us a glimpse at how Puerto Ricans were potentially able to assert their agency in the diaspora (by having control over their bodies). Among the musical highlights is the use of the violin, which along with the cuatro, plays the introductory musical material and ornamentations throughout the song.

The aguinaldos on the album are “El soco del medio'' and “Cantando a Borinquen.” The first is about a robbery that takes place at the singer’s house. It includes some great cuatro solos between the decimillas. The second revolves around the love for the homeland. Curiously, Baltazar is not too concerned with the syllabic count. While aguinaldos consist of hexasyllabic lines (six syllables), some of the lines in “Cantando a Borinquen” have seven and even eight syllables. Ironically, this would seem to contradict the claims made in “De cualquier maya sale un ratón” regarding the avoidance of mistakes.

The plenas on the album are characterized by their double entendre. Following up on the topic of “Aquí se me dañó Lola,” “Esa negra no come na’ ” is about a Black woman, presumably Lola, who is not interested in having sex. Baltazar suspects that “she must be eating elsewhere” because “several days pass by and she does not want to eat anything.” Furthermore, when she does eat it is “once a week” and “in a bad mood.” In “Qué bueno cocina Juana” Baltazar continues to dwell on the relationship between sex and cooking but now the central character is not Lola but Juana. Baltazar praises Juana for her “culinary” talents but complains: “If you could see compadre Nieves, how good Juana cooks, [the problem is that] she only cooks when she wants to, two or three times a month or once a week, and sometimes she pretends to be sick, even though she is healthy and fine.” As the somewhat sex-crazed Baltazar underlines, “if it were up to me, I’d be eating in the evening and the morning.” Baltazar continues to sing about Juana and sex in “Y si se cambia Juana.” But now, certain heterosexual anxieties seem to flourish: “If men continue to change [their sex], women will change theirs too. And so, I’m careful with Juana; that she might not become a Juan.” In this humorous yet homophobic/transphobic song Baltazar wonders, “what will I do if I fall asleep and she becomes Juan?” He has reason to worry as he saw “Juana dressed as a man, wearing a carton board and a suit.”

“En órbita,” the singer claims that he can come up with a plena about any topic because he is always inspired. So good are his plenas, he claims, that “women always enjoy them.”

The album also includes the merengue “Yo tengo un azúcar,” and the song “No la quiero más.” The first is in conversation with the plenas about sex/food: “I have sugar for women, she who leaves, comes back quickly [for more]. There is this little something that I do well.” The second is a guaracha about a woman that Baltazar “does not love anymore.” Apparently, this woman was rejected by Baltazar because she engaged in suspect activities such as “dyeing her hair, using pants and going out partying.” It includes the accordion and a nice cuatro solo midway through.

Overall, Baltazar Carrero Con Guitarras is largely about the relationship between men and women, narrated mostly from a male centric (and macho) point of view (the exception being “Toquen un seis bombeao”). Following up on the culinary metaphors, it is a somewhat spicy album.

-Dr. Mario Cancel Bigay