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El Cantor De La Monta​ñ​a, Vol. 3

by Ramito

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Siempre Amor 02:57
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La Copa Rota 03:00
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Adiviname 02:39

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In "Ramito El Cantor de la Montaña, Vol. 3," Ramito is accompanied by Toñito Ferrer y sus Jíbaros Modernos. While most of the songs revolve around Ramito’s relationship with women, he also explores other subjects.

In “Rosas del campo,” a beautifully poetic guaracha jíbara, Ramito compares his beloved to different types of flowers. “In the morning she was a rose; at noon, a carnation; in the evening, a Sicilian flower; and a lily at dawn.” As the catchy chorus stresses, this “pretty perfumed flower” is “from my beloved Borinquen,” that is, Puerto Rico. Among the musical highlights of this song is the virtuosic cuatro solo midway through, and its accompaniment throughout the entire song where it alternates between its lower and its higher register.

In “Nuestras mujeres,” a seis con décima, Ramito continues to extoll Puerto Rican women. Here, though, he compares the latter to women of different nationalities: Hawaiian, Indian, Japanese, German, Italian, Danish, Salvadorian, Chilean, Australian, St. Thomian, British, Argentinian, Dominican, Jewish, Brazilian, and Colombian, among others. Each décima concludes with the pie forzao “the ideal female is the Puerto Rican woman.” Though the song works largely as a list of nationalities, Ramito does describe what he views as the major attributes of some of these women. Haitian women, for example, are “clean,” and so are the “delicious Honduran women.” “Chinese women” for their part, are “home-loving.” Spanish women, he tells us, “are pretty” whereas Cuban and Mexican women “are like poppies.” Peruvians, on the other hand are “gladiolas” while Panamanians “are tasty.” In the end, Ramito seems to imply that the Puerto Rican woman is “ideal” because only she possesses all of the aforementioned “virtues.” That is, as seen through Ramito’s male gaze, the Puerto Rican woman is “ideal” because she is homebound, beautiful like a flower, and sexually desirable. Whether his description of the American woman as one who “dreams with being rich,” is an attribute or a defect is not clear. Throughout, once again, the cuatro plays a prominent role via its arpeggios, scales and solos.

In “Enséñame el lunar,” a meremple—a designation that suggests a mix of Puerto Rican plena and Dominican merengue—Ramito continues to explore his sexual desires. This time, though, he is accompanied by the tres cubano, the accordion, the panderos and the güiro. Directing the song to the woman that he is attracted to, he sings: “I dreamed about you, that I was going to marry you.” This woman has a “pretty mole,” and Ramito can already imagine how “much fun he will have when she shows it” to him. He will “eat it with kisses.” The mole, it turns out, is not a “metaphor” for some intimate female body part. It is actually behind the woman’s ear. In the end, then, insofar as the ear is an erogenous zone, and considering Ramito’s obsession with the mole, this song is less about double entendre than about Ramito’s exploration of fetishistic sexual desires.

The album also includes songs of sorrow and unrequited love. In “Triste y solitario,” an aguinaldo costanero, Ramito concludes each decimilla with the pie forzao “sad and solitary.” His life is akin to Jesus’s Via Crucis and a “never-ending rosary.” He describes himself as “a wounded bird,” “a ship without a port” and someone who has been wearing a “black veil” since he was born. With no one to assist him, even nature offers him nothing but a “storm.” While these beautifully poetic lyrics convey a feeling of sadness and despair, the music is rather upbeat and it includes an impressive cuatro solo right after the second decimilla.

In “Lo que tú no sabes,” a seis mapeyé, Ramito expresses the deep love that he feels for his beloved. He loves her, for example, “more than Christ loves his cross,” “more than the wolf loves his hideout,” “more than the sick loves his doctor,” “more than the dew loves the flower,” and “more than he loves his own life.” But as the title of the song makes explicit, and as he repeats at the end of each décima, his beloved “does not know that this is so.”
“La copa rota,” a seis llanera, is about two friends bonding in a bar over having been abandoned by their respective “ungrateful” women. The first friend is so distressed and angry that he bites the cup from which he is drinking “destroying his mouth” thus “mixing the liquor with his blood.” Still angry, he asks the bartender for another “broken cup” so that he can “feel more pain.” His goal is “to bleed drop by drop the venom of her love.”

“Recuerdos del nene,” a plena where Ramito is accompanied by the same musical instruments as “Enséname el lunar,” is about a woman who “abandoned” Ramito in pursuit of “wealth” and “many lovers.” Ramito accuses her of not being a good mother. As he stresses, if she is listening to his plena, and if she “has a heart,” she should know that “the child sends you his memories, bendito.” By adding the emblematic Puerto Rican “¡bendito!,” an expression of compassion, sadness and empathy with religious connotations that is more commonly preceded by the “ay” (¡ay bendito!), Ramito stresses this woman’s cruelty. While the child (¡bendito!), misses her terribly, she is enjoying her new car and living the “vida alegre,” an expression that literally means “happy life” but that in Puerto Rico is used to refer to prostitutes or to women who are considered to be prostitutes on account of having multiple sexual partners (e.g. “mujer de la vida alegre”). Insofar as Ramito is using it in the latter sense, and taking into account that Ramito often celebrated his own sexual exploits in his songs, he is clearly defending his child by asserting his own machismo, and vice versa. That is, through the child he is able to assert the latter.

In “Echa pa’ lante,” a seis controversia, Ramito’s machismo comes into full fruition. Singing to an unidentified trovador, Ramito tells him that if his wife is jealous, he should not let her “govern him even if she is good.” If she is “too independent and courageous,” he emphasizes, “he should hit her in the face, and continue moving forward” instead of being “a coward.” The unidentified singer replies that he “could be arrested for doing that” adding that “he who hits a woman, has no forgiveness from God.” Unconvinced, Ramito replies that if the woman continues to fight, he should “break three of her ribs,” “break a chair over her,” “throw a bucket of water at her” and “and continue moving forward” instead of being “a coward.” The singer answers by restating his case, this time arguing that “the devil will take you” because “he who hits a woman, has no forgiveness from God.”

Two other songs are worth highlighting in this album: “El preso y el que está muerto” and “Adivíname.” In the first, Ramito sings about those who are in prison. He begins by declaiming an octosyllabic quatrain (a four-line stanza) also known as glosa. Typically, when a trovador is given a glosa, each line becomes the final line of the following four décimas. Here, however, only three lines are used. Ramito notes how inmates and the dead are “two parallel lines” insofar as they are both forgotten by society. Overall, the song is a call for having compassion towards those who have been imprisoned. As Ramito explicitly states in his spoken remarks “one should visit the inmates.” In “Adivíname,” Ramito borrows some lyrics that date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. The quatrain of his chorus “Hojas del arbol caídas/ juguetes del viento son/y son flores desprendidas/del arbol del corazón” is a variation on a quintilla (a five-lined stanza) first published by American anthropologist Alden Mason in 1918 based on his fieldwork in Puerto Rico (see Mason 1918: 324) (1). Ramito drops one of the five lines, thus making it a quatrain. Interestingly, the original quintilla, as Mason notes, was based on a poem by José de Espronceda published in 1900: “Hojas del árbol caídas/juguetes del viento son/las ilusiones perdidas/ ¡Ay! son hojas desprendidas/del árbol del corazón.” (Fallen leaves of the tree/they are toys of the wind/the lost dreams/Oh, they are leaves/detached from the tree of the heart). Ramito fully repurposes this poem by adding several décimas that dwell on love and religion. Ultimately, “Adíviname,” illustrates some of the ways in which oral and literary traditions, or “the low” and “the high,” merged in jíbaro music.

Overall, this is a great album where poetry, existential reflections, compassion for inmates, cultural pride, and conservative gender politics mix, showcasing once again, the complexities behind Ramito’s worldview.

(1) See: “Porto-Rican Folk-Lore. Décimas, Christmas Carols, Nursery Rhymes, and Other Songs” by J. Alden Mason and Aurelio M. Espinosa in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 31, No. 121 (Jul. - Sep., 1918), pp. 289-450.

-Dr. Mario R. Cancel-Bigay

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released August 28, 1961

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