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El Cantor De La Monta​ñ​a, Vol. 5

by Ramito

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about

Florencio Morales Ramos, better known as Ramito, was an expert singer and composer of jíbaro (peasant) music. Born in 1915 in Caguas, Puerto Rico–which he would often extol in his songs along with his neighborhood of Bairoa—Ramito became familiar with the seises and aguinaldos (the main styles of jíbaro music or trova) during his childhood. By age six he was already singing décimas, the ten-line octosyllabic rhyme scheme emblematic of seises, and by the age of eight he was already improvising them. As Ramito told Pedro Malavet Vega during an interview in 1987, his mother Leonarda Ramos was key to his musical education: listening to her sing and improvise as she cultivated tobacco and washed the clothes was his school. He also credited a sister with teaching him some décimas (1).

It was at some point during the 1930s that Florencio Morales Ramos, having sung on a radio program hosted by Rafael Quiñones Vidal, became “Ramito, el Cantor de la Montaña” (the Singer of the Mountain) -- so impressed was Quiñones Vidal by his talent that he baptized him as such. This experience opened the doors to a prolific recording career—Ramito recorded more than 150 LPs (2)—providing him the opportunity to meet and befriend some of the most important Puerto Rican singers and musicians of the time such as Jesús Ríos Robles (“Chuíto el de Cayey”), Jesús Sánchez Erazo (Chuíto el de Bayamón) and Ladislao “Ladí” Martínez, a prominent composer and player of the Puerto Rican cuatro, Puerto Rico’s national guitar and the key musical instrument in trova. In 1949, after singing in the inauguration of several radio stations, he joined Ansonia Records, with which he would record for the rest of his career.

Along with his brothers Luis Morales Ramos “Luisito” and Juan María Morales Ramos “Moralito,” Ramito brought jíbaro music to the United States, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Mexico, among other countries. According to Jesús Vera Irizarry in “Flor Morales Ramos ‘Ramito’ una voz que no se olvida,” (3) Ramito performed in twenty Latin American republics and around thirty states of the US, including Hawaii. Known for his repertoire of aguinaldos and seises, Ramito also recorded and composed many plenas, an Afro-Puerto Rican rhythm born at the beginning of the twentieth century characterized by the use of panderos (handheld frame drums) and its use of call and response. According to David Morales, with the exception of Manuel Jiménez “El Canario,” no other artist recorded more plenas than Ramito (4).

Throughout the 1950s, Ramito, and other trovadores such as Ernestina Reyes “La Calandria,” participated in good will tours to the United States in support of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín’s foundation of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (in Spanish “Free Associated State”), an attempt to purportedly end, through a series of reforms, the still on-going colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States stemming from the US invasion of 1898 (for more on these tours see Licia Fiol-Matta’s The Great Woman Singer). In 1960, after going back and forth between Puerto Rico and New York City since at least the 1950s, he moved to the Big Apple where, with his music, he would delight an ever-growing Puerto Rican diaspora before returning again to Puerto Rico in 1972. Tragically, after having been diagnosed with cancer, he committed suicide in Salinas, Puerto Rico in 1990.

Today, Puerto Ricans evoke Ramito anytime they listen to El Gran Combo’s salsa version of his “Eliminación de feos,” or Tony Croatto’s version of “Nuestra sangre,” or Lucecita Benítez’s and Moliendo Vidrio’s versions of "Las Cadenas del 1800.” More generally, and this is fairly common, Puerto Ricans continue to remember and celebrate Ramito anytime they gather (be it on the Island or in the diaspora), to sing his “Qué bonita bandera,” an emblematic plena of cultural pride where the Puerto Rican flag, a symbol derided by US colonialism that was illegal during the first half of the twentieth century, is praised.

(1) Navidad que Vuelve by Pedro Malavet Vega (1987: 157-163)
(2) prpop.org/biografias/flor-morales-ramos-ramito/
(3) Published in Resonancias, Año 2, num.3, 2002: 39-40.
(4) cuatro-pr.org/node/212

-Dr. Mario R. Cancel-Bigay

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released November 4, 1963

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Ansonia Records

Independent Latin and Afro-Caribbean voices and rhythms since 1949 🌴🌴🌴

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