Puerto Rican saxophonist, composer and orchestra director Ángel Rafael “Lito” Peña (Humacao, Puerto Rico, 17 July, 1921 - 18 June, 2002) founded La Orquesta Panamericana in 1954 with trumpet player Berto Torres and pianist Luisito Benjamín. In an era that saw several big bands competing fiercely on the island primarily for the hotel and tourist market, La Panamericana emerged as one of the leading orchestras in Puerto Rico in the 1950s and ‘60s. It made a strong reputation for itself and carved a niche in the history of Puerto Rican popular music that is still honored today, especially for its beloved leader Lito Peña and his contribution to Puerto Rican culture. Ansonia Records released two albums at a crucial period in the orchestra’s trajectory that have withstood the test of time and showcase the diversity and power of La Panamericana during the golden era of Puerto Rican music.

During the first two decades of its existence, many talented and historically important vocalists passed through the orchestra including Ismael Rivera, Ramón “Chico” Rivera, Eladio “Yayo El Indio” Pequero, Papo León, Rocky Peña and Manolín Mena. Peña and his outfit also backed famous solo artists like Ruth Fernández, Bobby Capó and Gilberto Monroig. The orchestra was one of the first to bring the Puerto Rican folkloric music of the bomba and plena into the big band format and integrated other Caribbean genres like calypso, mambo, cha cha cha, bolero, pachanga and merengue into their repertoire, all to great effect, affording them top popularity with both local and international audiences.

Rafaelito Peña, or “Lito” as he was called from childhood (for “Little Rafael”), was raised “between notes and rhythms” in a musical household where his father Don Juan Peña Reyes was a teacher and director of the municipal bands of Humacao and Guayama. It is no wonder that young Lito knew from an early age that music was his calling; Don Juan Peña guided Lito, along with his brothers Miguel and Germán, through the first years of the learning process, giving the boys the rudiments of music theory and instrument lessons as well as taking them to many of his concert engagements where they witnessed firsthand the power of orchestral arrangements and performance. However, it was not until he was eight years old that Lito began to formally study music, a step that allowed him, a year later, to join one of the bands led by his father. During World War II, Peña enrolled in the US Army where he joined a number of other Puerto Rican musicians, including Pepito Torres (leader of Orquesta Siboney) and his brother Berto. Peña undertook the task of organizing, directing and performing in a band with his compatriots in order to play popular tunes and entertain the troops. Once discharged from the army, Peña joined Armando Castro’s orchestra as a saxophonist. He then became part of the Rafael González Peña big band where he played tenor sax. Soon after, the great Puerto Rican composer César Concepción recruited Peña to occupy the position of first saxophone in his popular organization. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Concepción’s orchestra began to interpret traditional Afro-Puerto Rican “street” genres of bomba and plena so as to help the music “cross over” to the white society audiences of the grand ballrooms of San Juan and Ponce as well as the tourist audience in the hotels. This so-called “whitening” of the genres was done in several ways, for instance adding elements of swing jazz and other international flavors, reducing the role of the hand-played drum, employing light-skinned vocalists, and incorporating nostalgic poetic lyrics as well as patriotic tributes to Puerto Rican people and history instead of more the topical and Afro-Puerto Rican rooted themes found in traditional renditions of the music.

In 1954 Peña quit Concepción’s organization to start his own orchestra, taking with him Berto Torres, Luisito Benjamín and three of his four musician brothers, with the idea of bringing back the more authentic African roots to the music, to made sure that both the bomba and the plena kept their original sound, thus reaffirming their national identity as Puerto Rican. Peña did this because he felt the repertoire of traditional Puerto Rican music could be just as popular with international audiences as the watered-down version had been if it was treated respectfully but presented in the same grand manner as Concepción’s large orchestra format, with sympathetic big band arrangements that augmented elements already in the original forms such as the complex African rhythms and drumming that accompanied them.

But Peña, Torres and Benjamín had an even more ambitious project in mind with La Panamericana because they wanted to do more than just showcase their beloved Puerto Rican styles and melodies in a big band format. They were interested in the orchestra being a vector for the expression of all the varied musical styles of the Americas and integrating their own beloved típico music of Borinquen into the Latin panoply. And so, the “Pan-American Orchestra” successfully launched itself into the artistic world of San Juan (and beyond) with a repertoire that included diverse genres such as tango, bolero, samba, merengue, jíbaro, bambuco, beguine, marinera, balada, huapango, jarocho, guajira, corrido, mambo, pachanga, calypso, cha cha cha, and even the twist and rock ‘n’ roll. The success of this open-ended and wide-ranging playbook was almost immediate and led to many engagements in top hotels as well as recording contracts during three decades with several important labels including Cook, Ansonia, Marvela, Tico, Gema and Borinquen. Soon after co-founding the orchestra, Benjamín left and the piano chair was taken over by the prolific composer and arranger Héctor Urdaneta (who can be seen clapping his hands on the right in the first volume of Ansonia Record’s Panamericana releases). Sadly Urdaneta died at the young age of 37 in 1962.

Thanks to the efforts of the famous cellist Pablo Casals, the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico was founded in 1960 and Lito Peña, aware that no subject has a limit, decided to attend that same year, along with seven of the members of his Orchestra, thus taking their musical skills to the next level. The orchestra traveled on several tours through the Caribbean and United States and shared the bill in New York at popular clubs like The Palladium with other top acts like Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez. A number of 78s by Orquesta Panamericana were recorded in Puerto Rico and released on the small independent label Ochoa Records during the 1950s, and a few of those sides were popular on Puerto Rican radio as well as overseas in the States, Spain, Mexico and South America.

In 1961 Ansonia purchased the rights to the Ochoa material and assembled them into two volumes, the first of which was released the same year and the second in 1962. The 78s were transferred at Beltone Recording studios from the original Ochoa record company masters with EQ and reverb added for the Ansonia mono ‘Hi-Fi’ versions of the releases and simulated stereo added for the stereo editions. These two albums happened to contain some of the band’s most important historic early material, showcasing what was happening in Puerto Rico in the 1950s during a crucially developmental period in the island’s music, especially when taking into account the tracks recorded with Ismael Rivera on Volume 1. His rendition of Toñín Romero’s plena “El Charlatán,” recorded and first released by Ochoa in 1954, remains one of Rivera’s most iconic and set the stage for his meteoric rise that commenced a few months after he voiced the tune and joined Cortijo Y Su Combo led by Rafael Cortijo who was a friend to both Peña and Rivera (and the rest, as they say, is history). The first volume contains a lot of other great music, including the calypso “Beautiful Girl” which features a vibraphone, the down-home cooking themed plena “La Sazón De Abuela,” and the sophisticated urban mambo “Ya Yo Sé,” all sung by Ismael Rivera, proving he could sing all types of genres with equal skill and conviction. Chico Rivera was also an accomplished vocalist with the band and he sings with a lot of emotion on the socially conscious ‘fantasía negoride’ “Negrito” with its lyrics decrying racism, as well as the bouncy plena “La Mujer De Palo,” and the upbeat merengue “Eres Mi Preferida.” The release also has plenty of torchy boleros, handled by Manolín Mena, with Héctor Urdaneta’s “No Me Explico Por Qué” standing out not only for Mena’s lovelorn and sultry interpretation but also the excellent brass arrangement by Peña. The record concludes with the playful calypso/plena hybrid “Ay, Qué Negra Tengo” where the band sings in unison.

By the mid-1960s Peña and the orchestra had appeared on various popular television programs on the island, such as “El Show del Mediodía” and was in direct competition with other local dance bands like El Gran Combo who were also on TV a lot. During the salsa era of the 1970s the band continued to sporadically release recordings but Peña began to slow down his involvement with the orchestra and withdrew from the directorship in 1979, ceding the position first to his son Ángel “Cuco” Peña (born September 1, 1948) who, along with his two brothers, had been in the band since their 20s, and then to Carlos “Coamito” Martínez. However, Don Lito did not retire completely as it was that same year that the Pan American Games were held in Ponce, Puerto Rico, an event for which Peña, at the request of the event’s producers, composed the music. Later he did the same with the Games held in Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico, while also continuing to teach music as he had for decades. After Lito’s son left Orquesta Panamericana in 1980, the original Panamericana basically ceased to exist as an entity and Cuco moved on to become a successful music director, producer, composer and arranger for a wide variety of popular solo Latin artists including Willie Colón, Olga Tañon, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Ricky Martin, José Feliciano, Celia Cruz and Marc Anthony.

Despite both father and son having resigned as director of La Panamericana rendering the orchestra basically defunct, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture entrusted Don Lito in 1985 with the mission of directing the Puerto Rico State Band. Peña took up the challenge with the usual passion he had displayed for the last four decades, introducing and adapting innovative arrangements of popular music to the brass section of the band, which were performed at numerous cultural and governmental activities to great success. In early 2000, the Puerto Rico State Band was part of the Puerto Rican Choral Dance and Music Festival. In the same way, Lito led the band at the Artistic Festival for People with Special Needs and their Friends held in the Arts Pavilion of the Luis Muñoz Rivera Park. This activity was held in honor of his distinguished musical career. A year later he was recognized again in the multi-artist festival “Ritmos de Mi Tierra”, a event where he was honored by Emilio Barcia, Consul of the Motherland, with the silver medal awarded by the Castellón de la Plana Festival of Spain. Just months after being honored with these tributes, Maestro Ángel Rafael “Lito” Peña passed away due to health complications on June 18, 2002.

-Pablo Yglesias