William R. Cumpiano
Puerto Rican master guitarmaker
William Richard Cumpiano (born April 30, 1945) is a builder of stringed musical instruments and is known for his writing and teaching of the art of luthiery. He has been involved in the preservation and understanding of the fading musical and musical craft traditions of his native Puerto Rico. Cumpiano was instrumental in the development of the first feature-length documentary about the cuatro and its music, Our Cuatro: The Puerto Ricans and Stringed Instruments, Volumes 1 and 2.
Early years
Cumpiano was born into a middle-class family in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His father was a native of the town of Rincón, Puerto Rico, and his mother from Boston, Massachusetts. He was raised in the capital of Puerto Rico where he received his primary and secondary education. On one occasion, Cumpiano wandered into an eatery next to his grade school which had a jukebox. He listened to Odilio González sing a décima with a guitar and a cuatro in the background. In Puerto Rico the type of music that Odilio González sang is known as "música jíbara", which is Puerto Rico's cultural equivalent of what in the United States is called country music. This early experience would eventually grow into his passion for Puerto Rican traditional instruments and singing.
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This entry incorporates text from “William R. Cumpiano” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.