Cortijo’s Wake / El entierro de Cortijo

A lyrical narration and examination of the life and death of Rafael Cortijo, an Afro-Caribbean drummer whose group–Cortijo y su Combo–influenced Puerto Rican society and music. A bilingual edition of a renowned work of Puerto Rican literature, Cortijo’s Wake/El entierro de Cortijo is novelist Edgardo Rodriguez Julia’s vivid description of the funeral of legendary Puerto Rican musician Rafael Cortijo. El entierro de Cortijo became an immediate bestseller following its original publication in Puerto Rico in 1983. An unparalleled Afro-Puerto Rican percussionist and bandleader, Cortijo (1928 - 1982) revolutionized the country’s musical culture. His band, Cortijo y Su Combo, captivated Caribbean and Latin American audiences as it emerged in the mid-1950s. Immensely popular across Puerto Rican social classes, the band both modernized the traditional vernacular forms of bomba and plena and forcefully re-established their African and working class roots. The group’s innovations have been integral to salsa since the 1960s. The author’s masterly shifting of linguistic registers, his acute sensitivity to Puerto Rican social codes, his broad knowledge of popular music, and his sardonic ruminations on death and immortality make this one of the most widely read books of modern Puerto Rican literature.