Tato Torres

My full name is Carlos Javier Torres Sáez Rodriguez Cintrón, but most people just know me as "Tato" Torres or "TatoBrujo". I was born in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico into an extended family of musicians, educators, artisans and community leaders from the mountain top rural barrio called El Consejo Alto in the southern town of Guayanilla. I grew up in El Alto up until 1984, when my immediate family (parents and siblings) migrated to the U.S. and lived in New York City until November of 2008 when I finally returned home to Puerto Rico.

I grew up in a very musical family, and I am, more than anything else, a musician, composer and singer. I am an experienced practitioner of Puerto Rican musical traditions and play a variety of musical instruments, but I am generally known and recognized as a singer. As both a musician and visual artist I have had the pleasure to have worked alongside some of the best interpreters of expressive Puerto Rican traditional arts in New York City.

Artistically, I've had the pleasure and honor of performing with and been part of numerous Puerto Rican musical ensembles like Los Pleneros de la 21na, Los Instantaneos de la Plena, William Cepeda's Afro Boricua and Afro-Rican Jazz, etc., and my own personal project, YERBABUENA. I've had the honor to share the stage with such greats as Andrés Jiménez, Antonio Cabán Vale "El Topo", Nito Méndez, Felix Olmo, El Gran Combo, La Sonora Ponceña, Raphy Levitt & La Selecta, Los Guyayacanes de San Antón, Yomo Toro, Papo Vázquez, and most recently as lead vocalist for Tambores Calientes.

I am an active member of the "musical family" from the Rincón Criollo Cultural Center in The Bronx, better known as "La Casita de Chema". And with my experience there and my musical background, I have founded two musical ensembles dedicated to moving Puerto Rican or Boricua roots music forward without losing grasp of its roots.

Firmly rooted on the ground at Rincón Criollo, the first band was founded in New York City, was called "YERBABUENA" (one word) which in 2006 released a debut CD, titled "BORICUA ROOTS MUSIC". Boricua Roots Music is a musical movement in which Boricua musicians have combined and re-combined elements of traditional and/or folkloric music as contemporary musical expressions. This style of modern music, which reaches back to the roots of Boricua (Puerto Rican) tradition, has come to be called "roots music" or "música de raiz" in Spanish. The movement is also often referred to simply as "roots" or "raices" in Spanish.

YERBABUENA includes musicians, singers and dancers from the New York City area, who share an intense passion for the musical traditions of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. YERBABUENA reclaims the Puerto Rican music often branded as "folkloric," refusing to accept its packaging as frozen-in-time museum pieces, only vaguely connected to contemporary culture. Instead, they make music that incorporates past and present. YERBABUENA taps right into the core of who Boricuas are as a People.

The second band, also deeply rooted in tradition is called ChivoLoco, continuing the legacy already established by YERBABUENA, adhering to the musical traditions of Puerto Rico with a contemporary and modern flavor, without limiting itself to the parameters of "folklore" and organically adopting all of the musical currents of the Boricua experience. Source: Tato Torres
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