In their manner of construction, none of these instruments follow a rational artistic pattern; their small material value results from their being made by the jíbaros themselves, whom most of the time must rely on barely appropriate tools while making them. It would be interesting to point out the divergent process which these cited national stringed instruments have followed in this province; in it dwells the ideas which rule the construction of guitars and bandurrias; but the lack of tools appropriate to make them as well as the models that were brought by the Spaniards from their cities, must have been the cause of their imperfections.
             Francisco Del Valle Atiles, 1887

In this way, unique native variants of gut and wire string instruments called tiple, bandolina, tres, and cuatro would endure in the Americas long after the Spanish retired back to Europe at the end of the last century.



The Tres in Cuba:
In Cuba, among the Creole class, the Son arose as a song and salon dance genre featuring the persistent sounds of a plucked string instrument alternatively playing the melodic lead and a four-bar ostinato passage called montuno. This repeating phrase forms a rhythmic foundation for the music. Originally, a guitar, tiple or bandola, played rhythm and lead in the son, but later these were replaced by a native-born instrument, a fusion of the three: the Cuban tres.

The original Son form consisted of melodies derived from the ancient sung coplas of Spain, accompanied by a guitar and an ingenious bass apparatus called marímbola (a hollow box about the size of a television set with an array of attached lengths of clock spring straps that were plucked by a player seated on the box, producing bass tones) or a botija (a large ceramic bottle with a hole in it which is blown like a rum jug). Some experts, however, understand that the direct historic antecedent to the son was a genre called "changúí," still played by some folkloric groups in Cuba.

The son ensemble evolved by growing in size until it included up to six or seven musicians (known correspondingly as sexteto or septeto): guitar, tres, maracas, claves (in the hands of the lead singer) and bongos; variously, one or more trumpets, a second guitarist, and a mar'mbola or botija would complete the grouping. The bass line was provided by the marímbola or the botija, but these instruments would disappear, as the groups became louder and rowdier, in favor of the more sonorous bass fiddle.

The Cuban tres itself began as a rustic native adaptation of the Spanish family of wire-strung instruments that were popular in Spain during colonial times: laœd, bandola and bandurria. The seventeenth century historian Bermudo describes a three-course bandurria which may have set the pattern for the first tres. The earliest are said to have been made from codfish boxes, most likely by African-Cuban dock workers. It was usually played with a tortoise-shell pick. Over time, the tres evolved into an object of refined craft, losing its rustic, mandolin-like form and growing in size, but retaining its bandurria-like pear shaped outline. Perhaps looking for greater sonority, Arsenio Rodriguez and Isaac Oviedo often played tres on a Spanish guitar adapted for three doubled up wire-string courses÷and its neck and scale shortened to ten frets to the body. Today, adapted guitars are the most often-seen form of the tres. When the son was eventually absorbed into the cabaret and dance hall, the instrument's job of playing the montuno over and over was largely taken up by the piano. Since then, the importance of the tres has waned in modern popular music, and can be seen today mostly during revivals of traditional forms.

The Cuban treseros
Early in this century, several legendary tresistas [tres players] would emerge: Nené Manfugás, Carlos Godines, Arsenio Rodriguez, Isaac Oviedo, and Eliseo Silveira. They are considered to be national treasures of Cuban music. Known as a bohemian and adventurer, Nené Manfugás brought his music from the hinterlands of Baracoa into the great city of Santiago de Cuba in the late 1880s. He played early, primitive sones that were marvelously rich despite the rusticity of his tres, and in the process propelled the son as a national genre.

Arsenio Rodriguez was a great composer and tresero from Matanzas. Blinded at an early age, he nonetheless developed a unique style that became established as a standard form. During the fifties, his music had fallen out of style in his homeland, and like so many traditional Caribbean musicians, he found a new and eager audience among hundreds of thousands of Cuban and Puerto Rican expatriates in New York City. He left behind a treasury of original compositions when he died in Los Angeles, California in 1972 at the age of 61.

Isaac Oviedo, another great Cuban tresero from Matanzas was born in 1902. During the 1920s he formed the Septeto Matancero, and toured the Caribbean and the United States during the twenties and thirties, leaving a craze behind him as he traveled.

During the twenties, the Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Piñeiro was another musical powerhouse that spread the Son throughout Latin America. Indeed Piñeiro is credited with having established the Son as a ballroom dance form (most other dances of the time were essentially communal or figure-dances) where a couple danced "solitos" or all by themselves. Around 1977 the surviving members of the Septeto Nacional reunited. The event was documented on film as a tribute to Piñeiro by his now octagenarian band associates.

While all the legendary treseros, sadly, have died off, a crop of top treseros still keep the flame of the son and its derivatives still alive: Three highly regarded living treseros are Francisco "Pancho" Amat, a Cuban with the Adalberto Alvarez y su Son group in Cuba, Also, one of the most technically proficient players on the level of Pancho Amat is Juan "Coto" de la Cruz Antomarchi.  He played w/Elio Reve and is now touring with Cubanismo and his own band.

Other important Cuban treseros are

• Alejandro "Mulato" Rodríguez - Cuarteto Machín
• Reyes 'Chito' Latamblet- the
  player most responsible for the changui style of tres playing
• Félix Ganuza - Cuarteto Machín
• Papi Oviedo - Conjunto Familia Oviedo, Orq. Revé
• Storch - Cuarteto Caney
• Niño Rivera - Estrellas del Areito
• Francisco "Pancho" Amat - Manguaré, Adalberto Alvarez
• Juan de Marcos González - Sierra Maestra, Afro-Cuban All Stars
• Guillermo Céspedes - Conjunto Céspedes

The Tres in Puerto Rico:
The idea of a Puerto Rican tres is not so odd when you realize that throughout the centuries, Cuban and Puerto Rican cultures have been intimately linked: indeed, the two peoples have been termed, poetically, "the two wings of a single bird." One of the outgrowths of this closeness has resulted in the tres being adopted in Puerto Rico and adapted into a instrument of unique shape and stringing, but similar tuning: the Puerto Rican tres.

From the time that U.S. citizenship is imposed on Puerto Ricans at the start of the First World War in 1917, boricuas travelled to New York to better their living conditions. Musicians were no exception. From the beginnings of the 1920s to the end of the 1940s, Puerto Rican musicians recorded music which was in vogue for American recording labels. Essentially this was all music with Cuban roots which had been imported by the record labels, for the North American market, the Latino market and above all for the Latin American market. At the time it was a very concentrated and controlled industry with musical styles and fads dictated by the entrepreneurs rather than by the musicians, and it was more economical to hire local artists in New York than to carry portable recording equipment to Cuba, Santo Domingo or Puerto Rico. This is why so many ancient son and guaracha recordings exist, predominantly performed by Puerto Rican musicians.

It is within this context, one where Puerto Ricans were obliged to adopt the tres as an instrument in their repertory. Composers like Rafael Hernández, Pedro Flores, Plácido Acevedo, Pedro "Piquito" Marcano, among others, found themselves composing music withing this commercial mold, one which permitted them to express their patrotic sentiments, their pain, their feelings of love-but within a musical base that was essential Cuban. That generation of musicians principally composed guarachas, sones, rumbas, congas-all sharing Cuban roots-rather than seises, villaranes, danzas or plenas: Puerto Rican genres. Given this context, it is quite easy to understandable the proficiency that many Puerto Ricans reached with the tres and their role with the music.

[We are currently seeking more information about  how boricuas began to adopt the instrument; who were the influential Cuban musicians that influenced them; and where and how the variations in shape, tuning and stringing arose. If you can provide information to help us, send us an email by CLICKING HERE]

The Puerto Rican tresistas
A number of Puerto Rican musicians who have become prominent with the tres have been (in order of epoch and listing their affiliations):

• "Piliche" - Reputedly the first Puerto Rican tresista, taught by Cuban tresero Isaac Oviedo (Sexteto Matancero)

• Yayito Maldonado - Quinteto La Plata, Sexteto de Pedro Flores, Canario y su Grupo

• ________ Reyes - Cuarteto Marcano (Los Carreteros)

• Cándido Vicentí - Sexteto de Pedro Flores, Quinteto La Plata

• Luis "Lija" Ortiz

• Mario Hernández - Los Diáblos del Caribe, Sonora Borinquen

• Tuto Feliciano - Cuarteto Yari

• Yomo Toro - Larry Harlow, Fania All Stars

• Máximo Torres

• Charlie Rodríguez - Orq. Johnny Pacheco

• Nelson González - Conjunto Folklórico Experimental, Típica 73, Cachao, Marc Anthony.
   Visit Nelson's website

• Tito García - Sexteto Moderno, Pleneros de Truco

• Oscar Ríos - Borincuba Oscar Ríos writes to us 8-27-01 tu correct the listing of his name and mention that he also played with Pete "El Conde"  Rodríguez, Conjunto Clásico de NY, El Sabor de Nacho, Micke Cora y la Orquesta Cabala, Conjunto Caney, Pacheco y su Tumbao, and Cachao.

• Louis García - Conjunto Canallón, Cheo Feliciano

The Instrument's tuning and stringing: :

Cuban Tres

The Cuban tres has three courses (groups) of two strings each for a total of six strings.

From the low pitch to the highest, the principal tuning is in

C Major: G, C, E

but often a capo is placed on the second fret, changing the tuning to:

D Major: A, D, F#

The individual strings in each course are tuned in unison or are tuned an octave apart (in this case the higher-octave string has to be a monofilament (plain or unwound string) and the lower octave string has to be a wound string, in order to keep both strings at a similar tension even though one is tuned higher than the other.

However, the precise way the octaves are arranged in each course, or even which courses are in octaves, depends on the custom of the player. The most common arrangement of octaves and unisons within the three courses of the Cuban Tres are: (The capital letters denote the lower octave-and thus the wound--string)

1- gG cc Ee
2- gG cc ee

Other arrangements are used, but less commonly. Among them:

3- Gg cc ee
4- Gg Cc Ee

The strings used on the Cuban tres can be selected from boxes of individual steel-string guitar strings available in most music stores in different gauges. The plain or unwound strings are usually high tensile steel monofilament strings, and the wound strings are usually nickel-wound, but can be also bronze wound or silk and steel. A typical set of gauges would be:

High octave g: .009" monofilament
Low octave G: .022" wound
C string:    .011" monofilament
High octave e: .009" monofilament
Low octave E: .022" wound


Puerto Rican Tres stringing, gauges and tuning:

The Puerto Rican tres has three courses (groups) of three strings each for a total of nine strings.

From the low pitch to the highest, the principal tuning is in

C Major: G, C, E

but often a capo is placed on the second fret, changing the tuning to:

D Major: A, D, F#

The individual strings in each course are tuned in unison or are tuned an octave apart (in this case the higher-octave string has to be a monofilament (plain or unwound string) and the lower octave string has to be a wound string, in order to keep both strings at a similar tension even though one is tuned higher than the other.

However, the precise way the octaves are arranged in each course, or even which courses are in octaves, depends on the custom of the player. The most common arrangement of octaves and unisons within the three courses of the Puerto Rican Tres are: (The capital letters denote the lower octave-and thus the wound--string)

The following alternate Puerto Rican tres tunings were given to us by the expert Brooklyn maker/player Tito Báez:

1- gGg ccc eEe
2. Ggg ccc eeE
3. ggG ccc Eee

The author has also seen the following tuning
4. Ggg ccc Eee


The strings used on the Puerto Rican tres can be purchased in sets from La Bella (#L-730, incorrectly labeled Tres Cubano strings) or selected from boxes of individual steel-string guitar strings available in most music stores in different gauges. The plain or unwound strings are usually high tensile steel monofilament strings, and the wound strings are usually nickel-wound, but can be also bronze wound or silk and steel. A typical set of gauges would be:

High octave g: .011" monofilament
Low octave G: .024" wound
C string:    .015" monofilament
High octave e: .011" monofilament
Low octave E: .024" wound

Discography
If you wish to purchase tres recordings, here is an essential discography:

• SEXTETO BORINQUEN: El Auténtico, Vol. 1 (Ansonia 1312)
• ISAAC OVIEDO: Routes of Rhythm, Vol.3 (Rounder 5055)
• LUIS LIJA ORTIZ Y SU SEXTETO CARAVAN: No Me Persigas (Ansonia 1601)
• JOHNNY PACHECO: El Maestro (Fania 485)
• ARSENIO RODRIGUEZ Y SU CONJUNTO: Montuneando 1946-50 (Tumbao 31)
• ADALBERTO ALVAREZ Y SU SON: Ay, Que Tu Quieres, Que Te Den? (DM 2002)
• MARIO HERNANDEZ Y SU SEXTETO BORINQUEN: Para Ti Son Mis Canciones (Artilleria CDC-332)
  
  Thanks to Eric Guerini, Ramón M. Gómez-Organización Sambumbia and Juan Sotomayor for their help on this article. Some portions of this article appeared in print in Acoustic Guitar Magazine as CARIBBEAN MEMORIES by William R. Cumpiano
  

Mario Hernández, supreme exponent of the Puerto Rican Tres, as seen in 1961 while playing with his Sexteto Borinquen

A Tres from Matanzas, Cuba

A familiar configuration of the Cuban Tres

SOUND CLIPS

Carreteros.rm Cuarteto Marcano. The Puerto Rican tresista could be one of the following: Luis "Lija" Ortiz o Sarraíl Archilla (c.1945-46)

Alma Borincana.rm  (guaracha) Quinteto La Plata - c.1937 tresista, Cándido Vicentí (?)

Maria Antonieta.rm  (plena) Grupo Marunguey - c.1994
tresista - arranger Tito García

Pastora.rm (son/changuí) Sierra Maestra - c. 1998
tresero - arranger (?) Juan de Marcos González