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Yomo Toro in a Bronx recording studio in 1994 Photo by Juan Sotomayor
"My name is Yomo Toro".
In 1996, Yomo gave us a short autobiography summarizing his long life with the cuatro
[NOTE: Immediatly below read Denise Toro's notes on when her father introduced the cuatro into Salsa music!]
"My name is Yomo Toro. I was born in the southwestern part of Puerto Rico, in a village called Guánica, in a neighborhood called Ensenada where there was a sugar cane processing factory--one of the largest in the Antilles--actually, I think it was the second biggest (the biggest was in Cuba), the second largest in the Antilles. It was in Guánica. It was called the South Porto [sic] Rican Sugar Company. The neighborhood folks made their living there, they worked at the processing factory. Some did one thing, others did something else. My father was a "technician," in other words, he drove. He was a driver, he drove the machines that loaded the cane that arrived for the mill. There were four sugar mills.
 And there's where I came from. My whole name is: Víctor Guillermo Toro Vega Ramos Rodríguez Acosta. There: my whole family. Well then, I began when I was six years old. It all began with the fact that my uncles all worked at the sugar mill. And then on weekends they'd get together. They were called The Roosters, and they weren't professional but they played a little music. I had an uncle who played cuatro, another played the guitar, another the flute, another clarinet, each one in his own manner. And among them, the cuatrista was my father. And at six, when I was six years old, my musical restlessness began, and that was in Ensenada, Puerto Rico.
When they went to play on weekends, little dances in homes here and there, well, I always went along. I remember that my father hung his cuatro from the wall. And I remember that I used to handle the cuatro--or better said, fondle the cuatro--and from that came my desire to learn how to play music, to do something musical with my life. And that's how I started, and when I was fifteen more or less, I played in school.
And that's how I began--when I was fifteen years old more or less, I played for the school. And we were three kids who were students in the school and we were called "the school band."
And in that way I played during all the school programs, and I became polished bit by bit until one day a señor from San Juan showed up who was looking for a lead guitar to put together a trio called Los Cuatro Ases de Puerto Rico [The Four Aces of Puerto Rico], which included the [famed singer and composer] Tito Lara. They had spoken to him about a kid in Ensenada which played requinto [a small lead guitar] and cuatro. So he went there and they came looking for me and I played the cuatro and the guitar for him, and he told me to sign a contract and he signed me onto a contract binding me for something like ten years.
Yomo with his requinto requinto guitar, along with his Grupo Los Príncipes.
Yomo Toro in Brooklyn, NY, circa 1954
So that was the first time I went to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to play and I remember I began to record with Bury Cabán and the Four Aces, and then [the famed singer] José Antonio Salamán. I also began to play with the Universitarios, El Trío Universitario [the University Trio] of San Juan. I played with the [famed trio] Los Antares, with Felipe Rodríguez, I played with Raimundo, and with everybody over there.
And the first time I came to New York City was in 1953, with the Cuatro Ases, to play in the Teatro Boricua [Boricua Theatre] which was at 108 Lexington Avenue. That's the first time I came to play in New York City. From there I returned to Puerto Rico again, and then I returned with José Antonio Salamán and with my compadre Polo Ocasio, a tremendous guitarist from Puerto Rico, among the very best-and we played in the Teatro Puerto Rico, and then I went to Puerto Rico in '56. I came to New York again to play and I remained there living every day till now..
Yomo backing the legendary crooner Daniel Santos in New York in 1960
I became part of the many little New York trios that played around New York City, playing with whatever little group asked me to. I began to make a living from the music. So I have always made a living from music. I don't live for anything else. If you asked me to do something else, I'd crash and burn, you know. But I've always lived off my music, and I have always done the same thing.
And then around 1970, in the seventies I began to record Salsa music. That was around the time when Willie Colón was hanging around with Héctor Lavoe and the Fania All Stars. He decided to do a Christmas LP, but they wanted to use an electric guitar--since Willie Colón wasn't so into the cuatro at the time, to Puerto Rico traditional music, for the simple reason that he was into Salsa, which was Salsa dance music played with an orchestra. But when they called me they said to show up with an electric guitar to record with Willie Colón and instead of an electric guitar, I brought a cuatro: I hung it over my back and went to the studio.
Yomo acompañando a Ruben Blades con una Gibson Les Paul, en un espectáculo de la Fania All-Stars
I remember when I entered the studio, Pacheco was directing the recording and when he saw me with the cuatro he said, "Ha! Who are you coming to record with, Ramito?" and I told him, "no, no, with Willie Colón, I'm doing the Christmas album." And they all kept quiet and didn't say anything. But when I started recording with them, recording the tracks, and we came to the end of the session, Willie Colón told me, "Never in my life have I had such a happy time as this. I think this will be a big hit." And sure enough it became one of Fania's greatest hits, so up to this day the recording Asalto Navideño, that I made with Willie Colón and Hector Lavoe, became and will always be a standard forever, because when people drop and break the record, they buy another one to replace it.
From then on I passed on to become one of the stars of Fania, and up to this very day I am still a Fania star. So I remained there living in New York City up to now, and I spend my time traveling around the world and thanks to God, music has been very good to me, and I've remained always in the musical struggle--as we like to say: in the musical battle. Thanks to God, I have no vices, I don't drink, I don't smoke any sort of cigarettes. Well, though, true, I've gotten fat, but it's no big deal, you can get over it, but if one drinks and smokes too much you can get heart disease, and get stuff that isn't very good for your musical career. But thanks to God, up to now I'm 64 years old, I'm no kid. And up to now I've been hanging out with a lot of cuatristas and those kids that have become virtuosos, the cuatro virtuosos like Edwin Colón Zayas, Pedrito Guzmán, Prodigio Claudio. I've had the opportunity to play next to them and spent so good times with them. If I happen to die right now, I'll be dying laughing, like this: [he flashes a wide toothy grin to the camera]"
WHEN YOMO TORO FIRST INTRODUCED THE CUATRO
INTO SALSA MUSIC
by Denise Toro
Yomo Toro and his old friend, the legendary Diómedes "Yomi" Matos rehearsing before a 1998 presentation at the Carmichael Hall of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, an event that the Cuatro Project helped put together. Photo by John Sotomayor.
Growing up in Brooklyn during the 1960s, I remember picking up the phone to let Papi know Ramito was on the line. Many were the times I spoke with La Calandria, Blanca Iris Villafañe, Johnny Albino, Odilio González or any of the other superstars of Puerto Rican music during the sixties. When my father Yomo Toro and Miguelito Poventud were studio musicians for CBS records, they recorded on some of the best selling albums of the most famous group in the world at the time, the Trio Los Panchos, featuring Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence.
My father never worked on a factory line. Instead he worked in the public relations company offices of Howard Rubenstein. By the time the 1970s arrived, my father had already become a star in his own right —featured weekly on New York television over channel 41, on his very own variety program, “The Yomo Toro Show”. Woody Allen even sought out Yomo Toro to include his music over the 1971 feature film, Bananas. So much for Willie Colón's claim that he discovered Yomo when he was playing in go-go bars and gave him his first big break!
By the early ‘70s, my father Yomo was no stranger to Fania. It was his friend, the guitarist Roberto García, who called him to sub on Fania’s first Christmas album, Asalto Navideño. Yomo had already recorded with Larry Harlow over his Tribute To Arsenio Rodriguez album, so Yomo knew the studio and Johnny Pacheco, Fania's co-founder. But Pacheco had already booked Roberto Garcia and had requested an electric guitar which had become very popular within Latin music after Santana created a craze for it.
But when my father heard that the album was to be about Christmas, he forgot about the guitar and by sheer instinct instead picked up his cuatro. When Hector LaVoe saw the ten-stringed national instrument of Puerto Rico, his face lit up. He started to improvise along Yomo’s rapid-fire cuatro lines. They clicked. The band followed. It was magical: like catching lightning in a bottle.
There were no arrangements but that didn’t matter, since my father didn’t read music anyway. He was a true virtuoso and Hector responded to him like a man in a desert thirsty for water.
Hector and Yomo made that historic recording at a time when Willie Colon’s band was promoted as a boogaloo group. Yomo brought in the “jibaro” element and since Hector hardly spoke English let alone sing it, the rest is musical history.
My father Yomo Toro went on to perform with the Fania All-Stars. He played on the recordings of many of the salseros of that time. His cuatro playing so stood out in performances around the world that even Eric Clapton wanted to know who he was, after watching him in London.
A statue of Yomo Toro is prominently displayed in his hometown of Ensenada, Puerto Rico. Yomo Toro, unequivocally brought the cuatro into the popular salsa world and made that sound his own. Fania followed up that first Asalto album with a supersized production that featured Daniel Santos along with a stable of the label’s best arrangers.
As Yomo Toro’s only remaining child and the keeper of his legacy, I hold my fathers’ history with honor and dignity — two things that can never be taken from someone who gave so much to his family, his band mates and to Puerto Rico.
!Que Viva Yomo Toro, his life, his music and his legacy of bringing the cuatro and jibaro music to salsa and the world! —Denise Toro
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