User:TatoBrujo

Tato Torres
Tato Torres was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico into an extended family of musicians, educators, artisans and community leaders from a mountain top of the southern town of Guayanilla, in a rural barrio called El Consejo Alto. He lived in EL Alto up untill 1984, when his immediate family (parents and siblings) migrated to the U.S. and has lived in New York City ever since.

Tato grew up in a very musical family, and is, more than anything else, a musician, composer and singer. Tato is an experienced practitioner of Puerto Rican musical traditions and play a variety of musical instruments, but he is generaly known and recognized as a singer. As both a musician and visual artist Tato has worked along side some of the best interpreters of expressive Puerto Rican traditional arts in New York City.

Tato once studied Applied Urban Anthropology at the City College of New York (CCNY) with a focus on Ethnomusicology and concentrating on the role of traditional music within the Puerto Rican community. After several semesters of graduate school in the Masters Program at CCNY (CUNY), he took off to do fieldwork, and eventually, simply decided to just stay out in the field.

Despite the academic experience, Tato identifies myself as a cultural activist, and often tends to referr to himself as a "recovering anthropologist." Tato have dedicated myself to learning, practicing and nurturing the musical traditions of Puerto Rico throughout the Diaspora, but with a focus on the community of New York City where he lives.

Tato has 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. He has shared the stage with such greats as Andres "El Jíbaro" Jimenez, Antonio Caban Vale "El Topo", Nito Mendez, Felix Olmo, El Gran Combo, La Sonora Ponceña, Raphy Leavitt y La Selecta, Los Guyayacanes de San Anton, Yomo Toro, Papo Vazquez, and many more.

He is an active member of the "musical family" from the Rincón Criollo Cultural Center in The Bronx, better known as "La Casita de Chema". And from his experience there, he founded a musical ensamble dedicated to moving our music forward without losing our roots. Firmly rooted on the ground at Rincón Criollo, the band, called "YERBABUENA" (one word), has just released their first CD, titled "BORICUA ROOTS MUSIC". ([www.yerbabuena.biz])