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On August 29, 1926, Rafael Ithier was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. Brilliant and talented pianist, composer, arranger, producer and founding director of the University of Salsa “El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico”.

Former member of Cortijo y su Combo. Don Rafael Ithier is by his own merit an authentic living legend of salsa worldwide.

The Korean War was imminent. The young Puerto Rican soldier Rafael Ithier, in the service of the U.S. Army, feared being sent to the battlefield. Music was his thing.

He had been a pianist in several ensembles in his native San Juan before his military service.

His mission at that time (1950) was to organize an orchestra to liven up the parties at the military base.

But the group did not progress because the soldier with the soul of a musician did not hurry the coupling of the incipient band.

He wanted to buy time. “Sorry, sergeant, the band is not ready to perform,” Ithier would say every time he was called upon. In the end, his cunning saved him from war. Several of those musicians would later form the Borinqueña Mambo Boys band. From then on, Ithier would earn his living at the piano.

With that same astuteness, and after six glorious years and a painful separation from Combo de Cortijo, one of the most successful groups in West Indian music, this self-taught musician founded El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico.

He called several of the best musicians of the defunct Combo and two very young singers: Andy Montañez and Pellín Rodríguez.

May 26, 1962 marks the birth date of the orchestra, which today has become a living legend of the genre, with 48 years in the salsa music scene and 57 recordings.

Since its first presentation at the Rock and Roll saloon in Bayamón (Puerto Rico), the Gran Combo revolutionized West Indian music with an innovative clave rhythm for that time, which was aimed at the dancer’s ear.

The jocular lyrics of their songs with Andy Montañez’s and Pellín Rodríguez’s strong voices made an immediate impact.

In addition, the band’s fresh image and colorful choreography soon gave the band its own identity, at a time when orchestras were proliferating.

For its founder, “fidelity to an original style, but at the same time adaptation to musical evolution and group discipline have allowed us to get to where we are today,” says the 84-year-old bandleader. With this formula they survived the difficult times of the industry, the genre and the passing of the years and fashions.

One of the difficult moments that Ithier remembers was when the two flagship voices of the group left in the seventies. According to the musician, “many decreed the death of the Gran Combo”.But once again, the director’s wisdom came to the fore when he found two voices that matched the band’s style.

The arrival of the new singers (Jerry Rivas and Charlie Aponte) reflected Ithier’s knowledge and leadership in managing his orchestra. When Rivas, white and blond, was introduced to replace the stellar Andy Montañez, the other musicians, most of them dark-haired, looked at him with suspicion. Ithier, with his traditional good humor, responded: “You can rest assured, he’s a black man painted white”.

On the cusp of success today few remember the vicissitudes to consolidate, after the disintegration of Cortijo y su Combo (due to indiscipline of the musicians, among them Ismael Rivera), from where the base of musicians of the Gran Combo came from. Ithier recalls how they were branded as “traitors” by the public and the musical milieu.

“Several times we were hired in clubs and when we arrived to play and they saw us, they closed the doors. Those were difficult times, we didn’t even have a place to rehearse”. The orchestra was on the verge of disappearing, says its director, who, disillusioned, locked himself in his house, determined to give up music.

“The musicians came looking for me and after begging me to conduct for a while, I returned. The truth is that with so many problems I thought the group would last one or two years at most and look where we are now,” confesses Ithier.

But the constancy, the iron but friendly discipline and the virtuosity of the 14 members of the group paid off. In 2005 alone, they performed in 137 shows around the world.

Los Mulatos del Sabor, La Bandera Musical de Puerto Rico or La Universidad de la Salsa, nicknames by which the legendary group is known, are now in their 48th year.

The successful musical life of El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico is linked in every musical note to the style andpersonality of its director and founder Rafael Ithier. This pianist describes himself as a self-taught musician who never attended a conservatory.

His musical school was the street and his discipline to learn from the musicians of his time. Ithier, born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, in 1926, has proven throughout his 63-year career to be a visionary of Latin music. In the 1960s, when he founded the group, he cemented his own style based on the rhythms that dominated the music scene of the time, such as bogaloo, jala-jala, bomba and plena. As for him, he was always a classical pianist.

In the seventies he understood the new direction that West Indian music was taking, already known as salsa, and he adapted to the changes.

He introduced the trombone to the brass section to give it a modern sound. Thirty years later, when the romantic salsa trend emerged, the Gran Combo knew how to stay current and worked in this line, without losing its style, but even so, the critics came.

“Music evolves like everything else and we adapt to the changes. Many orthodox of the genre do not accept it and criticized us, but for this reason many orchestras disappeared”. However, Ithier is one of the defenders of classic salsa and a critic of the so-called salsa monga (romantic), today in decline due to the resurgence of salsa dura.

“Those little guys missed the formula. They didn’t know what the clave was and they took away all the flavor of our music, they all did the same thing and that scared the dancer away. They even said that the clave was a delay in the music”.

In Latin music industry and genre circles, his influence is more than recognized.

It was Ithier who Gilberto Santa Rosa sought out for advice and support to become a soloist after having played with orchestras such as Willie Rosario’s. At present, Rafael Ithier continues in the direction of the Gran Combo and has no plans to retire, although he has not sat at the piano for three years due to hearing loss, according to himself, “due to an illness poorly cared for by not stopping traveling with the orchestra.”

Source: Alejandro-Gonzalez Teodoro (Dr Ted Alejandro Jr)

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