Cortijo y su Combo

Cortijo y su Combo was a Puerto Rican group led by percussionist and bandleader Rafael Cortijo, who grew up in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan. The group played bomba and plena, two Afro-Puerto Rican musical traditions, and helped bring those rhythms to a wider audience across the Caribbean and beyond in the 1950s and 1960s. Vocalist Ismael Rivera, a childhood friend of Cortijo, was the voice on many of their most celebrated recordings.