Fourth International Puerto Rican Tiple Conference

by C.F. Casey

Originally published in American Lutherie #86, 2006



What am I doing here? I’ve never been a speaker at an international conference before! And it’s not in my native language! These thoughts raced through my head on the evening of February 11, 2006, as I sat at a long table in a restaurant in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Others present were my wife, singer-songwriter Kate Ferris; Tiple Conference founder José “Pepito” Reyes; and two dozen other Tiple Movement officials, conference organizers, speakers, and spouses. It was the pre-conference supper.

It all started a year earlier, when American Lutherie editor Tim Olsen asked me to review a couple of books, one of which was in Spanish. As I had spent four years studying music in Mexico and still have a great love for the language, I was delighted. The book was El Tiple Puertorriqueño (see review in AL#81). In the course of writing the review, I needed the answers to a couple of questions and contacted author Pepito Reyes by phone. Thus began a correspondence that led to his inviting me to be a guest speaker at the Conference.