US government awards top culture prizes to master cuatrista Edwin Colón Zayas and master cuatro-maker Yomi Matos
by William Cumpiano

Colón Zayas receives national fellowship
In May 2009 we received the news that the master cuatrista Edwin Colón Zayas received the most prestigious prize given to traditional artists in by the National Foundation for the Arts in Washington DC. The prize, called the NEA National Heritage Fellowships honors individual traditional artists once in their lifetimes for their "contribution to our national cultural mosaic.

The fellowship awards the title of National Living Treasure, modeled after the Japanese manner of honoring selected artists. The prize is offered once a year. This year, the prize was also awarded to a Kazak coreographer, a Zydeco musician, a Yoruba singer, a cowboy poet, and a Cambodian dancer, among others. In 2008, another Puerto Rican, the craft promoter Walter Murray Chiesa won the coveted prize. In 2007 the prize was awared to the Puerto Rican cuatrista and cuatro-maker Diomedes "Yomi" Matos who resides in the state of Florida.

Diómedes "Yomi" Matos
In 2006 Yomi was awarded the title of National Heritage Master by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C We could describe “Yomi” Matos of the grand-master of Puerto Rican folk string instrument craft. He is without doubt unsurpassed among those mainland US builders of Puerto Rican instruments.

Born in 1940, Matos was surrounded by instrument makers where he grew up in the Puerto Rican village of Camuy. By the age of 12 he had built his first cuatro and from that time has worked to perfect the construction of a wide-variety of traditional stringed instruments, including cuatros, requintos, classic guitars and the Puerto Rican tres.

Matos learned his art by observing master builders such as Roque Navarro and relying on the time tested technique of trial and error. Now retired from his day-job as a hospital orderly, his cuatros are considered among the best in the world, sought after by the best Puerto Rican musicians, among which is the renown Yomo Toro, who he also backed up on the guitar and second cuatro during many of Yomo's stage performances in New York City.

Cumpiano is a cuatro
authority and luthier.
http://cuatro-pr.org