Ladislao Martínez

Puerto Rican cuatro player and composer, known as Ladi. Perhaps the most distinguished figure in the history of the cuatro instrument, and as well, one of the most distinguished Puerto Rican musician of all times, was Ladislao Martínez Otero, known as Maestro Ladí. He created a new way of listening to the cuatro. He came to compose, especially for the cuatro, around 1,500 musical pieces, among them danzas, mazurcas, valses, South American genres, even rock and bossa nova. By choosing the ten-string cuatro as his preferred instrument--playing it on the radio and thus being heard around the Island up until the end of the 1930s--he is thought to have precipitated the decline and eventual disappearance of the old four and eight-string variants across the Island. Ladí inspired generations of master cuatristas who followed him, who consider him the "trunk of the tree of cuatro musicians." The venerated Puerto Rican interpreter and composer was born in the Espinosa sector of Vega Alta on the 27th of June of 1898, the child of simple country-folk.