William Richard Cumpiano (born April 30, 1945) is a builder of stringed

musical instruments A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

and is known for his writing and teaching of the art of

luthiery A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers of ...

. He has been involved in the preservation and understanding of the fading musical and musical craft traditions of his native

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

. Cumpiano was instrumental in the development of the first feature-length documentary about the cuatro and its music, ''Our Cuatro: The

Puerto Ricans Puerto Ricans ( es, Puertorriqueños; or boricuas) are the people of Puerto Rico, the inhabitants, and citizens of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and their descendants. Overview The culture held in common by most Puerto Ricans is referred t ...

and Stringed Instruments'', Volumes 1 and 2.

Early years

Cumpiano was born into a middle-class family in

San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan (, , ; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it is the 57th-largest city under the jur ...

. His father was a native of the town of

Rincón, Puerto Rico Rincón () is a popular beach town and municipality of Puerto Rico founded in 1771 by Don Luis de Añasco, who previously founded Añasco in 1733. It is located in the Western Coastal Valley, west of Añasco and Aguada. Rincón is spread over ...

, and his mother from Boston, Massachusetts. He was raised in the capital of Puerto Rico where he received his primary and secondary education. On one occasion, Cumpiano wandered into an eatery next to his grade school which had a

jukebox A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which are used to selec ...

. He listened to

Odilio González Odilio González (born 5 March 1937), known by his stage name , is a Puerto Rican singer, guitarist and music composer who has been singing and composing for more than 65 years. He has mostly played traditional Puerto Rican folkloric music, song ...

sing a décima with a

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

and a

cuatro Cuatro is Spanish language, Spanish (and other Romance languages) for the 4 (number), number four. Cuatro may also refer to: * Cuatro (instrument), name for two distinct Latin American instruments, one from Puerto Rico (see cuatro (Puerto Rico), ...

in the background. In Puerto Rico the type of music that Odilio González sang is known as "música jíbara", which is Puerto Rico's cultural equivalent of what in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

is called

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

. This early experience would eventually grow into his passion for Puerto Rican traditional instruments and singing. Cumpiano attended the

University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico ( es, Universidad de Puerto Rico, UPR) is the main public university system in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a government-owned corporation with 11 campuses and approximately 58,000 students and 5,3 ...

High School in

Río Piedras Rio or Río is the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese word for "river". When spoken on its own, the word often means Rio de Janeiro, a major city in Brazil. Rio or Río may also refer to: Geography Brazil * Rio de Janeiro * Rio do Sul, a ...

from 1959 to 1961 and St. John's Preparatory School in Santurce from 1961 until his graduation in 1962. He wanted to study engineering, and in 1962 he moved to

Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city northwest of downtown Boston on the Mystic River in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus alo ...

. There he enrolled at

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

where he discovered that he was more interested in studying art. In 1964, he moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and studied industrial design at

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

. He earned his B.Ind.D. (Bachelor of Industrial Design) in 1968, and went to work as a professional furniture designer.

Master guitarmaker

Cumpiano met master guitarmaker

Michael Gurian Michael Gurian is an American author and social philosopher. He works as a marriage and family counselor and corporate consultant. He has published twenty-eight books, several of which were ''New York Times'' bestseller list bestsellers. He is ...

in 1969, and under Gurian's mentoring he began his training in the craft of guitarmaking. Cumpiano left his job and went to work in Gurian's guitarmaking shop in

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

. In Gurian's guitarmaking shop he met and befriended Gurian's shop foreman, Michael Millard. Eventually Cumpiano and Millard established a shop together named "Froggy Bottom Guitars", where Cumpiano completed his training in guitarmaking. In 1974, Cumpiano left to establish his first private guitarmaking studio in

Williamstown, Massachusetts Williamstown is a town in the northern part of Berkshire County, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, United States. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolit ...

. During the next twenty-five years he would move his workshop to North Adams,

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

and then to

Amherst, Massachusetts Amherst () is a New England town, town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2020 census, the population was 39,263, making it the highest populated municipality in Hampshire County (althoug ...

. In 1997, Cumpiano moved his studio to Easthampton Road in

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England; ...

where it currently resides. Cumpiano's career spans almost forty years of hand-crafting all sorts of fretted stringed instruments from the

North American North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...

, European and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

n traditions. In 1985, his interests turned to the stringed instrument traditions of his native Puerto Rico and over the years Cumpiano became an authority on the craft and traditions that surround the "national instrument" of Puerto Rico, the ten string ''cuatro''. He has built numerous cuatros for musicians in the United States and also has crafted cuatro variants of his own design: he developed a "seis", or six course (twelve string) cuatro that can be tuned in the same string intervals as a guitar. He also developed the "thinline" cuatro with a body depth of only two inches instead of the traditional three. Among his customers are

Arlo Guthrie Arlo Davy Guthrie (born July 10, 1947) is an American folk singer-songwriter. He is known for singing songs of protest against social injustice, and storytelling while performing songs, following the tradition of his father, Woody Guthrie. Gut ...

, Michael Lorimer, John Abercrombie, Country Joe MacDonald, the

Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...

band,

June Millington June Millington (born April 14, 1948) is a Filipina-American guitarist, songwriter, producer, educator, and actress. She was the co-founder and lead guitarist of the all-female rock band Fanny, which was active from 1970 to 1974. Millington has ...

, and Joel Zoss. Cumpiano has taught his craft for over twenty years out of his studio, in schools, during workshops and lectures and through numerous publications. He has taught cuatro making to young Puerto Rican artisans under grants originating from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

(NEA) through various regional arts organizations.

The Puerto Rican Cuatro Project

Cumpiano met Juan Sotomayor, a prize-winning photographer who worked on the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

staff. They discovered that there was no serious effort being expended at the University of Puerto Rico to study or research the origins and history, the corpus, of the jíbaro musical and musical craft traditions. They decided to set out to discover the story of Puerto Rico's traditional stringed instruments and later the story of Puerto Rico's traditional music. In 1992, he co-founded ''"The Puerto Rican Cuatro Project"'' with Juan Sotomayor and Wilfredo Echevarría, an expert in media communications. The Puerto Rican Cuatro Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering the traditions that surround the national instrument of Puerto Rico, by means of gathering, promoting and preserving its cultural memories of Puerto Rican musical traditions, folkloric stringed instruments and musicians. The Cuatro Project is also dedicated to promoting and preserving the Puerto Rican

décima A décima is a ten-line stanza of poetry. The most popular form is called décima espinela after Vicente Espinel (1550–1624), a Spanish writer, poet, and musician from the Siglo de Oro who used it extensively throughout his compositions. The dé ...

verse form and the traditional song as created by its greatest troubadours, living and past. Cumpiano, who is also a founding board member and president of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans (ASIA), has lectured about his skills at conventions of the Guild of American Luthiers (GAL). He has received the recognition of various institutes, among them the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...

and the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. He is also the co-recipient of a 1993 U.S. Patent for the compression-molded carbon fibre composite guitar soundboard.

Written work and Documentaries

Cumpiano co-authored, with Jonathon Natelson, the world's leading guitarmaking textbook, "GUITARMAKING: Tradition and Technology", a complete reference for the design and construction of the steel string folk guitar and the classical guitar, which has been acclaimed as the principal textbook in his field and considered by many as the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

of guitarmaking. In 1998, Cumpiano and his colleagues wrote, directed and produced "Un Canto en Otra Montaña: Música Puertorriqueña en

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

"'' (A Song eardon Another Mountain: Puerto Rican Music in Hawaii), a short-feature video documentary on the

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

and social history of the century-old Puerto Rican Diaspora in Hawaii. Cumpiano, together with Sotomayor and Echevarría, wrote, directed and produced two

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

documentaries for The Cuatro Project. They are:''OUR CUATRO Vol.1'', the first feature-length documentary about the cuatro and its music and ''OUR CUATRO Vol. 2: A Historic Concert''. Cumpiano and cultural researcher David Morales produced another DVD documentary ''THE DÉCIMA BORINQUEÑA: An Ancient Poetic Singing Tradition'', directed by Myriam Fuentes. The proceeds of these recordings were to be used for the research and documentation activities of the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project. *''"Nuestro Cuatro: Volumen 1, The Puerto Ricans and their stringed instruments"''. An unprecedented documentary that reveals the emotional story of the development and the history of the music and stringed instruments traditions of Puerto Rico. *''"Nuestro Cuatro: Volumen 2"'', Un Concierto Histórico/A Historical Concert. This is the conclusion of the video documentary ''"Nuestro Cuatro, a cultural and musical history of the Puerto Rican cuatro and Puerto Rico's stringed instruments"''. *''"La Décima Borinqueña/The Décima Borinqueña"'' An Ancient Poetic Song Tradition. The tradition of the décima of the Puerto Rican jíbaros and its singing troubadours can be traced back to popular poetic forms of the Island's colonial past. In them, one can trace the medieval Spanish and

Moorish The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or se ...

roots of the ''trovador''. Cumpiano also co-produced and co-directed in 2001, the documentary ''"Construyendo Cuatros"'' (''"Making Cuatros"''), which comprises visits with two of Puerto Rico's most respected cuatro makers, showing them at work, the sequence of constructing a cuatro, and their impressions of their craft and the future prospects for the instrument.

Associations

Cumpiano has been a member of the following associations: *1988–1996: Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans (ASIA). Co-founder, board president, and board member of international trade association of East Coast luthiers. *1993–1998: FibreAcoustics. Partner in start-up company to market new materials for the musical instrument industry. *1980–1994: Rosewood Press. Partner, publisher of guitar-making textbook. *1990–1993: Artists in Resonance. Co-founder of instrument maker's collaborative consisting of three guitarmakers, one drum maker and one harp maker, in

Hadley, Massachusetts Hadley (, ) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 5,325 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The area around the Hampshire and Mountain Farms Ma ...

. *1995–1997: Leeds Guitarmaker's School. Co-founder, instrument-making school in Northampton, Massachusetts. *1992 to Present: Co-founder, Puerto Rican Cuatro Project.

Awards and exhibits

Among Cumpiano's awards and exhibitions are the following: Awards: *1973: "Honor Award of Merit for Excellence in Workmanship". Given by the

, New Hampshire Chapter. *1997: "For his work in preserving the culture of Puerto Rico through the making of traditional string instruments and undertaking the task of teaching its art and origins to others.". Plaque given at awards banquet of the

University of Massachusetts, Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, i ...

. *2000: Received award and tribute for "Outstanding service to the Western Massachusetts

Latino Latino or Latinos most often refers to: * Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America * Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States * The people or cultures of Latin America; ** Latin A ...

community" from the Latino Scholarship Association, Western Massachusetts region. Exhibits: *1978: Smithsonian Institution,

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Request for display of a Cumpiano twelve string guitar in national show, "The Harmonious Craft". *1998: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Display of instruments and research, along with student work, to curators of the

National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

. *2001: American Crafts Museum, New York, New York
Display of instruments for major show, "Objects for Use: Handmade by Design".

Currently

Cumpiano has been married to Jeanette Rodríguez for the last twenty-three years and has a stepson. He continues to run his shop and is active with The Puerto Rican Cuatro Project. He currently shares his Northampton studio with a partner of many years, the master luthier Harry Becker, and they call their studio, "Becker and Cumpiano Stringed Instruments". He has been featured in many magazines and he has written articles which have been featured in the following publications: Journal of Guitar Acoustics, Frets magazine, Guitar Player Magazine, Fine Woodworking Magazine, Stringed Instrument Craftsman, ''

Acoustic Guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

'', Guitarmaker, the journal of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans (ASIA), American Luthierie, the journal of the Guild of American Luthiers (GAL) and is the author of "Manuel Velázquez, guitarrero", an article included in the Houghton Mifflin Spanish language reader "Portales" (published in 1997). Cumpiano is writer/consultant for the Question & Answer column of ''Acoustic Guitar''. Cumpiano is putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of "The Cuatro Project", which he and his comrades began fifteen years ago, tracing the roots and evolution of Puerto Rican traditional stringed instruments. He has been active giving community instrument-making workshops in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, Massachusetts and Puerto Rico.

References

External links

William R. Cumpiano
*
Woodworking - Today's WoodworkerBlue Book of Acoustic Guitars
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cumpiano, William R. 1945 births Living people Pratt Institute alumni People from San Juan, Puerto Rico Puerto Rican businesspeople Puerto Rican educators Puerto Rican inventors Puerto Rican luthiers Puerto Rican non-fiction writers People from Northampton, Massachusetts