Pancho Amat: Cuba's Tresero Mayor

Imagining Cuba apart from the history of its own music is impossible. In our nation, the origin and development of music has been, at all times, in intimate contact with the life of its people. Of all the music that comes out of the Cuban people, Son reigns supreme. And within Son and in the musical culture of Cuba as a whole, the Tres holds a position of great importance.

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The Cuban Tres is a guitar-like instrument with three courses (groups) of two strings each for a total of six strings. It most probably was born in the area of the Sierra Maestra Mountains, in the eastern part of Cuba, around the mid to late 18th Century, and had its ancestry in the Spanish Guitar. It is sometimes referred to as "Cuban Tres Guitar," "Tres Cubano" or "Tres Guitar." Some might think that the tres is just another guitar, but the major difference between the two is in playing the instrument. Unlike the guitar, in the tres, chords are seldom strummed.

Several famous musicians have preferred the tres for their music, notably, Nené Manfugás, Faustino Oramas, Alfredo Boloña, Arsenio Rodríguez and Compay Segundo. In recent decades, one "tresero," or "tresista" as he prefers to be called, has placed his very singular imprint on his interpretation of the tres, that is, Francisco Leonel Amat Rodríguez, better known as Pancho Amat or "El Tresero Mayor de Cuba" [The Top Cuban Tresero].

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