Puerto Rican songwriter Roy Brown’s songs based on poems by Juan Antonio Corretjer and other Puerto Rican poets

While reading poems for my forthcoming course on "La Poesía de Puerto Rico", I discovered that Puerto Rican songwriter Roy Brown (b. 1945) has set many poems by Juan Antonio Corretjer (1908-1995) to music, as well as poems by Luis Palés Matos (1898-1959) and Julia de Burgos (1914-1953). I've bought two Brown albums so far: "Distancias" (1977), all of whose songs are based on Corretjer's poems, and "Casi Alba" (1980), whose title cut is based on a poem by de Burgos. The music is lively and wide-ranging, with catchy refrains and excellent jams. I'm looking forward to exploring more of Brown's music, as well as music by other Puerto Rican musicians. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 July 2023)