Fabiola Mendez

– Traditional music in a modern package

With the string instrument cuatro as her signature, Fabiola Méndez unites Puerto Rican traditional music with modern musical impulses.

Puerto Rico's national instrument, the cuatro , was originally played by the Taino, fugitive slaves and European defectors who had fled to the mountains of Puerto Rico to escape the Spanish colonialists. Here they established an agricultural community, the jíbaro, which today is an important part of Puerto Rico's identity and musical and cultural heritage. A legacy that is being carried on by a new generation of young and innovative musicians like Fabiola Méndez .

Fabiola Méndez is the first to graduate from the renowned Berklee College of Music with the cuatro as her main instrument. At her Tiny Desk concert in September 2024, she showed that the cuatro is both part of a rich Afro-Caribbean culture and an instrument that suits everything from jazz to various Latin American rhythms, and in April she again showed her infectious joy of playing when she played alongside Bad Bunny in his Tiny Desk debut.