When the musician Luís Sanz showed up for a mystery recording session last year, he didn’t know that he’d be playing a cuatro solo for “Lo que le paso a Hawaii,” a lament about the dangers of statehood. Benito’s instruction was simple yet heart-wrenching: “play the cuatro as though it’s bleeding out.” 

In this episode, cuatristas show us that the cuatro is more than a musical instrument: it’s the soundtrack to the Puerto Rican experience. We follow the cuatro as it travels all over the world with the diaspora, as it fights against displacement, and as it adapts to a new global spotlight.

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