Roberto Angleró

While in New York, Angleró was drafted into the United States Air Force. He served four years, saw action in South Korea during the Korean War, and was eventually stationed at Air Force bases in Alabama and Texas. Angleró who was an Airman first class faced multiple racial discrimination incidents while serving in the Southern United States; a particularly acrimonious one occurred in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a restaurant owner refused to serve him dinner and later called military police to have him and his Jewish-American Air Force buddy escorted out of the state. Angleró recalls that, while being a proud veteran of the United States’ armed forces, incidents such as this one made him become a fervent supporter of independence for Puerto Rico. These incidents also shaped his views about race relations, most of which were humorously expressed in one of his major hits, a Puerto Rican bomba song called Si Dios fuera negro (If God were black), the melody of which, he claims, came to him in a dream.

After returning to Puerto Rico, and having overcome his stage fright issues, Angleró played with a few neighborhood trios and quartets in Barrio Obrero, until he became a part of Lito Peña’s Orquesta Panamericana. He sang with the orchestra, played minor percussion, and also started writing songs for the band, with the assistance of Peña and his long-time pianist, Héctor Urdaneta, to whom he claims were instrumental for any success he has attained as a composer. He composed his best known single, “La Pared” (The Wall), a bolero song that has been versioned over sixty times and whose best-known versions, besides the original one with the Panamericana (sung by Yayo El Indio), were sung by Felipe Pirela (whose version topped the charts in Pirela's native Venezuela for three months), Roberto Ledesma, Xiomara Alfaro and Armando Manzanero, Bambino

Angleró later established a long songwriting relationship with El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico. He wrote a number of El Gran Combo's songs, including: Serrana (1968), Dos Copas y Un Olé (1969), La Salsa de Hoy (1974), La Soledad (1976), and two major hits, Aquí No Ha Pasado Nada (1978) and Las Hojas Blancas (1973). Many of these songs have been rerecorded by the band in later releases.

For a short while, Angleró became one of the singers for Bobby Valentín’s orchestra. He then started one of various inceptions of his own band (Angleró had to change the name of one of these, jokingly named Angleró y Su Congregación, as to not appear as blasphemous), with a young Marvin Santiago as his lead singer. Santiago later joined Valentín’s band and became its first featured singer. Angleró wrote various songs for Valentín’s band, such as: Mírate al espejo, Amolador, Son Son Chararí, and two smash hits: the anthemic “Soy boricua” (a patriotic Puerto Rican song) and “La boda de ella”, a huge hit for the band and then-lead singer Cano Estremera.

Angleró kept recording songs as vocalist and bandleader. His band's most famous inception, Tierra Negra, was responsible for recording “Si Dios fuera negro”,[1] a humorous take on mildly racist figures of speech in Spanish where references to white and black are switched for comic effect. This song became a smash hit in various Latin American countries (particularly Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama and Peru), and was later versioned in French and became a hit in Guadeloupe and Martinique. Another song, which has become a popular Christmas song related to Epiphany in Puerto Rico, is “El Cinco de Enero” (January 5). “Esa enfermedad, ¿se pega?” was a minor hit.

Other songs written by Angleró include “Vas por ahí” by Papo Lucca’s Sonora Ponceña, and “Satisfacción”, recorded by Gilberto Santa Rosa

Angleró is virtually retired from the music business, but is still featured occasionally in radio talk show programs as a commenter. He was featured in a short biopic filmed by WIPR-TV in 2003. After Hurricane María went thru Puerto Rico in 2017, Roberto Angleró moved to live with he's daughter in Kissimmee, Florida.