Diomedes Matos is a Puerto Rican

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

 musician and master instrument maker who is most famous for building string instruments. He built his first guitar at age 12 and later studied and mastered construction techniques for several traditional stringed instruments including cuatros

Cuatro (instrument)

The cuatro is any of several Latin American instruments of the guitar or lute family. The cuatro is smaller than a guitar. Cuatro means four in Spanish, although current instruments may have more than four strings....

, requinto

Requinto

The term requinto is used in both Spanish and Portuguese to mean a smaller, higher-pitched version of another instrument. Thus, there are requinto guitars, drums, and several wind instruments.-Wind instruments:...

s, classical guitar

Classical guitar

The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...

s, and the Puerto Rican tres

Tres

The tres is a 3-course, 6-string chordophone which was created in Cuba. A tres player is called a tresero in Cuba and a tresista in Puerto Rico.-Cuban tres:In Cuba, the son was created as a song and a salon dance genre...

. Matos' instruments are in great demand and he has won many awards and honors for his work. In 2006, he was awarded the National Heritage Fellowship Award by the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

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