 He has taught cuatro making to young Puerto Rican artisans under grants originating from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) through various regional arts organizations.Cumpiano met Juan Sotomayor, a prize-winning photographer who worked on the New York Times staff.They discovered that there was no serious effort being expended at the University of Puerto Rico to study or research the origins and history, the corpus, of the jíbaro musical and musical craft traditions.