Victor M. Sterling

Victor M. “Papo” Sterling Duprey is a Puerto Rican musician who specializes in playing percussion especially drums in a variety of Latin rhythms. Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico where he learned to play among that area’s legendary musicians, he lived in California and New York City where he worked with renowned Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians and bands including Puntilla, and the Tito Puente Latin Jazz Ensemble, performing and touring widely. Papo is skilled on a wide variety of drums – timbales, bongos, bata, fundamento, etc. He later settled in the Hartford, Connecticut area in the mid-1990s, taught at Smith College in the dance department for a number of years, and was a radio producer for WRYM in Hartford. Papo formed and led the “Sabor A Timba” Afro-Caribbean Latin Jazz Group, and he sits in with jazz and bomba groups around Connecticut. He served as one of the project advisors for CCHAP’s exhibit project “Mano a Mano: Puerto Rican Traditional Arts From Island To City,” along with his then-wife Glaisma Pérez Silva with who he performed music and poetry in the 1990s.