Fate was to blame. Mario Cortés had been forging a solid international career as an accompanying guitarist next to dance figures such as Carmen Cortés and Manuela Carrasco; and top names in cante such as Camarón, Chocolate, José Menese and Fernanda de Utrera. But, by "pure chance", he found himself sanding wood on the balcony of his house. "And the truth is that you never know what destiny you're going to have in this life, nor where it's going to lead you, nor how you're going to reach the end, when your vocation and your profession is as a guitarist".

	Mario Cortés

The turn was marked by his son Marvin's whim way back in the year 1993. "I was rehearsing with my brother-in-law Gerardo Núñez and I took my son, who was about fourteen years old at the time, because he really likes percussion and Rubem Dantas and José Antonio Galicia were going to be there with us. When we left the rehearsal he asked me to make him a box drum and I told him that I would give him the money so that he could buy the best box drum around. And my son insisted; he really wanted me to make it for him... And I didn't even know how a box drum was made, nor had I seen box drums except on the outside when they were accompanying me, that's all". Mario Cortés forgot about his boy's request until, upon leaving rehearsal the following day, he came across a garbage container with a board in it. Without saying a word, he took it home with him, bought a handsaw and got down to work: "I started cutting the wood, at least sixteen-millimeter plywood, and the drum was coming out all bent; there was no way it was going to come out straight. I sketched the drum more or less; I didn't know the exact measurements, but I sat down on a chair, since the boy is tall … And then, how was I going to make the hole?".

And he started getting over stumbling blocks as they came along. "I got hold of a thinner saw because that way I could bend it, and the hole came out in any shape except round". Next he had to assemble the pieces... "I didn't even glue it, the wood was so thick that I put in screws all over it, I squared it and... I was missing the head. I know that in front it was plywood, so I bought four-millimeter okoume and I put it on. I wasn't on the wrong track there, but the rest wasn't worth a dime. Since the box drum looked horrible, I bought black paint to cover all the flaws and I painted the whole thing. That way it didn't look so bad, but it was a portable cooler".

A couple of days later, the novice craftsman invited his son to the rehearsal again and told him: "Come on, then. Pick up that box drum". Marvin was delighted: "How beautiful, how big". The thrill was tremendous, since his father had made that box drum for him. "Rubem Dantas and José Antonio Galicia had a look at it and started saying what a great box drum it was, that it was a real box drum and not the piece of shit that we have... I just looked at them and told them to shut up, and that I had made it myself, and that the boy was going to think they were laughing at him". But they were serious. Both percussionists wanted to try it and so they did. The conclusion is that, they insisted, "the box drum sounded good, better than the ones they had". In fact, they even tried to swap drums with Marvin, who flatly refused. The first order was already being made: "Rubem and José Antonio asked me to make a box drum for each of them, because they assured me that there weren't any good box drums out there".

Mario Cortés accepted the challenge, determined to improve the instrument's quality. The craftsman related that "I then made them out of okoume, glued and decorated with colored varnish, though I still hadn't realized that some inside system could be put in. They weren't the ones either … but they sounded better". Dantas and Galicia, "blissfully happy", began to spread the word that Mario Cortés made box drums "that were unbelievable". And, little by little, the orders came in to him: "When I went somewhere with my sister Carmen, people used to say to me, why don't you make me one, I'll pay you for it? And I said no, that I had made it because they had insisted". And the new customers used the same method: insisting. "I started making little box drums on the balcony of my house, in a third-floor apartment, with a block and sandpaper in hand". Since all the sawdust went into the house, and more specifically, into the closets, the adventure almost forced him to move out of his house. Word of mouth did the rest... "Make me one, make me another one … until the moment came for me to sit down and consider radically improving the instrument".

He invested money, time and gray matter in "researching what was the best wood there was to make a good box drum and I tried all the kinds I could get". Then, faced with growing demand, Mario Cortés had already automated the system a bit, since "I couldn't manufacture box drums by myself with a block and sandpaper". He looked for machinery which was the "most comfortable that existed for sanding" and he invented what he could not find: "I had to make the pattern of a mold made-to-measure to glue the box drums, a mold that I love because it's quite primitive, but where the drum fits perfectly". And it's an invention he has patented.

Mario Cortés stuck to the idea of "never buying a box drum to copy it, though I know that I could have saved myself years of work". So he opted for the trial-and-error formula instead. "I even made box drums out of oak, and though the wood was very expensive, the sound didn't convince me". Searching and searching, he found mukali, a Brazilian wood which he used to make the semi-professional models 'Jazz' and 'Soul'. And he went on investigating.

Mario Cortés was trying to perfect the sound of his hand-crafted instruments. And he did so, on the one hand, with Finnish birch wood, which he considers definitive for the flamenco box drum; and, on the other hand, with string systems. Springing up from this dual discovery and the endless creative capacity featured by the brand were the models 'Paradisso' and later, 'Universe', both established as ineludible pieces not only for flamenco groups, but also for bands of any genre. On the flamenco side there are percussionists like Ramón Porrina, Piraña, Antonio Carmona, Chaboli, Cepillo, Bandolero... and, on the other side, Tino di Geraldo, Giovani Hidalgo, Raúl Recua, Alejandro Sanz's group, Ricky Martin's group, Chayanne's... And the thing is, as Mario Cortés assures, "though we've made it evolve satisfying what flamenco musicians want, the box drum has been adapted to the percussion accompaniment of any group and any style of music. It's now another instrument".

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