Yin Carrizo

Dagoberto Carrizo Medrano was born in Ocu, in Panama's Herrera province, on 5 July 1939, and died in Panama on 7 September 2026, aged 87, after a long illness that had left him bedridden. Panama knew him as Yin Carrizo, El Cantor de la Patria, the accordionist who took interiorano dance music out of the toldos and into the country's ballrooms. His songs Lucy, Julia, and Viva Panama stayed in the national ear for more than sixty years. Tamayo Records, Telemetro, La Prensa, La Estrella de Panama, and Infobae agree on the outline of that life. The specific disease that ended it was not named.

He was the son of Leonardo Carrizo Diaz and Lucila del Carmen Medrano. Tamayo names his brothers as Leonardo, Celso Gustavo "Checho", Marco Tulio, and Rolando Olmedo. The same notes say he started on harmonica at five, and that his mother bought him his first accordion at nine. In a 2013 interview with Critica he remembered the same start a little differently: harmonica at five, first accordion at ten, a gift from his mother that cost 13 dollars. Both versions put the instrument in his hands before he was a teenager. They are not collapsed here into one unstated age.

He went to the Jose Dolores Carrizo school in Ocu, then to the Normal Juan Demostenes Arosemena. At 12 he joined the school's folk ensemble. The director asked him to go to Las Tablas and learn the pieces played there. Tamayo records his answer: "yo no tengo que ir alla, si quiere yo le compongo las piezas." At 13 he wrote Viva Panama. He later said the words were about polleras and montunos because that was the life of the school ensemble. When the director asked who had written the pieces, he said he had learned them in Las Tablas, because work by a boy of his age was not being credited. The ensemble took them in anyway. Early pieces named by Tamayo include Viva Panama, Carnaval Ocueno, Marisol, Noche Buena, Favorito Cazan, and Inspiracion de mi Acordeon. La Estrella later placed the writing of Viva Panama in the same school years, amid student struggles over national sovereignty.

From 1952, for six years running, he took first prize in the accordion contest run by professor Dora Perez de Zarate during Semana del Maiz at the Escuela Profesional Isabel Herrera Obaldia, and he also won the contest for tambor pujador. Other musicians began to play his pieces: Jose Vergara, Ceferino Nieto, and Dorindo Cardenas. He graduated from the Normal in 1958 and, at about 19, told his parents he would not teach. "Ya componia y tocaba, asi que una vez termine mis estudios les dije a mis padres que me dedicaria a la musica, cosa que hice y aqui me tienen," he told Critica. For a time he worked at the Asamblea de Diputados running a mimeograph, for 82 balboas a month.

In 1960 he was hired to play the four carnival nights at the pista Los Dos Mangos, Calle Primera, Santiago de Veraguas, for 40 balboas a night. Of nine dances that carnival, his was the one that filled. The owners doubled his pay. He then gave himself fully to music and named his own conjunto after that first composition: Viva Panama. The public called him El Cantor de la Patria and El Romantico del Acordeon. La Prensa also used El Romantico de Todos los Tiempos. His first singer was Reyna Cedeno. She was followed by Catalina del Carmen Carrasco Aguilar, Catita de Panama, the voice most listeners still hear on the conjunto's classic sides. Catita was the singer beside him, not his wife, and not the same person as Yin Carrizo. In 1963 he debuted in Panama City at Club 24 on Avenida Central, then at Club Ticeno and Jardin Orgullo de Azuero, to full houses.

The records followed the rooms. In 1965 he cut a first 45, Inspiracion de mi acordeon and La Pajarita, then a second with Trajecito de Organdi and La Aparicion. In 1967 he was the first tipico artist to play Club Union in Panama City. In 1969 he recorded Julia, written by his cousin Joaquin "Chin" Carrizo, which became an international hit and a Tamayo platinum. El Gran Combo of Puerto Rico later recorded Julia. Joaquin Chin Carrizo (1913-1973) is a different musician. This page does not merge his life, photographs, or catalogue with Yin's.

In 1970 the national government gave him the Orden Vasco Nunez de Balboa in the grade of Comendador. That carnival he shared four nights with Celia Cruz, Willie Colon, and the Estrellas Latinas, later known as the Fania stars. In 1971 he was the first to fill Estadio Juan Demostenes Arosemena for the crowning of the carnival queen. In 1978 his was the first conjunto tipico to succeed at the University of Panama summer programme. On 5 July 1978, his birthday, a Venevision crew came to Panama and sent a live broadcast to Venezuela of Yin Carrizo and the Venezuelan folk group Los Llaneros at the Gimnasio Nuevo Panama.

Lucy was the song that travelled farthest. On the 1982 Tamayo LP Celos, it became, by the label's account, the biggest-selling single in Panamanian musical history, a double platinum, with sales counted in Colombia, the United States, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, and Panama. La Prensa, quoting the producer and former presenter Alvaro Alvarado, said Carrizo wrote Lucy as a direct homage to his own daughter of that name, and that he sang it himself while playing accordion. A 2012 La Prensa visit to the family, timed to Lucy's birthday, treated the 1982 song the same way. In 2000, Premios a lo Nuestro named Lucy the most successful Panamanian song of the twentieth century. Carrizo asked Discos Tamayo to receive the recognition in his name. On 5 July 1985, Banco Ganadero honoured him in the presence of former Colombian president Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, who said that Yin Carrizo and Rafael Escalona had each helped take their country's music abroad.

There was a harder stretch. He told Critica that in the 1980s, during a political crisis in the country, he was accused in a delicate matter and stayed off the stage for about two years. He called that period very sad, and said he had got past it. The interview does not name the accusation. It is not invented here. By the early 1990s he was still filling dates, including the fiesta de reyes in David, Chiriqui, a night on 15 January in Anton, and the toldo Atlas in David on 12 March 1994. Bursitis then pushed him into private life. That is a 1994 retirement note, not the cause of the 2026 death. He came back for selected nights: in 1997 Cerveceria Nacional asked him to present the musician-of-the-year prize to Victorio Vergara Batista at the Feria Internacional de Azuero, and in January 1998 he and Victorio played mano a mano at Jardin Maricel to a full house.

On 12 November 2009 he was named an outstanding personality of Panama at the Museo Reina Torres de Arauz, with the president of the republic present. Later, professor Olmedo Carrasquilla wrote the book El Cantor de la Patria, and sculptor Ricaurte Martinez made a 1.80 metre resin statue, copper-painted, unveiled with the book under the auspices of Banco Nacional de Panama. The newspaper account of that homage does not pin a calendar date, so none is given here. He also painted. A 2012 La Prensa visit recorded that, at the end of secondary school, he had been unsure whether to stay with music or go to Florence to study painting. He told Critica he liked painting and had given time to it, "pero si volviera a nacer, volveria a ser musico." He admired Gelo Cordoba, Ceferino Nieto, and Dorindo Cardenas, liked ballads, and named Juan Gabriel and Agustin Lara among the composers he followed. Cien anos de soledad was among the books he preferred. With the Decerega family he was a co-founder of Jardin Cosita Buena on Via Fernandez de Cordoba.

He died on Monday 7 September 2026. The family said the illness had kept him in bed. They set a mass for Wednesday 9 September 2026 at 10:30 a.m. at the Santuario Nacional del Corazon de Maria in Panama City, and a mass for Friday 11 September 2026 at 11:00 a.m. at the Parroquia San Sebastian in Ocu. La Estrella reported that he is survived by his wife, Carmen Cedeno de Carrizo, and daughters Judith, Lucy, and Kenia, and that his son Dagoberto had already died. A 2010 published family note also names children Lilibeth, Judith, Carmen Lucila, Dagoberto Jr., and Kenia del Carmen, and says Judith inherited the accordion. Those lists do not match line for line. This page prints the names the sources print, and does not invent a single reconciled family tree. A burial place beyond those two masses was not stated in the pages used here.

He is Dagoberto Carrizo Medrano, the Panamanian accordionist. He is not Joaquin Chin Carrizo. He is not Catalina Carrasco, Catita de Panama. He is not a footballer or a politician who shares the Carrizo surname. No English Wikipedia article was found for him on 9 September 2026. The portrait used here is the La Estrella de Panama image of this accordionist, credited to Alejandro Ortiz, published with the 7 September 2026 obituary.