Petersburg Times – September 23, 1987 He became determined to become a writer and read voraciously. In one winter while in high school he read William Makepeace Thackeray and then "proceeded backward to Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Johnson and the other magnificos of the Eighteenth century." He read the entire canon of Shakespeare and became an ardent fan of Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Huxley. As a boy, Mencken also had practical interests, photography and chemistry in particular, and eventually had a home chemistry laboratory in which he performed experiments of his own design, some of them inadvertently dangerous.
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By the 1960s, local doo-wop groups were evolving into what became known as the Combos Nacionales, five to ten musician groups using electric instruments and incorporating the diverse sounds of jazz, calypso, salsa, merengue, doo wop, soul and funk. Famous Combos Nacionales included The Silvertones, The Exciters, The Fabulous Festivals, The Beachers, The Soul Fantastics, Los Mozambiques, The Goombays, Los Juveniles, Roberto y su Zafra and Bush y sus Magnificos. By 1970, the dynamic Combos Nacionales sound dominated Panamanian popular music, only winding down toward the late 1970s. Reggae en Español originated in Panama, known as Spanish reggae is very popular among youth, and spawned the Spanish language dancehall also known as reggae en español (Spanish dancehall) style known as the predecessor to reggaeton, which originated with such artists as El General, Nando Boom, Renato, Mr. Rico, Aldo Ranks, Kafu Banton, Jam & Suppose, Danger Man and Chicho Man, before becoming popular in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and eventually amongst youth in the United States.
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