Bomba and plena - Puerto Rico's fire inside

As a Caribbean musical powerhouse, Puerto Rico is mainly known for upbeat salsa and pop rhythms. But the birthplace of Latin pop superstar Ricky Martin is also home to two unique folk traditions that have played a major role in the development of the island’s rich musical heritage - bomba and plena.

A century before the island gained popularity as a salsa haven in the 1970s, drumbeats of ‘barriles’ and ‘panderetas’ filled the tropical air with bomba and plena, shaping the island’s sounds into the distinctive Spanish and African-rooted music of today’s Puerto Rico. The infectious beats were first heard in the coastal towns of Mayagüez, Ponce and Loiza, where in the 19th century African slaves were brought by the Spanish to work in sugarcane plantations. Bomba is the older genre, and most musicologists agree it developed in the mid-19th century, while plena derived from it decades later.

Bomba

“Bomba’s founding fathers - Andrés Lager, Anastasio Genal and Sergio Nater - came from the west coast town of Mayagüez to the capital San Juan in the 19th century. And my father, Rafael Cepeda learned from them while they played in the port districts after work dried up in the sugarcane fields,” Modesto Cepeda reminisces recently, minutes after wrapping up a performance in a plaza near El Castillo San Felipe del Morro, a 500 year old fortress in Old San Juan. “So I grew up carrying both rhythms in my blood and I’m honored to be a driving force of these folk beats on the island today,” he added.

A 60 something Loíza native, Cepeda has been the island’s leading figure in the bomba and plena traditions for over five decades. He explained that the bomba’s distinct rhythms are ‘sicá’, ‘yubá’ and ‘holandés'.

In bomba, musical instruments and their players have a special, symbiotic bonding. Its instrumentation includes a low-pitched ‘barril’ drum called the ‘buleador’, which carries the main rhythm, and the high-pitched ‘subidor’ drum that’s responsible for responding to the dancers’ rhythmical demands. Once bomba players set the rhythm, dancers take up the challenge and a duel commences. Tension and excitement mount as a call-and-response tune fires away, until the competition leaves both dancers and musicians drenched in sweat.

Archival footage of bomba in Puerto Rico showing dancers facing off ‘barril’ drummers

Plena

If bomba is all about drums and amazing folkloric dance moves, plena is all about lyrics. The narrative songs recount current social events and can be tragic, satirical or humorous. Plena is driven by ‘panderetas’ (tambourines without jingles), 3 to 5 handheld drums of different sizes and pitches that together make up the rhythm. The genre took hold in Ponce in the 1920s when it was mainly featured in the repertoire of ‘jíbaro’ artists. It’s based on a mix of several rhythms, including porro, calypso, merengue and Spanish romance.

Traditionally, it has been identified with the barrios and coastal zones of Puerto Rico, but a plena group can spring up anywhere across the island whenever a party is up or during the Christmas season.

As plena evolved, Rafael Hernández’s Trio Borinquen helped popularize it in New York’s growing Puerto Rican community in the 1940s. And the modernization of plena started in the 1950s when piano, bass and brass were added by artists like César Concepción, Bobby Capó, Daniel Santos, Mon Rivera, Ismael Rivera and Rafael Cortijo.

Audio clip of one of Cortijo Y Su Combo’s many hits - the plena ‘Micaela’ featuring Ismael Rivera on vocals

The next generation

In the past 20 years, plena has been given a modern spin with the emergence of new groups that have added their own unique touch to the original formula. Foremost among them is the 12-piece, Grammy-nominated band Plena Libre, whose tasty brew fuses salsa, jazz, rock and plena. Led by bassist and arranger Gary Nuñez, Plena Libre is credited for having revved up the genre thanks to their dynamic approach and the addition of a salsa-influenced brass section.

Plena Libre in concert at the Fez Jazz Festival 2008, in Morocco

Contemporary experimental artists such as William Cepeda - who has played with the likes of Dizzie Gillespie, James Brown and Miriam Makeba - has taken bomba a step further with his Afro-Rican Jazz Band by blending it with Latin jazz, funk, classical, hip-hop, Middle-Eastern sounds and salsa to create a new universal idiom.

“Today bomba and plena still maintain their sonic essence, but they have been influenced by a diverse blend of world rhythms,” Cepeda says. “What we have done in Puerto Rico is adapt all these rhythms into our own style and give it our own twist.”

With artists like these playing bomba and plena these ancient rhythms are set to see in the next century too.

Ian Malinow

www.plenalibre.com
www.williamcepeda.com

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