The genre of focus this week shifts to the sounds of my heritage: that is of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican sounds encompass a variety of styles like Bomba, Plena, Salsa, and Reggaeton. As a kid, my dad would blast music around the house at times over many different types of music: old Rock, Hip-hop, R&B, and the classic 90’s and the 2000’s music — but every once in awhile I’d hear some type of music with booming trumpets and beating bongos that just made me wanna get up and dance. Most of what I was hearing when I listened to these rhythms and beats was Bomba and Salsa, and not until Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” did I hear Reggaeton.

Plena

First, I’ll mention Plena because it’s the least I’ve been exposed to. In spanish, the term means ‘el periodico cantado’ or the sung newspaper. It was formed as a separate genre in Puerto Rico in the late 1800’s when sugar cane plantation laborers, manual workers, and former slaves moved to the urban areas and told the news of the day to each other through music and dance. Plena derives from a multitude of rhythms in Puerto Rico’s Spanish, African and Taíno cultures and has no fixed rhythm. The Taíno culture refers to the culture of the natives of Puerto Rico before the Spanish colonization of the Americas. It also has a variety of percussion instruments such as congas, guiros, maracas, timbales, and panderos (small tamborines), as well as a 4-stringed Puerto Rican guitar known as a cuatro. An example of Plena is shown below:

Bomba

Next, is Bomba which translates to Boom in english. While Bomba can be used as the name for a number of rhythms, its real meaning regards the encounter and creative relationship between dancers, percussionists, and singers. In performing bomba, dancers move their bodies in time with drum beats, with the drummers challenging dancers to dance with more and more intensity. Instruments include maracas, bariles, low-pitched hand drums such as the “beleador” (the “segundo”), which lays the foundation of the beat, and the high-pitched “subidor” (the “primo”) which improvises as well as palitos – clave-like sticks struck together, and a cua – a bamboo tube struck with wooden stick. Bomba as performed is displayed below:

Salsa

Salsa is the type most widley associated with Puerto Rican music and is the best to dance to. It utilizes many instruments like the bass, bongo, claves, congas, cowbell, guiro, maracas, saxophone, timbales, trombone, and trumpet. Although rooting in Puerto Rico and Cuba, Salsa gained its momentum in the 60’s and 70’s from Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City. Fused by son, mambo, and little guracha, Salsa became huge leaving large impacts on the music realm then and for years to come. Here is one of my favorite Salsa songs, Aguanile, originally by Hector Lavoe and covered by Marc Anthony:

Reggaeton

This last genre, Reggaeton, is the most recent of all the genres. With its starts in the Panama, Puerto Rico further modified and popularized Reggaeton; after its mainstream appearance in 2004, it spread to North American, European, Asain, and African audiences. It fuses musical influences of Jamaican dancehall and Trinidadian soca with those of Latin America like salsa, bomba, Latin American hip hop, and electronica. The vocals are generally rapped or sung, usually in Spanish with a hip-hop feel. Here – a popular example and my favorite 2000’s throwback Reggaeton song, Oye Mi Canto meaning “Hear My Song” by N.O.R.E. (explicit):