Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Moor Slayer, which begins during the last week of July and lasts for nine days. Partiers don
bright
vejigantes
(Puerto Rican masks) and take to the streets, celebrating all night.
Plena,
which originated in the more urban region around Ponce, is also drum-based but
with lighter textures and a less forceful beat. Introduced by
cocolocos,
slaves who migrated
north from islands south of Puerto Rico,
plena
uses an assortment of handheld percussion
instruments. Locals once referred to the form as
el periodico cantado
(the sung newspa-
per), because the songs typically recounted, and often satirized, current events.
Plena
often
uses
panderos,
which resemble Irish and Brazilian frame drums, but according to musi-
cologists
panderos
were introduced to the island by Spaniards, who had lifted them from
their Moorish neighbors. In its most traditional form,
plena
was performed by a group of
singers who accompanied themselves with only the
panderos.
The
plena
beat has strongly
syncopated African roots and is a close cousin to calypso,
soca
and dancehall music from
Trinidad and Jamaica.
Bomba y plena
developed side by side on the coastal lowlands, and inventive musicians
eventually realized the call-and-response of
bomba
would work well with
plena
's satirical
lyrical nature, which is why the forms are often played back-to-back by ensembles. If you
catch
bomba y plena
today, a historically accurate performance will be rare; in the 1950s
a modernization of the sound paved the way for salsa by often adding horns and other
European instruments, pan-Caribbean rhythmic elements and the clatter of Cuban percus-
sion.
Music of Puerto Rico (
www.musicofpuertorico.com
)
gives an excellent rundown on the complex musical genres of the island
including audio clips and printed song lyrics.
Salsa
For most gringos, salsa's definition as a catch-all term for the interconnected jumble of
Latin and Afro-Caribbean dances and sounds isn't easy to get a handle on, but for those
who live in its areas of origin - Puerto Rico, Cuba and New York City - it's as much a
lifestyle as a genre, with cultural complexities that go well beyond the 'spicy' jargon that's
often bandied about. If you grew up in any of the above, the instinctual reaction to salsa's
buoyancy seems to be in the blood, or at least in the hips. If you grew up elsewhere, try get-
ting acquainted with it by reading between the lines of Yuri Buenaventura's neotraditional
anthem, 'Salsa,' where it's called 'the rhythm that gives life.' Or better yet, don't read any-
thing - just get out there and dance.
Salsa tunes might sound vastly different from one another. They can be slow or brisk,
flippant or heartrending. Pondering salsa's definition will quickly lead you to the question
