Tag Archives | Puerto Rico

Rafael Cortijo helped start Salsa

We can’t end our week of music from Puerto Rico without even a nod to salsa, one of Puerto Rico’s most danceable musical exports, and one of its formative stars, Rafael Cortijo.

The musical progeny of Cuban son, from which it borrows its signature 3-2 and 2-3 clave patterns, the genre may have started in Cuba and Puerto Rico but really took root in the ’60s and ’70s in New York City where Puerto Rican immigrants fused son, mambo and little guaracha to make an extraordinary new musical form. In this video meet Rafael Cortijo, a leading Puerto Rican big band leader from the ’50s and ’60s. He and his combos started by performing only plena, then branched out to merengue and, eventually, salsa.

“Bomba’s from Puerto Rico, but first from Africa”

In music class we sing “Rule Sonda,” a bomba song that inspires us to dance, and receive a very basic, yet we hope inspiring, introduction to this essential Afro-Caribbean artform. The dance begins when one student, either chosen or who volunteers to be the dancer, gets up and starts to move. Outfitted with percussion instruments galore, the rest of the students are drummers who follow the dancer by increasing or decreasing tempo volume as dancer becomes more or less enthusiastic. For your young kids’ first foray into bomba don’t worry too much about mastery — empower dancers to dance, drummers to follow and everyone to have fun.

Puerto Rican Bomba is a joy to drum and dance

Puerto Rican bomba is an African-inspired folk music style that is deeply intertwined with dance.

The Bomba percussion ensemble consists mainly of maracas, palitos (clave-like sticks struck together), a cua (a bamboo tube struck with wooden sticks), and hand drums known as “bariles,” because they were traditionally made from the wood of barrels. There are low-pitched hand drums like the “buleador” (the “segundo”), which lays the foundation of the beat, and the high-pitched “subidor” (the “primo”) which improvises.

In Puerto Rico Spain meets Africa meets the United States

This week in our online class we sing and dance our way to Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island that has a long and complicated history of relationships with both Spain and the United States. In 1493 Christopher Columbus landed on Caribbean island now known as Puerto Rico, which the indigenous Taino called “Borinquen,” and declared it for the Spanish. Within fifty years the Spanish all but eradicated the Taino population, so they began to bring African slaves to the island to do hard labor. The island remained a Spanish colony, bolstered by the work of Africans, for four hundred years until the United States wrestled it away in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Since 1898 the United States has controlled Puerto Rico’s government and economy, though not its culture. Currently Puerto Rico is a “Commonwealth” of the United States; the U.S. President is the formal chief of state but Puerto Ricans can’t vote in the presidential. Puerto Rico elects its own governor but it has no voting representation in the U.S. House or Senate.

American Music Gets Hot Hot Hot

All Around This World US and Canada "Everywhere Map"

Salsa is Puerto Rico’s most danceable musical export. The musical progeny of Cuban son from which it borrows its signature 3-2 and 2-3 clave patterns, the genre may have started in Cuba and Puerto Rico but really took root in the ’60s and ’70s in New York City where Puerto Rican immigrants fused son, mambo and little guaracha to make an extraordinary new musical form. Over the next week we’re going to visit with just a few of our favorite salsa musicians. There are so many! And so many wonderful instruments to play and the “sauciest” of rhythms that inspire us to dance. ¡Vamanos!

The master of Timbales

Timbales — as we see come in this video of the master of timables Tito Puente — are sets of two shallow, high-pitched drums, to which a percussionist often attaches other instruments like cymbals, cowbells and claves. Timbales appear in Latin musical genres from salsa to mambo to reggaeton. Sometimes a percussionist hits the top of the timbales, other time s/he keeps time hitting the sides. Tito Puente can hit the timbales anywhere he wants and they’ll sound terrific.

We love to dance the Plena

Puerto Rican plena, also nicknamed “el periodico cantado (“the sung newspaper”), formed as a distinct musical genre in the late 1800s when sugar cane plantation laborers, manual workers and former slaves moved to Puerto Rico’s urban areas and communicated the news of the day to each other through music and dance.

A Puerto Rican plena ensemble consists of a variety of percussion instruments such as guiros, congas, timbales, maracas and panderos (small tamborines), as well as a 4-stringed Puerto Rican guitar known as a cuatro. The plena has no fixed rhythmic form, but, unlike bomba which is primarily African, weaves in a multitude of rhythms from Puerto Rico’s Spanish, African and Taino cultures. Enjoy the plena in this video while grooving along with these gentlemen, who are clearly having an extraordinary time.

Rule, Rule, Rule Sonda

Dance along with Hermanos Ayala as you meet bomba….

“Rule Sonda,” is a Puerto Rican bomba — music in which drumming and dancing are very closely connected, and in which the dancers generally usually lead the drummers rather than the other way around. Puerto Rican communities with strong ties to Africa developed bomba, with its energizing drumming and dancing, in the 17th and 18th centuries, giving enslaved Africans a medium to express both their struggles and triumphs through song. In this video Hermanos Ayala will make sure you dance.