Early music
Although it is customary in some circles to say that Puerto Rican music is a product of three cultural influences—Spanish, African, and Taino Indian--, it is not possible to attribute any aspects of Puerto Rican music to the long-extinct Tainos. Spanish colonists described the Taino's areito festivals, featuring dancers and singers accompanied by slit drums and scrapers, but there is no evidence that any of this music influenced that of the island's subsequent inhabitants. While the güiro scraper may have derived from the Tainos, the rhythms commonly played on it today probably came into vogue long after Taino language and culture had effectively died out.Music culture in Puerto Rico during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries is poorly documented. Certainly it included Spanish church music, military band music, and diverse genres cultivated by the jíbaros (peasants, mostly of Spanish descent) and enslaved Africans and their descendants. While these latter never constituted more than 11% of the island's population, they contributed some of the island's most dynamic musical features.
In the 19th century Puerto Rican music begins to emerge into historical daylight, with notated genres like danza being naturally better documented than folk genres like jíbaro music and bomba.
The African people of the island used drums made of carved harwood covered with an untreated rawhide on one side, commonly made from goatskin. A popular word derived from creole to design this drum was shukbwa, that literally means 'trunk of tree'. In other islands like Guadalupe, this type of hollowed trunk is called bwa fuyé.
Folk music
If the term "folk music" is taken to mean music genres that have flourished without elite support, and have evolved independently of the commercial mass media, the realm of Puerto Rican folk music would comprise the primarily Hispanic-derived jíbaro music, the Afro-Puerto Rican bomba, and the essentially "creole" plena. As these three genres evolved in Puerto Rico and are unique to that island, they occupy a respected place in island culture, even if they are not currently as popular as contemporary musics like salsa or reggaeton.Jíbaro music
Jíbaros—small farmers of primarily Hispanic descent—constituted the overwhelming majority of the Puerto Rican population until the mid-twentieth century. They were traditionally celebrated for their self-sufficiency, hospitality, and love of song and dance. Their most popular instruments were relatives of the Spanish vihuela, especially the cuatro—now with ten strings in five double courses—and the lesser known triple. A typical jíbaro group nowadays might feature a cuatro, guitar, and percussion instrument such as the güiro scraper and/or bongo. Lyrics to jíbaro music are generally in the décima form, consisting of ten octosyllabic lines in the rhyme scheme abba, accddc. Décima form derives from 16th-century Spain. Although it has largely died out in that country (except the Canaries), it took root in various places in Latin America—especially Cuba and Puerto Rico—where it is sung in diverse styles. A sung décima might be pre-composed, derived from a publication by some literati, or ideally, improvised on the spot, especially in the form of a “controversia” in which two singer-poets trade witty insults or argue on some topic. In between the décimas, lively improvisations can be played on the cuatro.The décimas are sung to stock melodies, with standardized cuatro accompaniment patterns. About twenty such song-types are in common use. These are grouped into two broad categories, viz., seis (e.g., seis fajardeño, seis chorreao) and aguinaldo (e.g., aguinaldo orocoveño, aguinaldo cayeyano). Traditionally, the seis could accompany dancing, but this tradition has largely died out except in tourist shows. The aguinaldo is most characteristically sung during Christmas season, when groups of revelers (parrandas) go from house to house, singing jíbaro songs and partying. The aguinaldo texts are generally not about Christmas, and also unlike Anglo-American Christmas carols, they are generally sung solo rather than chorally. In general, Christmas season is a time when traditional music—both seis and aguinaldo—is most likely to be heard.
Jíbaro music came to be widely marketed on commercial recordings in the twentieth century, and brilliant singer-poets like Ramito (Flor Morales Ramos, 1915–90) are well documented. However, jíbaros themselves were becoming an endangered species, as agribusiness and urbanization have drastically reduced the numbers of small farmers on the island. Many jíbaro songs dealt accordingly with the vicissitudes of migration to New York. Jíbaro music has in general declined accordingly, although it retains its place in local culture, especially around Christmastime, and there are many cuatro players, some of whom have cultivated prodigious virtuosity.
Bomba
In its call-and-response singing set to ostinato-based rhythms played on two or three squat drums (barriles), bomba resembles other neo-African genres in the Caribbean. Of clear African provenance is its format in which a single person emerges from an informal circle of singers to dance in front of the drummers, engaging the lead drummer in a sort of playful duel; after dancing for a while, that person is then replaced by another. While various such elements can be traced to origins in Africa or elsewhere, bomba must be regarded as a local Afro-Puerto Rican creation. Its rhythms (e.g. seis corrido, yubá, leró, etc.), dance moves, and song lyrics (in Spanish, with some French creole words in eastern Puerto Rico) collectively constitute a unique Puerto Rican genre.
In the 1950s, the dance-band ensemble of Rafael Cortijo and Ismael Rivera performed several original songs which they labelled as "bombas"; although these bore some similarities to the sicá style of bomba, in their rhythms and horn arrangements they also borrowed noticeably from the Cuban dance music which had long been popular in the island. As of the 1980s, bomba had declined, although it was taught, in a somewhat formalized fashion, by the Cepeda family in Santurce, San Juan, and was still actively performed informally, though with much vigor, in the Loíza towns, home to then Ayala family dynasty of bomberos. Bomba continues to survive there, and has also experienced something of a revival, being cultivated by folkoric groups elsewhere in the island and in New York City. Women have also played a role in its revival, as in the case of the all-female group Alma Moyo. Like other such traditions, bomba is now well documented on sites like YouTube, and on a few ethnographic documentary films.
Plena
Around 1900 plena emerged as a humble proletarian folk genre in the lower-class, largely Afro-Puerto Rican urban neighborhoods in San Juan, Ponce, and elsewhere. Plena subsequently came to occupy its niche in island music culture. In its quintessential form, plena is an informal, unpretentious, simple folksong genre, in which alternating verses and refrains are sung to the accompaniment of round, often homemade frame drums called panderetas (like tambourines without jingles), perhaps supplemented by accordion, guitar, or whatever other instruments might be handy. The plena rhythm is a simple duple pattern, although a lead pandereta player might add lively syncopations. Plena melodies tend to have an unpretentious, "folksy" simplicity. Some early plena verses commented on barrio anecdotes, such as "Cortarón a Elena" (They stabbed Elena) or "Allí vienen las maquinas" (Here come the firetrucks). Many had a decidedly irreverent and satirical flavor, such as "Llegó el obispo" mocking a visiting bishop. Some plenas, such as "Cuando las mujeres quieren a los hombres" and "Santa María," are familiar throughout the island. In 1935 the essayist Tomás Blanco celebrated plena—rather than the outdated and elitist danza—as an expression of the island's fundamentally creole or mulatto racial and cultural character. Plenas are still commonly performed in various contexts; a group of friends attending a parade or festival may bring a few panderetas and burst into song, or new words will be fitted to the familiar tunes by protesting students or striking workers. While enthusiasts might on occasion dance to a plena, plena is not characteristically oriented toward dance.In the 1920s-30s plenas came to be commercially recorded, especially by Manuel "El Canario" Jimenez, who performed old and new songs, supplementing the traditional instruments with piano and horn arrangements. In the 1940s Cesar Concepción popularized a big-band version of plena, lending the genre a new prestige, to some extent at the expense of its proletarian vigor and sauciness. In the 1950s a newly envigorated plena emerged as performed by the smaller band of Rafael Cortijo and vocalist Ismael "Maelo" Rivera, attaining unprecedented popularity and modernizing the plena while recapturing its earthy vitality. Many of Cortijo's plenas present colorful and evocative vignettes of barrio life and lent a new sort of recognition to the dynamic contribution of Afro-Puerto Ricans to the island's culture (and especially music). This period represented the apogee of plena's popularity as a commercial popular music. Unfortunately, Rivera spent much of the 1960s in prison, and the group never regained its former vigor. Nevertheless, the extraordinary massive turnout for Cortijo's funeral in 1981 reflected the beloved singer's enduring popularity. By then, however, plena's popularity had been replaced by that of salsa, although some revivalist groups, such as Plena Libre, continue to perform in their own lively fashion, while "street" plena is also heard on various occasions.
Bolero
The bolero originally derived from Cuba, but by the 1920s-30s it was being not only enjoyed but also composed and performed by Puerto Ricans, including such outstanding figures as Rafael Hernández and Pedro Flores. There are no distinctively "Puerto Rican" features—such as singing "lelolai" or playing the cuatro—in their boleros, but it would be pointless to go on regarding the bolero solely as a "Cuban" genre; it is, of course, a Cuban genre, but since the 1920s it has also been an international genre, including a Puerto Rican one.Merengue
In the 1990s the most popular dance music in the island was merengue, as performed by visiting Dominican bands and a few locals such as Olga Tañon. Similar disagreements have been voiced about local rock bands, such as Fiel a la Vega, Puya, and Konfrontazion, that flourished in the 1980s-90s.Guaracha and Salsa
Salsa is another genre whose form derived overwhelmingly from Cuba—especially Cuban dance music of the 1950s—but which in the 1960s-70s became an international genre, cultivated with special zeal and excellence in Puerto Rico, and by New York Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans and Newyoricans, indeed, rescued this music, which had been stagnating and isolated in Cuba itself in the 1960s, giving it new life, new social significance, and many new stylistic innovations. Salsa is the name acquired by the modernized form of Cuban-style dance music that was cultivated and rearticulated from the latter 1960s by Puerto Ricans in New York and, subsequently, in Puerto Rico and elsewhere. While salsa soon became an international genre, thriving in Colombia, Venezuela, and elsewhere, New York and Puerto Rico have remained its epicenters. Particularly prominent in the island itself were El Gran Combo, Sonora Ponceña, and Willie Rosario, as well as the more pop-oriented "salsa romántica" stars of the 1980s-90s. (For further information see the entry on "salsa music.")Other popular newyorican and puertorican exponents have been: Tito Puente (timbales and vibes player), Tito Rodríguez (guaracha and bolero singer), pianists Eddie Palmieri, Richie Ray and Papo Lucca, conguero Ray Barreto, trombonist and singer Willie Colón, and singers La India, Andy Montañez, Bobby Cruz, Cheo Feliciano, Héctor Lavoe, Ismael Miranda, Ismael Rivera, Tito Nieves, Pete El Conde Rodríguez and Gilberto Santa Rosa, among others.
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