Plena Es Brings Bomba to Tallahassee
The Florida Folklife Program celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month in September by presenting Plena Es as Artists-in-Residence in Tallahassee on September 26-28, 2017 in partnership with the Florida State University Center for Music of the Americas and Mission San Luis. In South Florida, Plena Es brings Puerto Rican music to life by emphasizing the island’s distinctive bomba and plena musical traditions and percussion-driven sounds that reflect the island’s African heritage. Founded by Pierre Ramos in 2004, the band—featuring percussion, trombones, piano and bass—stirs up a high-energy dance music that is a touchstone for Puerto Rican identity.
Bomba is the 17th-century music created by enslaved West Africans on Puerto Rico’s sugar plantations. Plena music, born out of bomba between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, came from the mixture of indigenous Taíno music, jíbaro music of the island’s mountain farmers, chamber music of the Spanish colonizers and the rhyming verse of urban satirists. The result was often called “el periódico cantado” (the sung newspaper), due to the prominence of political commentary and day-to-day news in the lyrics. Backed by the rhythms of the panderos (hand drums), plena focuses on the story, often improvised, sung by a lead singer and chorus.
“The bomba was traditionally played in backyards and private parties,” Ramos explains. “These rhythms were considered to be low-class. The plena then went from being played in the streets, to the town plaza, and finally among high-class Puerto Rican people.”
Ramos was inspired upon hearing Los Pleneros del Quinto Olivo as a young boy; he picked up the pandero and found that plena moved him. Shortly after founding Plena Es, Ramos, who also sings, was joined by David Lucca, a conga player originally from Ponce, the region many see as the birthplace of plena. Lucca is now Ramos’s partner in the band. The mission of these pleneros is to get audiences dancing and smiling.
“The music is so up-beat and dynamic that it will move anyone that listens to it,” Ramos claims. “The singer’s interpretation and the lyrics telling those amazing stories are nowhere else to be found. The essence of the instruments, when well-performed, creates such a powerful force that it doesn’t matter where you are from, I bet you will move.”
Plena Es will share Puerto Rico’s diverse musical heritage in a series of events listed below. All events are free and open to the public. Support for this program is provided by National Endowment for the Arts, Florida Department of State Division of Historical Resources, Florida State University Center for Music of the Americas and Conexión.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
September 26
6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Children’s Workshop
Legacy School of Performing Arts
105 N. Madison St., Quincy
September 27
5:00 – 6:30 p.m. Music and Dance Workshop for Adults
FSU Westcott Building, Rm 060 (adjacent to Ruby Diamond Concert Hall)
222 S. Copeland St., Tallahassee
September 28
Doors 7:00 p.m. CONCERT
Concert 7:30 p.m. Mission San Luis
2100 W. Tennessee St., Tallahassee