Bomba incorporates music and dance through group participation and often consists of a “call and response” approach. A leader sings a line of lyrics, and the rest of the groups sings back by “responding” to it. Instrumentation typically involves barrel drums, a log drum called a cua, maracas and singers. Bomba can be used for both religious and secular purposes and also consists of multiple drumming patterns: the most basic one being the bomba sica. The following tutorial video provides visual and musical notation examples for different bomba rhythms. How does this information relate to Afro-Puerto Ricans resisting enslavement in the nineteenth century? History reveals that enslaved Afro-Puerto Ricans used the bomba in the 1820s to secretly communicate with each other about plans for revolt and escape from the island. More of this topic will be included in my upcoming book.
In continuing the discussion from my previous post, I wanted to draw attention to how music has played a crucial role in helping enslaved Afro-Puerto Ricans in the nineteenth century to resist captivity and oppression. The bomba has been documented as one of the known performative genres extant since Spanish colonization in Puerto Rico. While the English translation of the word “bomba” signifies the word “bomb,” the word is actuallya Spanish mistranslation of the French word bamboula, roughly meaning a kind of drum. I have talked about the murky origins of bomba in Puerto Rico in From Ring Shout to Bomba: mainly, how the musical term is often attributed to the French botanist Andre Pierre Ledru in his trip to the island in the eighteenth century.
Bomba incorporates music and dance through group participation and often consists of a “call and response” approach. A leader sings a line of lyrics, and the rest of the groups sings back by “responding” to it. Instrumentation typically involves barrel drums, a log drum called a cua, maracas and singers. Bomba can be used for both religious and secular purposes and also consists of multiple drumming patterns: the most basic one being the bomba sica. The following tutorial video provides visual and musical notation examples for different bomba rhythms. How does this information relate to Afro-Puerto Ricans resisting enslavement in the nineteenth century? History reveals that enslaved Afro-Puerto Ricans used the bomba in the 1820s to secretly communicate with each other about plans for revolt and escape from the island. More of this topic will be included in my upcoming book.
0 Comments
It has become increasingly imperative over the years to understand the global connections, history, and identities of the African diaspora. I have spent the past decade or so perusing these aspects as they concern the Hispanophone and Lusophone (Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking) areas of the world. While my latest publication From Ring Shout to Bomba served as a comparative study of the Gullah Geechee people and Afro-Latin communities in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil by examining their histories, language, religion, and musical aspects, I also had the opportunity last year to expand my research on the historiography about the African presence in Puerto Rico.
Those who peruse the latest additions to the photographs in the “Gallery” section of this website will notice that, this past September, I presented at the 2022 Slave Dwelling Project conference at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Created by Joseph McGill, the Slave Dwelling Project seeks to encourage candid and civil discussions about the effects of African enslavement and Colonialism in the United States and abroad through detailed research and travels to areas where such practices were enforced. While the topic that year focused specifically on the Stono Rebellion in September 1739, one of the most important enslavement insurrections to have occurred in early colonial American history, the conference also allowed for discussions concerning enslavement revolts that occurred beyond the Thirteen Colonies. My involvement in that conference provided a comparative historiographical analysis of enslavement and revolts in Puerto Rico during Spanish colonization. Research on Puerto Rico has revealed the importance behind comprehending and preserving African enslavement history on the island. That often involves modifying that narrative with concrete data and, in certain instances, artifacts from the nineteenth century or earlier to avoid sugarcoating or romanticizing what occurred on the island. Sources from Guillermo Baralt, Luis A. Figueroa, and others not only clearly illustrate the Spanish involvement in enslaving African people in that area of the Caribbean. They also indicate instances where the enslaved populations either fought back against oppression or had conspired to do so. Sometimes, they implemented musical means via group participation in the bomba singing, drumming, and dancing by transmitting coded messages about liberation and escape from Puerto Rico. My goal lies in demonstrating to the public the gaps and challenges behind uncovering information about that part of the African diaspora resisting cultural erasure. In preparation for the one-hundred and fifty years of the official “abolition” of enslavement in Puerto Rico in 1873 on March 22, 2023, my next few posts will focus on issues related to locating and understanding documents about enslavement in Puerto Rico. |
AuthorDMA. Composer of acoustic and electronic music. Pianist. Experimental film. Archives
January 2025
|