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.
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.
RSS Feed
