How it began
Bomba developed during the Spanish colonial period among enslaved West Africans and their descendants who worked the sugar plantations along Puerto Rico's coast. The towns of Loíza, Mayagüez, Ponce and San Juan were the cradles of its regional styles. It is usually dated to the 17th century and is considered the island's oldest musical tradition. Researchers trace its roots to the Ashanti people of Ghana and the word bomba to Akan and Bantu languages.
The first written record dates to 1797, when the botanist André Pierre Ledru described people dancing and singing bombas.
How it works
A bomba ensemble has two or more barrel drums of different diameters, the barriles de bomba, traditionally made from rum barrels with goatskin heads. The larger drum, the buleador, holds the basic rhythm. The higher-pitched subidor or primo improvises. A single large maraca and the cuá, sticks struck on a hollow bamboo log, add further layers, and the singing is call and response.
The defining feature is the exchange between the lead drummer and the dancer. The dancer improvises steps called piquetes, and the drummer marks each one, so the drum follows the dancer rather than the reverse.
How it spread
Plantation workers used bomba dances to release sadness and anger, to celebrate baptisms and marriages, to communicate and to plan rebellions. Distinct regional styles grew up, with rhythms such as sicá, yubá and holandés. The music absorbed influences from other Caribbean colonies, including people brought from the Dutch islands and from Haiti during the Haitian Revolution.
In the 1940s Rafael Cepeda formed a group to perform bomba on the radio and later staged it in San Juan hotels. Puerto Rican migrants carried it to the mainland United States, where groups such as Los Pleneros de la 21 in the South Bronx perform and teach it.
What lasted
Bomba is among the clearest surviving evidence of Puerto Rico's African heritage. Knowledge of it was kept largely within families, above all the Cepedas of Santurce and the Ayalas of Loíza, who are credited with winning it national and international recognition. Its instruments and its dancer and drummer dialogue also reflect a blend of the island's cultures, combining African drumming with Taíno maracas and elements of European dances.
Where it stands today
Bomba has seen a resurgence as younger Puerto Ricans take an interest in learning and preserving it. In the 1990s the Emmanuelli Náter brothers started "bombazos", open gatherings meant to bring bomba down from the stage for communal participation, and these now take place in many parts of Puerto Rico and the United States. The music is played on weekends in the streets of Old San Juan, taught in schools, and performed both in traditional form and in fusion with other styles.
