Puerto Rican Culture and National Identity
Interview with David Santiago

On August 1st and 2nd, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History presented "Carnaval de Ponce," a performance of Puerto Rican bomba y plena, as part of the on-going program "Encuentros: Latin America at the Smithsonian." The group performed two completely filled concerts to young and old audiences, presenting a show of traditional Puerto Rican bomba and plena, as well as a demonstration of modern salsa dancing. In this event, we had the opportunity to talk with David Santiago, lead singer and dancer with the folkloric group and an accomplished writer, poet, singer, dancer and painter from Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Clave: David, what is the purpose of your work?

David Santiago: The purpose of our work is to rescue all the Puerto Rican traditions, customs and folklore. Because we are a country under the control of the U.S., a lot of foreign music comes into our country. Besides, our plena and bomba are rhythms and traditions that are not popularized by radio, television and the traditional mass media. Therefore, we are trying to rescue our music, trying to teach the new generations who we are as Puerto Ricans, our identity, our roots.

In my particular case I research and document -since I'm also a journalist- to transmit through poetry the real feelings of the Puerto Rican people, like in the music and poetry that you heard today. The bomba, the oldest rhythm that we have of African origin, comes from the whole Caribbean, from the French islands. Our bomba has different names that have nothing to do with our Puerto Rican vocabulary. Bambalué, cocobalé, oriza, gracimá, yubá, are names that the youth sometimes don't understand and we are trying to document them to tell them why our bomba has those names, how is it danced, what's the dialogue between the bailaor and the tocador de barriles, which is what the public appreciated today on stage.

Clave: Why do you have this particular emphasis?

-You have to remember that there many different kinds of groups in Puerto Rico. There are those who dedicate themselves to the typical music of Puerto Rico, the music from the mountains. It's another kind of work, emphasizing the Spanish décima as its literary foundation. However, this group that you saw today comes from the Caribbean coast, from a very hot coastal town named Ponce where there was a great concentration of blacks in the farms making rum and cutting cane. There we have completely black neighborhoods such as San Antón, Bélgica, that are very similar to some barrios in the North, in Loiza, that is also a black town. We are trying to emphasize that we are hot, rhythmic, singers and dancers. We have taken this to other parts of Puerto Rico, and we have travelled to Spain, Germany, South America, taking what we represent.

Clave: What is mostly known about the music of Puerto Rico is the plena. But you mentioned the different kinds of bomba. Could you give us a historical reference?

The bomba comes from the first blacks that arrived in Puerto Rico that carried with them very rhythmic memories from their motherland. First there were children's stories that were sung to babies under a kind of clave that was obviously African. That clave was then accelerated and it was put to music becoming what is known today as the Puerto Rican bomba. It managed to captivate the energy of the blacks as they went from island to island in the Caribbean, from Cuba to Santo Domingo, from Santo Domingo to Puerto Rico, from Puerto Rico to Cuba, and also to and from the French Antilles. And at the same time that the bomba was a very important celebration, it was also used as a conspiracy tool for the struggle for the freedom of the blacks. Playing drums was a concession by the masters, by the landowners, that was utilized by the blacks to conspire. In the playing, there was a strong communication between the bailaor and the tambor until one of them gives up, with a corporal dialog that sends a series of signals that were used to communicate messages, right in front of the landowners, of the whites, who didn't know anything about this exchange.

Among the different kinds of bomba there is the cocobalé, a kind of bomba performed with sticks that resembles a fight with swords, and it's just like a dancing game. There is the bomba holandé -very popular in Ponce and in Mayagüez-, the one most similar to our main mulatto rhythm, the Puerto Rican plena. There is also the bomba yubá from Loiza and Santurce. The bomba from Loiza tend to be much faster, the drum is played harder, since the blacks that arrived in Loiza from St. Thomas were already free slaves. In contrast to Ponce, where there was still a lot of persecution, Blacks sang with a sort of canto hondo, reflecting sorrow and pain. That's why our bomba in Ponce is played more slowly, with tenuous, slower movements in front of the drums.

Clave: Do you see yourself as part of a larger movement?

-We consider ourselves much like groups like Paramaya, Paracumbé, Bambaloe, that unfortunately are not many considering the size of the population. We are trying to take all of our music, developing dance and singing workshops through the Institute of Culture of Puerto Rico, doing workshops in schools, so that the young people can understand and appreciate the experience of a past that they were not part of. Youngsters sometimes think that ours is a dead culture, but it's not true. It's a culture that is alive, that celebrates, that dances all over the country. We are doing this work thanks to individuals such as Marta Vargas or Emanuel Dufrasne, Professor of the University of Puerto Rico. Myself, I try to do this work thorough poetry, developing the cultured form in our folklore, emphasizing the work of our most important poets through rhythm, giving it contemporary forms such as salsa, with the aim that the youth can identify those elements within the music that they hear in their present lives.

Clave: How was your experience in the U.S. during this most recent tour?

-In Washington DC, we have had the opportunity to perform before very enthusiastic crowds, in completely filled halls. Also we have gone to Cleveland, to other parts of the U.S. with this work. It is a testament to the strength of our culture, to tell the U.S. that we are a very ancient culture, a testament that Latin America is present and alive.

David Santiago can be contacted at PO Box 78, Coto Laurel, PR 00780-0078, Tel. (787) 844-1170