How Bomba de Aqui uses dance as a portal to culture

A performance by Bomba de Aqui is something you experience with your body as much as with your eyes and ears. A phalanx of drummers play barriles—large, conga-like drums—pounding out a beat that seems to come from the depths of the earth.

The drummers sing a repeated phrase in unison, while the lead drummer, Saul Peñalosa, sings the main lyric line.

In front of them, dancers, led by Brendaliz Cepeda, move in unison, wearing long, colorful skirts. She holds up the lower part of her skirt and uses the swirling fabric to give shape to her hand gestures, which are graceful, precise, and unequivocal, married to the drums and leading them.

Her grandfather, Rafael Cepeda, was an icon in Puerto Rico in the early decades of the 20th century, not only for his bomba performances but also because he documented everything about the tradition—and everything else he saw in notebooks.

“He wrote down everything he saw,” Cepeda says. “My cousin holds onto these notebooks, and there's word of the university saving them. He wrote down what he saw at festivals, any gatherings—the style, how they would dress, last names, the meanings of the songs.”

Cepeda learned bomba from him and from her father, who had a bomba group in New York (she grew up in Puerto Rico and New York). It’s hard to overstate the cultural importance of Cepeda's family in Puerto Rico.

Her grandfather is roughly the equivalent of Pete Seeger on the Mainland—the standard bearer and most famous and respected proponent of traditional music.

And just as Cepeda's grandfather sought to conserve and enhance the traditions of bomba, she, too, has that focus. She has a master’s degree in special education, and Bomba de Aqui is a nonprofit organization with a primary purpose of educating children about Puerto Rican culture, identity, and history. Their performances include workshops where anyone can learn about this tradition.

Of course, over time the performance of bomba has changed. “Now,” Cepeda says, “sometimes females don't wear skirts. They dance as if they're dancing boy style, or they use a scarf. I'm very old fashioned and very traditional, and I feel like the skirt is a connection of you. You always have to wear your skirt, dance with the skirt, because your skirt is your connection, and it's been used for many years.”

The skirts that the dancers in Bomba de Aqui use come from a seamstress in Puerto Rico. “No one here really knows how to do it properly,” Cepeda says.

In the case of Bomba de Aqui, the primo drummer is Brendaliz’s husband, Saul. When they perform, Brendaliz makes various gestures with her hands and arms, shoulders, hips, and head, each one directing accents that Saul plays.

He watches her intently, trying to anticipate where she is going and she takes pleasure in trying to surprise him. She feeds him with her motion, and he responds with gusto. It’s a kind of artistic conversation that builds and builds to a conclusion before returning to the foundational beat.

It's not only women who dance. “When men dance,” Brendaliz says, “they dance with their hats. They dance a lot of movement. Their legs, the upper body. That connection with the drum is important for them as well.

While Bomba de Aqui honors the traditions of their forbearers, they also perform more recent styles, like plena, which uses handheld frame drums rather than the larger, deeper barriles.

Plena was developed early in the 20th century, and where bomba has 16 different beats, plena has only one. The hand drums, called pandereta, come in different sizes and here, too, the smaller, higher-pitched drum is the lead instrument.

The key to plena is the lyrics to the songs. Much like calypso, the lyrics tend to be about current happenings, politics, and general life, full of commentary and tart humor.

And there is an even more recent development, which Bomba de Aqui is pioneering, called batuplena. It combines the instruments and rhythms of Brazilian samba with plena, for a high-energy, sharp style of music.

This is only part of what Cepeda does. She created the Multicultural Learning Center, which uses the arts to help children in schools connect with their cultural backgrounds.

“We work with about 15 schools,” she says. “Not only do we teach about Puerto Rican heritage; we also teach about Jamaica, Scotland, Ireland, you know, all these different cultures, but through the arts. The kids are always creating something, making something. We're not talking. What I find that's really important is that a visual really helps with the connection to culture.”

“My program doesn't eliminate racism, but it's a start of conversation, with the youth—how amazing is that? I ask each, one by one, ‘Where do you come from?’ Some, of course, will say Springfield. And I say, ‘Let me go a little deeper. What's your background? What's your roots?’ Some might say, ‘I’m from Puerto Rico,’ or ‘I’m from Jamaica, but I'm half Asian and I found this out through my parents.’ We get beautiful conversations. I had one kid who said, ‘I found out that I was from Ireland, and my parents took me.’ Everyone wanted to know what that was like. It opens up conversations, and the youth start talking among themselves.”

That, ultimately, may be the greatest gift Bomba de Aqui offers.

“When you are raised here, you get into the tradition of America,” Cepeda says. “You wake up, you go to school, you go to work. Some of the culture dies. It dies out. So the only time you celebrate your culture is if it is a Puerto Rican parade. It's like, ‘Oh, it's my day.’ But it should not be your day just one day. It doesn't hurt to celebrate you every day.”