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Christopher Columbus discovered the island in November of 1493, but the indelible mark of Spanish culture wasn't felt until Juan Ponce de León invaded the island in 1508 and established a colony near the current capital of San Juan. The colonists brought with them the musical instruments of their mother country, notably the guitar, a love of infectious rhythms and even some of the scales left in the Iberian peninsula by the Moors.
The Spanish guitar with six strings underwent several changes on the island, owing the lack of native materials and craftsmen to produce authentic instruments. Of the derivatives, namely the requinto[?], bordonua[?], tiple[?] and cuatro[?], only the cuatro is used with any frequency today. It has five double strings and produces a unique, rather hollow sound. (A linguistic note: cuatro means "fourth" and refers to the tuning of strings which are a half octave (a fourth) apart.)
For more information and pictures of Puerto Rican stringed instruments, see the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project/El Proyecto del cuatro (http://www.cuatro-pr.org/)
From Africa came the tambou[?], a hollowed out tree trunk covered with a taut animal skin), and the maraca, which is a gourd filled with pebbles or dried beans and shaken to produce rolling sound.
Improvisation and Controversia[?]
The heart of much Puerto Rican music is the idea of improvisation in both the music and the lyrics. A performance takes on an added dimension when the audience can anticipate the response of one performer to a difficult passage of music or clever lyrics created by another. This technique in Puerto Rico is called a controversia. A similar dialog creates a hightened appreciation in the classical music of India, or in a lively jam session in jazz.
Bomba often begins with a laina, or a female singer who is answered by the chorus and musicians with a 2/4 or 6/8 rhythm before the dancing begins. Harmony is not used. Dancers interact with the drummer, who is usually solo and dance in pairs without touching each other.
The dancers challenge the drummers in a kind of competing dialog, like the controversia mentioned earlier. The drummers respond with a challenge of their own. Sometimes one group of dancers will tempt another group to respond to a set of complicated steps. As the bomba proceeds, tension rises and becomes more excited and passionate. It's not unusual for a bomba ends with all the performers thoroughly soaked with prespiration.
The instrumentation is simple: usually the main rhythm is maintained by a low-pitched buleador, while the high-pitched subidor dialogs with the dancers. More complicated counter rhythms are created with sticks beaten on any resonant surface. A third set of rhythms is maintained by a maraca.
The first part of the romantic danza had 8 measures of music without rhythm, when the men circled the room in one direction, and the women circled in the other. This afforded young couples the opportunity to face each other, if only briefly, and to conduct some serious flirting. The second part, called the merengue, grew from the original 16 measures to 34, in 1854, and up to 130 even later. Here the couples held each other, in a proper stance and executed turns that looked very much like a waltz. Like the tango in Argentina, the danza was considered rather naughty and was outlawed for a time.
While the origins of the danza are murky, it probably arose around 1840 as a sort of reaction against the highly codified contradanza[?] and was strongly influenced by Cuban immigrants and their habanera[?] music. The first danzas were immature, youthful songs condemned by the authorities, who occasionally tried ineffectively to ban the genre. The first danza virtuoso was Manuel Tavarez[?] and his disciple, Juan Morel Campos[?].
Vicente Martinez de Espinel[?] was a Spanish writer and musician who revived the d�cima, using Andalusian jibaro traditions and midieval Moorish influences. The two varieties are seis[?], a dance music, and aguinaldo[?], derived from Spanish Christmas carols.
The seis originated in the latter half of the 17th century in the southern part of Spain. The word means six, which may have come from the custom of having six couples perform the dance, though many more couples eventually became quite common. Men and women form separate lines down the hall or in an open place of beaten earth, one group facing the other. The lines would approach and cross each other and at prescribed intervals the dancers would tap out the rhythm with their feet.
The melodies and harmonies are simple, usually performed on the cuatro, guitar, and g�iro, although other indigenous instruments are used depending on the available musicians. The 2/4 rhythm is maintained by the g�iro and guitar.
The Aguinaldo are similar to Christmas carols[?], except that they are usually sung in a parranda, which is rather like a lively parade that moves from house to house in the neighborhood, looking for holiday food and drink. The melodies were subsequently used for the improvisational d�cima and seis.
Plena[?] is a narrative song from the coastal regions of Puerto Rico, especially around Ponce. Its origins have been various claimed as far back as 1875 and as late as 1920. As rural farmers moved to San Juan and other cities, they brought plena with them and eventually added horns[?] and improvised call-and-response[?] vocals. Lyrics generally deal with stories or current events, though some are light-hearted or humorous. Manuel A. Jim�nez[?], or El Canario, is the most highly-celebrated of the original plena performers.
By the 1950s, plena's popularity had given way to salsa, merengue and rock and roll. In the 1960s and 1970s, though, artists like Mon Rivera[?] updated the sound and added a big band-style orchestra. Plena's popularity has since blossomed, and the revival has survived and influenced foreign genres from Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil and other Latin and Caribbean countries. Artists like Willie Col�n[?] united plena and bomba with salsa music to great critical acclaim and popularity.
Ricky Martin today is Puerto Rico's contribution to music with a Latin flavor, that comes under the heading of bolero. In the not too distant past enjoying the voice of Danny Rivera was a Puerto Rican's patriotic duty. Jennifer Lopez is another Puerto Rican singer and actress who has attained great popularity. Not even a generation ago Chayanne, whose real name is Elmer Figueroa, was the bright star in the firmament, which evidently has faded considerably.And of course, Menudo, long considered by many to be the greatest teen boy band in history, came from Puerto Rico. Martin started his career as a member of Menudo. In addition to that, Chayanne started his career as a member of Los Chicos, a boy band that went toe to toe with Menudo for some time during the early 1980s.
Latin music on the island today is most widely represented by salsa, which in English means sauce. The music is of Afro-Caribbean[?], especially Cuban, origin and the term was probably coined first by the Venezuelan radio host, Fidias Danilo.
Salsa appears to have arisen in El Barrio[?] of New York City, where emmigrants from the island settled. It quickly acquired Cuban and African-Caribbean elements that made it eminently danceable with its hot, insistent rhythms. New York remained salsa's capital for years, but San Juan is also a contender. In Puerto Rico, the debate between the rockeros, who prefer rock, and the salseros has became part of a class antagonism between the growing middle class on the island, who prefer rock music from the mainland, and the poor who look upon salsa as their personal heritage.
Tito Puente's contribution to salsa cannot be easily measured. He studied percussion at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City before he going on to form his own band, which first introduced its audiences to the salsa sound and beat. In many respects salsa is a catch word that covers all contemporary music with a Latin beat and a big band sound.
As to instrumentation, salsa music needs primarily a large battery of percussion instruments, like g�iros, maracas, bongos, timbales, conga drums, claves and even a cowbell for the j�baro sound. Horns play a large part in creating the authentic salsa sound.
See also: Music of the United States, Latin American music
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