Welcome to travels with Todd

Given my past history on this blog, calling this post “Music and songs of Puerto Rico” is a little misleading because I made only one deliberate musical reference – the section header Abriendo Puertas that references a Gloria Estefan salsa-ish hit of that name composed by Kike Santander. The song itself is a mix of son cubano and vallenato. (Vallenato is a Colombian folk music style that has earned a UNESCO Intangible cultural heritage designation. The style was born in the valley – the literal translation of vallenato – between the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía de Perijá ranges in north-east Colombia.)

Born in Havana, Estefan’s “Cuban-style” salsa draws heavily on Cuban son, mambo, and pop making it so distinct from its Puerto Rican cousin that Cubanos are unlikely to call it salsa. Here’s Estefan’s recording of Abriendo Puertas.

Timba would be a more accurate description of what I’ve rather casually labeled Cuban salsa. This music emphasizes rhythmic complexity with heavy Afro-Cuban percussion (congas, bongos) and its clave rhythm is more organic and groove-focused. I felt I needed the label so I could tie it to Puerto Rican salsa. However, the latter incorporates bomba and plena influences, jazz harmonies, intricate horn sections, vocal harmonies, and a syncopated sound often on the “2-3” clave beat. (The clave beat is a two-bar, five-stroke rhythmic pattern within four-four time that acts as the structural foundation for most Afro-Cuban music, including salsa, rumba, and son.)

For people who love music, YouTube is, in some ways, an astonishing archive and repository of music of almost any style, genre or historical era. Not only can one find music, there’s a category in which people react to music with which they claim to be unfamiliar. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they’re not. But its an undeniably popular genre. Some of the reactors are ordinary folks and tend to be rather informal while others are professional musicians and singers like Elizabeth Zharoff here analyzing Eva Cassidy’s performance of Over the Rainbow.

Regardless of the authenticity of their reactions, I’m often surprised by their unfamiliarity with the way new music builds on past traditions. Whether it’s an evolution from baroque to classical to Romantic music or ska morphing into rocksteady and rocksteady to reggae or learning that the blues is a progenitor of rock and roll anyone who wants to understand music has to understand that none of what they think of as modern or contemporary emerged fully grown and armored like Athena from the forehead of Zeus.

Thus, we’re about to embark on a journey. Although this won’t be a comprehensive survey, I’m going to try to take you through some distinct styles of Puerto Rican music beginning with the oldest, the aforementioned bomba. From there, we’ll jump ahead to explore plena followed by salsa and end with reggaeton. It’s my hope that you’ll not only learn how one underpins the other, you’ll be entertained along the way.

Old Puerto Rican Music – (It’s da) Bomba but not La Bamba

Bomba is a traditional Puerto Rican musical and dance form with African roots. (Reading this sentence alone should be enough for you to see some measure of connection between bomba and salsa.) The music emerged in the 17th century among enslaved Africans in Puerto Rico mainly toiling on sugar plantations. They are the forebears of bomba. If you dig for them, you can find the style’s deepest roots in coastal communities like Loíza and San Juan and you’ll discover a secular, celebratory art form using only percussion instruments.

In performance, bomba centers on a lead drummer and the dancer. Following the dancer’s steps and gestures, the drummers improvise or respond. Its intent is creating a live interactive dialogue between music and motion.

Although bomba arose using cuás (bamboo idiophones) and incorporating Taíno maracas to provide additional rhythmic support, the two barriles de bomba seen in the video from WapaTV YouTube Channel above are enough to initiate the performance.

The barril da bomba (bomba barrel drum) is crafted from a rum barrel’s wooden cask then topped with goatskin and uses ropes, pegs, wedges, or screws to tighten or loosen the goatskin for tuning. The performance features two drum sizes. The slightly larger buleador provides a steady rhythm and the smaller, higher-pitched primo (or subidor) engages in the dialog with the dancer.

The dancer isn’t merely shaping the rhythm of the performance. She’s also expressing cultural identity, resistance, and community storytelling. The intent of the drummer-dancer dialogue can be to create unity, express resistance, sadness, joy, and even rebellion planning during bambulas (gatherings).

Much as the drummer responds to the dancer in their dialog, bomba’s vocal pattern is one of call and response as you can hear in this video with Nelie Lebrón Y Paracumbé performing the traditional folk song and bomba Palo De Bandera.

Bomba evolved stylistically through Caribbean exchanges with Cuba, Haiti (from which the Puerto Ricans developed and added yubá rhythm), and Dutch colonies. Cultural syncretism led ensembles like Rafael Cepeda’s to incorporate vocal harmonies and some western instruments. While traditional bomba resists this sort of fusion to preserve its authenticity and roots, one can find examples of the latter such as this one called Baila, Julia Loiza written by Cuban musician and composer Justi Barreto and performed by Isabella Martin.

Here’s a historical explainer to wrap things up.

Lucy, you’ve got some Plena to do!

Thanks at least in part to Woody Allen’s movie of the same name, “Play it again, Sam” might be the most misremembered line in movie history. Here’s what Rick Blaine actually said.:

Similarly – although without any help from Woddy Allen – Desi Arnaz never said the line referenced in this section header’s pun. The expression, “Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do!” was certainly part of the zeitgeist of late 20th century America. I wasn’t able to trace the source of the misquote but this short video provides the closest approximation.:

With my semantic antics put to rest, let’s move on to discuss the musical style called plena. Unlike its ancestor bomba that can trace its roots as far back as the 17th century, plena is barely more than a century old tracing its origins to southern Puerto Rico, particularly Barrio San Antón in Ponce.

Barrio San Antón is among the oldest in Ponce and, after emancipation, its population was comprised primarily of freed slaves. Over time more manual laborers located there. Considered a working-class art form, plena built on the rhythms of bomba guitar, accordion, pandero, and vocals to share news and social commentary. The defining characteristics of plena are its blend of African musical traditions with local storytelling called “periodico cantado” (sung newspaper).

Springing to life in the cafetines along the banks of the Río Portugués, the earliest plenas focused on reporting local events such as storms or murders in this tightly-knit neighborhood.

Plena also provided the proletariat a sense of empowerment through parody and political commentary. Songs like Tintorera del Mar by Manuel “El Canario” Jiménez who, in the 1920s, added horns and piano to the sound, were satires that mocked a US lawyer from the Guánica Central sugarcane company who was reportedly bitten by a shark while swimming near San Juan.

But the composers didn’t hesitate to poke fun at eccentrics in the barrio either. The song El Brujo Bendeteador by  Toñín Romero translates to The Witch Doctor Bendeteador. The likely target of the song’s satire was an eccentric local sorcerer (brujo) known for his bendete (percussive skills on the pandereta or similar instrument) and brought together supernatural folklore with musical prowess.

Here’s a slightly more modern interpretation of Plena by the group Los Pleneros de la 21. The song is called Somos Boricuas and was composed by the group’s founder Juan Gutiérrez. Recall that before the Spanish arrived, the local Taíno people called the island Borinquén. Written as a response to debates over whether only islanders or people in the Puerto Rican diaspora can claim “boricua” pride, it incorporates traditional plena rhythms with contemporary bomba elements and features pandero, timbal, and vocals in call-and-response style.

Here’s a more academic plena explainer for those so inclined.

In Mexico it’s a hot sauce

In the Eastern Caribbean it’s hot music and dance

Yes, I’m talking about salsa.

There’s little doubt that salsa music built on centuries-old African, Spanish, and Taino influences in the Caribbean and the first real inklings of the music that would become salsa appeared not in Puerto Rico but in the Cuban style called son.

Son arose in the early 20^th century, spread to Puerto Rico and New York ballrooms in the 1940s and 1950s where it blended with Cuban Danzón and became known as mambo. The video is tagged as the first recording of the song Mambo Number 5 written by Damaso Pérez-Prado and performed by his orchestra.

African-derived percussion and call-and-response vocals are common elements shared by most eastern Caribbean music and Puerto Rican bomba and plena provided the key rhythmic foundations for salsa.

As the fifties were becoming the sixties, Puerto Rican migrants in the Spanish Harlem neighborhood in Manhattan fused the sounds of son, bomba, and plena with jazz and R&B. Pioneers such as Rafael Ithier of El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico (founded in 1962) and duos like Richie Ray & Bobby Cruz adapted the music to a more urban style and feel. Here’s El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico performing the song A La Verdgue written by Catalino Curet Alonso.

But the still developing fusion genre lacked its own label. That needed the combined efforts of Phidias Danilo Escalona – a Venezuelan DJ – and Fania Records. It began with Escalona.

It was at a casual lunch in 1962 with friends, where one exclaimed “¡Pásame la salsa!” combined with a nearby ad for Salsa Pampero that prompted him to name his radio program on Radiodifusora Venezuela “La hora de la salsa, el sabor y el bembé.” (Bembé refers to an Afro-Cuban religious ceremony or drum-based party involving singing, dancing, and percussion, often in a 6/8 rhythm derived from Yoruba traditions. It later became slang among salseros for something irresistibly danceable.) Musicians like Bobby Cruz recalled Escalona dubbing their sound “salsa” live on air in 1966, and, with the help of Puerto Rican bandleader Tito Rodriguez who brought the term to New York, their “loca” music was becoming salsa.

Then, in the late 1960s, Fania Records began marketing some of its artists and their music as salsa. They promoted not only the artists above but also groups such as Sonora Ponceña. The label then took the music on world tours thereby amplifying its global reach and guiding it into the seventies. This is often considered the golden era of salsa music and it’s perhaps epitomized by the great Tito Puente who wrote and performs Salsa y Sabor.

Let’s Dance!

Meanwhile, dancers were also bringing new steps to the floor helping differentiate this music from mambo and pachanga. Salsa dance drew from those same precursor dances (son, mambo, pachanga, and cha-cha-chá) already paired with those musical styles in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Salsa incorporates mambo’s open slot positioning and pachanga’s montuno flair of knee-bending bounces, hip swivels, slides, and twists that mimic the music’s jazzy, hard-edged pulse.

But salsa amps up the speed and complexity of the steps and in a more closely partnered style.

Hip motion is central across all the styles but salsa’s is more exaggerated and coordinated with partner leads, distinguishing it from son’s grounded flow or cha-cha-chá’s precise chasse. Its distinct partner style crystallized in 1960s New York Latino communities. Ballroom adaptations in places like the Palladium fused it further, making the dance and the music co-evolve closely.

Among the different styles of salsa dance, the Puerto Rican salsa matches the music with intricate footwork, hip movements, and partner patterns often presented in linear or circular styles timed to the beat (e.g., on 2). Further, Puerto Rican Style emphasizes smooth flows, turns, and sabor (flavor). This distinguishes it from Cuban or New York on-1 styles. It’s a key part of island nightlife whether the island is Cuba, Manhattan, or Puerto Rico.

Maybe not a heavy weight but definitely a reggaeton

All of the music from the Eastern Caribbean can be said to have African roots if you trace those roots far enough into the past. But it’s also true that bomba and plena are uniquely Puerto Rican and that much of the music we call salsa is attributable at the very least to the Puerto Rican diaspora – especially those living in and around New York City. I can’t say the same for the original reggaeton sound.

Rather than being a local modification of traditional rhythms and sounds, Reggaeton started as a fusion of multiple styles of music. Its roots trace to the 1980s and 1990s in Panama City. It was here that descendants of West Indian laborers who built the Panama Canal adapted Jamaican reggae, rocksteady, ska, and dancehall beats infused with Spanish lyrics.

Then artists like El General, Nando Boom (who wrote and performs Enfermo de Amor below),

and Renato pioneered ‘reggae en español,’ singing about neighborhood life, migration, and discrimination using faster rhythms called dembow.

(Dembow rhythm is the signature percussion pattern that defines reggaeton. It features a repeating two-bar loop with a 3+3+2 tresillo cross-rhythm – two side-stick hits followed by a snare on offbeats that create a bouncy syncopation over a four-on-the-floor kick drum. This propulsive bounce feel is typically played at 85-100 BPM in reggaeton. The beat was named after Shabba Ranks’ 1990 dancehall track Dem Bow.)

However, once reggaeton made its way eastward and reached Puerto Rico, producers began leavening the mix by incorporating bomba’s African-derived percussion, plena’s narrative storytelling and rhythmic complexity, and salsa’s brass accents and danceable syncopation. These local influences added Latin flair, timbal hits, and fusions (e.g., with merengue), distinguishing it from its pure Jamaican roots and Reggaeton Latino was born.

The genre exploded globally in 2004 when Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez, under the name Daddy Yankee, released Gasolina – a song he co-wrote with Eddie Dee.

Two years later Jerry Duplessis, LaTavia Parker, Omar Alfanno, Shakira, and Wyclef Jean blended salsa and hip-hop with reggaeton beats and created Hips Don’t Lie.

And as I complete this first draft on 8 February 2026, I feel almost compelled to include at least one song by tonight’s featured halftime performer at Super Bowl LX – Bad Bunny (Benito Martinéz Ocasio). I chose Yo Perreo Sola, a song he wrote with Marco Masis (Tainy) and Genesis Rios-Serrano (Nesi), not only because it’s heavily reggaeton influenced but also because, like these other styles, reggaeton also inspired its own dance. That dance is called perreo.

Perreo is a hip focused dance that originated in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Also called doggy-style dancing (perro is the Spanish word for dog), the dancers emphasize rhythmic pelvic thrusts, knee flexes, and backside swaying. Perreo can be performed solo, in pairs, or in groups and works with fast or slow reggaeton beats.

Here’s a video explainer about reggaeton.:

Before I sign off, in my research for this post, I came across this video that struck me as a rather amazing bit of fusion.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip that has touched some highlights of the history of Puerto Rican music and will perhaps be inspired to embark on some exploration of your own.

In June 2026 when I added a new category tagging the music posts, it struck me that I should always include one song that expresses gratitude so I’ve decided to add it to those previously posted summaries and will also include it in my posts henceforth. So, Agnetha, Björn, Benni, Anni-Frid (and every other composer, lyricist, and musician), I Thank You for the Music.

Thank You for the Music – by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus (Performed by ABBA)