CON EL ECO DE LOS BARRILES: RACE, GENDER AND THE BOMBA IMAGINARY IN PUERTO RICO¹

1. I borrow the first part of this title from the song “El eco de mis barriles,” written and performed by Víctor Vélez. I especially thank Merida Rúa, Gaye Johnson, Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas, and two anonymous reviewers for their careful suggestions and feedback as I worked through various drafts of this paper.

Abstract

Although bomba remains a largely understudied musical genre, the majority of studies on bomba have focused on the historicizing or anthropological detailing of bomba as an Afro-Puerto Rican musical tradition. Recognizing the importance of these initial studies, this article critically interrogates the gendered dimensions of bomba dancing as well as the historical and structural implications imbued within colonial and racialized contexts. In short, the gendered division of cultural labor in bomba has received notable recognition, whereas bomba as a racialized and “gendered experience/expression” has not been sufficiently explored. The performers mentioned in this study include two youth bands as well as audience members from the San Juan metropolitan area (between the ages of 18 and 30) who participated in an ethnographic study during the summer of 2002. Based on this fieldwork and data, this presentation uses the historically “situated imaginaries” of these youth performers as means to understand the ways in which bomba is used and experienced differently by female and male practitioners (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002). This article maintains that (1) the relationship between dance partners remains marginal in meaning infused contexts of bomba and that (2) bomba as experienced by the performers in this study provides a useful research lens for reexamining both popular and colonial representations of gender performance within the public and private spheres in Puerto Rico.

Key Words:

• Youth
• bomba
• situated imagination
• Puerto Rican masculinities

Notes

1. I borrow the first part of this title from the song “El eco de mis barriles,” written and performed by Víctor Vélez. I especially thank Merida Rúa, Gaye Johnson, Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas, and two anonymous reviewers for their careful suggestions and feedback as I worked through various drafts of this paper.

2. Although Puerto Rico has been a U.S. colonial possession since 1898, it was not until 1952 that Puerto Rico was formally made into a U.S. Commonwealth. Being a U.S. Commonwealth provides Puerto Ricans a number of fringe benefits including a (second class) U.S. citizenship that prohibits their participation in national elections while also making them eligible for U.S. military service.

3. A total of eighteen individual interviews along with four focus groups were conducted. Each focus group contained between six and eight persons. With the exception of one respondent, all those interviewed were between the ages of eighteen and thirty.

4. The initial intention behind this research project was not to find a large representative sample of all bomba youth bands. Instead, I was aiming to understand the experiences these two bomba groups encountered and how their stories and accounts related to larger questions of how bomba music had developed historically and how this informed these two bands. Nonetheless, the incorporation of two bomba bands is significant, given the genre's longer history of marginalization in Puerto Rico and lack of popularity among youth.

5. I define an active audience member as those individulas who actively participate in the presence of live bomba performances by singing, dancing, or playing instruments. Active participation is not exclusively founded on the premise of being on stage, but rather as engaging with the band from a variety of spatial locations throughout the performance sites. Active participation should not be taken to mean that those who actively participate are the only subjects producing knowledge and meaning from the performances.

6. See, for example: Ramos-Zayas (2003); Rivera (2003); and Guerra (1998).

7. I thank Dr. Fregoso for introducing me to the situated imagination during her recent talk “Human Rights and the Poetic Imagination,” at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center conference Human Rights and Neoliberalism: Universal Standards, Local Practices and the Role of Culture, University of California, Santa Barbara, March 2–3, 2007.

8. The term “young” and “youth” are used loosely throughout this essay to include a wider range of participants. Such an approach, I believe, permits a broader understanding of the ways in which culture is demonstrative of a dynamic process that is appreciative of the ways culture shifts and is transformed across time and space by different groups of people. That said, with the exception of one respondent in his late forties, the participants in this study were all between the ages of eighteen and thirty.

9. The myth of the “racial triad” is one of the foundational elements of Puerto Rican national identity. Comprising the racial triad is the noble Indian, the rational and lettered Spaniard, and the African laborer and musician. The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (est. 1955) is the state institution charged with developing and disseminating the racial triad ideology, which is often incorrectly used as an example of Puerto Rico's functioning racial democracy. Despite the hierarchical positioning of these two groups, it is important not to ignore the ways in which both indigenous and African populations actively worked together to resist the Spanish conquest and slavery by forming Cimarron societies throughout different regions of the Spanish, French, and British empires. Finally, one should also be critical of the ways in which the “racial triad” by its very logic homogenizes each racial/ethnic component glossing over in-group heterogeneity.

10. Besides the work of Godreau in Puerto Rico, the work of Robin Moore in Cuba (1997) and Deborah Thomas in Jamaica (2006) are useful points of comparison within the Caribbean for understanding the relationship between nationalist initiatives about race correlate with history, cultural practices, and everyday social relationships to produce complex and, at times, contradictory meanings.

11. In addition to the example the Haitian Revolution could potentially provide slaves wishing to conspire against their owners, the uprisings in Guadalupe and Martinique stirred anxiety among colonial administrators who feared these former slaves would migrate to the Puerto Rico and incite further rebellions on the island. To counter any potential uprising, the Código Negro (Slave Law) was implemented in 1848 by Governor Juan Prim. The Código Negro was specifically intended to harshly punish slaves as well as former slaves who had gained their freedom for numerous offenses of which the most important was bearing arms.

12. Spain formally abolished slavery in Puerto Rico on March 22, 1873. However, emancipation was not immediate as many slaves were required to serve their owners for an additional three years and in some cases were “forced” to stay put even after they had achieved their formal freedom.

13. See, for example, Alamo-Pastrana (2003) and Davila (1997). Both authors argue that one of the ways bomba came to be preserved was through the reification of the genre in which certain performative standards were established as a means of identifying “authentic” bomba music and performers. For a detailed interview of the ICP's director, Dr. Ricardo Alegría, and the ways in which he sought to preserve Puerto Rica's cultural patrimony and its institutionalization, please refer to Reina-Perez (2003).

14. In terms of uniforms, ICP groups are asked to dress in traditional folk attire. For the women this usually means long white dresses that cover almost the entire body and a colorful head wrap and jewlery. Meanwhile, men are asked to wear some variation of a white shirt (preferably a guayabera), black slacks, and a red handkerchief. Music themes should be based on romantic idealizations of topics such as the Puerto Rican countryside and national heroes. Because many bomba songs are syncretic in terms of origins and languages, it is virtually impossible to regulate.

15. The popularity of reggaeton artists Tego Calderon, La Sister, and Abrante who all incorporate bomba within their musical productions are notable exceptions.

16. For excellent ethnomusicological and anthropological descriptions of bomba, please refer to Vega Drouet (1979); Barton (1995); González (1982; 1990; 1994); Quintero-Rivera (1994); Suau (2001); and Baralt (2003). The traditional instruments used in bomba include the primo, a maraca, cúa, and a drum line known regionally in the north as buleadores that are used to keep the basic rhythmic cadence of the song. Within bomba, there exist a large variety of complex rhythms including síca, holande, seis corrido, and yubá among others. Many of these rhythms are products of regional variation. Finally, bomba is sung in a traditional African call and response style between the lead singer and the chorus/audience.

17. It is not uncommon today for dancers to approach the stage by themselves.

18. While most dancers remain within the gendered bounds of performance, it is not uncommon to see dancers incorporate dance moves typically assigned opposite their gender.

19. This subheading is borrowed from the song Cuando Diego Llego a traditional yubá originally written and performed by Don Rafael Cepeda. The chorus “Cuando Diego bailó hasta la tierro tembló” is loosely translated to mean: “Even the ground shook as Diego danced.”

20. Acevedo Vilá is not the only governor in the history of Puerto Rico to discredit the potential contributions that Black Puerto Ricans can make. In one of the more terribly memorable moments, his governorship Rafael Hernández Colón (1985–1993) commented during a speech in Madrid, Spain, that: “The contribution of the black race to Puerto Rican culture is irrelevant, it is mere rhetoric” (quoted in Torres 1998: 286).

21. For example, consider the memoir of Puerto Rican immigrant Bernardo Vega where, upon his arrival in New York, he remembers throwing his watch overboard so as not be considered ‘effeminate’ (quoted in La Fountain-Stokes 1999: 96).

22. See, for example, Aparicio (2002). In comparing Salsa Dura (hard Salsa) and Salsa monga (limp Salsa), Aparicio demonstrates that the symbolic importance placed on cultural production within the field of music in Puerto Rico. Specifically, Aparicio notes that salsa dura came to be seen as masculine space associated with the gritty and political music of the 1970s generations that dealt with important issues including racism, poverty, and crime. Conversely, salsa monga came to be seen as feminized version of salsa focusing only on romantic plots or love triangles. Aparicio questions the logic behind this false binary construction of these two subgenres showing that the music of female salseras including Celia Cruz, La Lupe, and La India, seen as producers of salsa monga, is in fact very political. In addition, Aparicio also points to the celebration of male salseros active in the production of salsa monga such as Gilberto Santa Rosa.

23. In addition to the performers mentioned by Aparicio, consider also, for example, the cultural work of the pleneras Catherine George, Carolina Mora Clark, and singer/musician Choco Orta among others.