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| HOT SOUNDS, By ENRIOUE FERNANDEZ Sun-Sentinel, South Florida 4/7/1999 |
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| Puerto Rican music makes a comeback I'm catching a Puerto Rican wave that rises up in the island, swells up to New York and breaks to the shores of Southern California and South Miami Beach. I had seen it coming but it was Ricky Martin's Grammy for Best Latin Pop Performance that brought it to focus. Martin, one of the many cute boys swinging through latin pop, is not the first nor the best Puerto Rican recording artist to win the Grammy or earn other accolades. The greats of the Latin dance music known as salsa — Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Willie Colon and many more—are all Puerto Rican and their contribution to music is measureless. . In Latin music, Puerto Rico's sounds had taken a back seat some time ago, when most of the island's great musicians embraced Afro-Cuban dance rhythms like the mambo—which would eventually mutate into salsa—over their own. But if you listen to old recordings of Latin dance music by classic Cuban musicians, you will hear Puerto Rican plena in their repertoire. And latin music aficionados still remember the legendary bandleader Cortijo, who made the plena popular throughout the Latin world. Puerto Ricans still listened and danced to plena, bomba and Puerto Rican country music, but mostly during Christmas, when they were seized by a traditionalist fever. And, of course, the island's native music continued to be the choice among Puerto Rican nationalists. But now come some new, hip recordings, like "Plena Libre" (Ryko Latino), Viento de Agua's "De Puerto Rico al loundo" (Agogo), William Cepeda Afrorican Jazz's "My Roots and Beyond" (Blue Jacket) and Grupo Afro Boricua's "Bombazo" (Blue Jacket), directed by Cepeda. There are more recordings of both traditional material and Latin jazz. The latter is a genre dominated by Afro-Cuban rhythms, but a number of Puerto Rican artists are now experimenting with their native sounds. It's about time. Puerto Rican music is seductive, the kind of beats that make you feel like partying along with them, all day and all night. And you've never experienced the virtuoso sounds a tambourine can yield until you've heard a master percussionist beat out plena polyrhythms on one. Puerto Rican music's lack of popularity has prevented it from lapsing into the formulaic nature of so much commercial merengue. But it's also feel-good. And deep. And sexy. Bomba! Enrique Fernandez Sun-Sentinel South Florida |
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