Plena Es

About

In the Cuban-rich region of South Florida, Plena Es has carved a space for Puerto Rican music by emphasizing the island’s distinctivebomba y plena musical traditions, percussion-driven sounds that reflect the island’s African heritage. Founded by Pierre Ramos in 2004, the band—featuring percussion, trombones, piano, and bass—stirs up a high-energy Latin dance music that is a touchstone for Puerto Rican identity.

Bomba is the 17^th-century music created by West African slaves on Puerto Rico’s sugar plantations. Plena mixed bomba with indigenous Taíno Indian music, jibaro music of the island’s mountain farmers, chamber music of the Spanish colonizers and the rhyming verse of urban satirists. The result was often called “el periódico cantado” (“the sung newspaper”), due to the prominence of political commentary and day-to-day news in the lyrics. Backed by the rhythms of the panderos (hand drums), plena focuses on the story, often improvised, sung by a lead singer and chorus.

“The bomba was traditionally played in backyards and private parties,” Ramos explains. “These rhythms were considered to be low-class. The plena then went from being played in the streets, to the town plaza, and finally among high-class Puerto Rican people.”

Ramos was inspired upon hearing Los Pleneros del Quinto Olivo as a young boy; he picked up the pandero and found that plena moved him. Shortly after founding Plena Es, Ramos, who also sings, was joined by David Lucca, a conga player originally from Ponce, the region many see as the birthplace of plena. Lucca is now Ramos’s partner in the band. The mission of these pleneros is to get audiences dancing and smiling.

“The music is so up-beat and dynamic that it will move anyone that listens to it,” Ramos claims. “The singer’s interpretation and the lyrics telling those amazing stories are nowhere else to be found. The essence of the instruments, when well-performed, creates such a powerful force that it doesn’t matter where you are from, I bet you will move.”