Bomba was banned from sugar and coffee plantations once "patrones" learned of its insurrectional nature. Prior to its banishment, bomba was heard on Sundays, a day of rest for the descendants of the conquistadores católicos during the 19th century. Even after its prohibition, bomba was brought to life in coastal communities of Puerto Rico's Loíza Aldea, Santurce, Guayama and the southwestern coast bordering Mayagüez, considered the birthplace of bomba.

Harmonious female voicings were the driving force behind bomba in the south, while the north favored drumming and dancing dialogues infused with intense passion and social commentary. Dancing and drumming were improvised reflections of a daily reality-not an isolated, disciplined demonstration of them. This was a collective experience, nourished by musical memories of dignity and pride, with dancers and drummers as two distinct polyrhythmic instruments providing a deeper dimension to the songs of freedom.

Due to racial discrimination, all types of African-derived expression on the Island were placed under the banner of bomba. There are even some members of the cultural elite who would have one think that bomba today does not have to adhere to a rhythmic structure, style or form, and can be played "freestyle"-by which they mean "no style."

Pirates, rebels and exiles of the 1791 Haitian revolution-many of whom jumped ship and escaped to Puerto Rico and Cuba-influenced the development of bomba with French feelings, styles and names like "rulé," "bambulaé" and "grasima fi fi." Bomba drumming and dancing has always been handed down through collective memory of African rites and music. Unique in its Island expression, bomba nonetheless shares roots throughout the Caribbean.

Breakthrough Bomba

Although the bomba can be traced back to the 17th century, it did not break through commercially until the 1950s, when Armando Castro y Su Orquesta produced what seems to be the first recorded bomba, "Titía." In 1955, La Sonora Matancera recorded "Mi Bomba Sono" featuring Celia Cruz but while it is listed as a bomba, it's really a guaracha, Sonora style.

 Meanwhile, the plena had been enjoying commercial success since the '20s as protest music by Rafael Hernández; and Manuel "Canario" Jiménez took it one step further by recording plena albums. And in the late 1930s, an Afro-Puerto Rican Jew named Augosto Coen would orchestrate the plena genre with horns and strings.

Finally, in the '50s, bomba exploded onto the international Latin music scene with a vengeance. Bomba danced on the backs of percussionist/arranger Rafael Cortijo and the extraordinary vocalist, Ismael Rivera, who, along with their Combo, were the first all-black band to appear daily on Puerto Rican television as the house band for La Taberna India for five consecutive years.

Day after day, the numerous hits of Cortijo y Su Combo con Ismael Rivera were heard on virtually every radio program. They performed in one of Puerto Rico's first cinematic attempts at competing with the Mexican film industry ("Maruja") in 1959.

Resistance in Paradise

Cortijo and company broke through the Condado color line when their pal and collaborator, vocalist Bobby Capó, campaigned for the right to lodge at the same hotels where they played. And it was Cortijo who insisted on pay raises for drummers, who had been esteemed, and paid, far less than so-called "schooled" musicians prior to Cortijo's intervention.

Contrary to what's shown on most documentaries, Cortijo rocked at the Palladium. They were so "hot" with their beloved bomba and plena rhythms that Cuba's most popular crooner, Benny Moré, passed the torch to Ismael "Maelo" Rivera, dubbing him El Sonero Mayor, the Master Singer. The king was crowned. Bomba was in the house.

Today, bomba cannot be seen on television, and is not heard on commercial Latino radio or written about critically. It is not presented and danced to at The Copa or Latin Quaters. If it is shown on film or television, it is for documentary use only, making an appearance at educational and cultural facilities in the context of "folklore"; a misnomer, because if it were folk, everyone could do it.

Bomba has always resisted the insidious "whitening-of-the-race" (mejorando la raza), self-hate mentality subconsciously ingrained on the Island-and that is one reason given for bomba's stepchild status in the internationalization of "salsa" music. Islanders have systematically denied and rejected bomba's blackness in favor of more "mixed" or mestizo forms of musical identity, occasionally displaying bomba as a "relic" of its colonial past.

Cortijo's Revenge

So strong is this rejection of the music's inherent blackness that Cortijo (1928-1982), in death, instigated an Islandwide controversy in 1988 after a political candidate had the audacity to suggest that the name of the Island's Bellas Artes (Fine Arts) Performance Arts Center be changed in honor of Cortijo. This sad episode is documented in Juan Flores' essay, "Cortijo's Revenge/La Venganza de Cortijo," and unmasks a new level of complexity to Puerto Rico's debate on race.

Even the most important exponent of bomba, don Rafael Cepeda, (1910-1996) who was recognized as a Smithsonian National Heritage fellow for his preservation of the Island's native music, has gone largely unrecognized in his homeland. Meanwhile, the latest recording from another pioneering bomba family, La Familia Ayala-produced by Cepeda's grandnephew William-has remained an academic reference rather than a contender for the hit parade.

Bomba Breaking Barriers

While the new millennium holds the bomba hits of "Maelo" and Cortijo hostage in old-school salsa memories, bomberos straddle racial borders on the Island and the mainland, dangerously dancing around identity and culture while breaking racial barriers.

"[It was] always looked down on as a mysterious 'black thang,'" recalls Félix Romero, a bomba dancer, musician, film producer and activist. "And [that is] one of the many reasons why its roots in sacred ceremonies are played down in its historical development. Elders such as don Rafael Cepeda feared further rejection of bomba, and played down its spiritual connection."

Bomba was again pushed aside on the Island in the late '60s and '70s by "nueva trova" or "nueva canción", which became the protest music for the middle-class elite at the head of that movement.

"It's ironic, since bomba hit New York with a bang as a commercial entity first with the advent of Cortijo y Su Combo," explains Romero, whose company, Teatro Otra Cosa, expressed both the "folk" and community appeal of bomba.

Bomba in the 'Hood: The '60s, '70s and '80s

While the Young Lords marched in the '60s, Félix Romero and his troupe danced for the people, taking bombas to the "revolution," while breaking ground in Puerto Rican folk festivals that had alwaysexcluded bomba. He even held a misa de bomba at a St. Ann's Church in the Bronx.

And Félix was there at the Central Park Jams of the '70s where my own brother, Yeyito Flores, a hardcore rumbero and bombero, would punctuate the hottest rumbas with "beat-down" bombas. Along with Heny Álvarez, who taught bomba at El Museo del Barrio, they gigged as Mi Grupo Bomba.

Pioneering folklorist-singer Benny Ayala made "vejigante" carnival masks and sang bombas for the annual Fiesta de Loíza Aldea festival in New York. Heny sang bomba with legendary percussionists Milton Cardona and Frankie Rodríguez on producer René López's seminal '70s recordings of Grupo Folklórico Experimental Nuevayorquino.

Marta Moreno Vega, founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center and the Association of Hispanic Arts, sponsored bomba in the streets and on the stages. Meanwhile, Yvette Martínez, a young bomba dancer and instructor, started her own female bomba group, Retumba. And legendary tongue-twisting "plenero" Mon Rivera was in the 'hood making music with Willie Colón, Héctor LaVoe and Yomo Toro. Around the same time, Tito Cepeda (great-nephew of don Rafael) taught percussion at Lexington Avenue Express, and rich kid Pepe Castillo bogarted the microphones on stages around town.

Félix Romero, who was named as Connecticut's first Latino commissioner of culture in the late '70s, blazed trails that led us to modern-day bomba. Los Pleneros de la 21, currently celebrating their 20th anniversary, have taken the music to the next level, adding keyboards, bass and cuatro to the oral percussion folk standard, forging, in the process, a nationwide following. Despite their longevity, they have only two recordings and receive virtually no airplay.

Meanwhile, a handful of New York City bands compete viciously for attention, forming cliques that further divide the community. Now, with no recent recordings or airplay of any of these groups on commercial radio, bomba in New York is stagnant at best, never matching its glory days of the '50s, '60s and '70s.

"Bomba is about community, participation and expression," says José Emmanuelli-Nater, who has carved a rep for himself by bringing the bomba back to the 'hood. "We need to elevate the culture and show it off at its best, but we can't forget its roots and its purpose. It is a cleansing, a nourishment for the soul, a spiritual and heartfelt respect for my ancestors and what this music was to them," he affirms. "It is a passing of a history that we, as a community, are allowing to fade. Its many distinct rhythms, strict 'clave' and style must be respected and supported."

Bombazos Today

Emmanuelli-Nater has been exploding with "Bombazos" throughout New York since his recent return to the metropolis. His troupe of drummers and dancers, with him as cantador, drive a raw, street, community embrace. Steps are taught and improvised in the moment, as verses fall from his mouth.  Shoulders shake, body bends, chin is up, and "¡piquete!"-a hand flings out, clutching the corner of a long skirt that whips the drummer into a counterslap from the drum. ¡Bomba!

At the core of modern bomba culture are the community gardens and casitas throughout New York City. Of these, Rincón Criollo at 158th Street and Brook Avenue in the Bronx is most popular because of its bomba tradition of community. Its yearly special events host hundreds of drummers playing bomba, plena and jíbaro music. Rincón Criollo was featured in the documentary "Raíces", which features Ángel Luis Toruellas, one of the last of the living bomba y plena legends, with more than 100 recordings to his name.

In East Harlem, you were able to feel bomba the first Thursday of every month at Julia's Jam. Produced by Aurora Communication, Inc., these events fully embraced the culture at the Center named for Puerto Rico's most prominent feminest poet. Here, young and old met, community and culture mixed and mingled, young boricuas claimed their Afro-Caribbean heritage, and veteran bomberos and pleneros such as the late Hugo Asencio, Juan Usera, and others help to pass the tradition down. Awilda Sterling-Duprey displays a stylized bomba that feels like ballet, while young bloods bang bomba, sitting with experts like Mickey Sierra, Tito Matos and Tito Cepeda. William Cepeda has also been spotted, as has the legendary Cepeda dancer Roberto, who gives real meaning to the phrase "dance the drum."

However, even that monthly cultural expression was dropped from Spanish Harlem's profile replaced with a weekly dose of salsa bands that rotate from the same "clique" turning the cultural house that Julia made into just another salsa club house where older men come to drink, leer and see who they can pick up.

But bomba is still hangin' in there.  Papo Vasquez creates his own fused mix of bomba while pianist José Lugo, in this writer's opinion, has created he best recipe of fusion mixing bomba with jazz and blues in his recording "Piano con Mata."  Take a listen to Chembo Corniel's Portraits in Rhythm where you'll hear a jazzy bomba mixed with swing written by David Fernandez.  And Los Pleneros de la 21's third CD was actually nominated for a Grammy in '05.  So bomba is still hangin' in there, alive and strong, if only relegated to those who know and love their cultural heritage.