Bomba Lives: The Preservation of African-Puerto Rican Tradition
By Roberto Maldonado | Originally published 2015 | El Cuarto del Quenepón Archive
Editor’s note: This feature, originally published in our special issue on African-Puerto Rican culture, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in cultural criticism. We present it here as part of our ongoing effort to preserve important writing on Puerto Rican heritage.
In a community center in Loíza, a woman in white steps into the circle. The drummers watch her—the subidor players maintaining the steady foundation, the primo drummer ready to respond. She begins to move: a dip of the shoulder, a sweep of the skirt, a stamp of the foot. The primo follows, matching her rhythm, answering her call. For the next few minutes, dancer and drummer are in conversation, speaking a language older than Spanish, older than the colonization of the island, as old as the African diaspora itself.
This is bomba. And it is very much alive.
Origins
Bomba emerged in Puerto Rico during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, created by enslaved Africans—primarily from the Kongo, Yoruba, and other West African peoples—who brought their musical traditions to the Caribbean. On the sugar plantations and in the coastal towns where enslaved people labored, bomba was a form of resistance, communication, and spiritual practice.
The Spanish colonizers understood the danger. Music that could coordinate movements, communicate across distances, reinforce African identity—all of this threatened colonial order. Authorities periodically banned bomba, forced practitioners to hide their drums, punished those caught dancing. The persistence of the tradition despite centuries of suppression testifies to its importance to the people who created it.
After emancipation in 1873, bomba remained central to African-Puerto Rican communities, particularly in Loíza, Santurce, Ponce, and Mayagüez. But it was marginalized by official culture. The Puerto Rican elite, eager to claim Spanish heritage and deny African roots, dismissed bomba as primitive, vulgar, embarrassing—something to be hidden rather than celebrated.
This attitude persisted well into the twentieth century. When folklorists and cultural nationalists began documenting Puerto Rican traditions, they often emphasized the jíbaro culture of the mountain interior—white or mestizo, Spanish-speaking, associated with the rural idealism of la gran familia puertorriqueña. Bomba didn’t fit this narrative. It was African. It was Black. It was other.
The Cepeda Family
No discussion of bomba preservation is complete without the Cepeda family of Santurce. For four generations, the Cepedas have taught, performed, and advocated for bomba, ensuring its transmission to new generations when others would have let it die.
Don Rafael Cepeda (1910-1996), known as “El Patriarca de la Bomba,” was the family’s founding figure in bomba preservation. A drummer and dancer who had learned the tradition from his elders, Don Rafael spent his life documenting, teaching, and performing bomba at a time when few Puerto Ricans valued it.
“My father faced a lot of resistance,” recalls his son Jesús Cepeda, now a master drummer and teacher himself. “People would tell him, ‘Why are you wasting your time with that African stuff? Why don’t you play something respectable?’ He didn’t listen. He knew what bomba meant, what it represented. He was preserving something sacred.”
The Cepeda family’s school, Escuela de Bomba y Plena Don Rafael Cepeda, has trained thousands of students. Its graduates have gone on to found their own groups, teach in universities, spread bomba across the Puerto Rican diaspora. The family’s influence is immeasurable.
“Don Rafael’s generation saved bomba,” says ethnomusicologist Halbert Barton, who has studied Puerto Rican music for decades. “Without families like the Cepedas, the tradition might have been lost. They refused to let it die.”
The Ayala Family
In Loíza, the Ayala family has played a similar role. Los Hermanos Ayala, founded in the 1950s, became one of the most respected bomba groups in Puerto Rico, performing traditional styles at a time when commercial music dominated.
Loíza itself is unique. This northeastern coastal town has the highest concentration of African-descended Puerto Ricans and has preserved African cultural elements—not just bomba, but also the vejigante traditions, the worship of Santiago Apóstol, the carnival practices—that have been diluted or lost elsewhere on the island.
“Loíza is the heart of bomba,” says Raquel Ayala, a fourth-generation bombera. “Our ancestors brought this music here. Our families have kept it alive for four hundred years. When you dance bomba in Loíza, you’re not just performing. You’re connecting to everyone who came before.”
The bombazo—a community gathering for bomba drumming and dancing—remains a regular occurrence in Loíza. These events are not performances for tourists; they are living practice, community ritual, cultural transmission in action.
The Revival
The past two decades have seen a remarkable revival of interest in bomba, particularly among young Puerto Ricans seeking connection to African heritage long suppressed in official culture.
Groups like Bomba con Buya, Ausuba, and Los Pleneros de la 21 have brought bomba to new audiences, performing in venues from community centers to international festivals. They maintain traditional forms while innovating—collaborating with jazz musicians, incorporating contemporary dance, using social media to spread the tradition.
“When I started learning bomba, it was seen as old-fashioned,” says Norka Hernández, a dancer and educator who teaches bomba workshops across the United States. “Young people weren’t interested. Now I have students who drive hours to learn. They want to know where they come from. They’re hungry for this.”
The revival is partly a response to Hurricane María. The 2017 disaster devastated Puerto Rico but also prompted cultural reckoning. Puerto Ricans, facing the negligence of the federal government and the fragility of island infrastructure, turned to their traditions for strength and identity. Bomba became a way of asserting Puerto Ricanness—and particularly African-Puerto Ricanness—in the face of disaster.
Beyond the Island
Bomba has traveled with Puerto Rican migrants to the mainland United States, where diaspora communities have established their own traditions of practice and transmission.
In New York, groups like Alma Moyó and Bombazo Dance Company teach and perform bomba. In Chicago, Afro-Boricua Loíza maintains connections between Midwest Puerto Ricans and the tradition’s heartland. In California, Hawaii, and wherever Puerto Ricans have settled, bomba groups have emerged.
“Diaspora bomba is its own thing,” says Jorge Emmanuelli, a drummer and educator based in Philadelphia. “We’re not just copying what they do in Loíza. We’re creating our own traditions, adapting to our own circumstances. But we’re still connected to the source.”
This diaspora practice raises questions about authenticity and ownership. Who can learn bomba? Who can teach it? What does it mean when non-Puerto Ricans—or even Puerto Ricans without African heritage—practice a tradition created by enslaved Africans?
The bomba community has grappled with these questions, arriving at rough consensus: bomba is open to all who approach it with respect. But it must be learned from teachers who are part of the tradition, practiced in community settings, understood in historical context. It is not simply entertainment to be consumed; it is a living tradition that demands responsibility.
The Spiritual Dimension
For many practitioners, bomba is more than music or dance. It is a spiritual practice.
“When I’m in the circle, when the drum is responding to my body, I feel my ancestors,” says Carmen Pérez, a bombera from Ponce. “They’re with me. They’re dancing through me. Bomba is a way of honoring them, of keeping their memory alive.”
This spiritual dimension connects bomba to African religious practices—the drum as communication with the divine, the circle as sacred space, the dance as embodiment of spiritual power. Though most Puerto Ricans today are nominally Catholic, African spiritual elements persist in cultural practice.
“Bomba is healing,” says Jesús Cepeda. “When you play, when you dance, you’re releasing something. You’re connecting to something bigger than yourself. It’s therapy. It’s church. It’s everything.”
The Future
Bomba has survived four centuries of suppression, marginalization, and neglect. It will survive whatever comes next.
The young people learning bomba today will teach their children. The diaspora communities will maintain their practice. The families in Loíza and Santurce will continue their generational work. The tradition is not frozen; it evolves, adapts, incorporates new influences while maintaining its core.
“My grandfather used to worry that bomba would die with his generation,” says Raquel Ayala. “He’d be amazed to see what’s happening now. Young people, not just Puerto Ricans, coming from everywhere to learn. Bomba classes in universities. Bombazo events that fill plazas.
“Bomba isn’t dying. It’s growing. And it will keep growing, as long as people remember where it came from and why it matters.”
Roberto Maldonado is a music journalist based in San Juan. He has covered Puerto Rican traditional music for over fifteen years.