The Role of Music in Puerto Rican Popular Culture

The Role of Music in Puerto Rican Popular Culture

What is Puerto Rican music like? Where did it develop, and around when did it develop? What makes it up? These are very valid questions for someone who does not know anything about Puerto Rican music or Latin music in general. To understand Puerto Rican music and what it means to Puerto Rican people in general, you must look at the beginning.

First there are different kinds of music that can be considered Puerto Rican. In general, Salsa is considered to be Puerto Rican music of today, but a famous musician by the name of Tito Puente says he plays Cuban music. (Waxer, Oct., 29). The reason for this is that he believes Salsa originated in Cuba, and Puerto Ricans just play their music. But this is an inaccurate statement and view. Puerto Ricans have helped to develop this style of music as well as others.

Puerto Ricans travel and take and bring different sounds with them wherever they go. This is the way many of the different musics of Puerto Rico have formed and shaped.

"Musicians are workers producing tangibles products, and music itself often follows trade routes and is made up of concrete mixes that we can trace" (Glasser, 8). The island’s music is like its people, a combination of all different elements and this is why you have such styles as Bomba, Plena, and La Danzas. Some of these musical styles unfortunately had the stigma of classicism attached to them, too. But let us begin with the beginning of this century.

At the turn of this century, Puerto Rico had passed as a colony from one country (Spain) to another (United States). It was a small island that was divided by classicism, therefore it seemed like two worlds. You had the world of th...

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... other Caribbean and Latin American countries.

Music was also a way to express their anger towards their situation with the United States. They were able to "speak out" against this oppression in subtle ways, and also to push the limits with sexual innuendoes in the music. A perfect example of this was Raphael Hernandez’s "Menealo Que Se Empelota" (Glasser, 151).

I believe this quote of Harold smith best says what music meant to Puerto Ricans during the first couple of decades here, "Music means more to them [than Americans] at any time, and the music of their homelands means still more. They love it as they love food" (Glasser, 168).

References

Ruth Glasser, My Music is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians in New York and their Communities, 1917-1940. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

Lise Waxer, "Puerto Rican Music". Oct. 29, 1998.