Like so much of the Americas, the music of Puerto Rico was fundamentally shaped through the slave trade. The bomba, with roots in West Africa, is heavily percussive, and played on large barrel drums. The bomba is thought to have been rooted in the occasions when slaves from different haciendas (plantations) were allowed to gather and celebrate together. Their bomba instrumentation is comprised entirely of percussion instruments: two barrel drums (called "barril primo" and "barril Segundo"), a pair of hardwood stick called "cuas", and maracas. Paracumbe's bombas are sung entirely by women, a series of beautiful call and response songs from the southern part of the island (as opposed the bomba of the north often sung by men). Puerto Rico is divided by large mountains, and as a result, the bomba of the south was heavily shaped by the music of Haiti. It was actually easier in the past to get from Haiti to Puerto Rico by boat than it was to cross the mountains. Their debut international release is Tambo (Ashe 2005). The album begins thunderously with the bomba, "Cico Mangual," as an orchestra of drums set the tone for a magnificent series of call and response vocals between the fiery Nelie Lebron Robles and a trance inspiring female chorus. The song is an homage to the Cico Mangual, a legendary bomba dancer from Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Paracumbe was formed by University of Puerto Rico ethnomusicologist Emanuel Dufrasne. Dufrasne says that he took the name from a dance described in 17th century manuscript discovered by linguist Manuel Alvarez Nazario:

¿Pues qué, no me conocéis?
El paracumbé de Angola, ciudadano de Guinea
Casado con la amorosa que escogí yo por mujer
Si queréis saber quién soy en este baile atended
Y acompañad mi romance al estilo portugués.

Then what, you do not know me?
Paracumbé of Angola, citizen of Guinea
Married with a loving woman
If you want to know who I am in this dance, take care
and accompany my romance to this Portuguese style
Paracumbe also perform splendid Puerto Rican plenas. Plena developed more or less as a sung newspaper. Pleneros would travel the island, bringing the news of the day to the public through song. The plena has more European elements than the bomba. Paracumbe's leader, Emanuel Dufrasne believes that the plena's origins are a result of the fusion of forms brought to Puerto Rico by immigrants from Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad with bomba rhythms and incorporating these on a variety of new instruments, such as the guiro and the cuatro (a small guitar) and later accordions. While the plena that is more commonly heard today is the sort typified by salsa-plena fusion bands such as Plena Libre and New York's Libre, Paracumbe's rootsy plenas are a direct link to the genre's origins in West Africa. Simply put, Paracumbe's music is Africa in Puerto Rico. Their album is living history, sacred and contemporary, and flawlessly recorded.

Contributed by: Dan Rosenberg