Charla: A Conversation with the Elders
César Colón-Montijo, a doctoral student in ethnomusicology at Columbia University and author of the upcoming book,
Viaje a La Casita: Notas de Plena en el Rincón Criollo (for the Institute
for Puerto Rican Culture), leads a conversation with elders of the tradition about the stories and experiences on the migration of the art form from Puerto Rico to New York and its resurgence. The elders include: Benny Ayala, a longtime plenero and instructor at the Rincón Criollo Cultural Center, and the grandfather of Friday evening headliner Matthew González; Roberto Cepeda, the world renowned bomba dancer of the famed Cepeda family which has promoted the traditions of bomba and plena in Puerto Rico and abroad since the 1930s; and Julio Colón, a longtime performer at Rincón Criollo where he had the opportunity to play and sing with Union Boricua, one of the first groups that came from that institution. Although not an elder, Héctor ‘Tito’ Matos, leader of the popular Puerto Rican Plena group Viento de Aqua, will help to put the evening into a musical context.
