plena is
an urban
musical
Genre with
African
roots

Plena is an urban musical genre with African roots created by the Puerto Rican working class. There are only approximations of its origin: to the south of the big island, with voices that point to the Guayama area and others -the most- pointing to Ponce as its birthplace; sometime after the 1880s, but more likely during the early 20th century. In old interviews with dead pleners, many claim they heard their first plenas between 1902 and 1905. Traditionally known as "the people's newspaper," Ramón López simply called her “bembeteo” because of her tendency to sing to Puerto Rican daily life.

  • In its early years, it was played with a tambourine, guitar, guiro, symphony of buttons or mouth, and sometimes the triangle. Light and easily transportable instruments. Today, given the need for amplification and the natural development of all genres of popular music, the plena band is similar in size, volume, and composition to salsa or merengue orchestras. But its beginnings were probably minimalist: a tambourine and a guitar. It is believed that cane workers from the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean (especially the so-called Lesser Antilles), mostly black people, are the first pleneres. To this day the plena is a genre of migrants.

    The plena was played in its beginnings for dancing and by the 1920s it was a very popular genre at parties and dances organized by businessmen and owners of establishments throughout the southern area, Mayagüez and San Mateo de Cangrejos, Santurce. Its contagious popularity was driven by the process of industrial mechanization and immigration at the beginning of the 20th century, a consequence and imposition of the North American colonial regime after the invasion of 1898. By the 1920s it is known that the plena was already heard in New York. , through El Barrio Boricua and the Lower East Side (Loisaida). It is in New York that the first plena album, Canario es Candela, by Manuel Jiménez “El Canario” y Su Grupo in 1927, is recorded on the RCA label.

    From there to the world, making and giving the news, bembeteando. La Casa de la Plena Tito Matos is dedicated to his research.