Creolization in Caribbean Music - Spanish
There are lots of Spanish music styles that exemplify the theme of creolization. The one I'll be discussing is the plena. Plena is an African influenced genre that can be found in Puerto Rico as well as in the Dominican Republic. The Puerto Rican plena is known as "el periodico cantado" or "the sung newspaper" (Maynard, 1998) because it is a short song thar described events or critiqued society, similar to calypso in Trinidad and Tobago. For this reason, plena was popular among the working class, forcing the city to try to ban this music because persons from the upper class in Puerto Rico complained about it being indecent and distasteful (MasterClass, 2021). As mentioned before, plenas have African roots but also influences from native Taino and European. It is a blend of African rhythms with other Puerto Rican styles like bomba. Plenas consist of alternatives of stanzas and refrains and there i...