Below is an excerpt from a post on the Library’s Of the People blog by Folklife Specialist Douglas Peach who interviews Community Collections Grant recipient LeAna López about Los Pleneros de la 21’s project, “From NYC to Puerto Rico: Documenting Evolving Practices and Perspectives of Bomba y Plena in the Diaspora.” This post is part of the Of the People blog series featuring the 2024 awardees of the AFC’s Community Collections Grants. The Community Collections Grants program is part of the Library’s Of the People: Widening the Path initiative, which seeks to create new opportunities for more Americans to engage with the Library of Congress and to add their perspectives to the Library’s collections, allowing the national library to share a more inclusive American story.
Los Pleneros de la 21 (LP21) is an organization, based in New York City, whose members practice the traditional Puerto Rican musical genres of bomba and plena. In 2024, the American Folklife Center awarded Los Pleneros de la 21 with a Community Collections Grant (CCG) to document their community. In this interview, LeAna López, a member of LP21 and the project’s primary interviewer, talks with Dr. Douglas Peach (Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center) about the group’s CCG work, her personal history with the traditions, and what has been surprising to her about interviewing members of her community.
Doug Peach: LeAna, tell me about Los Pleneros de la 21’s CCG project and what inspired you to undertake this work?
LeAna López: Our project is titled “The Evolving Practices and Perspectives of Bomba y Plena in the Diaspora.” We’re focusing specifically on the New York City tri-state area [Editor’s note: the tri-state area is New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut]. My inspiration, I think, is really a response to the shifts that are happening within our community, my expanded role in the community, and the increased responsibility that I now have. I’ve always had an interest in doing research and taking a more retrospective “bird’s eye view” into our cultural practices. The Community Collections Grant presented itself and was a perfect opportunity to do so.
COVID-19 created some major shifts in our community in the ways that we practice and share our musical traditions. Change is inevitable, but during COVID-19, something extraordinary happened where we were all forced into our homes and had to result to technology. And I think technology was extremely helpful, and has been extremely helpful, in connecting us. Bomba is now practiced in Japan! In giving others access [to our cultural practices], it allowed us to connect, to take classes, to learn, to continue to grow. But, I think it also shifted the culture in other ways.