LOS PLENEROS DE LA 21, formed in the South Bronx, New York City, in 1983 by National Heritage Fellow, Juan Gutiérrez-Rodriguez, is a group which has spanned three generations of Puerto Rican musicians, dancers, and artisans dedicated to performance of BOMBA and PLENA, two styles of Puerto Rican music which springs from deeply rooted African traditions. The group consists of traditional practitioners and professional musicians who have been deeply influenced and formed in the traditional performance and execution of Bomba and Piena, coming together to keep their traditions alive. Not only do they play, sing, and dance, but they make their own instruments. The name evokes the place of origin of its members, the now gone Parada 21 (Bus Stop 21), a predominantly Black neighborhood in the Santurce municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico that produced many of the island's most accomplished interpreters of Bomba and Plena. LOS PLENEROS, which means Plena practitioner-musicians, are, according to ethnomusicologist Nick Spitzer "widely admired as the premiere Bomba and Plena group". LOSPLENEROS were also the first New York-based Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena group to perform at world-renowned Carnegie Hall. Though LOS PLENEROS have performed at such renowned stages as Symphony Space, Lincoln Center; at such important festivals as the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, the International Folklore Festival in Russia; Hawaiian Tour, University of Hawaii at Manoa; Westcan Jazz FesVvals Tour and New Mexico State Tour and have been featured in acclaimed, Sesame Street, LOSPLENEROSDELA21 remains deeply rooted in the Puerto Rican community maintaining an active program of workshops, performances, and lecturedemonstrations for children, teenagers, senior citizens, and the community in general. Their music has roots hundreds of years old, from the days when Spanish colonists brought West African slaves to cultivate Puerto Rico's sugarcane. It melds European, African, Native Taino musicai traditions. "Our music is about sharing and celebrating." comments Juan Gutiérrez-Rodriguez, musical director and founder of LOSPLENEROS. "This music happens because of peoples' needs to express themselves. And we continue to play it at an effort to introduce it to new audiences hoping to bolster a tradition." Their performances, according to The Advocate and Greenwich Time "...resemble much more of the spontaneous street jam out of which this music was born." It has a distinctive New York performance style which goes back forty years when LOSPLENEROS original members learned themselves to play Bomba and Plena in Puerto Rico.Their enthusiasm, showmanship, and command of the genre has won LOSPLENEROS DELA21 a respected place in the folk and world music circles, with their performances being described as "magical melting of the invisible curtain between performers and audience...", (The Albuquerque Journal) and their drumming "...incendiary, complex and precise, made the room rock." (The New York Times) LOSPLENEROS' discography includes 4 recordings. The most recent, Somos Boricuas/lA/e are Pueffo Rican: Bomba y Plena en Nueva York (Henry StreeVRounder Records 1996), has been praised by critics and audiences alike. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.