Duany Critical Review

Popular music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa
Jorge Duany


The Duany reading introduces the reader to the historical and cultural roots of salsa music. The author points to social and geographical interactions between African, Amerindian, and European influences which all contributed to the Puerto Rican musical style. It is described as a mix between the mulatto plena and the black bomba with the white seis. He mentions the social implications that this fusion had on the unification of the country as a whole and on the individual ethnic groups themselves. As Duany so succinctly summarizes, “it reflects a synthesis of Afro- and Hispano-Puerto Rican trends, of the coastal lowlands and the inner highlands. Of course, these have been fused with some foreign musical currents, but that does not invalidate its basically nationalistic appeal” (207).


One interesting fact was mentioned in Duany’s discussion of the plena, a contributing musical style to salsa. He writes, “[a] kind of musical newspaper, the plena deals with the topics that most impress the coastal populations, ranging from the everyday incident to the inter-national happening” (192). Some of the songs he mentioned happened to be stereotypical caricatures of Puerto Rican citizens. Why is this meaningful? Are there examples of this in other musical genres that we have discussed?