With its infectious call and response vocals and topical lyrics commenting on the events and gossip of the day, the music genre plena is known in Puerto Rico as the people's newspaper. And much like print newspapers today, plena faced a multitude of challenges back in the early 1990s.
Overlooked and ignored by Puerto Rican radio stations and record labels, plena had lost a generation of listeners and was in the midst of fading from view before bassist Gary Nuñez founded Plena Libre in 1994, breathing new life into a style with decidedly populist origins.
While retaining plena's essential percussion-driven rhythm and West African-derived dance moves, Nuñez added jazz-inflected horn arrangements and a wide array of Latin grooves, including merengue, cumbia and mambo.
He's turned plena into an international force, earning four Grammy Award nominations while spreading Puerto Rican culture around the globe. Nuñez brings his powerful 12-piece band back to California next week for a series of gigs, including Monday at Santa Cruz's Kuumbwa Jazz Center and Wednesday at Yoshi's-Oakland.
"When I started this project, I have friends who asked, 'Are you crazy? Why are you doing that?' some with good intentions, some with bad ones," Nuñez recalls.
"But when I believe in something, I stick with it. People caught on really fast. We showed a road other people could travel, and now there are dozens and dozens of plena
At first, though, the old guard resisted his innovations.
While plena's folkloric trappings often alienated young Puerto Ricans, who saw the traditional clothing worn by planer's as terminally unhip, the old-school musicians felt the garb (ornate white guayaberas and white slacks for men, and white or brightly colored multilayered skirts for women) was essential.
Nuñez brought his experience playing jazz and other Latin forms into the mix, creating a contemporary sound steeped in plena's roots, but open to the world.
It's an approach that resonated widely, for instance inspiring Bay Area percussion great John Santos to incorporate plena and bomba rhythms into the Machete Ensemble, his flagship band for two decades.
"Before, all plena musicians were very traditional, wearing costumes," Nuñez says. "I changed all that, looking toward a new generation that listens to different forms of music.
"Now I'm glad there's a new generation really taking care of our music. We keep evolving, going deeper into the different bomba rhythms, and adding some new jazzy tunes."
Part of what makes Plena Libra so exciting is that the band features four clarion vocalists. Rather than merely performing classic songs, the planeros extemporaneously riff on current events, discussing a politician's foibles, a merchant's shady practices or a neighborhood scandal. Of course, many songs focus on relationships and romance, but the call and response form provides plenty of space for vocalists to demonstrate rhythmic dexterity and quick wit.
"The singer in this type of setting has to be improvising all the time," Nuñez says. "This is the type of music that requires him to think fast, and come up with lyrics and a new melody each time he sings."
The near-death experience of plena seems strange considering the central role that Puerto Rican musicians played in evolution of Latin jazz, and later in the rise of salsa, styles based largely on Cuban rhythms.
The islands are so closely linked by history and culture that the 19th-century Cuban poet and revolutionary José Martí described them as "two wings of the same bird." But in the latter half of the 20th century, Cuban music overshadowed Puerto Rico's, even on the self-governing U.S. territory.
When Cuban musicians were no longer allowed to travel to the United States after the 1959 revolution, Puerto Rican musicians stepped into the void, eventually fueling the rise of salsa. Back on the island, the commercial power of salsa and Dominican merengue crowded out plena and bomba (another percussion-driven Puerto Rican style). By the time Nuñez created Plena Libre, it had been about two decades since a new plena band had broken through.
Today, Nuñez looks out at a very different landscape.
Last year, Puerto Rican alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, a founding member of the SFJazz Collective, released "Esta Plena," an album continuing his jazz-infused investigation of folkloric Puerto Rican styles.
"It's a great recording, and I'm very happy about it," Nuñez says. "You wouldn't figure it happening even 10 years ago. That's the kind of thing we were looking forward to. When we got our first three Grammy nominations, it was the first time a Puerto Rican group playing folkloric music got any international attention.
"It's a way of opening doors and the eyes of our people and the rest of the world."
Plena Libre
When: 7 p.m. Monday
Where: Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz
Tickets: $22-$25,
www.kuumbwajazz.org
Also: 8 and 10 p.m. Wednesday, Yoshi"s-Oakland, 510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, $12-$20,
www.yoshis.com.
