Premiered on PBS
on October 7, 2004
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for rebroadcasts.

Camilo Gaetan

Camilo Ernesto Molina-Gaetan is a young percussionist who plays Puerto Rican folkloric music, salsa, Latin jazz, and other styles. His instruments include congas, bongos, timbales, and pandereta. He lives in East Harlem, New York.

Camilo began studying Puerto Rican folkloric music with the Afro-Puerto Rican folkloric ensemble "Pleneros de la 21", who he still plays with today. Since he was four years old, he has also studied at the Harbor Conservatory with master percussionist Johnny Almendra and Louis Bauzo. Camilo has also traveled to Cuba to study the roots of Afro-Caribbean music.

Camilo has performed with many well-known Latin musicians including Tito Puente, Gilberto Santa Rosa and David Sanchez. He has recorded with Eddie Palmieri and Viento de Agua. In 2002, he won third place in the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition (a competition previously only won by adults). Camilo also plays the trumpet and other musical styles like pop and funk.

"I want to go far. Tito Puente wanted to take his music to the moon. That's kind of what I want to do," says Camilo.

Puerto Rican Folkloric Music

Puerto Rican folkloric music is made up of two main styles, Bomba and Plena. "The plena was used as a newspaper to tell what was going on. And Bomba was used as a form of having fun after a long day at work," says percussionist Camilo Gaetan. There are about 20 to 30 different variations of Bomba and Plena, each with an accompanying dance style.

Bomba is a Puerto Rican rhythm and dance primarily influenced by African Bantu and Yoruba traditions. Enslaved Africans who worked on the island's sugar plantations brought it over in the 17th century. Bomba is played with large barrel-shaped drums and a maraca. When drummers are playing bomba, they follow the dancer, doing a call and response and improvising on the spot.

Plena is a Puerto Rican song style that is primarily influenced by the musical traditions of Spain. It originated in Puerto Rican working class neighborhoods in the late 1890s. Sometimes called a "sung newspaper", Plena song lyrics deals with everyday events, and society and politics, often satirically. It is traditionally played on the panderos-hand-held tambourine-like instruments with goatskin stretched across one side.

Salsa

Salsa describes the rhythm, music, and dances of Caribbean and African origin. Salsa translates literally as "sauce", it is an umbrella term coined in the 1970s to describe the Afro-Cuban musical hybrid created in New York City.

In the early 1960s, when the Cuban embargo prevented many Cuban musicians from coming to New York, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban and African American musicians played Cuban music, reinterpreting it and mixing it with their own traditions to create what we know today as "Salsa".

The Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts

The Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts is an offshoot of the Boys and Girls Harbor - a community nonprofit youth agency that offers education and social services. Located in Spanish Harlem, it is a leading center for the study of Latin Music. It also offers classical music, dance, and theater training.

The Harbor's principal music program is designed to expose students to the full spectrum of Latin music, specifically Afro-Cuban music, percussion, and folklore. The conservatory is also home to the Raices Latin Music Collection, an archive documenting the history of Latin music in New York City.

Louis Bauzo is the director of the Harbor Conservatory's Latin Percussion Program, its resident Afro-Caribbean folklorist, and the co-founder of Raices. He has studied in Africa, Puerto Rico, Cuba and at Juilliard, and was a member of the Tito Puente Orchestra for seven years. Bauzo has also performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Machito, Eddie Palmieri, Celia Cruz, and Paul Simon.

Johnny Almendra, is a also a long-time Latin percussion teacher at the Harbor. He has played with Willie Colon, Ruben Blades, Mongo Santamaria, and Tipica Novel. He is the bandleader of Los Jovenés del Barrio, a twelve-piece Latin ensemble.