In recent years, Puerto Rico has illustrated how several points can be true simultaneously throughout the global media. A territory can survive the consequences of being the world’s oldest colony, — it can gift the populace the most listened-to entertainer year after year, and natives and descendants can assert a cultural pride that can only be identified as Boricua. The Discover Puerto Rico team is dedicated to teaching the history of La Isla del Encanto and joined forces with Premios Juventud earlier this month to illuminate the beauty of the island’s music, landscape, and heritage.
“I am committed to purchasing and experiencing art among locals,” Nicole Olmeda, a communications coordinator at Discover Puerto Rico and Fajardo native, explained to her arriving party. Olmeda’s sentiment touching the support of Puerto Rican-owned businesses was further substantiated by the Premios Juventud Media Fam itinerary. Journalists based in the United States and other Latin American territories traveled to Puerto Rico to experience the Univision televised award show’s 20th anniversary at Coliseo Jose Miguel Agrelot in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The trips back-to-back agenda spanned several days, and to be concise with its highlights, The Knockturnal will list background information on separate establishments’ attributes, respectively. The Don Rafa Boutique Hotel & Residences hosted guests with an ambiance inspired by the 1950s and the love story of the hospitality pioneers Rafael Hernández Salazar, Ernesto Suárez, and Pura Suárez Salazar. Bespoke Lifestyle Management, a family-owned transportation and concierge service, took media attendees to and from each press trip site. And the first stop was at a renowned San Juan chef’s establishment, Mario Pagan Restaurant. Pagan, the owner, has been featured on television shows, including the Food Network’s “Next Iron Chef,” but his most considerable work is arguably his efforts alongside the World Central Kitchen and Chefs For Puerto Rico in the name of disaster relief.
Each facet of the collective experience directed eyes to the community it serves, and Melissa Santana, the executive director of the corporation for musical arts and subsidiaries for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, added to the discussion over dinner. Since its inception, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico has been distinguished by having musicians of the highest caliber who have excelled locally and internationally. Santana, a musician herself, has studied between the island and the United States, creating visibility for the company’s youth development programs and activations such as Festival Casals de Puerto Rico.
In order to fully immerse ourselves in the adventure, editors were required to do some homework of our own. CL Tours PR, an excursion company, started the festivities with a cultural walk in the birthplace of commercially accepted reggaetón and bomba. The prominent locations we visited were La Perla, Old San Juan’s Calle San Francisco, Calle Fortaleza, Puerta de Tierra, and Santurce. The latter location is home to the Cepeda family, the descendants of the legendary bomba composer and instrumentalist Rafael Cepeda.
The genre’s origins derive from the Spaniards’ colonization of Indigenous Peoples — subsequently, enslaved West Africans were brought to work on sugar plantations in Puerto Rico, and their musicality prevailed. Enslaved populations used bomba as a form of resistance, including communications of forthcoming rebellion and to celebrate momentous occasions such as baptisms and weddings. While this music has existed since the pillaging of most Taínos, its inclusivity of surviving Indigenous Peoples remains. It is also a testament to how Blackness founded nearly all Spanish-language genres, which were later amplified on the trip and awarded through Premios Juventud.
While the show’s name translates to “youth awards,” Latino icons are prioritized. The affair opened with a reggaetón medley arranged by Boricua superstar Daddy Yankee and concluded with the Colombian idol, Shakira, becoming the biggest winner of the evening, sweeping 8 awards. “To be honest, when I had self-doubt, you made me believe in myself again. When I feel fragile, you give me strength. You’ve protected me. You’ve been loyal,” she told fans during an emotional speech.
Performances by De La Ghetto, Zion & Lennox, RaiNao, Wisin, CNCO, Chencho Corleone, Farruko, Hoobastank, and others kept the audience on its feet. Also known as la fiesta más HOT del verano (or the hottest party of the summer), the event annually recognizes youth leading to change in music, culture, charitable happenings, and the world. Award winners Eladio Carrion, Danna Paola, Bizarrap, Peso Pluma, Rosalía, and Rauw Alejandro were unmistakable fan favorites. Although many Spanish-speaking territories had representation present, none were plentifuller in number than Borikén.
Still, the Discover Puerto Rico team aimed to reiterate that there was nothing new under the Taíno sun. All the musical genres we revere in mainstream culture today have predecessors. The following morning, a scenic drive was taken to the south of the island to encounter Ponce, previously known as the largest and richest city in Puerto Rico. The locale is also understood to have gifted the voice of the man frequently credited as the most significant Boricua musical figure of all time, Héctor Lavoe.
At 17, he migrated from Puerto Rico to New York City to pursue his career as a singer. Before being revered as a longtime member of the Fania All-Stars and solo salsa luminary, Lavoe was a teenager making his rounds in Spanish-language nightclubs in the Bronx and Manhattan. He is among the pioneers, who were mostly New York-based Puerto Ricans and Cubans, who took the salsa genre globally.
Today murals of him cover New York City and Puerto Rico. Lavoe (born Héctor Juan Pérez Martínez) are buried in his hometown with his wife, Nilda “Puchi” Román Pérez, and the couple’s son, Héctor Pérez Jr. With respect, a bottle of Don Q was placed on their tomb as an offering during Discover Puerto Rico’s tour of Ponce with Isla Caribe PR. Landmarks visited in Ponce included Centro Cultural Carmen Solá de Pereira, Plaza de Mercado Isabel II, and Paseo de la Salsa Cheo Feliciano.
The city’s music fueled our visit, namely with Centro Comunal y Cultural del Barrio San Antón de Ponce, where we met athletes and plena exemplars Carlos “Cao” Vélez, Otoniel “Otto” Vélez Franceschi, and Luis Antonio “Mambo” de León Tricoche. Plena is an Afro-Boricua genre known for its heavy percussion and spirited sound. Much like bomba, plena is also a means of critiquing worldly conditions and communicating messages among listeners. Beyond historical lessons was the review of another Puerto Rican cultural staple, Caribbean dishes.
The mountain town of Cayey introduced lechón (roasted pork), and Lechonera El Mojito specializes in pork by the pound and the Creole bites that commonly accompany native eats. Further, traditional West Indian food from neighboring Caribbean territories is accessible throughout the island, and you may likely find more culinary similarities than differences facing those of Puerto Rico.
Other establishments visited beside Premios Juventud’s Media Fam selectees were Areyto, Mercado La Carreta, Casita Miramar, La Factoría, and Santaella. The last-mentioned restaurant is owned by the best-selling cookbook author (“Cocina Tropical: The Classic and Contemporary Flavors of Puerto Rico”), Chef José Santaella. His establishment also borders La Placita de Santurce, a market square celebrated for its nightlife, time-honored artwork, reggaetón, and salsa.
In recognition, El Bastión, a cultural center devoted to developing arts and knowledge in diverse disciplines, including salsa, offered a lesson to scribes on the genre that frequently fills the streets of Puerto Rico and its correlating dances. Salsa typically combines elements of the vocal traditions from African genres, percussion instrumentation from conga, plena, mambo, bomba, Spanish guitar techniques, and more recently, modern components of jazz.
A few of salsa’s most influential figures include Johnny Pacheco, Celia Cruz, Oscar D’León, Tito Puente, Rubén Blades, Cheo Feliciano, Marc Anthony, and Andy Montañez. The latter artist deepened my affinity for this music, as he is my relative. Discover Puerto Rico also acknowledged Montañez via a record placement at Casa de la Música en Cayey.
Andres Yambo, a musician and representative of this Cayeyana artistic hub, offered a reading on Puerto Rican music from the 19th Century forward — and writers encountered the evolution of radios by playing music chronologically from each generation’s finest apparatus. Chiefly, what is absolute is the magnificence, culture, and resilience of natives and their descendants that compel all who witness the land they love most: Puerto Rico.
