Plena Cangrejera
A multidisciplinary street exhibit, a tribute to the sound of plena, a traditional music of San Mateo de Cangrejos.
Leader
Tito Matos
Location
Loiza Street San Juan, PR 00911
About the project
Plena is a traditional Afro-Puerto Rican musical genre. Santurce, a neighborhood in San Juan, has a rich history of plena groups, composers and performers. Plena Cangrejera will set up 15 stations along busy Loíza Street to tell the stories of some of these cultural warriors. The stations will each have a photograph of a performer or group with a brief description of their work and a QR code that will take the visitors to the website where they can listen to a podcast with each interviewee and their music, and also read their bios and link to their webpages and social media.
This multidisciplinary exhibit will also offer a monthly musical tour in which we will play some of the songs of the featured pleneros walking from one station to the next. Tito, main curator of the exhibit, is a Grammy nominated lifelong plenero who also lives in the neighborhood, and leader of the band Viento de Agua, will lead the musical tours with local pleneros.
The stations will be placed on the walls of private buildings, facing the street, some are homes and others are businesses, the outreach of incorporating them to the project is a very important part of our work since it is a way of engaging the community with the project. This outreach will also be done by a neighbor that will be hired for these purpose. The entire project is a tribute to a local art form and to the history of the community. Our aim is for this to be a first step of a long term project that will include conferences, cultural events and a permanent exhibit at a local closed school reappropiated by the community.
The Steps
Research and interviews: Narrow the list of artists that will be featured, contact them and make interviews with either them or their families and friends. November 2019
Community outreach: Establish the sites where the stations will be located and meet with owners, tenants and administrators to coordinate the placement of each station. November 2019
Podcasts and website: Create, design and develop the website. Produce and edit the podcasts for each one of the 15 stations. December 2019
Installation, opening and presentations: Installation of the boards, opening event and first musical tour. December 2019
Why we‘re doing it
Our neighborhood has a rich cultural history. Some of Puerto Rico's most adored musicians hail from here including Ismael Rivera and Rafael Cortijo, musical innovators that took plena to an international level. Their stories must be told. Their stories are the stories of a working class that resisted with music, that literally built some of these streets, many pleneros were also construction workers. Afro-Puerto Ricans that immensely contributed to the foundations of this barrio are many times missing from history lessons.
The essence of this community should be preserved because even though the hood is been rapidly gentrifyng, we are still here. The project is part of a wider community effort to support an inclusive narrative that tells the story of those that came before us that defined the sector as what it still is today a vibrant and diverse community. Plena Cangrejera will strengthen our community's sense of belonging and pride. We aspire to contribute to the wider conversation towards a healthier, stronger and more resilient community.