Latine Heritage Month Celebration with Aguacero

Student Center Ballroom A
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

Join us for an opening celebration with Aguacero. Aguacero is an artistic, educational, and cultural project that focuses on the traditions and creative expressions of Puerto Rican Bomba music and dance. Aguacero literally means a sudden heavy rainstorm usually followed by a refreshing sky clearing and gust of sunshine. The spirit and practice of Bomba, like an aguacero, is intense, healing and promotes life and growth. Through song, music and dance, Aguacero embodies the life, energy, and continuity of water in nature.

Bomba is a traditional form of Puerto Rican music and dance. The central feature of all bomba dancing is its improvisational character. The dancer calls, with her or his moves, for specific accents and figures, piquetes, that the drummer has to execute on the drum. This occurs in the form of a friendly yet fiery competition where each dancer and drummer showcases their skills.

Musically, bomba features the use of the drum and other percussion instruments in combination with an African derived call and response vocal style. In The Bomba y Plena Workshop we study four of the major styles of bomba – the sicá, the yubá, the cuembé, and the holandé.

This event will also highlight the upcoming Musical performance by the Music Department and the Theatre Arts & Dance Department  slated for the spring of 2023, In the Heights.  Faculty directors Dr. Lynne Morrow and Prof. Marie Ramirez Downing will discuss the Afro-Latino musical and cultural roots of In the Heights.  In the Heights tells the universal story of a vibrant community in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood – a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. It’s a community on the brink of change, full of hopes, dreams and pressures, where the biggest struggles can be deciding which traditions you take with you, and which ones you leave behind. -Concord Theatricals