Roots in bomba music run deep in Puerto Rico – all the way back to African slaves playing drums on plantations. These musical conversations were passed down for generations and helped inspire much of the Latin music we hear today. It’s the core of the Puerto Rican group El Laberinto del Coco, defined by conversation between percussionists. Bandleader Héctor “Coco” Barez sat down with KHOL DJ Valeria Bunnett before performing in Jackson on Oct. 19.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. – Ed.
Valeria Bunnett: What is your connection to bomba from your childhood?
Héctor “Coco” Barez: When I was starting to look for information about bomba, there wasn’t much documentation. It was something that you had to go to certain points of the island where there were bomba festivities. And if you weren’t on the site, in the loop, you will never know where bomba was happening. The fact that it wasn’t something popular that you can hear on the radio, that lack of having something that’s been for 500 years among us that is not popular among the music (the Puerto Rican music on the radio). I started late because I was an athlete. My sister and my brother – one was a musician. He went to the conservatory and all that. I had to experience a lot of going to see him play the violin with the orchestra. We all slept with music as a white noise, so it was always there. And my sister, she used to dance with one of the most important families in bomba. Back in Puerto Rico, that is La Familia Cepeda. She was part of that ballet, and our dad took us to see her. When I got to the university, that’s the crossroads at that time there weren’t enough male dancers. If it wasn’t on a stage there weren’t a lot of dancers in the streets doing it. She grabs me, she comes and gives me a card. And she’s like, ‘Oh, we need dancers.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, but I don’t wanna dance. If I’m gonna do something, I wanna play the drums.’ I had to wait my turn. People want to play, play, play, right, but there’s a process to get to a certain point. You gotta wait for your time. From that moment on, once you start playing bomba, it’s a whole world out there of other percussions and it’s addictive to a certain extent because bomba took me to Brazilian music and Brazilian music took me to Flamenco and you start learning other stuff and getting enriched by all this rhythm that all comes from the African diaspora.
VB: That’s amazing. I figured you had started as a percussionist and then moved into bomba, which it seems like you actually started from that bomba influence. Luckily you had your surroundings, although you started as an athlete and you say you started late, but you were around 18 years old when you started.
HB: I think it’s late because it’s a language. When you have a language, if you grow up with that, it’s first nature. That’s why it’s late, but it’s never late.
VB: No, it’s not. What are your first impressions of Jackson Hole? How does this mountain town compare to your experiences back home and to other towns here in America?
HB: Well, it’s amazing because you come as a performer asking, ‘Are the people here going to like it?’ You have your own questions, because for us, bomba is something that we see every day, but for someone that hasn’t experienced it, what’s going to be their reaction? So you’ve got to rely on what we know and try to put it out there as the best way we know. And, yeah, try our best. And if our best is not good enough, it comes again. And not only that, the landscape. The landscape of Wyoming, it’s like a puzzle. Andres was saying, ‘Man, this is a puzzle, this is a puzzle.’ We were like, ‘What are you talking about?!’
Andres Cruz: Because in Puerto Rico you don’t see that many different colors like here because we’re in a tropical area where the trees are always green. We don’t have the change of colors. So for us it’s like something beautiful.
VB: When a group like yours, full of cultural influence, full of richness, comes to a town like ours, it sparks up that conversation that we won’t typically have in everyday scenarios. One thing that I also learned about during one of you guys’ workshops was that you had several local sponsors to be able to get out here but you also got a sponsorship from Puerto Rico. Can you share a little bit about that?
HB: In 2023, this dear friend of mine, Javier Hernandez, calls me and says, ‘Hey, Hector, I need to talk to you, but I need to talk to you in or call you or sit down because if I send it to you an email you’re not gonna believe it.’ He tells me I got selected for a grant. It’s something that I didn’t ask for. I had a job in a factory. And from that job, I got the money to do my shows, produce my own shows, because we were a new band in town. It wasn’t appealing to traditional producers because it’s bomba. But bomba, even though it’s from Puerto Rico, there’s things in there that are for certain settings. Now, the youth is breaking with that – bomba is everywhere.
VB: You’re fighting for culture, for roots. At the same time, it is an uphill battle as a musician.
HB: You hear only one type of music on the radio. And back in the day, you can hear a ballad, you can hear rock, you hear salsa, merengue. But now it’s a balance. I know people are looking for other stuff to listen to and create that balance. Like, I need to listen to a ballad now because I feel this way, or I need to hear jazz because I feel creative.
Listen above for KHOL’s full, unedited conversation and live performance with El Laberinto Del Coco.
