Modesto Cepeda: Teaching Bomba and Plena to a New Generation

Some artists preserve a tradition by performing it; Modesto Cepeda preserved bomba and plena by teaching it — opening classrooms so the music his family had carried for generations would never die out.^[1]

Born into the Cepeda dynasty

Modesto Cepeda was born in 1938 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, into the most revered family in Afro-Puerto Rican music.^[1] His father was Rafael Cepeda Atiles, the "patriarch of bomba and plena" and a 1983 NEA National Heritage Fellow, and his mother was doña Caridad Brenes Caballero; from both he learned the songs, dances, and drumming of the tradition from earliest childhood.^[1]

The teacher

In 1976, Cepeda became one of the first artists on the island to establish a school devoted to teaching bomba and plena to children and adults, formalizing instruction in arts that had always passed informally within families.^[1] A trained educator who taught for years in Puerto Rico's schools, he wove the traditions into the curriculum, and in time a cultural center and school in San Juan was named in his honor.^[2]

Why it matters

In 2017 the National Endowment for the Arts named Modesto Cepeda a National Heritage Fellow, the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.^[1] By building institutions around the music — rather than letting it rest on performance alone — he helped guarantee that the plena and bomba of his family's legacy would reach generations he would never meet.^[2]