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ABSTRACT
This monograph gives voice to generations of women who live on through the many performers and culture bearers who represent bomba today. Excerpts of more than twenty-five interviews and personal communications with artists, practitioners, eyewitnesses and descendants of bomberxs will help detail different roles women have taken in both bomba practice and performance over the last 100 years. This text draws on ethnographic and genealogical research to provide insights into place making, inclusion rituals, the use of the enagua in traditional 20th century bomba dance, the roles of families in perpetuating this practice, knowledge transmission and challenges to male-dominated representations. It also draws attention to the diaspora and some of the ways women outside the Island are working to stay connected to bomba history and performance. [Key words: Bomba, women, petticoats, Villodas, Bomberas, Ponchinela, Mason]
The community knowledge that has survived in regard to the AfroPuerto Rican traditional music and dance of bomba holds that, historically, it was a male-dominated genre-from those who played the primary instrument by the same name to those who created music through stylized gestures and other movements. While both men and women have enjoyed a fairly equal representation in songs that have survived to the present, the role of women is remembered as mostly ornamental throughout the early- to mid-1900s. This paper attempts to unpack the lesserknown contributions of women and help create space for them in the archives by reviewing how they created and nurtured spaces that continue to be identified with bomba practice. Thus, this essay is meant to consider how petticoat (enagua) fashion became an unregulated realm where women could experiment and dictate their own participation, as well as examine the legacies of women whose names continue to circulate because of their contribution and others who are unknown outside of their families or communities. More recent herstories help illuminate lesser-known contributions to the perpetuation of traditional practice and shifts in contemporary performance. This paper will reveal the names of bomberas that have otherwise been lost to the recorded history and will illuminate the specific contributions of women who have been identified in archival sources with passing mention or should be recorded for posterity's sake.
As a result of the folklorization of bomba during the mid-twentieth...