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Jazz Articles about Grupo Afro Boricua

About Grupo Afro Boricua

Album Review

William Cepeda is a man on a mission. For some time the trombonist for the United Nation Orchestra has stressed the music of Puerto Rico, so we do not forget its contribution to the Latin sound. His album Afrorican Jazz: My Roots and Beyond put a big band atop bomba drums and “versa negro” chanting (Capeda calls it a precursor to rap.) This album is more folkish: traditional tunes and chants (some originals too), sung in high voice with deep ...

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Album Review

Grupo Afro Boricua: Bombazo

by Jack Bowers
February 1, 1999

Dizzy Gillespie would have loved this. No Jazz to speak of, at least as we normally employ the term, but an abundance of captivating and colorful Latin rhythms from Puerto Rico, home of Grupo Afro Boricua and its director, William Cepeda. Grupo Afro, it says in the liner notes, is a leading exponent of Puerto Rico’s traditional musical forms, the bomba and plena, the former composed of rhythmic variations that grew out of the African slave experience in colonial Puerto ...