Photograph provided by Marisol Díaz
MISSION & history
Our mission is to promote cultural continuity, community connection, and accessible arts education, through the knowledge and appreciation of Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena.
Los Pleneros de la 21 (LP21) is the premier East Harlem-based performing ensemble and non-profit community organization. LP21 was founded in 1983 by Juan J. ‘Juango’ Gutiérrez (National Endowment for the Arts’ Heritage Fellow, 1996) and the legendary Master Plenero, Marcial Reyes Arvelo. The ensemble has pioneered the road for Bomba and Plena performance around NYC, and continues to spread it globally for over 40 years. The ensemble received a Grammy nomination for their groundbreaking album with Smithsonian Folkways, Para Todos Ustedes.
As a traditional arts and community organization, Los Pleneros de la 21 fosters awareness and appreciation of Afro-Puerto Rican and related cultural expressions, namely Bomba and Plena music and dance, as essential for healthy community life and encouraging people of all ages to create their own bonds through active participation in these traditions. Our landmark cultural arts education and performance programs have served communities for forty years, with an annual roster of accessible workshops and community-based concerts.
The organization aims to present accessible public traditional music programming of the highest caliber; expose inner city youth and others to the cultural heritage of Puerto Rico and encourage their active participation in these cultural arts expressions; and contribute to the continuity of these living traditions through the creation and performance of a repertoire of works embedded in the rich tradition of Puerto Rican music for audiences everywhere.
LP21’s community-based cultural and educational programs have created a common space for the recognition, education, and practice of Puerto Rican culture and identity. These programs include Bomba and Plena Community Workshops for kids; Bomba and Plena In the House for NYC school children; and other Cultural Legacy Programs. These programs have educated thousands of individuals of all ages.
Los Pleneros de la 21 remains a dynamic, intergenerational group of musicians and cultural leaders from East Harlem, the South Bronx and many of NYC’s own local communities. Los Pleneros de la 21 Live at Pregones: 35 years of Bomba & Plena (Truth Revolution Records, Nov 2018), is an ode to the group’s long arduous, yet satisfying journey. Live at Pregones represents a lifetime of work, blood, sweat, tears, and laughter of countless dedicated Bomberos, Pleneros, educators, and cultural advocates. Raising their spear in the name of Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena, and the makers of this tradition, this album marks a new era for a younger generation of musicians taking the lead in re-envisioning LP21’s ongoing legacy.
Por la Plena y Otros Asuntos (Truth Revolution Records, Feb 2025) is Los Pleneros de la 21's latest production, coming on the heels of the group’s milestone fortieth anniversary. True to its name, this album is a heart-felt ode to this Puerto Rican traditional expression–La Plena–as conceived, curated, and orchestrated by Los Pleneros de la 21’s founder and longtime director, ‘Juango’ Juan J. Gutiérrez Rodríguez. With a multi-generation collective of over thirty musicians from LP21’s New York City backyard and the island of Puerto Rico, Por la Plena y Otros Asuntos gathers within a single production today’s top voices, creative geniuses, and influential practitioners of la Plena. This album brings to life the passion for la Plena felt by each of these musicians as well as their unwavering love for Los Pleneros de la 21, a group whose four decades of teaching, performing, touring, and recording has crafted many pathways for generations of pleneros to come.
“Their enthusiasm, showmanship, and command of the genre has won Los Pleneros de la 21 a respected place in folk and world music circles, with their performances can be described as magical melting of the invisible curtain between performers and audience and their drumming is incendiary, complex and precise, made the room rock.”
“Cultural critic Juan Flores commends Los Pleneros de la 21 for “innovating within the tradition, rather than superimposing innovations onto the tradition.””
About our Founder
Juan Gutiérrez
Juan J. ‘Juango’ Gutiérrez Rodríguez was born March 8th, 1951, in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He grew up in Caparra Heights, a suburb of San Juan. As a boy, he was drawn to the Afro Puerto Rican percussion music that surrounded him. His father bought him a set of timbales when he was seven, and he later went on to study Caribbean percussion at the Escuela Libre de Música.
Gutiérrez learned to play the Plena, but as he started his career as a professional percussionist, he performed many other styles of music as well. After moving to New York City to continue his studies, he felt a need to return to his Puerto Rican musical roots. He took up Plena under the legendary Plenero Marcial Reyes Avelo, who introduced him to other master Pleneros in New York.
Later, Gutiérrez focused his attention on Bomba as an even deeper root of Puerto Rican tradition and sought out elders who were able to teach him. The Bomba had emerged in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century plantation life and exhibited many of the attributes of West African dance ensembles; interlocking drum patterns overlaid by a lead drum that “converses” with improvised solo dancing, a declamatory vocal style, rhythmic patterns, and sometimes spiritual overtones.
As Gutiérrez’s involvement with music grew, so did his vision of what could be done through music for the benefit of his community. Eventually, he decided to devote himself entirely to his passion, Afro Puerto Rican music and culture. In 1983, Juan and Reyes formed the ensemble Los Pleneros de la 21 (The Pleneros of Bus Stop 21), named after a neighborhood in Santurce famed for its Pleneros.
““When I demonstrate bomba and plena music in the schools I ask the students to reach out and take our traditions in.””
Los Pleneros de la 21 has performed throughout the United States and has toured abroad to Puerto Rico and Russia. The group has served as a role model for other Plena ensembles and has made Gutiérrez’s vision a reality by promoting the recognition, celebration, and practice of Afro Puerto Rican music and dance.