LACUSL talk: Bomba Bambulaé: A Community Building Tool from Puerto Rico, with Beto Torrens

Thursday, Oct 22, 2026
2:30pm – 3:30pm
American Geographical Society Library (AGSL)
UWM Libraries, 3rd floor east wing

This talk is part of the LACUSL Speaker Series: Join us to learn about the many topics you can study through UWM’s interdisciplinary LACUSL major (Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies).

Bomba Bambulaé: A Community Building Tool from Puerto Rico

In this presentation, Grammy Award musician and UWM graduate student Beto Torrens will speak about his decades of cultural artistry working in the tradition of Puerto Rican Bomba. Bomba is Puerto Rico’s oldest living musical tradition: it was created by our enslaved African ancestors to create communities of support between the various ethnic groups that were forced to live together in the “hacienda’s” slave barracks. Because Bomba is a living language, it is in a constant evolutionary process.

Beto Torrens is a Grammy Award-winning musician, producer and educator from San Juan, Puerto Rico. With a career that spans over 30 years professionally, Beto’s main interest is in creating bridges between Afro – diasporic music and dance traditions from the Caribbean and the Americas. He is currently pursuing an MA in music here at UW-Milwaukee.