LACUSL Speaker Series Presents Beto Torrens

Bomba Bambulaé: A Community-Building Tool from Puerto Rico

In this presentation – which is part of the LACUSL (Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies) Speaker Series – Grammy Award-winning 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 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.

This event will take place on Oct. 22 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. in the American Geographical Society Library on the third floor in the east wing of the Golda Meir Library.