每日一题

Writing & Language

The song opens with three drummers tapping their panderos. The largest of the panderos—a hand drum called the seguidor—provides the pulse of the music. Two smaller hand drums—the segundo and the requinto—weave in and out of that beat. Each pandero adds a layer to the complex, syncopated rhythm I immediately recognize as that of plena music. A maraca and an accordion chime in and are soon joined by the ratchet-like scrape of the güiro. Next, the singers pipe up, one calling and two others responding in a playful chant. As the music builds to a crescendo, I detect a twist on the traditional Puerto Rican folk style: a trombone bursts in and then a clarinet. They add an element of big band jazz. Underneath the fused musical styles, though, the classic plena rhythm, propelled by the panderos, beats on.