Plena

Plena is a Puerto Rican folk and popular genre of narrative song, performed with hand drums (panderetas), güiro and voices in call and response, and known on the island as the periódico cantado — the sung newspaper. It crystallised in Ponce in the early twentieth century among Afro-Puerto Rican working-class communities, chronicling hurricanes, crimes, strikes and daily life. *Manuel Jiménez "Canario"* made its first commercial recordings in the 1920s, *César Concepción* took it into the dance hall, and *Mon Rivera* and *Los Pleneros de la 21* renewed it for later generations.