ABSTRACT
Mon, Rafa, and Maelo are gone. The death of those three master pleneros-Mon Rivera, Rafael Cortijo, and Ismael Rivera-in recent years marks the end of an era in the history of the Puerto Rican plena, that form of popular music which arose at the beginning of the century in the sugar-growing areas along the southern coast of the island, and which within a generation, by the 1930s, came to be recognized by many as an authentic and representative music of the Puerto Rican people. Despite the unfavorable odds dictated by its evidently African-based features and its origins among the most downtrodden sectors of the population, plena rapidly supplanted the traditions of both bomba and musica jfbara as the favored sound among many poor and working people. Plena even superseded the danza as the acknowledged "national music" of Puerto Rico. Tomas Blanco's 1935 essay "Elogio de la plena" was a landmark in this process of intellectual and cultural vindication, which is itself part of a larger project aimed at acknowledging the fundamental role of African and working-class expression in the history of Puerto Rican national culture.
