Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Dr. Miriam Padilla, one of about 12,000 or so Utahns who call themselves Puerto Rican, knows Utah is pretty distant, in many ways, from the U.S. territory in the Caribbean.
"Yeah, you can feel very disconnected here," she said.
So, to explore her heritage and connect to the Puerto Rican diaspora, the endocrinologist learned to sing and dance what's called Bomba, and she started the musical group Bomba Marilé.
Bomba is a music and dance brought to Puerto Rico by West African slaves forced to work in sugar plantations. Singers and percussionists make the music, and a dancer improvises a musical "conversation," of sorts, with a drummer.
Many of the Africans came from different areas and didn't speak the same language, so it was a way for them to communicate, Padilla said. And it was at these gatherings that they planned rebellions.
Padilla was born on the island and moved to the U.S. when she was 7 years old. It was only years later that she took an active interest in her Puerto Rican background.
"I wanted to connect to my roots and so I started researching my past and my ancestry," she said.
Padilla said according to a DNA analysis her ancestry included African as well as indigenous Taino people.
She took classes from a Bomba teacher in San Francisco and made trips to Puerto Rico. She founded Bomba Marilé in 2017.
The group performs, visits schools and organizes Bomba classes including one recently with musician and educator Rafael Maya.
"A lot of times they're (Puerto Ricans in the U.S. who take his classes) looking at the music like, this is something that identifies me as a Puerto Rican," he said.
Liliana Rodriguez, a member of Bomba Marilé, first heard Bomba when she was about 9 and her mother signed her up for a ballet class. She heard people playing Bomba in the neighboring classroom.
"I hear the Bamba drums and then I jumped to the Bamba," she said. "After the ballet class, I just run to follow the sound. I see the teacher dancing and these two guys playing the drums, and they were having fun and smiling and enjoying what they were doing."
"I tell her (her mother) I don't feel ballet is me because is for proper people and I'm a more wild person," Rodriguez said.
"Ballet is pink and I don't like pink color," she said.
She and her husband, Omar, who also performs in Bomba Marilé, lived in Puerto Rico until Hurricane Maria devastated the island.
They moved so Omar could keep his job writing computer code. In Utah she felt out of place.
"The first time I came here to visit Omar, I felt weird because I see everybody like white color in the skin and I'm the only black person here. The only thing that I see black here was a cow and I feel happy like, oh, finally something looks similar to me," she said.
But since meeting Padilla – Omar first met Padilla as a patient and only much later discovered their common interest in Bomba – they don't feel quite so homesick.
"Yes, that was like finding an oasis in the desert," he said.
"It makes you feel like you're part of something bigger and part of a community. It's slow-paced, but we're building a community here," he said.
If you would like to learn Bomba, the group is teaching free classes 3 p.m. Saturdays in April, May, and June at the Sorenson Community Campus, 1383 S. 900 West in Salt Lake City.
