Proyecto Cimarrón

Proyecto Cimarrón is a Puerto Rican bomba performance group based in New Haven, CT. The members were brought together by their love of Afro-Latino culture, a shared commitment to  preserving and sharing bomba rhythms, and utilizing bomba as a gateway for advancing social justice.

Puerto Rican bomba is a traditional dance and music style  which evolved in the island during the island's history of African slavery while under Spanish rule over 400 years ago.  For the  enslaved and their ancestors in the sugar plantations, bomba was a source of spiritual expression, a clandestine medium of expression through which  enslaved Africans could share future plans of insurrections, mark events and momentarily forget their oppression and feel the freedom of expression using their instruments: their voices, their drums, maracas, cua and the dancers' piquetes (improvised dance steps). Once found mainly in coastal towns, bomba can now be seen and heard  everywhere in Puerto Rico and  the diaspora outside of the island. Bomba remains rooted in resistance and is often used as a cultural means to fight for racial justice and social justice. It was omnipresent during the successful peaceful protests to close the US Naval base in the island of Vieques; in the protests for Black Lives Matter and racial justice and in the recent historic and peaceful uprising to remove the former disgraced Governor Ricardo Rosselló  from his post as the island's political leader.