I AM PROUD OF MY ROOTS

Long before ships, before borders, before systems that tried to measure human value, there was rhythm. There was drum language. There was circle. There was the earth under bare feet and the understanding that sound could carry memory, prayer, story, and community.

Africa is a starting point of civilization, artistry, spirituality, and joy.
What slavery interrupted, it did not create.

Modern scholarship makes clear what our bodies have always known:

Before chains, there was rhythm.

African culture did not begin with slavery. We may watch dances, rituals, and moments of history and still frame them only through oppression — but I choose to uplift them as something far greater.

Bomba lives in our truth — the truth before chains.

Bomba is not the sound of oppression.
It is the sound of life. Survival. Growth. Community. Earth and beyond.
It is the sound of continuity. A door to what was and what can be.
It is the sound of a people remembering themselves in real time.

It may even be a path toward collective healing — if we allow ourselves to feel the music without bias.

In the barracks, in the fields, in hidden gatherings, the drum became voice. The dancer became language. The circle became protection. What could not be written in books was written in the body.

And bodies remember.

That is why when I dance this music — in whatever form my body expresses it — I reach a new heaven here on earth.

Bomba is how my career began.
Plena shaped it.
Seis chorreao made me run wild toward my dreams.

If I am alive today, if I share my voice around the world, if I moved from a schoolyard to Broadway, to Cirque du Soleil, and now direct across this nation — it is because of the recognition of one essential truth:

I am rich because I have heritage.

Yes, heritage from an island shaped by colonization — but also heritage of history, glory, knowledge, and beauty that existed long before oppression. I choose to manifest and celebrate that truth in every moment I can.

The Caribbean carries this memory.
Puerto Rico carries this memory.
I carry this memory.

The United States carries much of this memory too — alongside the vast history and power of women’s contributions, and the often forgotten Indigenous heritage that also connects us to deeper balance, land, and life.

History books often center power, systems, and domination. Many were written through the lens of those who controlled the narrative. But culture does not live in books first.

Culture lives in practice.
In repetition.
In community.
In celebration that refuses disappearance.

Bomba lives in my shoulders and in my bones — celebration as resistance, as existence, as knowledge.

My body is movement as archive.

I carry African heritage. Taíno heritage. Spanish heritage.
I am all of them.

To honor African heritage in my work is to widen the frame. It is to recognize that our ancestors did not arrive empty. They arrived with cosmologies, musical intelligence, spiritual technologies, humor, sensuality, elegance, and a deep relationship to the earth.

The Americas were shaped by that inheritance.

When I bring bomba into historical storytelling, I am not inserting something foreign. I am revealing something foundational that has often been minimized.

I am reminding us that freedom did not begin in one place, one language, or one document.

Freedom has always had a rhythm.

The drum gathers people.
The circle restores dignity.
Dance reconnects body and spirit when systems try to separate them.

Art becomes survival technology.

For me, this is not abstract.
It is heritage.
It is lineage.
It is responsibility.

In a world that often profits from division, rhythm creates belonging.
In a world that categorizes, movement dissolves borders.
In a world that forgets, community remembers.

My work seeks to uplift that remembering.

To celebrate the vast diversity of our cultures.
To honor the joy that existed before oppression and continues beyond it.

When we gather around rhythm, something ancient becomes present again.

We listen differently.
Listening is a brave act.
We see each other differently.
We remember that freedom is not only political — it is cultural, communal, and embodied.

And that rhythm is still here.

CON AMOR y RESPETO!

Luis Salgado