Plena
Richmond, VA
Plena is a narrative, energetic, and percussive musical genre created in the early 1900s by working-class Puerto Ricans along the island’s southern coastal towns. Mayagüez, western Puerto Rico’s largest city, has a long and rich tradition of Plena dating back to the genre’s origin, and has produced leading practitioners that wrote, performed, and recorded some of Plena’s most emblematic songs.
Maurice “Tito” Sanabria is a second-generation plena and bomba practitioner born in Mayagüez and raised in the neighboring towns of Hormigueros and Cabo Rojo. His family hails from barrios that have shaped Mayagüez-style plena such as the barrio Barcelona and barrio El Seco. As an elementary school student, Tito started formal musical studies under Joseph Carbó in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico and became a member of the town’s marching band (alto sax). He was first exposed and fell in love with plena at the age of ten during Christmas family gatherings known as “parrandas.” Tito’s love for plena continued through college and followed him to the United States. He became a professional Afro-Puerto Rican music practitioner and traditional artist in 2018 as a founding member of Kadencia Orchestra.
Tito plays the “requinto” hand drum, “buleador” bomba drum, and sings backup vocals with Kadencia. He served as co-executive producer and recorded multiple “panderetas” (hand drums), the “buleador” drum, and vocals for Kadencia’s award-winning album En Otro Barrio. The band and three of the songs from En Otro Barrio were featured on Season 2 of the AppleTV+ series Swagger. He is honored to play bomba and plena on stages throughout the United States including past performances at the Lincoln Memorial, The Reach at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Postal Museum, the Library of Congress, Richmond Folk Festival, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Winter Blues Jazz Festival.
Tito is committed to preserving and promoting the practice of plena and bomba in Virginia and the broader mid-Atlantic region. He leads Kadencia’s educational workshops and demonstrations. He has offered workshops and demonstrations at performing arts organizations, public and private schools, and universities including Richmond Public Schools, Chesterfield County Public Schools, the University of Richmond, the College of William & Mary, and Bridgewater College.
As a band leader, he is leading efforts to expand Kadencia’s geographical reach. He helped Kadencia achieve inclusion in the Virginia Commission for the Arts (VCA) Performing Arts Touring Directory and served on the VCA’s Touring Directory panel twice. He also helped the band become a resident artist at the Perkinson Center for the Arts and Education in Chesterfield, Virginia.
In 2023, Maurice "Tito" Sanabria was the recipient of a Virginia Folklife Program Apprenticeship. His year-long apprenticeship on Mayagüez-style plena with master practitioner Kily Vializ is part of a commitment to preserve and promote Mayagüez-style Plena in the United States through practice, education, and original works.