Kadencia Orchestra

Maurice “Tito” Sanabria completed a Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship with Eric Miguel Vializ Montalvo, who performs as Kily Vializ, between July, 2023 and June, 2024. Kily apprenticed Tito in Mayagüez-style plena, specifically the requinto pandereta.

Virginia Folklife honored their apprenticeship and ongoing commitment to this regional, influential style of plena at the 2024 Richmond Folk Festival. On Saturday, September 23, the two performed three sets, stopping at 10PM out of respect to the neighbors of Hardywood Brewery.

When asked about his motivations to use culture as a way to grow understanding between communities, Tito reflected: “When you share your culture, you provide insight into the human experience behind the culture. Insight creates context. Context leads to understanding. Understanding defeats the shallowness of stereotypes.”

Kily Vializ performed with Kadencia, led by Maurice (Tito’s father and band founder) and Tito, who is band leader for Kadencia’s comparsa, or small ensemble.

Based in Richmond, Kadencia performs salsa, bomba, and plena. Plena is a narrative, energetic, and percussive musical genre created in the early 1900s by working-class Puerto Ricans in towns along the island’s southern coast. It’s based on the rhythms of the pandero (hand drum, the best are made from old aluminum pots—an artform itself) and blends African, Indigenous, and European influences. Mayagüez-style plena has a more intimate sound, giving more focus to the singer.

Tito opened their Center for Cultural Vibrancy Virginia Folklife Stage set with an original Mayagüez-style plena composition he wrote during his studies with Kily, who was also inspired to write new music.

Kadencia and Kily Vializ also led a plenazo (community jam and dance circle) street performance on Tredegar Plaza, before ending the day at Hardywood Brewery for a plenazo after party, where members of the DMV Puerto Rican community came out, including Isha M Renta Lopez (Virginia Folklife Program Apprentice with Margarita “Tata” Sanchez Cepeda, Bomba Dance, 2022-23) and members of local non-profits Semilla Cultural and Cultura Plenera. - Virginia Folklife.org

The Virginia-based Afro-Puerto Rican orchestra Kadencia announced its participation in the Apple TV+ series “Swagger,” a basketball series loosely based on the story of NBA superstar Kevin Durant.

Kadencia is an 11-piece band, led by the father-son duo of Maurice Sanabria and Maurice “Tito” Sanabria, with members from Richmond, Chesterfield, Henrico and the Tri-Cities. The band preserves, promotes and plays the Afro-Puerto Rican musical genres of Bomba and Plena.

“Swagger’s” Episode 7 of Season 2 aired on August 4 and features original music from Kadencia’s latest album “En Otro Barrio.” Members of Kadencia can be seen in the opening act of the episode. The band contributed an authentic Puerto Rican sound to the story of character Nick Mendez, a Puerto Rican high school basketball star playing in the DMV [DC, Maryland, Virginia] after relocating to the U.S. after Hurricane Maria.

Played in the native Puerto Rican rhythms of Bomba and Plena, Kadencia’s songs “Bagazo,” “Puerto Rico Te Extraño” and “Oye” can be heard throughout the episode.

The band recorded its sophomore album at Minimum Wage Recording in Richmond. The album contains 10 original songs that fuse Bomba and Plena with the Afro-Cuban rhythms that make up Salsa. The songs, written by singer-songwriter Maurice Sanabria, tell stories based on the history and culture of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican experience in the diaspora.

Kadencia is a member of the Virginia Commission for the Arts Performing Arts Touring Directory. Their album “En Otro Barrio” was selected as one of the Top 20 albums released by Puerto Rican artists by Puerto Rico’s National Foundation for Popular Culture.

The Richmond/Chesterfield-based orchestra has performed at Perkinson Center for the Arts and Education, Library of Virginia, Chester Library, Richmond Folk Festival, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Que Pasa Festival, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, Festival de Música, Kennedy Center, Dominion Energy Center, Henrico Theatre and many other venues and festivals. - The Progress-Index

Join Virginia Folklife in Danville for a special day exploring storytelling and the African roots of musical traditions!

For the past year, the artists featured at this event have worked together in Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship teams to learn and teach the cultural traditions of community storytelling, gourd instrument building, and Puerto Rican plena and requinto hand drumming.

Danville’s own Fred Motley and Karen Williamson of Caswell County will share stories they have collected—both on screen in a short film and to the sounds of local musicians. Dena Jennings of Nasons will offer two workshops about the history and techniques behind the making of gourd instruments—the precedent to today’s banjo, which is often separated from its African origin story. Maurice Sanabria of Richmond will also be offering workshops on hand drumming traditions of Puerto Rican plena music.

Plena is a percussive music that is based on the rhythms of the pandero, a round hand drum that comes in varying sizes and tones. Blending African, indigenous and European influences, this uniquely Puerto Rican artform was also called “el periodoco cantado” (the sung newspaper) for its narrative lyrics.

Drop in or stay for the whole event. This group of local and visiting artists will help you discover the roots of modern Virginia traditions.

On Saturday, September 21 from 11AM to 2PM, return to the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History for Part 2: “Finding Your Ancestral Roots,” a community genealogy workshop and presentation hosted by Danville-based public historian and genealogist Karice Luck-Brimmer, Virginia Humanities Community Initiatives program associate. - Virginia Folklife Program

A Puerto Rican tradition comes to Hardywood following Kadencia’s two performances at the Richmond Folk Festival!

Based in Richmond, Kadencia performs plena—a narrative, energetic, and percussive musical genre created in the early 1900s by working-class Puerto Ricans in towns along the island’s southern coast.

A plenazo is a community performance, gathering, jam session, and dance circle all-in-one and special guest Kily Vializ, a plenero from Mayagüez, will help lead tonight’s music. Bring your friends, your dance moves, a Folk FestBier, and join us to celebrate the music of Puerto Rico and twenty years of the Richmond Folk Festival. - Virginia Folklife Program

The featured orchestra for the Aug. 24 Latin Jazz and Salsa Festival at Dogwood Dell burst onto the Richmond scene a year ago.

Led by Maurice Sanabria-Ortiz, 59, the 12-member Kadencia orchestra is dedicated to conserving and promoting Afro-Puerto Rican music.

“My music is inspired by my grandfather who lived until age 97,” Sanabria-Ortiz says. “He worked as a sugar cane train conductor, and he explained to me about the parties the sugar cane workers would have after the harvest using the bomba and plena music styles.”

Sanabria-Ortiz moved to Richmond eight years ago from Puerto Rico because of the economic crisis there. He left behind a career in the pharmaceutical industry and a band of the same name, but his move brought him closer to his son Maurice Sanabria Gallardo, 39, who has lived in the area for more than 15 years. Father and son both work at the Defense Supply Center in Chesterfield, and both are members of Kadencia.

Kadencia (a spin on the Spanish word for cadence) is one of the few Caribbean bands in Richmond. “In Puerto Rico, my group had three trombones, a bass and a piano,” Sanabria-Ortiz says. “Here, it’s one trombone, two trumpets and one sax player who also plays the flute.”

Sanabria Gallardo plays the plena drum and sings an echoing chorus to his father. Onstage, he also banters with his dad and explains the songs to the audience. “We are trying to use bomba and plena, these rhythms that were born out of poverty and slavery, to make something very nice,” he says.

At the Latin Jazz and Salsa Festival, Kadencia will share the bill with numerous local, national and Puerto Rico-based performers including Tito Puente Jr. The group will perform a repertoire from “La Voz del Barrio” (The Voice of the Neighborhood), a CD Sanabria-Ortiz brought from Puerto Rico. It was performed and recorded by musicians in his hometown of Mayaguez, but here in Richmond, Kadencia interprets the songs with new arrangements.

The song “Bomba de Baquine” tells the story and portrays a celebration of the enslaved sugar cane workers in Puerto Rico after a baby died because of the belief that the child was passing without sin. “Rumba Callejera” (Street Rumba) portrays a street party. “Juicio al Plenero” (Plenero Trial) is a tongue-in-cheek story of a court that has to determine the origin of the fast plena rhythm.

Says Sanabria Gallardo, who also does social media for the group, the music is “something that shows resiliency. It came out of these rhythms of people working very long hours. They used music to relax, to have fun and to talk about what happened. We use three different drums; we play as a team. Each of us [has] to play our part. We have to play in unison.”

Those are lessons the musicians have taken to stages at the Que Pasa Festival, the Henrico Theatre, the Smithsonian and the Lincoln Memorial, as well as a solo performance at Dogwood Dell earlier this summer and workshops at area schools.

“It’s an oral tradition,” says Sanabria-Ortiz. “They used to call plena the newspaper of the neighborhood, to talk about important events. But most important to the music are the rhythms.” Backed up by numerous percussionists in the band, as well as a hearty brass section, the rhythms are intended to make the audience dance.

Sanabria Gallardo is seeking to keep the band busy with monthly bookings. They also have a smaller ensemble that plays a more pared-down, traditional style. Sanabria-Ortiz is working with arrangers in Puerto Rico on his next album, which delves into the different histories of the island surrounding slavery, Africans and Spaniards.

“This band of heroes preserves the culture and history of the island of Puerto Rico through the preservation of our music bomba and plena,” says Luis Hidalgo, a Latin Jazz and Salsa Festival organizer. “Through their music and expression of fellowship, they bring us together in a time of divisiveness.” - Richmond Magazine