Brian Slattery photos
Movimiento Cultural drummers and dancers liven up Wilson Library.
Kids making crowns for themselves, with and without parental aid.
As Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental’s drummers played driving rhythms and singers instructed families in the traditions of bomba, one young dancer learned fast about the ways that she could converse with lead drummer Kevin Diaz during the ongoing library-hosted Three Kings Day fest.
She made a gesture, and Diaz, fully attentive, responded with a crack from his drum. She gestured again, and he responded in kind on his instrument. The smiles that passed between them needed no words to convey their meaning.
That wordless, dance-and-music-filled back and forth took place nearly an hour into the Wilson Branch Library’s celebration of Three Kings Day Thursday afternoon.
The communal space on the Washington Avenue library’s lower level was still filled with dozens of people, most of them families. Near the back of the room, kids were gathered around a craft table. At the front of the room, a circle had formed around Movimiento, as the drummers and singers and dancers engaged with the kids and parents who had turned out for the event.
Three Kings Day is celebrated across several Christian traditions and goes by many names — the Feast of the Epiphany, Theophany, Breaking Up Christmas, to list a few. It commemorates when, according to the Bible, the three wise men arrived at the manger shortly after the birth of Jesus.
In Puerto Rico, “people really focus on Three Kings,” Diaz, who founded Movimiento Cultural, said. “Every kid in Puerto Rico grows up with it and looks forward to it.… I remember as a child getting the shoebox and putting grass — yerba, we call it — and putting it underneath the bed because we knew they were coming with camels, and they had to be fed for our presents. It’s similar to Christmas but more connected to the heritage that we come from.”
That heritage arises from the thorough mixing in Puerto Rico of European (Spanish and Portuguese), West African, and indigenous cultures. “We call it a mix of three cultures,” Diaz said.
The same mix that produces the celebration of Three Kings Day there also created bomba. “When we celebrate the bomba, we try to emphasize the history, our ancestors,” he said. “They were yanked from their culture and brought to work under horrible conditions, but they brought their culture with them, their songs, their history. So 400 years later, here we are. So it’s an honor for us to honor our ancestors.” It’s “recognizing what they did for us.”
Kevin Diaz.
Diaz noted that bomba in years past was overshadowed by other Puerto Rican music “from the mountains,” essentially “country music. There’s a lot of strings, and it has more influence from Spain and Portugal because there’s the guitar.” The drums were often “stigmatized, because it was Black.” But bomba has seen a resurgence lately like “I’ve never seen in all my years. So we have bomba. We have the cousin of bomba, which is plena.”
In Puerto Rico, he explained, all of the music comes together with the holiday in the parranda, akin to Christmas caroling, as people gather instruments and go house to house to sing and play, and celebrate with food and visits.
“Three Kings encompasses everything, the whole culture,” Diaz said, “from country music to drumming and dancing. It reminds us of our heritage.” For Puerto Ricans in the comparatively cold Northeast, it conjures memories of “the island, and the warmth, and hanging with your friends and playing this music. It brings you back. And we try to bring it here.”
He noted that the first Puerto Ricans in New Haven were a very small, close-knit community. The 1950s and 1960s saw big influxes of people from Puerto Rico and the greater tri-state area, and has created a network for the Puerto Rican community running from New York City to Hartford to Springfield and Holyoke and beyond.
Diaz was also interested in fostering bonds with as many as possible, regardless of background. “I think we’re connected more than we have been led to believe,” he said. “A lot of us start from the motherland, which is Africa, and we continue to discover new things every day.”
For Wilson Library Technical Assistant Jeffrey Panettiere, who was instrumental in organizing the event at the library, the commemoration was part of carrying on the work of years past.
“Three Kings Day, like a lot of the great things at the Wilson library, was something John Jessen had started,” said Panettiere of the city librarian, who died in 2022. The first celebration was in 2018, when “John had worked his magic and he found somewhere in Hartford that had a bunch of toys. He drove his car up there and filled it up. That was John.”
Panettiere arrived at Wilson in 2019; he recalled the 2021 celebration, held in the front entrance, “coincided with the donation of almost the entirety of the contents of the Peabody Museum’s gift shop.” Fashionista provided costumes for the kings, “so that was kind of our thing.” They repeated it last year outside. Movimiento Cultural did an event at Wilson in May 2022 and “they proved very popular — people were really receptive.” So the library invited the musical group to participate in the Three Kings celebration this year. “I thought it would be nice to combine the two.”
Panettiere pointed out that the library has musical instruments that people can use, as well as instructions on how to use them. “At least half the neighborhood is Latin American,” he said, the majority Puerto Rican and Dominican. “So whenever we’ve done independent programming highlighting Caribbean and Puerto Rican culture, it has been well received.”
For Panettiere, it’s part of a larger push to elevate the status of the Hill in the field of the arts; too often, he said, it’s “overlooked,” and the library programming is one way to show that “you don’t have to leave the neighborhood” to have a cultural experience.
An observance of Three Kings Day would, of course, not be complete without three kings present to hand out presents to kids, and Wilson staff quickly stepped into the role (Panettiere is farthest on the left).
Much of the festivities, however, were guided by the able hands and voices of Movimiento Cultural, who set the tone with two stirring songs, full of irresistible rhythm, then invited everyone to come close, because “bomba is for everybody,” as Diaz said.
Singers and drummers took turns explaining the fundamental rhythms of bomba and how they fit with the songs. They then invited everyone to participate, saying that bomba “is very dependent on the transfer of energy … the vibes, as they say nowadays.” That transfer happened through dancing, and especially through entering the circle and communicating, by movement, with the drummers. The circle, the singers explained, was a chance to “express what you are feeling” through movement — whether those feelings were joy, anger, or (in the grand tradition of bomba) political resistance.
“There is no right or wrong expression,” they continued. It was up to the drummers to make that expression whole by providing rhythms in response. “Music and dance is part of your soul,” Diaz said. “We have to follow you, whatever movement you make.”
Several dancers (including one king) took up Movimiento Cultural on their invitation to join them. As one dancer after another engaged in the conversation of music and movement, the rhythms and singing intensified. The connections and bonds Diaz talked about were embodied in the room — of people to their heritage, to their community, and to one another, talking with and without words, everyone moving to the same beat.
On Saturday, Jan. 7 there will be another public Three Kings celebration at Casa Otonal, 148 Sylvan Ave., from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.