Puerto Rican Bomba Dance Apprenticeship ’22-’23 | Margarita “Tata” Cepeda & Isha M Renta López

This film introduces Margarita “Tata” Sanchez Cepeda and Isha M Renta López who received a Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship in 2022-2023.
Bomba is, as Margarita “Tata” Sanchez Cepeda puts it, “all about love. I was taught under love, bomba is a form of love, and we continue to carry bomba out of love.”
As granddaughter to Rafael Cepeda-widely regarded as a leading ambassador of bomba and a recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship in 1983-Tata was quite literally taught under love. She remembers how her grandparents seamlessly got her involved into the tradition. On multiple occasions, after writing a new song, her grandfather would ask her to find a drum or a couple of drumsticks, so she could provide a rhythm and thereby hear his composition. Her grandmother, who is credited with leading the rise of women dancing bomba, would then casually start showing her steps while teaching Tata.
In June 2022, with the support of a Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship, Isha Mary Renta Lopez completed a bomba intensive for experienced dancers with Tata. Isha understands the responsibility that comes with practicing bomba firsthand: She founded Semilla Cultural, a non-profit dedicated to nurturing Puerto Rican art and culture in the broader Washington, DC area, in 2014.
“Through bomba, we are exalting and acknowledging the legacy of our ancestors,” Isha said. “Unfortunately our culture is filled with a lot of suffering, a lot of pain, and above all, a lot of love felt by people who were uprooted from their land to be mistreated and abused. We have to know and value this suffering. As a community leader in the diaspora, it is a very big responsibility to bear this whole story.”
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About Virginia Folklife: www.virginiafolklife.org/about/
About the Apprenticeship Program: www.virginiafolklife.org/appr...
Credits:
Filmed by Mariana Núñez Lozada and Pat Jarrett
Edited by Albert Tong with Katy Clune
Produced by the Virginia Folklife Program of Virginia Humanities with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts with additional support from the J & E Berkley Foundation. Directed by Katy Clune and Pat Jarrett.

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God bless the Cepedas who kept the African dance alive!