The University of Chicago Department of Music is pleased to welcome Jorge Emmanuelli Náter as Visiting Artist-in-Residence with the Afro-Cuban Folkloric Ensemble for the 2024-25 academic year.
Jorge Emmanuelli Náter is the great-grandson of master Bomba practitioner Sergio Náter Peña (most known for his mastery of the “Primo” or “Subidor” lead drum of Bomba during the early 1900s). He embodies the legacy of at least 100 years of Afro-Puerto Rican music and culture knowledge in his family. He is a member, director, and founder of the Bomba and Plena clan known as Hermanos Emmanuelli Náter.
With Emmanuelli Náter in-residence, the Afro-Cuban Folkloric ensemble will be able to learn song, drumming, and dance through hands-on, traditional instruction from a master bombero from the island of Puerto Rico. He will also teach about the connections between different musical traditions of the African diaspora.
Emmanuelli Náter will visit campus for one week during each academic quarter. In addition to working with the students and members of the Afro-Cuban Folkloric Ensemble, the residency will include a traditional bombazo, or drum and dance gathering, to introduce the campus and surrounding community to the artist, visits to Music Department classes, and more. His residency with the Afro-Cuban Folkloric Ensemble will culminate in a final concert in spring 2025 featuring musical works that blend song, rhythm, and dance from Afro-Cuban and Afro-Puerto Rican traditions, showing their common musical ancestry.
About Jorge Emmanuelli Náter
During his 40 year tenure of cultural work; master practitioner Jorge Emmanuelli Natér has made significant and historical contributions in the preservation, practice and evolution of both Bomba and Plena in Puerto Rico, the broader United States, and in Europe. In the mid 1980’s Jorge became the intellectual progenitor and primary catalyst in successfully reviving the tradition of community “Bailes de Bomba” (or Bomba dances) and Plena from his residence in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and in the coining and use of the term "Bombazo" to identify contemporary Bomba dances, which lead to the birth and use of the terms and community practices now commonly known as “Bombazos”, “Plenazos” and “Bomplenazos”. His work and research related to Bomba, Plena and other obscure Afro-Puerto Rican musical and traditional practices have been sponsored and endorsed by American and Puerto Rican institutions alike. Mr. Emmanuelli Náter has showcased and performed his legacy with renowned artists who include Giovanni Hidalgo, Cachete Maldonado, and more; he has also been featured in documentaries such as De Africa al Caribe and “En Búsqueda de la Verdad de la Bomba Puertorriqueña” (Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico) and contributed to programming for HBO, MTV International and television shows and commercials in Puerto Rico and the United States.
In the last two decades, Mr. Emmanuelli Náter has defined himself by focusing his teachings on the development and evolution of the contemporary community practice coming from foundational and ancestral knowledge of both Bomba and Plena. For these and numerous other contributions to these two genres, Mr. Emmanuelli Náter is consider a practitioner and a performing artist, as well as a revered elder and a master in both communities of Bomba and Plena – having gained his knowledge in the global practice of apprenticeship to other elder and master practitioners. Jorge is the first elder in either of these genres to make his knowledge available for broad consumption via instructional materials. Mr. Emmanuelli Náter is also the first practitioner in either of these genres to formally offer mentorship to artistic and educational institutions, organizations, groups and individuals seeking to submerge themselves into his movement for preservation and evolution of Afro-Puerto Rican foundational knowledge and practices.
Most recently, Jorge has worked to further the evolution of these genres through his conceptual orchestra “Los Ancestros”; formerly “CAPRE” – Chicago Afro Puerto Rican Ensemble which is the first full orchestral ensemble to have Plena and Bomba as its root musical forms and purposefully only utilizes traditional Puerto Rican instruments in its percussion section. In addition to these and other projects, Mr. Emmanuelli Náter is bringing together his knowledge of ancient Afro-Boricua music traditions and expert execution for several upcoming book projects. Jorge has spent most of his life lecturing, performing, researching and providing instruction about, and on the history and practice of the uniquely Puerto Rican genres of Plena and Bomba.