Yomo Toro, Choco Orta, Los Pleneros will perform – Bronx

On Saturday, in the spirit of those albums, the Bronx’s Lehman Center for the Performing Arts (718-960-8833) will host a concert called “Asalto Navideño,” featuring Yomo Toro, vocalist Choco Orta and Los Pleneros de la 21.

“Yomo was a big star way before those albums,” said Juan Gutiérrez, who founded the Grammy-nominated Los Pleneros de la 21 in New York in 1983. “He had a group that would accompany the great jíbaro singers like Felipe Rodríguez, Chuito de Bayamón, and Ramito when they came to play in Teatro Puerto Rico in the Bronx in the old days.” Backed by a panoply of Afro-Puerto Rican rhythms, the jíbaro style of singing usually followed the constraints of the décima, a poetic form that goes back to medieval Spain. While improvising in décima (a 10-line poem with eight syllables per line) is often competitive, the meter is also used in the aguinaldo, the traditional Puerto Rican Christmas song.”*

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