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Alexander
LaSalle, Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Music & Dance
From Moca, Puerto Rico,
Alex is the founder and musical director of Alma Moyó.
He is a skilled percussionist, songwriter and singer whose
versatile musical talents lend themselves to singing Afro-Boricua,
Afro-Dominican, Afro- Cuban and Haitian traditional music,
including Rara, Palo and Salve, Bomba, Plena, and Musica Jibara.
Alex is fluent in the Afro-Cuban Kongo language and an avid
cultural researcher and oral historian. He has presented
lectures on Afro-Puerto Rican spirituality and culture and
Pan-Caribbean and African cultural connections for educators and
students at Yale University, El Centro de Estudios Avanzados de
Puerto Rico, Long Island University, Columbia University, New
York University, Tufts University, and others. A teaching artist
in the public schools of New York City , Alex has taught Pre-K
through adult age populations in the South Bronx and City-wide
and has performed with such groups as William Cepeda’s Afro-Boricua,
Pa'lo Monte, Ntima Ngoma Mayombe, La 21 Division, Son del Batey,
and Los Tambores de Felix Alduen, and now Los Pleneros de la
21. Alexander is also a specialist in Sance, a spiritual
system that evolved from Vodoun practices in Puerto Rico and
throughout the major Antilles in the early 1800's. He is also
the Bakonfula (soon to be steward) to the oldest house of
Palo Mayombe in Cuba, La Casa de Batalla Sacara Empeño.
He hails from an old lineage of healers, herbalists, and
spiritualists of traditional African religious and spiritual
ways of life.
To join our network of teaching
artists, apply for our institute or email
Manuela@thelegacycircle.org
with your name, address, phone, email, a description of your
artist discipline.
Feel free to include your teaching
artist resume.
Phone calls are welcome as well.
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