When you want to do something humble and heartfelt, you don't need much: three frame drums, a güiro and a hug are enough.
During Bad Bunny's DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS tour, which lasted eight months, Josué Román Figueroa and Joseph, Joshuan and Jeyluix Ocasio Rivera had no shortage of moving moments. "I saw tears in every language," Josué Román Figueroa says about the tour in the latest episode of Punto Aparte con Platea.
Los Pleneros de la Cresta brought the requinto, the punteador, the seguidor and the güiro, the sound of Puerto Rican plena, to 89 shows in 21 countries: they played in Japan and Poland, in Australia and Brazil. But before crossing the ocean alongside Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, they played in the barrio Frontón de Ciales, at misas de aguinaldo and family parrandas. That is still where they always return.
All four are from the same barrio as Juan Antonio Corretjer, the poet and activist who wrote the décima "Boricua en la Luna." Josué is the son of teachers, and the Ocasio Rivera brothers are the grandsons of a farmer who makes güiros: abuelo Frao.
"He has taught us the true meaning of life," Joseph Ocasio Rivera says of his grandfather. "The true meaning of solidarity, of respect, of love. That many times money is not happiness, but family love, sharing as a family, family support," he adds during the interview with Platea at Finca Pueblo Nuevo.
Among themselves, that closeness needs no words. "We look at each other wherever we are and we can probably already tell that something is happening," Joseph says.
The family values that define them carry over to the place where the Punto Aparte episode was recorded. Finca Pueblo Nuevo is a family agroecological project in Ciales. It is also where the well-known photo of the banana plant that appears on the cover of DtMF was taken, the Benito album that elevated their careers. "Where we are right now, we think this is the aspiration Puerto Rico should have for where we ought to be heading," Joshuan says.
Los Pleneros are a product of Ciales and of the area's cultural centers, where they learned about the cuatro and the trova, and of the Universidad de Puerto Rico, where the project was born in 2013. "This tower is where the value and mission of Los Pleneros de la Cresta intensifies and takes shape," Joseph says, "where we understood that through art we can also defend what we as Puerto Ricans deserve."
They identify as a collective because individual members don't have to stay for the project to evolve. Their mission goes beyond music: since 2017 they have worked with the organization Acción Valerosa and with Centro Cultural Yerba Bruja, educating and providing a safe space for community development through art. "Joseph doesn't have to be there, nor Joshuan, nor Jeyluix, nor Josué for la Cresta to live. (...) We are facilitators and the baton can be passed," Joshuan explains about what it means to be a collective.
Centro Cultural Yerba Bruja, located in the Antiguo Casino de Ciales, is the space they are trying to acquire in order to launch five projects that include exhibition spaces, cultural programming, local product sales, content recording and services aimed at older adults in Ciales.
The goal is to raise $1.8 million to acquire and restore the building. You can support the initiative at Yerbabruja.net.
From Ciales to the World
It was through their community work that they met Janthony, from Bad Bunny's team. Alondra, a classmate of Joseph's in a El Josco Bravo course, brought him to Ciales, to the jarana, an annual event they organized. In October 2024, at the Festival de la Esperanza, the closing campaign event for Juan Dalmau and Victoria Ciudadana, Janthony approached them. They hugged. "And then Benito comes over and greets us," Joshuan recalls.
To this day they do not know why they were chosen. What they do know is that from that point on there were stadiums of more than 70,000 people, recording sessions at Abbey Road, and a workshop in Argentina where young people played plena for the first time in their lives.
On the Super Bowl, Josué says: "It was a place we never thought we'd be, and where we still can't believe we were." For his part, Joseph underscores the value of using plena precisely at the moment Benito names every country in the Americas: "These are people, professional musicians, who were holding a pandero for the first time." (...) "It magnifies what the pandero is," he adds.
A tour full of lessons
During the tour they learned what Jeyluix highlights: "There is literally space for plena. And not just for us, but for the whole genre, for everyone else making plena. There is space for plena to keep growing and keep spreading to different parts of the world."
The awards confirm it. DtMF won the Grammy for Album of the Year (2026), and "Café con Ron," the song they recorded with Benito, took home the award for Tropical Collaboration of the Year at the Premios Lo Nuestro (2026).
"It shows that through the creative industry we can move the economy. We can make an impact on our families. We can create opportunities. The national economy can grow through the creative industry," says Joseph about the tour that began in Puerto Rico with the residency.
Nosotros cantamos siempre lo que vivimos, lo que sentimos, lo que somos, como puertorriqueños y puertorriqueñas. Pero la gira nos enseñó que la plena también hay que empezar a hacerla para el resto del mundo, no tan solo para los boricuas. (...) Como yo digo, cuando los boricuas hablan, el mundo se detiene a escucharnos. Y todas las personas en ese estadio nos veían como algo sumamente grande, estaban orgullosos y felices como nosotros, querían ser boricuas como nosotros
Their lives changed with the album's release, and not only professionally. It was a dance of pride and hope. "During the tour I found out I'm going to be a father for the first time," says Joseph, moved.
Honoring their teachers as a mission
In their absence, Ciales kept being Ciales. "Here in Ciales, our mother, our father, our cousins, our friends, our community collaborators (...) are constantly dreaming alongside us," says Joseph.
That responsibility is also a demand. In the episode they pointed out that for years, playing plena, bomba, or traditional music meant playing for free, or close to it, while other genres reached stages with guaranteed budgets.
Siempre tenemos que buscar recursos, o de momento tenemos que sacrificar, porque siempre nos ven como que hacemos las cosas de gratis, o tenemos que buscar colaborar con entidades (...) cuando de momento reconocemos que si hablamos de otro género, otros artistas le dan unas condiciones que entonces a los folcloristas no
The teachers who taught them the craft, Joseph says, often could not make a living from it.
"If we're going to put on an event that involves bomba, plena, traditional music, then let's talk about it the same way we talk about a techno festival: that there is an identified budget to cover all the bases for the artists, sound crews, technical crews (...) and not always having to ask those people to come for free, because they also need to generate income to cover at minimum the gas they're going to use."
Honoring crafts and traditions has become part of their mission. That is why they returned to the Island with a souvenir in the form of an album, one that honors the work of the folklorists they met during their experience around the world.
"Puerto Rico Abraza al Mundo," the new album
"Puerto Rico Abraza al Mundo" comes out Sept. 27 with the intention of giving back the love they received during the tour.
Its songs include instruments that are not their own. "The collaborations are aimed at musicians from each country who play some traditional instrument," Joshuan previews.
Part of the album was recorded in hotel rooms, and the choir was recorded at Abbey Road, the London studio where in 1969 the Beatles recorded the album whose cover shows them crossing the street.
"Looking, obviously, to strengthen the idea we want to contribute: that, with the versatility of plena, without losing its essence, we can do many things," Joseph concludes.
This content was translated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
