Plena’s pandereta is a jingleless hand drum, closely resembling a tambourine without cymbals, built around stretched goatskin over a round wooden frame. A plena ensemble typically uses three sizes at once, each with its own role: the seguidor (largest, holding the steady pulse), the punteador (mid-sized), and the requinto (smallest, improvising over the top of the other two).

Plena developed out of bomba — Puerto Rico’s older Afro-Puerto Rican drumming tradition, built on barrel drums rather than frame drums — around the turn of the 20th century in Ponce’s working-class neighborhoods. Where bomba’s sixteen distinct rhythms each carry their own dance, plena settled on a single basic rhythm and put its energy into storytelling instead, becoming known as “el periódico cantado,” the sung newspaper, for its habit of narrating local events, politics, and gossip in song. The tradition has carried strongly into the Puerto Rican diaspora, with groups like Los Pleneros de la 21 keeping it alive in New York since 1983.