Christmas caroling is a little different in Puerto Rico, says Maurice Sanabria-Ortiz. In the Caribbean Commonwealth where he was born, they call it throwing a “parranda.”
“It’s crazy and fun,” says Sanabria-Ortiz, the lead singer and songwriter for Kadenica, a Chesterfield-based bomba and plena ensemble celebrating its fifth anniversary in the U.S. with a special Christmas showcase on Dec. 22 at Richmond Music Hall. At the heart of the festivities will be the playful spirit of the parranda. “Everyone waits until your lights are out at night and then starts singing and playing outside your door. You are not warned it’s gonna happen.”
“It would never work in the states,” laughs Sanabria-Ortiz’s son, Maurice “Tito” Sanabria, Kadencia’s pandero, barril and bongo player. “You play until the people in the house wake up. They turn on the lights and that signals that everyone is welcome. The crowd goes inside and the musicians keep playing and singing and the host offers anything they have on hand, food and wine or a Puerto Rican moonshine called pitorro.” Then, Tito says, the visited guests join the party and go to the next house. “It’s a collect-and-gather deal, and an all-nighter.”
At Kadencia’s Richmond Music Hall show, titled “A Tropical Christmas,” the band will showcase traditional Puerto Rican aguinaldos, which are songs traditionally performed at parranda gatherings; infectious rhythmic chants built on repetition and improvisation. “You have the basic verse and people will repeat that verse and the singer is supposed to improvise over it, and that’s how it goes,” says Maurice. The songs touch upon both religious and festive themes, adds Tito. “Sometimes they can be about the birth of Jesus, or the Three Kings, or maybe they address the tradition of the parranda itself – ‘we’re coming to your house and you better open up.’”
Father and son co-founded Kadencia in 2018 as an American revamping of a group with the same name that Maurice had formed in his hometown of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico before relocating to the U.S in 2011. “The concert will not only be an opportunity to celebrate the season in a festive way, bringing that Puerto Rican vibe to Richmond with very festive and danceable music,” Tito says. “It’s an opportunity to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the rebirth of Kadenica in the U.S. It’s been a great ride.”
In short order, Kadencia has become a member of the Virginia Commission for the Arts Performing Arts Touring Directory, a resident artist at Chesterfield County’s Perkinson Center for the Arts, and a certified performer of traditional music by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. They’ve performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and in venues across the mid-Atlantic, including star turns at the Que Pasa Festival and the 2020 virtual installment of the Richmond Folk Festival.
The group’s 2022 CD, “En Otro Barrio,” recorded with engineer Lance Kohler at Richmond’s Minimum Wage Studio, was selected as a Top 20 album by Puerto Rico’s National Foundation for Popular Culture, and their original songs, “Bagazo,” “Puerto Rico Te Extraño,” and “Oye” were used on the AppleTV+ series, “Shatter.” “We got quite a lot of press coverage out of ‘Shatter,’” Tito says. “Our followers on social media increased and we had a jump in streaming and listeners.”
Alongside Ortiz and his father, the Kadenica orchestra consists of Will Roman on timbales, trumpeters Marc Roman and Nick Skinner, pianist Marlysse Rose Simmons, bassist Jon Wheelock, saxophonist and flautist Myrick Crampton, trombonist Pete Anderson, congo player Sergio Rosario and Alberto Solano on pandero, shekere and güiro.
The positive reception the ensemble has enjoyed in and around Richmond has taken the group by surprise, both the full 11-member band and its stripped-down more traditional six-piece “Comparsa de Kadencia” (Sanabria, Crampton, Solano, Rosario and the Roman brothers).
“Richmond doesn’t have this big Puerto Rican population, and the music from the Caribbean is very different from South and Central America,” says Sanabria-Ortiz. “The music that we play is on the odd beat and the count is not on the one. It’s hard for a lot of people to grasp.” While Richmond has learned to embrace salsa music – three of Kadencia’s members also play in Bio Ritmo – he is pleased that “some of the other rhythms, like bomba and plena, are starting to be embraced too. So far, the people love what we’re doing.”
The concert will also commemorate a changing-of-the-guard. Maurice, 64, has retired from his day job at Chesterfield’s Defense Supply Center and relocated to Melbourne, Florida, southeast of Orlando. He will continue to fly in and front the concerts with the group’s big band. “But he has transitioned the small ensemble to me,” says Tito, who relocated to Chesterfield in 2004. “I did a few gigs in 2023 where I sang so the process has already started.” One of Kadencia’s key features – as the full band and the comparsa – has been Maurice’s soulful, charismatic lead vocals. The son acknowledges that he has big shoes to fill. “I may match him in charisma,” he says. “I can’t match the voice. He’s been doing this a long time.”
The group is next set to record a Christmas song at Minimum Wage, but its release is slated for next season. Maurice says that it’s called “Las Navidades.” He wrote it to show how Puerto Ricans celebrate Christmas longer than everyone else. “It starts right after Thanksgiving, and with some people even earlier than that. They do the parrandas up until Jan. 6, that’s when the Three Kings is celebrated, and then the parrandas will keep going until eight days after that.”
Stretching the season out even more in Puerto Rico is the popularity of U.S. Christmas customs such as Santa Claus. “After our close association with the United States over the last hundred years, we now celebrate Santa, too. So the kids end up getting gifts twice during the Christmas season.” He laughs. “Spoiled, eh?”
“A Tropical Christmas with Kadencia” takes place at the Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House on Friday, Dec. 22 at 7 pm. $15 advance, $20 day of show. For tickets, go to thebroadberry.com
