Roots

In Puerto Rico and Cuba we talk about the Yorubas, of Nigeria, as ancestors, originators of Afro-Rican and Afro-Cuban music, Bomba and Plena in Puerto Rico, especially the less Spanish-influenced Bomba.
In fact, I had an epiphany a few years ago here in Washington, DC. I rode a cab with a Nigerian driver who was playing his native music and to me it sounded just like Bomba though not sung in Afro-Rican Spanish, of course, ith a lot of heavy fast drumming and chants and group responses, and so I asked him about it and he told me it was Yoruba music.
I have a cassette of Bomba on one side and Afro-Cuban music on the other side. What really gets me is that while the Afro-Rican music features African names and words and the singing is in Afro-Rican Spanish the Afro-Cuban music is all sung in Yoruba or some other Bantu African language. Go to www.cdnow.com and check out cd's of musica jibara and Plena and Bomba and there'll be very brief audio bits. Better yet, check out Bomba and Plena here at the pages of Yerbabuena, Comborican, Pleneros de la 21.
African elements permeate all Puerto Rican music, including the more Spanish (white) jibaro music, mountain music (seis, ai-le-lo-lai) our country music if you will. Six string guitars, small four string guitars (cuatros), maracas, gourds. And in one of those typical seemingly ambivalent racial things in Puerto Rico the term "musica tipica", typical or folkloric music, is more often applied to this more Spanish kind of music. And the white Jibaro remains a national cultural symbol of the people of Puerto Rico.
"Fulano" is the most widely used Afro-Rican Spanish word and it's not limited to Puerto Rico. Fulano means "some somebody". Some folks add "de tal" ("of whoever"), fulano de tal, providing more of a linguistic mixture.