Legend has it that Loíza, a small town that sits on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, takes its appellation from a Taíno kasike, or tribal chieftain, called Yuiza. She changed her name to the more Spanish-sounding Luisa after marrying Pedro Mejías, an Afro-Spanish conquistador who accompanied the first wave of European colonizers in the 1500s. Over the next five centuries, her geographical namesake would witness the arrival of Yoruba tribe members brought to Puerto Rico as enslaved Africans, the birth of the bomba and plena musical traditions, and the loss of hundreds of lives and homes to Hurricane Maria...