The Music Culture in Puerto Rico during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries is poorly documented. It most likely included Spanish church music, military band music, and diverse genres cultivated by the jíbaros, who are peasants, mostly of Taino descent, and enslaved Africans and their descendants. While they only make up 11% of the population in the country, they contributed some of the island's most dynamic musical features becoming distinct indeed. In the 19th century, Puerto Rican music begins to emerge into historical daylight, with genres such as danza being naturally better documented than folk genres like jíbaro music and bomba y plena.
The African people of the island used drums made of carved harwood covered with an untreated rawhide on one side, commonly made from goatskin. A popular word derived from creole to design this drum was shukbwa, which literally means 'trunk of tree'. In other islands like Guadalupe, this type of hollowed trunk is known as bwa fuyé.
If the term "folk music" is taken to mean music genres that have flourished without elite support, and have evolved independently of the commercial mass media, the realm of Puerto Rican folk music would comprise the primarily Hispanic-derived jíbaro music, the Afro-Puerto Rican bomba, and the essentially "creole" plena. As these three genres evolved in Puerto Rico and are unique to that island, they occupy a respected place in island culture, even if they are not currently as popular as contemporary music like salsa or reggaeton. Examples of the folk music found in Puerto Rico are Jibaro, Bomba, and Plena.
Jibaro music was made by a group known as Jibaro, who are small farmers of primarily Hispanic descent. They constituted the overwhelming majority of the Puerto Rican population until the mid-twentieth century. This folk music was traditionally celebrated for their self-sufficiency, hospitality, and love of song and dance.
There were historical references indicating that by the decades around 1800 plantation slaves were cultivating a music and dance genre known as bomba. By the mid-twentieth century, when it started to be recorded and filmed, bomba was performed in regional variants in various parts of the island.
Around 1900, Plena emerged as a humble proletarian folk genre in the lower-class, largely Afro-Puerto Rican urban neighborhoods in San Juan, Ponce, and elsewhere. Plena subsequently came to occupy its niche in island music culture. It is an informal, simple folksong genre, in which alternating verses and refrains are sung to the accompaniment of round, often homemade frame drums called panderetas, which are like tambourines but with no jingles, perhaps supplemented by accordion, guitar, or whatever other instruments might be handy. An advantage of the percussion arrangement is its portability, contributing to the plena's spontaneous appearance at social gatherings. Other instruments commonly heard in plena music are the cuatro, the maracas, and accordions.
Puerto Rican music was also influenced by the Caribbean music. Examples of these are bolero, merengue and salsa. The bolero originally derived from Cuba, but by the 1920s-30s it was being not only enjoyed but also composed and performed by Puerto Ricans, including such as Rafael Hernández and Pedro Flores. Merengue was the most popular dance music in the country during the 1900s. Salsa is another genre whose form derived from the Cuban\Puerto Rican melding of genre, especially Cuban dance music of the 1950s, but which in the 1960s-70s became an international genre, cultivated with special zeal and excellence in Puerto Rico, and by New York Puerto Ricans.

Contemporary genres of music can also be found in Puerto Rico, such as pop and reggaeton. Puerto Rico is perhaps the single biggest center for production of reggaeton.

The music of Puerto Rico has evolved as a heterogeneous and dynamic product of diverse cultural resources. The most conspicuous musical sources have been Spain and West Africa, although many aspects of Puerto Rican music reflect origins elsewhere in Europe and the Caribbean and, in the last century, the USA. Puerto Rican music culture today comprises a wide and rich variety of genres, ranging from essentially indigenous genres like bomba to recent hybrids like reggaeton.