 This week on Afropop Worldwide, we profile reggaeton, the reggae and rap inspired dance music from Puerto Rico that has rapidly taken over the Latin mainstream across the Americas. Our field producer Marlon Bishop reports with anecdotes from his research in Puerto Rico. Whether you are Latino or not, chances are you know something about reggaeton. Maybe you love it, or maybe you love to hate it, but you’ve definitely heard that persistent boom-chi-boom-chick beat flying at you from passing cars, beaming at you through jewelry-soaked music videos, or moving you at the dance club. Although many claim that reggaeton’s day has come and gone, pointing to a declining share of the Latin market, there is no doubt that the music remains relevant – reggaeton is still by far the largest selling Latin genre of today and, until somebody comes up with something new, the sound of a generation of Latin youth. And despite a long litany of criticisms often directed at the music (it’s repetitive, it’s sexist, it’s materialistic), it has a fascinating musical history just beneath the surface, and the music goes much deeper than the radio-ready hits you’ve heard from stars such as Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Wisin y Yandel. A Little History Meanwhile, Panamanians had been making Spanish language covers of reggae songs throughout the 80s, influenced by a large Jamaican community living on Panama’s Caribbean coast. Spanish reggae from Panama took off among New York’s many Latin diasporas during the, and soon Panamanian vinyl began playing alongside hip-hop in San Juan as well. Around 1993, Puerto Ricans began rapping over sped-up Panamanian B-sides, and these freestyle sessions evolved into a truly grassroots movement known as underground, its music circulated outside of the formal economy on homemade mixtapes. Early producers like DJ Negro and DJ Playero would make 30 copies of these tapes, with titles like Playero 37 and The Noise 1, and they then passed hand to hand across the country’s barrios. Underground DJs made their tracks by recycling a handful of dancehall recordings and classic hip-hop samples and stringing them into intricate, fast-changing collages. Eventually one recording, Shabba Ranks’ “Dem Bow,” became the most popular drum track to use, and began to appear under virtually every underground pista, or backing track, becoming the reggaeton beat we know and love. In fact, in today’s Spanish parlance, dembow is used as the name of a rhythm, as if it were guaguanco or merengue. There’s a long ongoing debate over where reggaeton really comes from, and without diminishing the importance of Panama’s Spanish-reggae tradition, today’s reggaeton is really a Puerto Rican phenomenon. Walking the streets of San Juan today, there can be little doubt that it must be ground-zero of the reggaeton explosion – the sauntering dembow beat is everywhere, seemingly floating out of every vehicle and storefront in the tropical metropolis. While most Puerto Ricans have a thing or two to say about their island’s colonial status, and with plenty of good reason, the commonwealth’s ties to the United States have brought good economic tides to the island. Puerto Rico is wealthier than any Latin American nation and it shows. Luxury towers glisten above San Juan’s beachfront as steady lines of SUVs zip along the boulevards, and the walled city of Old San Juan has maintained it’s colonial splendor. “It was crazy, but I think the hardest, craziest and most fun, wasn’t the music or the scene – it was the streets,” said Omar. “When I was 14, I was just from barrio to barrio, running the island from side to side. I used to have two or three shows every weekend, and all of them were in a different casario, in a different project. In the park or basketball court, they used to put up a stage and some sound equipment and bring whoever was available. “It was too much, and eventually I had to stop. Because, you can imagine, I sang at midnight at the earliest, and I was in high school, and in the middle of the casarios, whether it’s the coolest one or the hottest one. But I learned a lot. You get a sense of your country in a very direct, objective, non-hypocritical way, just going to every hood, barrio, and project and hearing from them. There's no VIP area in the casario. Back then, that was the real thing. Underground, that was the real stuff. You won’t get realer than that.” “Bomba is very important to us Puerto Ricans,” said self-described street-poet Michael Cruz, alias Dulce de Coco. “It’s a chance for the human being to communicate through the drum, a place for the black man to let himself leave his pain in the clave and the wind, and clean himself spiritually.” I spoke with Michael by a lush riverbank, where, as he explained to me, his grandfather used to operate a ferry back before a bridge was built to connect Loiza to nearby towns. Fat-bodied bomba drums from the distant stage competed with the steady pulse of crickets and the mid-evening quiet. At 29 years old, Dulce de Coco is one of many black-and-proud rappers I spoke with in Loiza who saw no contradiction in pairing the centuries-old drumming tradition with reggaeton; whom in fact, see a synergy in the common African roots of diasporic reggae and rap with local styles of bomba and plena. It hadn’t always been so – before the name “reggaeton” became standardized as the title of the genre, artists referred to the music as musica negra, black music, or melaza, referring to the black color of molasses, a popular local condiment. Regardless of skin tone, early reggaetoneros chose to see their music as part of an international black music phenomenon, closer to the streets of New York than a flashy San Juan discoteca. The Reggaeton Divide “Reggaeton, I think, is a genre that had its moment. Once the major labels came in, it began to lose that defiance, and the image and music of the rapper was softened, and even the environments in the music videos changed. The ghetto disappeared and became the mansion, the cars, and the bling bling." “What I really don’t like is how it’s gotten so much like a carbon-copy of the American rap scene,” says Omar Garcia, the former underground kid quoted earlier. “Because I’m a rap fan, but I’m a Puerto Rican first. What about the hungry and homeless guy from your barrio, or whatever. What does he think when he looks at the TV and sees you waving your chain in his face?” Back in 2005, after “Gasolina” was unleashed upon the world, it seemed that a new industry sprung up over night. The music industry, seeing a whole new world of untapped sales, went into a reggaeton frenzy, inventing the concept of hurban (hispanic-urban) music. Spanish-media giant Univison converted their stations into 24/7 reggaeton formats, hip-hop magazines spawned Latino-oriented sister publications, and record labels expanded their Latin departments to prepare for the coming tidal wave of dollars. Indeed, reggaeton continued to thump its way to commercial greatness for years and hit after hit arrived on the airwaves. Since then, however, the industry’s euphoria seems to have subsided, and reggaeton has begun to adapt to stay competitive with older sounds like bachata and salsa-romantica. Over the years, more and more reggaeton songs have fused such Latin styles in their music, and alternative reggaeton-ish acts such as Calle 13 have challenged the status-quo model of the reggaeton artist. Most recently, reggaeton artists have been ditching the classic dembow sound and incorporated more and more dace beats, and many are turning to the term “musica urbana,” or “urban music” to refer to reggaeton plus a whole swath of rap and R&B related sounds that are catching on in Puerto Rico and beyond. Despite increasing pitched fights about the looming “Death of Reggaeton,” it doesn’t appear that the music is going anywhere right away. “There is a whole generation that grew up with reggaeton,” said Welmo. “I grew up with hiphop, my father’s generation grew up with salsa and merengue. So this generation grew up with hiphop, and that’s just the music they know.” Whatever the case is, reggaeton’s legacy on not only music but on identity in Latin America is going to be huge. And until further notice, reggaeton’s hypnotic beat will continue to inspire on the global dancefloor. I’ll leave the final words to Dulce de Coco: |
Reggaeton Roundup: New Moves in Latin Youth Music
Aired March 11, 2010
When Daddy Yankee released his hit single, "Gasolina," in 2005, nobody suspected what was about to happen. Reggaeton, that rollicking Caribbean dance-rap, traveled like an uncontained blaze around the world - crossing over from the Latin charts to pop and hip-hop from the U.S to Australia, thrilling and/or shocking those that came in its path. Reggaeton was the sound and swagger of a new generation of urban Latin Americans, and a whirl around Latin America in 2009 will show you that the genre is here to stay. We travel to Puerto Rico, the birthplace of reggaeton, and talk to players from the music's history and take the pulse of today's scene. We'll follow that omnipresent bass-heavy beat that wove its way from coastal Panama in the 1980s to freestyle sessions in San Juan in the 90s, and talk to Puerto Ricans who are taking the music to new places today. Interviews with Omar Garcia, Calle 13, and more, plus side trips to Brazil and Chicago to get a taste of Baile Funk and Latin House.
Hip Deep
Discography
