I don’t have as much to say about reggaeton in Mexico City as I do about hip-hop and graffiti, though it has often been an elefante in the room. Also, you don’t have to understand much Spanish to read this sort of writing on the wall –
There are other kinds of reggaetony writing on the walls too, however, and so reggaeton’s status in DF seems to me, at best, ambiguous. For instance, though I didn’t get any shots of them, when I was in DF in November 2009 I saw several brightly-colored, professionally-rendered, wall-sized paintings advertising upcoming shows from Wisin y Yandel and Ivy Queen.
And while visiting the city last month for Postopolis, I did happen to get a snap of this:
This curiosity — which I’m guessing must be a few years old now — announces a concert from Don Chezina, billed here as hailing “from the island of the gangsters”! (Way to go, Puerto Rico!) Interestingly, the poster itself declines using the term reggaeton. I’m not sure how deliberate that evasion was, but it’s interesting that instead Chezina is referred to as “el maestro del perreo boricua.” As I’ve discussed before, reggaeton sometimes seems to travel easier as a dance form — as perreo — than as a musical style.
Given the ongoing popularity of Latin Caribbean dance music in Mexico, this may not be too surprising. I’ve bought cumbia villera and reggaeton romántico CDs from the same vendor. As Deborah Pacini Hernandez details, this embrace is central to cumbia’s story of transmission and transformation. And I witnessed this affinity registered on other posters in the same neighborhood –
Still, from what I can tell, save for pockets of popularity (about those in a moment), reggaeton is pretty much genre-non-grata for participants (and gatekeepers) in DF’s hip-hop scene. Mirroring Tego Calderon’s story in PR, Big Metra, once among the DF’s most revered and popular MCs, was shunned by many of his peers after embracing that ol’ dembow and aiming at pop crossover. (Despite collaborating with the likes of Jadakiss and Twista.) Consider, then, the following account of opposition to reggaeton within Puerto Rico’s hip-hop scene, which, as Marlon Bishop relates –
split ways with the reggaeton scene in the mid-90s and went down a more conscious, political path.
I spoke with rapper-scholar Welmo Romero about this difference. Welmo grew up in Puerto Rico of Haitian and Dominican parents, and was on break from studying to defend his master’s thesis when we got together.
“One of the most important things about hip-hop to me, it’s way of being ‘in your face,’ of using poetry to talk about a very crude reality,” said Welmo. “So until reggaeton went mainstream, it maintained this spirit of defiance, of questioning inequality, poverty, the lack of resources…
“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.”
Then watch this Big Metra video:
An antipathy to reggaeton came through loud and clear in the conversations I staged at El Eco with some of DF’s important hip-hop purveyors. During his talk, in an aside akin to spitting on the ground, Tomás Álzarez Brum called reggaeton “mierda” — a common charge, especially among a certain set of “underground” torchbearers. My other guest, 2phase, agreed in so many words, though I confess that I can’t recall the particular phrasing. (Any recollection, Camilo?)
It’s the sort of objection that keeps rearing its head in places like this 15 second YouTube video I posted a few years back. It’s actually rather surprising — or, I suppose, revealing — how often the mierda (i.e., shit) is applied to reggaeton (see also, basura / trash). It’s a form of diss implicating matters of taste and value. As I’ll explain, however, it’s not so easy to say that reggaeton is rejected either because it is seen as “low” or, alternately, as some sort of foreign import for the local jetset. Ironically, reggaeton in DF is (dismissed as) both of these things. Naco y fresa.
At one end, we find reggaeton used as a stylish signal of metropolitan fashion, a globally-circulating symbol of cosmopolatino cool, the sort of thing you’re careful to put on your flyers and email-blasts if you’re, say, promoting “LUXURY HIP HOP” at a super-swank club in one of the schmancier parts of town (h/t Daniel H) –
Given the way that reggaeton figures into fresa fantasies, you can understand why some might revile it. But interestingly, the disgust and dismissal of the genre also feeds into animosity toward the poor kids (literally) who make up reggaeton’s other main constituency in Mexico City. Camilo Smith has an excellent post on the intense anti-reggaeton sentiments he encountered when pursuing more information about the so-called “cult” of San Judas (a phenomenon recently profiled in the NYT). Here’s Camilo’s take –
The anti-reggaeton sentiment, I think, is more classist than anything. The reggaetoneros are viewed as thugs and neardowells, when in fact, most are just young kids among the desperate and needy whom San Judas is supposed to protect. Albeit with airbrushed and rhinestone caps.
One Facebook fan site, is filled with pictures tagged with racist and mean captions and comments. Odiamos a todos los reggaetoneros ke van a la iglesia de San Judas los 28′s (We hate the reggaeton fans who go to the San Judas church on the 28ths) has over 4,000 fans.
You can see a few of its mocking portraits below, and after the jump. There tends to be special distaste for reggaeton’s doggy dance or perreo that the kids do.
Go over to Camilo’s blog to read the whole post and see the pics (he really dug up some digital gems), but I can’t resist sharing this mashup of San Judas and Yandel –
And since I stay steady scratching the surface of what reggaeton means in Mexico City — how it figures in DF’s noisy, charged soundscape — I’ll have to come to a close with a few telling jokes culled from Camilo’s web wanderings. I’m not sure about the particular provenance of these (i.e., was the author posting them writing from DF?). But the way they simply cut-n-paste several classist cliches suggests that reggaeton, despite its uptake in places like Polanco, remains strongly anchored to images of poverty, crime, and lack of education:
Que le dices a un reggaetonero con trabajo? / Me puedes dar mas papas fritas?
(What do you say to a reggaetonero with a job? / Can you give me more fries?)
Que le dices a un reggaetonero en traje y corbata? / Que el acusado que se ponga de pie porfavor.
(What do you say to a reggaetonero in suit and tie? / Will the defendant please stand.)
2 reggaetoneros en un auto, no se oye musica a todo volumen. Quien conduce? / Un policia.
(2 reggaetoneros in a car; you do not hear music at full volume. Who’s driving? / A cop.)
Bringing it back home, this page, which includes the jokes above, even offers a list of places “where you can encounter a reggaetonero” in Mexico City:
>>>> DONDE ENCUENTRAS A UN REGGAETOÑERO <<<<
*LOS DIAS 28 EN REFORMA. LLENDO A VER A SN JUDITAS
*EN EL METRO O EN LOS TRANSBORDES DEL METRO ESPERANDO A ROBARTE TUS PERTENENCIAS
*AFUERA DE SUS VECINDADES
*EN MOTONETA CAZANDO GENTE
*TRABAJANDO DE COMERCIANTE EN EL CENTRO
*TRABAJANDO DE MICROBUSERO
*TRABAJANDO DE VAGONERO
*EN LA CALLE ROBANDO
*DE PORRO EN ALGUNA FIESTA
*JUGANDO FUTBOL SIN PLAYERA AFUERA DE SU CASA
Given such an evocative map, I clearly need to return to DF once more and see what I can hear while riding a minibus or getting robbed on the street.
Since I’m in a syllabus sharing mood, I figured I should finally get around to posting the one I put together in Spring 2008 for a course on “Global Hip-hop.” A series of case studies examining how hip-hop travels outside the US, what it carries with it, and how people adapt its forms to their own ends, it was a hugely fun class to teach, and I was thrilled by the response at Brandeis. (At 150 students — which is where we finally capped enrollment — it was easily the biggest class I’ve taught, as well as the largest that Music or AAAS had hosted in years.) I’m sorry that I can’t include here all the audio and video that we reviewed (never mind pdfs), but poke around the webz and you’ll find lots of the examples referenced in the readings, as well as many of the articles themselves.
Wayne Marshall
Florence Levy Kay Fellow
Music / African and Afro-American Studies
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Over the past several years, hip-hop has been heralded as a global phenomenon and an American export par excellence. Although a flurry of books, articles, and college classes have begun to examine the cultural, social, and political significance of hip-hop’s worldwide resonance, studies of the genre rarely focus on the specific ways that hip-hop travels, how it is engaged, represented, reproduced, and changed in various locales around the world, and how it animates local cultural politics despite carrying such strong, and sometimes contradictory, connotations of what it means to be American and African-American. This course considers hip-hop as itself constituted by international movements and exchanges and as a product that circulates globally in complex ways, cast variously as American, African-American, and/or black, and recast through the cultural logics of the new spaces it enters, the new soundscapes it permeates.
A host of questions arise in considering the scope and significance of global hip-hop: What does the genre, in its various forms (audio, video, sartorial, etc.), carry with it outside the US? What do people bring to it in new local contexts? How are American ideologies of race and nation mediated by hip-hop’s global reach? Why do some global (which is to say, local) hip-hop scenes fasten onto the genre’s politics of place and community, of struggle and opposition to the status quo, while others appear more enamored with hip-hop’s portrayal of personal gain, hustler archetypes, and conspicuous consumption? How do hip-hop scenes differ from North to South America, North to South Africa, Europe to Asia? What threads unite them?
In pursuit of such questions, we will read across the emerging literature on global hip-hop as we also explore the growing resources available via the internet, where websites and blogs, MySpace and YouTube and the like, appear to be facilitating a further florescence of international (and peer-to-peer) exchanges around hip-hop. We will consider a number of case studies of hip-hop scenes around the world as well as closely related (and sometimes antagonistic) musical/stylistic offshoots and hybrids, including: Puerto Rico (reggaeton), Brazil (funk carioca), England (grime), South Africa (kwaito), Tanzania (bongo flava), Jamaica (dancehall), Germany, Japan, Kenya, Cuba, Morocco/France, and Australia. We will also examine the international roots of hip-hop in multicultural New York and how American hip-hop figures the foreign (as in “orientalist” gestures and other sonic representations of otherness). Larger themes to be explored include postcolonialism and globalization, mass media and migration, race and nation.
MAIN SOURCES
Basu, Dipannita and Sidney J. Lemelle, eds. The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005.
Condry, Ian. Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Forman, Murray and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Mitchell, Tony, ed. Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
20% - Class Attendance and Participation: all students are expected to attend all class meetings and to participate in discussions, especially in Thursday sections
40% - Weekly Wikipedia Edits: each week students will make a small but substantive edit or addition to a Wikipedia article related to course materials. Students will also post a brief note to an open thread on LATTE explaining what they have done and why.
40% - Final Paper: a 10-15 page essay investigating a hip-hop scene outside the US: what representations exist and/or frame the scene’s narrative, how does the global/local dynamic play out, how does it compare to other places, etc.
CLASS CALENDAR
Week 1: Introduction & a Brief History of Hip-hop’s Roots in Multicultural New York
Kelley, Robin D.G. “Foreward.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. By Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, xi-xvii. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
Mitchell, Tony. “Introduction: Another Root—Hip-hop Outside the USA.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 1- 38. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
Chang, Jeff. “Inventos Hip-Hop: An Interview with Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.” In Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, ed. Jeff Chang, 255-261. New York: BasicCivitas / Perseus Books, 2006.
_______. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation. New York: St. Martins Press, 2005. (Chapters 1-4.)
Flores, Juan. “Puerto Rocks: Rap, Roots, and Amnesia.” In That’s the Joint!: The Hip-hop Studies Reader, 69-86. New York; London: Routledge, 2004.
Hebdige, Dick. “Rap and Hip-hop: The New York Connection.” In That’s the Joint!: The Hip-hop Studies Reader, 223-232. New York; London: Routledge, 2004.
Patterson, Orlando. “Ecumenical America: Global Culture and the American Cosmos.” World Policy Journal 11(2): 103-17 (1994).
Thomas, Deborah. “Modern Blackness; or, Theoretical ‘Tripping’ on Black Vernacular Culture.” In Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica, 230-62. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004.
Kenner, Rob. “Dancehall,” In The Vibe History of Hip-hop, ed. Alan Light, 350-7. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999.
Marshall, Wayne. “Bling-bling for Rastafari: How Jamaicans Deal with Hip-hop.” Social and Economic Studies 55: 1 & 2 (2006): 49- 74.
_______. “Follow Me Now: The Zigzagging Zunguzung Meme” .
Week 3: Hip-hop, Reggae, and Reggaeton in Puerto Rico
Negrón-Muntaner, Frances and Raquel Z. Rivera, “Reggaeton Nation.” NACLA News. 17 December 2007.
Flores, Juan. 2004. “Creolité in the ‘Hood: Diaspora as Source and Challenge.” Centro 16, no. 2 (Fall): 283-289.
Giovannetti, Jorge L. “Popular Music and Culture in Puerto Rico: Jamaican and Rap Music as Cross-Cultural Symbols.” In Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in the Americas, ed. Frances R. Aparicio and Cándida F. Jáquez, 81-98. New York: Palgrave, 2003.
Marshall, Wayne. “From Música Negra to Reggaeton Latino.” In Reading Reggaeton (forthcoming, Duke University Press).
Week 4: Hip-hop vs. Reggaeton in Cuba
Pacini-Hernández, Deborah and Reebee Garofalo. “Hip Hop in Havana: Rap, Race and National Identity in Contemporary Cuba.” Journal for Popular Music Studies, 2000: 1-41.
_______. 2006. “La Habana que no conoces: Cuban rap and the social construction of urban space.” Ethnomusicology Forum 15, no. 2: 215-46.
_______. 2008. “The Politics of Dancing.” In Reading Reggaeton (forthcoming, Duke University Press).
Fairley, Jan. 2008. “How To Make Love With Your Clothes On: Dancing Regeton, Gender and Sexuality in Cuba.” In Reading Reggaeton (forthcoming, Duke University Press).
Wunderlich, Annelise. “Cuban Hip-hop: Making Space for New Voices of Dissent.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. By Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 167-79. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Eli. Inventos: Hip Hop Cubano. DVD. (2003)
Week 5: Hip-hop vs. Funk in Brazil
Behague, Gerard. “Rap, Reggae, Rock, or Samba: The Local and the Global in Brazilian Popular Music (1985-95).” Latin American Music Review 27, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2006): 79-90.
Sansone, Livio. “The Localization of Global Funk in Bahia and Rio.” In Brazilian Popular Music & Globalization, 135-60. London: Routledge, 2002.
Yúdice, George. “The Funkification of Rio.” In Microphone Fiends, 193-220. London: Routledge, 1994.
Stanley-Niaah, Sonjah. “Mapping of Black Atlantic Performance Geographies: From Slave Ship to Ghetto.” In Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, ed. by Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods, 193-217. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007.
Magubane, Zine. “Globalization and Gangster Rap: Hip Hop in the Post-Apartheid City.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. By Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 208-29. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
Ariefdien, Shaheen and Nazli Abrahams. “Cape Flats Academy: Hip-Hop Arts in South Africa.” In Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, ed. Jeff Chang, 262-70. New York: BasicCivitas / Perseus Books, 2006.
Lemelle, Sidney J. “‘Ni wapi Tunakwenda’: Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. By Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
Rebensdorf, Alicia. “‘Representing the Real’: Exploring Appropriations of Hip-hop Culture in the Internet and Nairobi.” Senior Thesis, Lewis & Clark. http://lclark.edu/~soan/alicia/rebensdorf.101.html
Ferguson, James. “Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New World Society.’” Cultural Anthropology 17, no. 4 (2002): 551-569.
Wanguhu, Michael. Hip Hop Colony: The Hip Hop Explosion in Africa. DVD. (2005)
Week 8: Postcolonial UK Soundclash: Hip-hop, Reggae, Grime, and Bhangra
Gilroy, Paul. “It’s a Family Affair.” In That’s the Joint!: The Hip- hop Studies Reader, 87-94. New York; London: Routledge, 2004.
Hesmondhalgh, David and Caspar Melville. “Urban Breakbeat Culture: Repercussions of Hip-Hop in the United Kingdom.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 86-110. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
Sharma, Sanjay. “Noisy Asians or ‘Asian Noise’?” In Disorienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music, ed. Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk, and Ashwani Sharma, 32-57. London: Zed Books, 1996.
Week 9: Hip-hop and Raï in France / North Africa
Gross, Joan, David McMurray, and Ted Swedenburg. “Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap, and Franco-Maghrebi Identities.” Diaspora 3:1 (1994): 3- 39. [Reprinted in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, ed. by Jonathan Xavier and Renato Rosaldo, 198-230. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.]
Swedenburg, Ted. “Islamic Hip-hop vs. Islamophobia.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 57-85. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
Prevos, Andre J. M. “Postcolonial Popular Music in France: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the 1980s and 1990s.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 39-56. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
Helenon, Veronique. “Africa on Their Mind: Rap, Blackness, and Citizenship in France.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. By Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 151-66. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
Meghelli, Samir. “Interview with Youcef (Intik).” In Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness, ed. by James G. Spady, H. Samy Alim, and Samir Meghelli. 656-67. Philadelphia: Black History Museum Publishers, 2006.
Week 10: Hip-hop in Germany
Bennett, Andy. “Hip-Hop am Main, Rappin’ on the Tyne: Hip-hop Culture as a Local Construct in Two European Cities.” In That’s the Joint!: The Hip-hop Studies Reader, 177-200. New York; London: Routledge, 2004.
Pennay, Mark. “Rap in Germany: The Birth of a Genre.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 111-134. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
Brown, Timothy S. “‘Keeping it Real’ in a Different ‘Hood: (African-) Americanization and Hip-hop in Germany.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. By Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 137-50. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
Week 11: Hip-hop in Japan
Condry, Ian. Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Wood, Joe. “The Yellow Negro.” Transition 73 (“The White Issue”): 40-67.
Week 12: Hip-hop in Australia and the Pacific
Maxwell, Ian. “Sydney Stylee: Hip-Hop Down Under Comin’ Up.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, ed. Tony Mitchell, 259-79. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
Mitchell, Tony. “Kia Kaha! (Be Strong!): Maori and Pacific Islander Hip-hop in Aotearoa-New Zealand.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, ed. Tony Mitchell, 280-305. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
Henderson, April K. “Dancing Between Islands: Hip Hop and the Samoan Diaspora.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. By Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 180-199. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
I’ve written a lot here about the “riddim method,” a cheeky term suggested by my co-author Peter Manuel to describe a well-worn practice (and in the case of our article, a distinctly Jamaican version of it). We jest, but we’re serious. In short, what we try to explain is an approach to musical materials as shared/public/communal resources which people feel a certain license to riff on, reinvent, rearrange, remix — an approach sharpened and modernized in some special ways in the soundsystem<->studio industry-ecology of L20C Kingston, and an approach long gone global via reggae’s own migrations not to mention as absorbed and additionally broadcast by hip-hop, house, jungle, garage, grime, you name it.
But just because people participate in riddim/remix culture doesn’t mean they aren’t quick to turn the screws of copyright when it suits them. As Peter and I note in our article and as Larisa’s thesis will no doubt illuminate in lots of nuanced detail, plenty of reggae artists, musicians, and producers have sued each other over the years over allegedly unauthorized examples of plagiarism or infringement or tiefing.
Take Nando Boom, for instance, one of the Panamanian pioneers of dancehall reggaespañol. My co-editor-y-compi, Raquel, told me many months ago that Sñr Boom was suing Don Omar (as well as Wisin y Yandel and their producers) for the unauthorized use of elements from his “Enfermo de Amor” in their relatively successful single, “MySpace” (a song initially discussed here way back when). So thanks to Raq for putting it on my radar, though I’ve been steadily wondering — even while sitting on a draft of this post — what’s been happening with the suit. In that regard, I gotta thank my tweep Tito for letting me know yesterday that the case was recently settled, at least between Nando Boom and Don Omar.
Indeed, it apparently was announced earlier this month that Sñr Boom was withdrawing “counterfeit charges” against Don Omar and would accept his $100k offer as “bastante” despite having turned up his nose at it for about a year and a half (he initially demanded a sum in the millions and is still waiting on W&Y to “square up”).
When I discussed “MySpace” back in June 2007, what I appreciated about it was the brief moments when Don Omar performs a retro style reggae/ton flow —
We hear a number of signposts of the new reggaeton — state-of-the-art synths, emotive harmonic progression, dembow loops — but we also hear a nostalgia for “old school” stylee in a few retro interludes (e.g., around 1:10, 2:10), complete with throw-back, flip-tongue rapping by Don Omar over a crunchy, skanking, digi-reggae loop (though I can’t quite place it) –
Jace was quick to note that the riddim itself seemed to be a version of “Night Nurse,” and about that he was right. What neither of us caught at the time was that Omar was actually directly alluding to — really, re-performing — a central phrase from Nando Boom’s own version of “Night Nurse” (and it’s worth noting that a good number of Boom’s songs, including his own big hits, have been covers of Jamaican dancehall recordings):
While taking more departures than Arzu’s siempre fiel (save for Spanish) “Amor” — including, of course, the very melody / flow and lyrics that Don Omar recites — Nando Boom’s song is itself quite audibly a version of Gregory Isaac’s rubadub classic, employing the Night Nurse riddim as well as some of Isaac’s vocal melodies (and, yeah, underlying medical conceit). Doing what Omar does in “MySpace” or what Nando does on “Enfermo” — i.e., inserting a musical mnemonic, invoking a familiar phrase — is not merely commonplace but arguably central to the poetics of reggae and its many musical kin. (Can I get a zunguzungung?)
Call it quotation, homage, allusion — we have lots of words for this sort of thing (including, I’m afraid, “interpolation,” which is an attempt to bend language & culture to the demands of commerce & its legal armature). So while there’s no disputing that Don Omar has, in a word, “copied” something from Nando Boom, there’s no way that Sñr Boom himself can avoid the same charge on the very song for which he is claiming ownership. (Or just about any other song in his “catalog,” to risk reifying another recording industry concept.)
“Defamation”? Oh man, could the litigiousness get any more specious? (I better watch my mouth though, don’t?)
To his credit, Omar has essentially gone the genteel route, proclaiming himself a “caballero” all along, apologizing throughout, offering praise and respect for Nando, and offering $100k in recompense. Actually, it’s not clear how much they eventually settled for. Nando Boom will only say it’s “bastante”; he won’t specify p/q “hay secuestradores” (kidnappers).
Now, I’m not saying that Sñr Boom didn’t pay some serious dues. I feel too that, in some sense — indeed, in the same sense that applies to the pioneers of hip-hop who never got to profit from its eventual global commercial triumph — dude deserves some “reggaeton money,” if you know what I’m saying. Despite his seminal contributions to the genre, Nando Boom never made the kind of cheese that these guys have. And maybe that’s what Don Omar’s magnanimous settlement is nodding to. Still, I don’t know about shaking down random infringers participants in riddim/remix/REGGAE culture.
Among other things, it just adds to bad precedent — and I don’t mean actual legal precedent, since this never went to court, and I’m not really sure about the wider implications of a Panamanian ruling about reggae copyright infringement (except that it could be bad for a lot of Panamanian reggae artists) — I’m talking about how bad faith behavior can have chilling effects on an immense, international, interlocked system of peer-to-peer cultural norms.
I hope Wisin y Yandel and the producers of the song continue to stand their ground. Or maybe just break dude off with a micro-writing credit or something, if that’s what he’s getting at. That seems fair enough, especially if it can be dialed down to the degree to which his so-called “property” animates the song — good luck trying to calculate that, folks.
I can understand if the bad blood / press might have itself felt like bastante to Omar, but I still can’t believe he didn’t go to court over this. Would it really have cost him $100k in lawyers’ fees? (Did they really make that kinda dough with “MySpace”?) Then again, given that the Panamanian courts had apparently granted Nando Boom’s request to arrest Don Omar and Wisin y Yandel should they ever come to Panama (see last para here), who knows whether he could have beaten the charge. In a US trial, I think he might be able to make a decent argument, despite that I don’t have great faith in this country’s legal system when it comes to policing musical practice. But when the issue becomes a question of national patrimony (even if that so-called patrimony is also Jamaican), tensions can really flare.
As I’ve been noting for a while, this sort of geographical enmity / argument among reggaeton’s “stakeholders” (i.e., would-be stockholders) — in particular between Panama and Puerto Rico — animates a great deal of online discourse about reggaeton, and my chapter in the reggaeton book was an attempt to speak to and sort out the various claims. Ultimately, I try to show the various and distinctive ways that each node in the network — Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, New York — have done their part to shape what we now call reggaeton. Clearly, not enough people have read it ;)
Nearly every blogpost, news article, and vaguely related YouTube video have played host to strongly jingoistic arguments about who is owed what in this case. See, for example, the comments from one particularly UNHINGED fellow on that blogpost about Tego pointing out Boom’s hypocrisy –
CARLITO EL PANAMENO is practically calling for his gente to receive reparations from reggaeton. But shouldn’t that open the floodgates of such claims? Should reggae and hip-hop artists, in turn, shake down their legion interpreters in Panama and Puerto Rico alike? I mean, if that’s the game, better be prepared to play by those rules. If it’s true that, as is alleged, Hector El Father decided to drop a dime on Omar + W&Y, I wonder whether Nando Boom should worry about someone making a call to the Cool Ruler.
I suspect some dear readers out there, much as they like me, are getting sick of seeing my bristly face when they load the page, so I figured I’d get something else up here at the top, though I don’t have time for a proper post right now. One thing about those beard shots — ok, 2 things — 1) somepeople like em; 2) you can’t exactly call me a typical navel-gazing blogger now, can you?
As for placeholders, I’ve got a couple good ones per ongoing conversations in the comments.
The first comes c/o “Acid Washed Genes,” where we’ve been having a pretty lively discussion of “gypsy” signifiers, balkan beats, and nu-whirled politricks. Special shoutout to Joro-boro who, among other gems, posted a link to the following video, about which he writes —
It is kolbasti and according to my Turkish friends it is a style of music and dance originating from the Laz communities in the Trabzon area.
In addition to it being kolbasti, I would add that it is awesome:
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The second is just a thought, inspired by some reportage c/o Marlon and Tito, who both have noticed a number of English language pop/club songs drifting into formerly Spanish-only (if not reggaeton-only) playlists. It’s easy enough to blame Pitbull alone for that, but I think the responsibility might actually lie with reggaeton itself. I have been thinking, for some time now, that reggaeton was remarkable for making space in Anglo media for Spanish language music, but I might have gotten it totally wrong: instead, reggaeton has made it safe for English language pop/club music to work its way into formerly Spanish-only spaces. Maybe the genre’s anti-imperialist detractors were right all along? Reggaeton: making the Latin world safe for Ke$ha.
I don’t have a video for that, but I do have a reggaetony YooToob which people seem intent to send my way. I wonder whether it will rub you as wrongly as it rubs me.
[Since we're talking about reggaeton again, and about the absence/return of dembow, it seems like a good moment to repatriate the following riddimmeth0d post from early 2006. The post, a complement to an article on reggaeton I wrote for the Boston Phoenix, features a mix which uses the dembow drumloop to string the songs together, most of which represent the sound of the genre during its mid-decade heyday. For more mixxage along these lines, see also: Dem Bow Dem, a mix of "Dem Bow" cover versions (as opposed to songs which only gesture to the dembow rhythmically or timbrally). This was initially posted on 19 January 2006, almost 4 years ago to the day!]
to accompany my piece on reggaeton (with sidebar!) in this week’s phoenix, i’ve put together a mix intended to demonstrate just how deep the dem bow runs through contemporary reggaeton (as well as to establish some sonic links to jamaican dancehall and to other styles).
the sonic-social-symbolic connections here are multiple, myriad. though one can try and try to convey them in prose, sometimes hearing them is really the best way. and that’s what the riddim method’s all about (for me anyhow): letting the music do the talking.
so let’s get to the sounds in question, but permit me just a couple of notes to orient your attention to what you’ll be hearing.
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it almost makes no sense to make a “dem bow mix” of reggaeton songs since the vast majority of reggaeton songs appear to feature some element of the inspiring, originary riddim. (and i’m not exagerrating when i say the vast majority.) thus, to make a reggaeton mix is to make a dem bow mix, and vice versa. that’s how inextricable the two are. the dem bow is reggaeton’s rhythmic DNA, a constant feature of the genre’s rhythmtexturtimbre, performing a function somewhere between ‘amen’ and clave. rather than boiling the blood of copyrighters, such use should prove a demonstration of the degree to which a vast world of derivative works can emerge from the creative sampling of recorded music, but which would not be possible – or conceivable even – without an utter disregard for, disrespect for, and disagreement with (american “international”) copyright law.
in the mix i’ve posted here, you’ll hear many appearances of dem bow, including more subtle, textural uses of the percussive loop as well as riddims that really foreground it. moreover, just for good measure, i often add an additional layer of the dem bow (in various versions) to thread pieces together, though a close examination will reveal the riddim already lurking in most of the tracks i’ve selected here. finally, as might be expected, i’ve also cooked up a couple specials and some little segments that i hope prove interesting.
i begin with the dem bow riddim itself (an “original” instrumental version, technically, as one would find on any one of a number of reggaeton “beats” CDs), overlayed with some clips from the BBC/”the world” radio program which aired last summer and featured some interview clips and beatboxing boom-chicking from yours truly. i like the way the mainstream media “hype” comes across here, complete with mis-pronunciations (“reggae-tawn”) and slight exaggeration. from there, we move into shabba ranks’s “dem bow,” the hit which propelled the dem bow riddim to NY, PR, and beyond. i don’t really want to get into the implications here of an entire genre essentially emerging from something that draws such stark lines in the sand, but suffice it to say that shabba’s thematic focus on “dem bow” is consistent with a lot of reggae (and some reggaeton): it’s anti-gay, anti-oral-sex, anti-imperialist.
the latter point – shabba’s pro-black stance against colonial(ist) oppression – points us to an interesting, and often overlooked, irony: that the dem bow is closely related to another dancehall riddim, the poco man jam, created by steelie&clevie in 1990, essentially “re-licked” (and tweaked) by bobby digital for shabba’s “dem bow,” and associated with and juggled alongside each other ever since. of course, “poco” in this case refers to the afro-jamaican religion, pocomania (alt. pukkumina), but i can’t help hearing a strong resonance with another meaning of poco. reggaeton’s relationship to race is something that has gone pretty unexamined in all of this coverage, so that’s another dimension – linked as it is to circumstances in the post-colonial americas – which i attempted to address, if only briefly, in my article for the phoenix.
after the dem bow/poco man section (including tunes by gregory peck, cutty ranks, and super cat), we hear panamanian founding-figure el general performing “son bow,” his traduccion of shabba’s “dem bow,” and from there, we get into the real deal: some PR-reppin’ from tony touch to kick it off, followed by some early, ruff-n-ready sounds from ivy queen. once we get into the reggaeton songs, we essentially thread our way through various “big chunes” that employ the dem bow, making a couple detours as we go: we hear how reggaeton producers nod to contemporary hip-hop as we segue from “el tiburon” to the busta rhymes song that seemingly inspired its chord-progression (as well as a dubplate-version by kingston-based DJ scrum dilly); there’s a section devoted to “juggling” over what we might think of as the gasolina riddim (for luny tunes appear to approach their riddims much like, say, lenky approached the diwali and steelie&clevie approached the poco man); and finally we close with two mini-mixes, the first devoted to bachataton or reggaetonchata or whatever they’re calling the increasingly common mixture of reggaeton and bachata (actually, i think they’re calling it reggaeton, and genres like bachata may be in serious danger of being eaten by reggaeton), the second devoted to some salsa-drenched remixes, including one of my own, connecting el gran combo’s “ojos chinos” to the tego song that alludes to it.
that – and the tracklist below – should be enough to give you a handle on all of this (si no ya lo tienes). ojala que hope you dig. if you do, go out and get yerself some reggaeton today. (i recommend these.)
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tracklist:
Dem Bow intro: BBC “The World” excerpts
Shabba Ranks, “Dem Bow”
Gregory Peck, “Poco Man Jam”
Cutty Ranks, “Retreat”
Super Cat, “Nuff Man a Dead”
Shabba Ranks, “Dem Bow”
El General, “Son Bow”
Tony Touch, “Pa’ Que Tu Lo Sepa”
Ivy Queen, “Yo Soy La Queen”
Tony Touch ft. Nina Sky, “Play That Song”
Wisin & Yandel, “Rakata”
Alexis, Fido, & Baby Ranks, “El Tiburon”
Busta Rhymes, “Break Ya Neck” (w&w dembow mix)
Scrum Dilly, “Nah Go Stray (dubplate)” (w&w dembow mix)
Hector “El Bambino,” “Dale Castigo”
Daddy Yankee, “Dale Caliente”
Daddy Yankee, “Cojela Que Va Sin Jockey”
Ivy Queen, “Marroneo”
Daddy Yankee, “King Daddy”
Tony Touch ft. Lisa M, “Toca Me La”
Daddy Yankee, “Gasolina”
Don Omar ft. N.O.R.E., “Reggaeton Latino (remix)”
Don Omar, “Dile”
K Mill, “Metele Perro”
Ivy Queen, “La Mala”
Pitbull, Master Joe, & O.G. Black, “Mil Amores”
Ivy Queen, “Te He Querido, Te He Llorado”
Tego Calderon, “Metele Sazon”
Tego Calderon, “Dominicana”
El Gran Combo, “Ojos Chinos” (w&w dembow mix)
Daddy Yankee, “Sabor A Melao”
Dem Bow outro (Shabba Ranks vs. El General)
Ok, back to reggaeton. So, once again, back to questions of vitality and vocality. Or, how it’s doing and for whom & from whence it speaks.
one way of looking at the “reggaeton” “crash” (and recovery?)
I was tickled to see Birdseed name reggaeton genre of the year for 2009, fully contra Gavin’s provocative post about the genre’s crash. If one is not persuaded by Birdseed’s praise of reggaeton’s post-dembow turn to synthy club beats (right alongside, let’s note, its longtime main sources: hip-hop and dancehall), the real proof in the pudding is Dominican dembow, but more on that below…
First, a couple other items relating to reggaeton’s urbanity, if you will. This is gonna get a little meta, but my post about Gavin’s post resulted in a post by Marisol which got cross-posted to Racialicious, where it generated an intense and interesting conversation about Calle 13, reggaeton, and transnational racial politics, among other things. Marisol’s central argument riffs off something I wrote in my response to Gavin:
Wayne makes a good point that “música urbana” basically functions as a (seemingly sexier and less scary euphemism) for reggaeton’s old moniker of “música negra.” So it’s interesting to me that reggaeton’s resident blanquito has appointed himself the gatekeeper of said race music. … I’m curious about the work that placing a blanquito at the center of “música urbana” does. For sure it makes the music palatable to the a wider audience, as so many blanquitos have crossed-over “race musics” in the past. But I think the work that Calle 13 very clearly does is “fuel fantasies about reggaetons inherent latinidad,” as Wayne points out in his chapter “From Música Negra to Reggaeton Latino” in Reggaeton (Duke UP). There is something appealing to the many music critics who have profiled the group in their brand of Latin World music, something in stark contrast with the repetitive samples and versioning of Black music that is central to many other reggaeton acts.
I recommend that anyone interested in reggaeton and race read the entire exchange.
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As it happens, I was asked recently to write another dictionary blurb, an entry for Calle 13. Trying to sum up an act like Calle 13 is difficult even with the 9000 or so words tossed around on that Racialicious post, but I only had 200. In light of the conversation at Racialicious, I found Calle 13’s polarization of the reggaeton audience (never mind of their peers in so-called música urbana) difficult to leave out. Here’s what I came up with (exceeding word limit a little) –
Calle 13 is a Puerto Rican hip-hop group comprising two step-brothers, René Pérez Joglar (b. 23 February 1978), better known as Residente, the group’s acid tongued vocalist, and Eduardo José Cabra Martínez (b. 10 September 1978), aka Visitante, a producer who brings together a diverse sonic palette using synthesizers, samples, and live instrumentation while drawing from reggaeton, cumbia, electro and a variety of other genres. The group hails from San Juan, named after street on which Residente grew up. Prior to their debut album, they garnered attention with “Querido F.B.I.,” a blistering critique of the assassination of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, longtime leader of the pro-independence movement. Distributed freely over the Internet, the song made Calle 13 a household name in Puerto Rico. Brimming with sarcasm and satire, Calle 13 initially posed as an alternative reggaeton group working within as they subverted the genre’s conventions; in recent years they have distanced themselves from reggaeton, preferring the broader label, música urbana. Thanks especially to Residente’s irreverent, sexually explicit and “vulgar” lyrics and pointed political statements, Calle 13 courts controversy, especially among Puerto Rican elites, as they enjoy a remarkable degree of commercial and critical success, including almost a dozen Latin Grammys. Their popularity notwithstanding, Calle 13’s reception as the poster boys of música urbana has been colored by resentment over their whiteness, class privilege, and disproportionate acclaim.
I still have time to edit this, incidentally, so if you feel strongly about the word choice or what gets put in vs. left out, I’m all ears.
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Curiously, a few years before “música urbana” became the new industry term, the media had already announced the dawn and dusk of the “hurban” era — a term given to the new formats adopted (and, before too long, dropped) by such radio franchises as La Kalle, centered on reggaeton but also including Spanish-language rap, r&b, NYC-based bachata and other styles that could be confidently classed as hispanic-urban. I corresponded recently with a student working on a paper about the rise and fall of “hurban,” or as they described the project:
I am currently interested in the mass proliferation of “hurban” media outlets during 2004-2006, and their eventual demise from mainstream radio. Basically, I hope to analysis why “mainstream” Reggaeton, a la N.O.R.E.’s Oye Mi Canto and Daddy yankee’s Gasolina, has “fallen off,” so to speak, of the mainstream U.S. media circuit.
So if you can answer some of these questions, that would be so helpful:
Why do you think Reggaeton and the “hurban” radio station phenomena failed to hold a spot in the mainstream media? Was it a backlash from Anglo-audiences, who were quick to jump on the catchy Reggaeton bandwagon but soon decided they did not really understand the music? Or was it a feeling from the young Latino demographic that the music “sold out” to corporate interests?
Or, was it simply the repetitive nature of the music (use of dem-bow, “copycat” artists, similar lyrics) no longer attracted the same attention?
Do you think there will be a resurgence of Reggaeton in the mainstream pop music circuit?
These are interesting questions, if familiar. I was happy to hazard some answers, though once again, I’d be eager to hear from people who have other evidence or narratives to offer. Here’s what I replied:
I think one thing that needs to be put into context is how much the “hurban” marketing angle was a relatively contained (if well hyped) experiment on the part of major media conglomerates like Clear Channel and Univision. If we understand it as an exercise in top-down, corporate branding — as opposed to grassroots demand, regardless of the extent to which it sought to tap into that — then it becomes easier to explain the sudden abandonment of the format when it failed to meet high expectations.
Another thing to note is that the question of the rise and fall of “hurban” is separate from the question of reggaeton’s fleeting heyday in the Anglo mainstream; hurban format stations were not pitched at Anglo listeners. On the other hand, reggaeton’s receding from mainstream urban radio and MTV (where it maintains a marginal presence, but a presence all the same) and the failure of the “hurban” format might have the same root cause(s), as you imply. My sense is that a certain lack of interest in reggaeton/hurban was less about an Anglo lack of comprehension or a Latino disenchantment with the corporatization of the genre, and more with a sense of saturation and sameness: at the height of reggaeton’s (mainstream/media) popularity, radio DJs and major record labels were pulling from a relatively small pool of hits and artists, and the Luny Tunes sound was so dominant — and momentarily successful — that it crowded out other approaches. I think a lot of people just got bored.
That said, it’s worth noting that reggaeton — or whatever one wants to call it (and it’s telling that “música urbana,” not so different from “hurban” as labels go, has become the latest umbrella term for the music) — continues to offer a fair amount of variety to listeners willing to seek it out. I’m not sure what it will be called the next time there is a resurgence of Spanish-language dance-pop in the mainstream pop circuit, but I’m quite confident that we’ll hear that sort of thing again. The underlying reasons for reggaeton’s mid-decade explosion — burgeoning Latino demographics in the US, savvy music entrepreneurs, a timely stylistic overlap with contemporary club music — are factors that remain very much in play.
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In the other corner of reggaeton’s big tent, across from the slick commercial stuff that fills-out Birdseed’s YouTube queue and aspires to radio spins and TV airings (and, yes, YouTube views) — the stuff that Jace more or less dubs music for airports — is Dominican dembow, an exceedingly local (if also diasporic / virtual) reanimation of reggaeton’s former (and formative) sound. In a somewhat surprising and awesome move, the DR’s hip-hop scene has embraced PR’s mid-90s underground aesthetic — the stuff of Playero and The Noise mixtapes — fullup of samples from classic (that is, early-mid 90s) dancehall riddims like Bam Bam and Drum Song, rubikscube beats shuffling the same snares, hats, and hits into an endless array of colorful configurations.
The poster child track for Dominican dembow is the bizarre and unforgettable “Pépe.” But I highly recommend the mixes by DJ Scuff (the first of which includes samples from “Pépe”) –
I’m particularly struck by how these productions resonate with Marisol’s questions about sampling & reggaeton’s racial politics — questions raised, notably, not just by DR dembow but by PR’s ‘regreso’ acts as well):
Is it time to think of sampling practices within reggaeton as an overtly political act? Is sampling consciously hailing an audience and interpolating the performer and audience in a specific genre?
I often wonder how much these theories about sample-riffic music and memory/signification require particularly active, engaged, and perhaps cognocentric (?) modes of listening, though we might posit — especially with the sorts of samples recycled in (proto/regreso) reggaeton / Dominican dembow (i.e., largely, short percussive sounds with distinctive timbres) — that there are modes of embodied (and perhaps even what Adorno would call regressive) listening that also, in their own ways, involve forms of musical memory. At any rate, that this practice is happening at the producerly level is remarkable in its own right.
Along those lines, I want to note that the 2nd DJ Scuff video embedded above contains a sample of the infamous DR-diasporic YouTube hit, “Watagatapitusberry” (about which, start with Marisol’s post from last October). One reason this is interesting is that it folds a track with no overt sonic references to reggaeton directly into the dembow diaspora. It makes me think that, in some ways, we may as well think of “Watagatapitusberry” and “Pépe” and even DR kids posting jerkin videos as all of-a-piece. We needn’t call that piece reggaeton (which marks another moment, another layer of activity, perhaps), and I don’t think música urbana says it any better.
More important than giving all this seemingly related activity a name is to note that the efflorescence of shared referents and practices, all this artful work of technological reproduction (to refix Benjamin for our labor/leisure effacing age), continues unabated outside the corporate mediasphere (that is, if things like YouTube can exist outside of that; I’m not sure they can). This vibrant shared and co-produced culture thrives on overlapping publics networked by language, diaspora, dance, Facebook, and filesharing. This is the point that I try to underscore whenever I get asked about the so-called reggaeton crash — if we only look to corporate radio, to the formal commercial sphere, for measures of music’s vitality, we may well overlook the lion’s share of what’s happening. Que fue indeed.
Like I try to do with most fruits of my labors, I’m liberating some recent words of mine here (shhh!), composed last week for a relatively well-consulted (by music grad students?) music “dictionary.” It’s likely that none of you will read them otherwise, not that you’d necessarily want to. (I’ve received requests to share, however, having tweeted about the inherentchallenges.)
Boiling down any subject into so few words seems an intrinsically painful, reductive enterprise. At the same time, it’s also a semi-enjoyable task in the way that any thing which challenges you can be.
I was asked to write a 500 word description of reggaeton and 200 word profiles of Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Ivy Queen, and Tego. I agreed for a few reasons. For one, the challenge. For two, the relative (and I mean RELATIVE) prestige of contributing to a widely recognized publication. For three, and this is the most important: because I care a lot about representations of reggaeton, esp how the genre animates rather heated debates about national/racial/ethnic identity.
That said, I don’t know to what extent these encyclopedia entries will have any impact at all on how people think about and tell the stories of reggaeton. Our (very!) forthcoming book is a lot more likely to be read. But these may have a greater chance of “getting out there” now that I’ve put them on the web. (Wha gwaan, Wikimaniacs?)
At any rate, here they are. Don’t hate me p/q I’m concise. I HAD TO BE. Why don’t you give it a shot? Edited and alternate versions invited in the comments ;) PLZ STICK TO WORD COUNT –
REGGAETON
Although some dispute the national character of the genre, reggaeton is most frequently represented as a Puerto Rican and, increasingly, pan-Latino fusion of hip-hop and dancehall reggae. Featuring lyrics in Spanish and propelled by a modified reggae rhythm referred to as the “dembow,” the genre also travels in the form of a suggestive, sexualized dance called “perreo.” In 2004-05 reggaeton performers such as Daddy Yankee and Don Omar scored chart-climbing hits on US and international pop charts, bringing widespread attention to a genre that had been growing in popularity since the early 1990s, especially in Puerto Rico and New York City.
Origin narratives acknowledge the crucial role played by Panamanian vocalists, among the first to record reggae songs in Spanish. The music of Jamaica infused the Panamanian soundscape via descendants of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Anglo-Caribbean labor migrants to Central America who maintained cultural and family ties to the island. By the late 1970s, groups such as Franco y Las 4 Estrellas were performing Spanish-language versions of contemporary reggae songs. For all the continued engagement with reggae in Panama, however, such influential Panamanian avatars of dancehall reggae “en español” as Nando Boom and El General made many of their most popular recordings in New York City, working with Jamaican musicians and producers, typically translating the lyrics of contemporary reggae hits while employing the same (or re-recorded) rhythm tracks as the Jamaican originals.
While such recordings circulated widely among Spanish-speaking audiences in New York, the records resonated especially strongly with young Puerto Ricans, both in the city and on the island. Taking as a template the pioneering productions by Panamanian performers, Puerto Rican DJs and producers, including DJ Negro and DJ Playero, employed excerpts from the instrumental versions of these recordings to support performances by Puerto Rican vocalists. Initially a live practice, these sessions, in which a series of rappers declaimed over a shifting sonic accompaniment sampled from the hip-hop and reggae hits of the day, started to circulate as “mixtapes,” copied and passed hand-to-hand after an initial dubbing of a few dozen copies.
During the 1990s the Spanish-language mix of hip-hop and reggae produced in San Juan was alternately known as underground (or under), melaza (molasses), dembow (after the Shabba Ranks recording, “Dem Bow,” a frequent sample source for producers), and sometimes simply hip-hop or reggae. Occasionally it was called “música negra,” bearing witness to the racial cultural politics expressed by an embrace of hip-hop and reggae. The term reggaeton became dominant shortly after the turn of the millennium, around the same time that producers and performers sought to market the music to a broader audience, packaging recordings in the form of singles and albums rather than mixtapes and infusing the “dembow” beat with pan-Latino musical signifiers from salsa to bachata to cumbia. The great hope of the Latin music industry, reggaeton remains a grassroots phenomenon, embraced and localized across Latin America.
DON OMAR (William Omar Landrón), b. 10 Feb 1978
Puerto Rican vocalist Don Omar is one of the few reggaeton performers to enjoy success on US pop charts and airplay on MTV. Raised fatherless in an impoverished area of San Juan, a subdivision of Santurce called Villa Palmeras, Omar spent his late teens working as a youth pastor and singing in church choirs (including a group called the Christian Rappers). After leaving the ministry and turning to reggaeton, Omar built a following through live performances and appearances on mixtapes, distinguishing himself through his gruff voice and melodic rapping. Recruited by popular duo Héctor y Tito as a ghostwriter, Omar caught the attention of Juan Vidal, president of VI Music, who offered him an album deal. Omar’s first single, “Dale Don Dale” (2002), became a huge hit among reggaeton audiences. In 2005, his chart-topping song, “Reggaeton Latino,” symbolized the genre’s ascendancy to mainstream visibility and refigured reggaeton as a pan-Latino product. Omar often employs Christian symbols in his music and videos, and his themes reach beyond braggadocio to serious topics from suicide to AIDS. His 2006 album, King of Kings, debuted at #7 on the Billboard 200, the highest appearance by a reggaeton album to date.
DADDY YANKEE (Ramón Ayala), b. 3 Feb 1977
Best known for his massive, international hit, “Gasolina” (2004), Daddy Yankee is not only reggaeton’s most recognized performer, he is also one of the genre’s original and most consistent voices. Born into a musical family in Río Piedras, Yankee grew up in the Villa Kennedy housing project. After being shot in a case of mistaken identity, Yankee set aside aspirations to play baseball and dedicated himself to music, making a name for himself by performing rapid-fire raps at house parties. By the mid-90s, sometimes under the name Winchester Yankee, his distinctively nasally-tinged, tongue-twisting vocals featured prominently on DJ Playero’s popular mixtapes. Yankee released his first album, No Mercy, in 1995. Beginning in 2000, he started issuing albums at a steady clip of one per year, making inroads into the Latin Billboard charts while becoming a major star in Puerto Rico. He struck gold (or platinum) with his 2004 release, Barrio Fino, propelled by the runaway success of “Gasolina,” which effectively introduced reggaeton to the world. Having become his own brand, including merchandise endorsement deals with Pepsi and Reebok, Yankee remains restless, collaborating with hip-hop and R&B artists to reach new audiences.
IVY QUEEN (Martha Ivelisse Pesante), b. 4 March 1972
Ivy Queen has reigned as reggaeton’s practically sole female voice for well over a decade, remaining a central and respected figure while transforming herself from fierce battle rapper to sentimental sophisticate. Born in Añasco, Puerto Rico, she started singing to her father’s guitar accompaniment and identifies Celia Cruz and Selena as role models. She lived in New York city from childhood into her teenage years, moving to San Juan after high school. While writing for other acts and performing in talent shows, she grabbed the attention of DJ Negro, who added her to the roster of The Noise, an influential crew of DJs and performers. After making a splash on several mixtapes by The Noise, she embarked on a solo career, in part to distance herself from sexually-explicit and violent lyrics, addressing a range of topics from domestic violence to single mothers, fidelity to feminism. Her first album, En Mi Imperio (1996), sold briskly in Puerto Rico and was picked up by Sony. She has since released a steady stream of albums, broadening her audience, garnering industry awards, and settling into a style that finds her crooning bachata-infused ballads as often as rapping in her distinctively deep rasp.
TEGO CALDERÓN, b. 1 Feb 1972
Puerto Rican rapper Tego Calderón looms large in reggaeton, respected as a witty lyricist with a beguiling flow who anchors his sound and image in symbols of negritude. Born in Santurce but raised in Río Grande and Río Piedras, Tego expresses a strong connection to Loíza, where he was exposed to Afro-Puerto Rican traditions. Tego studied percussion at the Escuela Libre de Música of Puerto Rico before moving to Miami in the late-1980s where he was introduced to hip-hop and began composing lyrics in English. He credits Vico C with providing a model for rapping in Spanish. Returning to Puerto Rico, he established himself as a force in the local hip-hop scene before trying his hand at reggaeton, a savvy career move. His first album, El Abayarde (2002), was a local smash, and subsequent releases have been widely distributed and critically acclaimed. Tego’s music incorporates a variety of genres, including bomba, salsa, blues, and roots reggae. As a vocalist, he is known for his gravelly baritone, unique enunciation, love of slang and puns, and sense of swing. He has become a popular guest artist for hip-hop collaborators (including Terror Squad, Cypress Hill, and Wyclef Jean).
Amazing how an Amazon link makes our book finally feel real. (Pre-orders in teh house!)
And though they don’t have any imgs yet, I’m happy to report that I do, and — having lobbied HARD for this particular photo by Miguel Luciano to grace our cover — I’m thrilled to share it with y’all:
On the other hand side, I may be as excited about the back cover as the front, since we were able to land such luminary thinkers and wordsmiths re: music and race and nation as Jeff Chang, Mark Anthony Neal, Juan Flores, and Residente (!).
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Since I’m in a sharing mood, here’s a pdf of an article by Flores that makes a wonderful argument about diaspora “as source and challenge” what with its many “cultural remittances” “from below.” (Incidentally, Centro is offering many more pdfs at their site; see, e.g., the 2004 issue on “Rican Structing Roots / Routes,” from which this piece comes.)
Flores’s narrative centers on salsa and rap, but I’ve found the thesis utterly illuminating wrt reggaeton (as readers of my chapter in the book will see) –
& while I’m at it, here are two excerpts featured on a relatively recent Tego mixtape (almost a year old now, actually). I offer these up as each wonderful examples of how reggaeton “works,” if you will, consistent with the rich remix/reference culture that it is.
The first is a reworking of Fabolous’s unavoidable track from last year (and/or 2007), “Make Me Better” (incidentally, is it just me or does that central string motif sound awfully close to a recurring bit from the Lost score?). We hear here, among other things, how reggaeton artists — just as their “underground” bredren did in the 1990s — continue to version contemporary US/urban pop, translating and transforming the sounds that surround us:
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As you hear toward the end there, that track leads into a rowdy cumbia parody (sounding remarkably similar to a Manu Chao song in the chorus). I like how it shows reggaeton’s ability to incorporate / allude to other genres — and the “cultural work” inherent to such (re)figurations — not to mention how it shows off reggaeton’s (and Tego’s) sense of humor, with El Negro Calde putting on an extra coarse accent for “realism”:
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* for some reason, the tracks above sound distorted when listened to through the player; click on the song titles to hear more clearly.
I’ve already discussed and DJ-demo’d the degree to which the Dem Bow riddim underpins the lion’s share of reggaeton tracks. But one remarkable part of the story I haven’t given much focus here is how “Dem Bow” the song — in particular, the chorus melody, but also the basic theme of the lyrics — has also seen its share of reincarnations (often in the form of creative, localized translations).
Last year I wrote an article that specifically traces the migrations, transformations, and connotations of Shabba’s “Dem Bow,” a song released in 1991 and, that same year, covered (twice!) en español. Shabba’s tune has inspired versions of varying fidelity to the original by Jamaicans, Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, and Frenchmen, no doubt among others I’ve yet to hear. Over the course of its already long life, it has gone from a relatively stable anti-gay anthem to a floating signifier for reggaeton’s sexy beat — or, in the case of Paris-based Daddy Yod, a Verlan inversion (“delbor” from “bordel”) for trouble or agitation (h/t Guillaumepour la traduction*). I try to make sense of the implications of such shifts, linking translation to transnation, or the audible articulation (pace Stuart Hall) of communities that transcend as they traverse state borders — something I hear deeply embedded in reggaeton’s sonic structures themselves.
But enough about the article, here’s the thing itself. It was an invited contribution by the editor of a special issue on popular song in Latin America, published in a German journal. Please note that the copy I’m making available here is a pre-print proof, though the final version is quite close to this. Here goes –
Having tracked down all these versions of “Dem Bow” (including no fewer than THREE songs by Wisin y Yandel, who seem quite content to rip themselves off), I couldn’t resist putting them alongside each other “in the mix,” as they say. It’s a little weird to put a bunch of anti-gay anthems “to tape,” but then again, one thing that’s interesting about the history of this song is that, despite the musical continuities, only the first third of the mix contains homophobic sentiments (many of them, as I describe in the article, quite colorful and imaginative). As you’ll hear, however, “Dem Bow” quickly comes to stand for other things (in other words, it becomes THE dembow, dembo, denbo). Notably, even in the suave hands of W&Y (or w&w for that matter), it remains a chant centering a heteronormative/macho subject. What’d you expect?
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Tracklist
Unattributed, “Son Bow” (The Beats: Pistas De Reggaeton Famosas Vol.3)
Shabba Ranks, “Dem Bow” (Just Reality)
Nando Boom, “Ellos Benia” (Reggae Español)
El General, “Son Bow” (The Hits)
Grinds Man, “Dem Bow” (At The Super Stars Conference)
Unattributed, “Dembow ‘The Original’” (Pistas de Reggaeton Vol. 2)
Unattributed (Luny Tunes?), “Dembow ‘The 2004 Version’” (Pistas de Reggaeton Vol. 2)
Wisin & Yandel (Luny Tunes), “Dembow (Pista)” (Pistas De Reggaeton Famosas)
Wisin & Yandel, “Dem Bow” (Jamz Tv Hits, Vol. 2)
Wisin & Yandel, “Dembo (remix)” (A Otro Nivel)
Wisin & Yandel, “Llamé Pa’ Verte (Bailando Sexy)” (Pa’l Mundo)
Wisin & Yandel (ft. Tempo), “Deja Que Hable El Dembow”
King Daddy Yod (ft. Flya, Ragga Ranks, Jamadom, Tiwony), “Delbor 2006″
* sez Guillaume via email re: “Delbor” –
Yeah so no reference to sexuality, just straight up social problems and that the society is fucked up. You even have an eschatological reference at the end of the song. What’s interesting is that they use verlan only in the first verse, like an indication for the listener to make the chorus easier to understand at first. They don’t use verlan in the rest of the song as far as I could understand. Bottom line, it’s pretty safe to say that this song reference the 2005 riots and expand it to express a view of a fucked up society.
[Update 6/2010: A few months ago I found the original recording of Daddy Yod's "Delbor" (which can be purchased here); also, although it's not strictly a "Dem Bow" cover, Nando Boom's "Pension" very clearly traces the melody/vowel-sounds rather closely, and indeed many of the lyrics are the same that he later uses in "Ellos Benia." The riddim undergirding both Boom tracks, the Pounder, was clearly inspired by the Dem Bow riddim and may just be the missing link between Bobby Digital's / Steely & Clevie's production for Shabba and the dembow beat so widely used in reggaeton.]
musicologist, internet annotator, and rapper-ternt-blogger.
