{"id":9041,"date":"2017-08-24T13:08:40","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T17:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=9041"},"modified":"2020-01-31T10:42:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T14:42:14","slug":"everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-despacito-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=9041","title":{"rendered":"Everything You Wanted to Know About Despacito &#8212; and More!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-vid-grab.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-vid-grab-1024x562.jpg\" alt=\"despacito-vid-grab\" width=\"600\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-9044\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-vid-grab-1024x562.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-vid-grab-300x165.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-vid-grab-768x422.jpg 768w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-vid-grab.jpg 1228w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Despacito&#8221; has proven to be an amazing platform for Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, Justin Bieber, reggaeton, and now &#8230; me. <\/p>\n<p>Since April, I&#8217;ve been contacted by people looking for an explanation of how this song has proven so spectacularly successful, and whether I wanted to or not, I found myself having to think about it over the last several, surprising months. I&#8217;ve given quotes to reporters from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenational.ae\/arts-culture\/music\/from-south-america-to-a-dance-floor-near-you-looking-at-the-rise-of-reggaeton-1.614324\">Abu Dhabi<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ledevoir.com\/societe\/actualites-en-societe\/505196\/despacito\">Montreal<\/a>, and Texas &#8212;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/321568201&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The song &#8212; indeed, the <em>phenomenon<\/em> &#8212; has proven an excellent vehicle for thinking about reggaeton, &#8220;tropical&#8221; pop, and pop culture in the age of YouTube &#8212; 3 things I obsess over &#8212; and so when I brag-plained on Twitter last week about how &#8220;Despacito&#8221; has impacted my inbox, it ironically resulted in being asked to write a big ol&#8217; piece myself about the song for <em>NY Mag<\/em>&#8216;s Vulture. It seemed like a great opportunity to bring together the different angles from which I&#8217;ve been listening and watching, so I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n<p>Having penned my original &#8220;reggaeton longread&#8221; for the <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060301234418\/http:\/\/www.thephoenix.com:80\/PrinterFriendly.aspx?id=1595\">Boston Phoenix<\/a> back in January 2006 (though I guess <a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.blogspot.com\/2005\/08\/we-use-so-many-snares.html\">this is a contender<\/a> too), it was a pleasure to return to the form and try to share some deep context with a larger audience than my academic work. So far, I&#8217;m pleased as <em>perreo<\/em> at the favorable reaction it has garnered. Check it out:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2017\/08\/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-despacito.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/vulture-article-1024x753.png\" alt=\"vulture-article\" width=\"400\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-9050\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/vulture-article-1024x753.png 1024w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/vulture-article-300x221.png 300w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/vulture-article-768x565.png 768w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/vulture-article.png 1112w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\/\/\/<\/p>\n<p>While I&#8217;ve got you on the line &#8212; and while I&#8217;m here writing a rare blogpost &#8212; allow me to share a few related pieces. <\/p>\n<p>First, I want to remind readers that I&#8217;ve spilled many more words than 3500 here and there on reggaeton, and if you&#8217;re up for, say, 10k words on the history of the genre, you can consult <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=koaINmF8l5kC&#038;pg=PA19#v=onepage&#038;q&#038;f=false\">my chapter<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Reggaeton-Refiguring-American-Raquel-Rivera-ebook\/dp\/B00EZBLEYG\/\">our book<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>You can also hear me speak around that many words about reggaeton &#8212; and offer plenty of A\/V examples &#8212; in this lecture I presented at Berklee a few years back:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yLOXfSQ5Zao?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Second, I&#8217;m happy to appear this week as an ethnomusicological expert bigging up Munchi and connecting dots between reggae, reggaeton, and Dutch house in the this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/moombahton-ran-its-course--but-now-it-can-be-heard-in-pop-musics-biggest-hits\/2017\/08\/23\/c2e282e0-867d-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html\">piece in the Washington Post<\/a> that attempts to size up the legacy of moombahton.  <\/p>\n<p>Third, as I discussed in the &#8220;Despacito&#8221; piece, the song features a common chord progression, theoretically allowing one to mix and mash it with any number of previous pop songs. To demonstrate this, I mashed it up with the Cranberries&#8217; &#8220;Zombie,&#8221; mainly using the instrumental guitar passages from the latter. I was happily surprised by how good &#8220;Despacito&#8221; sounds with a little grungy guitar, and it was also striking how much their poppy dynamics complement each other, stylistic differences notwithstanding. <\/p>\n<p>See what you think (and thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/remezcla.com\/music\/despacito-zombie-mashup\/\">Remezcla<\/a> for the signal boost!); if you like it enough, here&#8217;s an <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/0Bx5w-INFosQEY1VQOW4xX1JVS0k\/view?usp=sharing\">MP3<\/a>: <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/226480919\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In order to make this work, I had to grapple with the audio in Ableton &#8212; and more than usual. It called to my attention a surprising fact about &#8220;Despacito&#8221;: it skips a beat (or a beat and a half, or so) twice during the song, before Bieber&#8217;s hook (which, without a pause, should land right on measure 21) &#8212;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-pause.png\" alt=\"despacito-pause\" width=\"400\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9042\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-pause.png 874w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-pause-300x124.png 300w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-pause-768x318.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 874px) 100vw, 874px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is an odd feature for a digital-age dance number, and while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.playground.plus\/culture\/despacito-is-so-catchy-because-it-tricks-our-brains-by-breaking-a-basic-rule-of-music\/\">some have speculated<\/a> that it is the magic key to the song, I think it&#8217;s more likely an &#8220;accident&#8221; resulting from the post-hoc splicing in of the Biebz. <\/p>\n<p>Couldn&#8217;t mash the song up with &#8220;Zombie&#8221; without fixing this irregularity. So I did a nerdy thing; I fixed it:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-fixed.png\" alt=\"despacito-fixed\" width=\"400\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-9043\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-fixed.png 752w, https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/despacito-fixed-300x140.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 752px) 100vw, 752px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It occurs to me that this may have bugged an occasional listener or dancer, or perhaps even caused an occasional trainwreck for a beat-matching DJ. If so, here you go&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><strong>w&#038;w, &#8220;Zombiecito&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/audio\/wayneandwax-zombiecito.mp3\">MP3<\/a> 9.3mb)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pasito, a pasito, y&#8217;all. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Despacito&#8221; has proven to be an amazing platform for Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, Justin Bieber, reggaeton, and now &#8230; me. Since April, I&#8217;ve been contacted by people looking for an explanation of how this song has proven so spectacularly successful, and whether I wanted to or not, I found myself having to think about it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9041"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9129,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041\/revisions\/9129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}