Refiguring American Music

A series edited by Ronald Radano and Josh Kun Charles McGovern,

contributing editor
Edited by Raquel Z. Rivera,

Wayne Marshall, and

Deborah Pacini Hernandez

Illustrations

Foreword: What's All the Noise About?

Juan Flores

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Reggaeton's Socio-Sonic Circuitry

Wayne Marshall, Raquel Z. Rivera, and Deborah Pacini

Hernandez

Part I. Mapping Reggaeton

From Musica Negra to Reggaeton Latino: The Cultural Politics of

Nation, Migration, and Commercialization

Wayne Marshall

Part II. The Panamanian Connection

Placing Panama in the Reggaeton Narrative: Editor's Notes

Wayne Marshall

Reggae in Panama: Bien Tough

Christoph Twickel

The Panamanian Origins of Reggae en Espanol: Seeing History

through "Los Ojos Cafe" of Renato

Interview by Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo

Muevelo (Move It!): From Panama to New York and Back Again,
the Story of El General

Interview by Christoph Twickel

Part III. (Trans)Local Studies and Ethnographies

Policing Morality, Mano Dura Stylee: The Case of Underground Rap

and Reggae in Puerto Rico in the Mid-i99os

Raquel Z. Rivera

Dominicans in the Mix: Reflections on Dominican Identity, Race,

and Reggaeton

Deborah Pacini Hernandez

The Politics of Dancing: Reggaeton and Rap in Havana, Cuba

Geoff Baker

You Got Your Reggaeton in my Hip-Hop: Crunkiao and "Spanish

Music" in the Miami Urban Scene

Jose Davila

Part IV. Visualizing Reggaeton

Visualizing Reggaeton: Editors' Notes

Wayne Marshall and Raquel Z. Rivera

Images by Miguel Luciano

Images by Carolina Caycedo

Images by Kacho Lopez

Part V. Gendering Reggaeton

(W )rapped in Foil: Glory at Twelve Words a Minute

FelixJimenez

A Man Lives Here: Reggaeton's Hypermasculine Resident

Alfredo Nieves Moreno

How to Make Love with Your Clothes On: Dancing Regeton, Gender,
and Sexuality in Cuba

Jan Fairley

Part VI. Reggaeton's Poetics, Politics, and Aesthetics

Chamaco's Corner

Gallego (Jose Raul Gonzalez)

Salon Philosophers: Ivy Queen and Surprise Guests Take

Reggaeton Aside

Alexandra T. Vazquez

From Hip-Hop to Reggaeton: Is There Only a Step?

Welmo E. Romero Joseph

Black Pride

Tego Calderon

Poetry of Filth: The (Post) Reggaetonic Lyrics of Calle 13

Frances Negron-Muntaner

Bibliography: Selected Sources for Reading Reggaeton

Contributors

Index
A skeletal sketch of reggaeton's boom-ch-boom-chick.

Dancehall reggae's minimal "bomp bomp."

A (very) skeletal sketch of roots reggae's "one-drop."

Vico C's version of a standard hip-hop beat.

Image from Dancehall Reggaespanol liner notes.

The basic elements of Puerto Rico's localized Dem Bow.

Artwork for Playero

Artwork for Playero

From left to right: Rasta Nini and a friend in Colon, Panama. Photo
by Christoph Twickel.

Lady Ann poses in front of her beauty salon in La Chorrera,

Panama. Photo by Christoph Twickel.

Renato at the studio. Photo by Rose Cromwell.

El General, Panama City, Panama. Photo by Christoph Twickel.

"Reggaeton a lo cubano" concert poster, Havana, Cuba. Photo by

Geoff Baker.

Promotional image for Platano's single "Helicoptero." Image

courtesy of Heavy Management.

Sito Oner Rock. Photo by Time-Shift Studios.

Pure Plantainum at King of Platinum, 125th Street, Miguel Luciano

(2006).
Pure Plantainum, Miguel Luciano (2006).

Filiberto Ojeda Uptowns-Machetero Air Force Ones, Miguel

Luciano (2007).

Stills from Gran Perret6n, Carolina Caycedo (2004).

Tego Calderon and children, Sierra Leone. Photo by Kacho Lopez

(2006).

Diamond miners at work, Sierra Leone. Photo by Kacho Lopez

(2006).

Man with prosthetic hands, living testimony of a diamond trade driven

civil war, Sierra Leone. Photo by Kacho Lopez (20o6).

From left to right: hip-hop artist Paul Wall, author Ishmael Beah,
and Tego Calderon. Photo by Kacho Lopez (2006).

Detail of CD cover art, Glou/Glory, 20o6. (First released in 2005)

CD cover art, Calle 13, 2005.

CD inside art, Calle 13, 2005.

Welmo E. Romero Joseph. Photo by Abey Charr6n (2005).

My late friend Johnny Ramirez used to call it "racketon." "Apaga ese
racketon" (Turn off that racketon) he would shout as the thumping
cars shattered the peaceful quiet of his little house, campo adentro in
the hills of Puerto Rico. For him, music was El Trio Los Panchos,
Ramito, a little salsa maybe, an occasional tango, and a lot of
boleros, Daniel Santos, Pedro Flores, Rafael Hernandez, and of
course, Felipe Rodriguez, "La Voz." Even after spending forty of his
seventy years in New York City, Johnny's whole system was geared
to "la musica de ayer," the trusty old melodies and familiar cadences
of yesteryear. The insistent boom and incoherent vocal gibberish of
reggaeton was a "racket," nothing but meaningless, ear-grating noise.
It's just not music.

Reggaeton is to this extent no different than other new styles or

modes of popular music as they take hold among the young
generation and conquer the soundscape of its place and time. The
history of emergent genres and practices of music making illustrate
time and again how the new language is greeted with widespread
disdain among those with a stake in perpetuating what's been
accepted and taken for granted as "the real stuff." Often what is at
stake is social privilege, the wealth and power of the tastemakers and
gatekeepers. But in the case of Johnny, who spent his whole life poor
and uneducated, it's obviously not about privilege or wealth or power.
His rants against " racketon" were backed by another kind of power,
the weight of tradition and generational authority. Music is what music
has "always" been. The rest is simply not music; it's noise, a racket.

Of course music is never just about music, and the social

judgments it faces are always about the people who create it and love
it. Johnny's responding not only to the sounds he hears but to the
wayward, good-for-nothing young people these days, with their drugs
and sex and the contaminating influence from outside, in this case
meaning from the inner-city jungles of the United States. The sonic
intrusion he feels is the invasion of generational degeneration, the
moral decline of young people today "que no valen na"' (who are
worthless). Again, this is a familiar clash, the story of modern-day
popular music, a story with countless examples around the world.

What is new about reggaeton-and the editors and authors of this

anthology point up this novelty in multiple ways and from many
angles-is how it came into being. Previously, what made the new style
"popular" and immediately recognizable in all its novelty, was that it
was rooted in a certain place, whether that local point of origin be
defined in terms of geography, ethnicity, nationality, or simply
grounding in certain ancestral traditions. Think of jazz, tango, blues,
plena, reggae, salsa, samba, hip-hop-we can trace with some
precision where the form started and by whom and why then and
there. All those styles diffuse throughout the country and around the
world, but it is always possible to say from where and how they
spread and became relocalized in the many settings where they take
hold. Controversies generally swirl over proprietary rights and issues
of authenticity and corruption, but the power of roots and local
groundedness, the "down-homeness" of the emergent style, remains
decisive in establishing its place in music history.

Reggaeton may well go down in that history as the first

transnational music, in the full sense of the term. Not only that it
becomes transnational by its massive and far-flung spread in the
world, a process that has become more rapid and intensive with
every new generation of technology and global shrinkage. Hip-hop, in
that sense, has outpaced and surpassed even rock, salsa, and
reggae in becoming a musical lingua franca of world reach and
proportions. But reggaeton kicks that remarkable process up still
another notch by being an eminently popular form of music without
any single specifiable place of origin, with no cuna (cradle) in the
sense of a "'hood" or even national setting from which it sprang. The
contention over whether it's Panamanian, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, or
Nuyorican will most likely seethe on, since it seems to be a style
brewed in a multilocal, transnational cauldron from the beginning. All
of these parental claims are valid, yet none of them are, because the
"location" of origin in this elusive, perhaps unprecendented case is at
the very crossroads of many diasporic, migratory, and circulating
communities of taste and generational solidarity.

The twist, though, and what belies this seemingly disembodied,

unrooted genesis, is that reggaeton (and here I use the accent mark)
is in Spanish. Unlike hip-hop, whose English-language lyrics attest to
its South Bronx birthplace even when it finds expression in Turkish,
French, Swahili, Hebrew, or Cantonese, the Spanish rhymes of
reggaetbn (or is it " regueton"?) signal a reassertion of cultural and
national specificity within a thoroughly trans- (not to say post-)
national field of musical and poetic expression. It's almost like a kind
of Latino revenge against the doggedly Anglophone nature and
official narrative of early hip-hop, with its erasure of the powerful
Boricua (Puerto Rican) presence and input from the outset. And it's
an in-your-face at the nervous gatekeepers of "Hispanic" culture who
would deny the overriding presence of hip-hop in the lives of a whole
generation of young Latinos, a massive public that will not stop
insisting that "this is the culture I grew up with, it's my culture." This
anthology opens a chapter in hip-hop history that brings it all back
home, back to our transnational Afro-Spanish-speaking countries and
diasporas and 'hoods where young people are going through their
hip-hop ecstasies and traumas, but in their own language, and in their
own unique and hitherto-unknown style. And let's be clear: some of
these lyrics are also vibrant, fresh poetry as well. Check out Gallego's
street-corner chronicle, "Chamaco's Corner," included in this
pioneering book, for a good example.

Maybe what freaked out "old Johnny" the most, even more than
old-school rap ever seemed to bother him, was just that, that it's in
Spanish, his own language, too close to home and too undeniably
Caribbean to be waved off as "de alla" (from over there). A
reappropriated sound that was incubated somewhere else finally
comes home to roost. Such is the blast that shattered Johnny's rural
tranquility, not "racketon" but "raqueton"!

Bring on the Racket!

An anthology like this one is by definition a collective endeavor, but in
addition to the contributors, many other people and institutions were
crucial to its development, and we would like to thank them. Tufts
University's Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows Program can take credit for
creating the intellectual context for an interdisciplinary approach to
reggaeton. While Raquel Z. Rivera was at Tufts in 2004-6 as a Mellon
Post-Doc, she co-taught with Deborah Pacini Hernandez a course
entitled Music, Blackness and Caribbean Latinos that generated so
much excitement from the students when the conversation turned to
reggaeton, that the need for a volume like this one became apparent.
Tufts's Mellon Program also provided Rivera with the funds for a
symposium on reggaeton, which brought Wayne Marshall into the
discussion, and eventually into the editorial collective. Rivera later
received generous support from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies
at Hunter College through a research fellowship as well as funding
and logistical assistance in securing images and permissions. Tufts
University also provided publication support via a Faculty Research
Award to Pacini Hernandez.

We were also fortunate to find exceptional translators for the

articles submitted in Spanish and German: Juan Flores, Hector
Fernandez L'Hoeste, Noah Dauber, and Maritza Fernandez. Marisol
Rodriguez and Melinda Gonzalez provided valuable assistance by
compiling the bibliography. Cambridge University Press, Riddim
magazine, Editorial Isla Negra, and the New York Post also
contributed by granting us permission to reprint articles.

Each of us also benefited individually from the support and

generosity of friends and collaborators. Raquel Z. Rivera would like to
thank Bryan Vargas of Mofongo Music & Media, Jorge "Georgie"
Vazquez and Jonathan "J-Blak" Troncoso, for the many, many
musical consultations, and Anabellie Rivera, Sabrina Rivera, and
Marisol Rodriguez for research assistance. Wayne Mar shall is
grateful to Mario Small, Anton Kociolek, and DJ El Nino for their
insightful answers to his oddball queries and especially to all the kids
in Boston and Cambridge who put him on to this "Spanish reggae"
thing back in 2002-3. Rebecca Nesson and Jesse Kriss both deserve
props for their assistance with the transcriptions that appear in his
essay. He would also like to acknowledge the support of the
University of Chicago Department of Music, where he enjoyed a
postdoctoral fellowship during the preparation of this anthology.
Deborah Pacini Hernandez thanks those who generously shared their
time and thoughts on Dominicans and reggaeton in Puerto Rico and
New York, among them Jorge Duany, Jorge Giovannetti, Juan Otero,
Welmo Romero Joseph, Andres Ramos (aka DJ Velcro), Karin
Weyland, Jorge Oquendo, Orquidea Negra, Boy Wonder, and
Jeanette Luna.

Finally, our heartfelt thanks to Ken Wissoker, Mandy Earley, Neal

McTighe, and Sonya Manes, who so skillfully helped shepherd the
manuscript through the editorial and production process.
In a January 2006 article published by the Village Voice, Jon
Caramanica ended a largely celebratory piece on reggaeton with a
somewhat sudden, cryptic remark: "Fuck a Slim Shady," he quipped,
"Hip-hop's race war begins here"' Caramanica thus suggests that the
most prominent "racial" tensions around hip-hop are not between
African Americans and whites (represented by prominent white
rapper, Slim Shady, a.k.a. Eminem) but between African Americans
and Latinos. Similarly, blogger Byron Crawford's tongue-in-cheek
March 20o6 post for XXL magazine's website, "Ban Reggaeton: Fight
the Real Enemy of Hip-Hop," makes one wonder how exactly-snide
and enigmatic remarks aside-the perceived rivalry between hip-hop
and reggaeton is informed by extramusical tensions between African
Americans and Latinos.2 What seems clear is that reggaeton has
emerged in recent years as a prominent, potent symbol for
articulating the lines of community. Its suggestive sonic and cultural
profile has animated contentious debates around issues of race,
nation, class, gender, sexuality, and language. That the genre's
commercial rise and mainstream presence in the United States have
coincided with increasingly tense rhetoric and anxiety centering on
immigration-rhetoric which in turn informs the reception and
production of the music-makes an analysis and understanding of
reggaeton's social, historical, and political dimensions all the more
important, if not urgent.

Drawing on reggae, hip-hop, and a number of Spanish Caribbean

styles and often accompanied by sexually explicit lyrics and a
provocative dancing style known as perreo (doggy style), reggaeton
emerged from Puerto Rico in the late 199os but only recently crossed
over into the U.S. mainstream and public consciousness. According
to Nielsen SoundScan, while overall album sales declined close to 8
percent in the first six months of 2005, Latin music albums grew
almost 18 percent. Though reggaeton was not the only genre driving
the increase, reggaeton artists generated great enthusiasm in an
industry concerned with boosting waning record sales. Dozens of
Latin music stations across the United States switched to a reggaeton
or "hurban" (Hispanic urban) format-for example, La Kalle, a
franchise of the Mexican media conglomerate, Univision-while
numerous record companies established new label imprints under the
Latin urban music umbrella where reggaeton plays a starring role.

During reggaeton's meteoric rise to mainstream prominence in

2005-6, major U.S. newspapers and magazines such as the New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, and Rolling Stone
published articles heralding and interpreting the phenomenal success
of the genre. More recently, in the wake of relatively disappointing
sales figures, industry excitement and media coverage has grown
more measured, and several journalists have wondered whether the
genre is "running out of gasolina," referring to the Daddy Yankee
song that served as the genre's (first and only?) mainstream
anthem.3 Reggaeton-format radio stations have broadened their
playlists to include urban bachata and other Latin pop, and reggaeton
subsidiaries of major record labels-Roc La Familia and Wu Tang
Latino, for instance-have closed shop. Leila Cobo, in a January 2007
Billboard article taking stock of the multiple and contradictory
interpretations regarding the period 2005-6 in Latin music sales,
explained how dire predictions and disappointment over reggaeton
might have less to do with its impending demise and more with the
high expectations initially placed on the genre: "Those 2005 numbers
were misleading, inflated by overly ambitious shipments of reggaeton
releases. The numbers plunged during the first six months of the year
when returns started coming in and factors like gasoline prices and
immigration issues cut into Latin music sales."4

At the same time, other accounts seem to affirm the genre's

continued rise and future potential. After attending a Radio City Music
Hall concert in February 2007, during which the duo Wisin and
Yandel "kept a packed audience on its feet, screaming for nearly two
hours," the New York Times' Kelefa Sanneh cautioned against
premature eulogies: "The concert certainly didn't secure the future of
reggaeton, or even the future of Wisin and Yandel. But it was
impressive proof of what this genre and this duo can do."5

Some observers have explained reggaeton's success as the result

of demographic changes in the wake of record levels of immigration
from Latin America, but the significance of the reggaeton
phenomenon goes well beyond the similarly hyped but ephemeral
"Latin boom" that attracted media attention a few years ago: for the
first time since the "mambo craze" of the 1950s, a music whose lyrics
are in Spanish and whose aesthetics are Latin Caribbean has been
embraced not only by pan-Latino but mainstream audiences as well-
both African American and Anglo-American. (The commercial hits of
Ricky Martin and the other "boom" artists, such as Shakira and
Christina Aguilera, were primarily in English, and their aesthetics
were mainstream pop rather than "Latin.") Moreover, reggaeton
differs from earlier Latin pop or dance "explosions" in its widespread
grassroots popularity, especially among Spanish speakers, as the
genre's basis in digital tools of production and distribution has
facilitated a flowering of aspiring producers and performers across
the United States and Latin America.

Whether or not reggaeton reached its commercial apex in 2005 with

Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina," its resonance continues as localized
versions emerge from Santo Domingo to Springfield, Massachusetts,
from Chicago to Cartagena. Reggaeton's significance thus extends
beyond its commercial success, which offers but one measure of the
genre's cultural and social footprint. Although we might wonder how a
more modest mainstream profile for reggaeton might affect the
discussions and debates around, for example, Latino, Puerto Rican,
American, and/or black identities, we might also ask whether
reggaeton's moment in the mainstream suggests a more profound
reordering of mainstream and margin, center and periphery.
NAMING REGGAETON

Readers may notice that the spelling of reggaeton in the anthology

takes a number of forms. Because we have decided to respect the
individual contributors' decisions about spelling the term, it appears
throughout the text as reggaeton, reggaeton, regueton, regeton. Even
so, as editors, we have our own ideas about which rendering best
represents the public discourse. The title of the anthology and many
of the essays employ the unaccented reggaeton. There are a number
of reasons for preferring this spelling.

Since the music has been embraced-and indeed, shaped-to such a

degree in the United States and is so often referred to as reggaeton
in newspapers and on album covers and websites, it seems most
appropriate to spell it without the accent. Several influential mixtapes
by Di Blass, for example, spell the term sin acento (see, e.g., the
Reggaeton Sex series), and along with the work of DJ Nelson and
others, these releases are largely responsible for popularizing the
term itself as well as its "Anglicized" spelling. Although the term dates
to the late'9os, reggaeton did not circulate as a popular descriptor
until the early years of the new millennium. Before the music attained
a presence in the U.S. mainstream in 2004-a process which may
have been facilitated by the advent of the term itself-practitioners and
devotees frequently held on to such terms as rap, underground,
dembow (or dembo), melaza, or simply reggae to describe the music
and to place it in social and cultural context. As a neologism
emerging from a circuit of production, performance, and distribution
between Puerto Rico and the United States-sometimes understood
as conjoining reggae and maraton (in order to describe the genre's
staple of nonstop, long-playing mixes)-the unaccented spelling thus
expresses the genre's increasing, if not inherent, Spanglish
orientation. In his essay, Wayne Marshall explores this changing
nomenclature along with its accompanying shifting musical
aesthetics.
 Moreover, despite the appearance of a more properly Spanish form,
reggaeton (with an accent) does not follow standard Spanish
orthographic rules: hence the current debate within con acento circles
about whether to spell it regueton, rather than reggaet6n.6 The
Academia Puertorriquena de la Lengua Espanola (APLE; Puerto
Rican Academy of the Spanish Language) has announced that it will
submit a proposal suggesting that the next edition of the Real
Academia Espanola dictionary include an entry on regueton. This
wellmeaning approach seems problematic, however, in its erasure of
the term's and the genre's relationship to Jamaican reggae (which is
rarely rendered as regue in Spanish), as well as its Spanglish
constitution. Aware of these objections, APLE's Maia Sherwood Droz
has said that "orthography does not require that type of fidelity" to the
original Jamaican term and argues, instead, for the advantages of
having phonetics match orthography, as is typical in Spanish.7 We
prefer reggaeton-particularly for this English-language anthology-not
only as the more popular spelling, but because it best embodies the
music's transnational and multilingual character.

DEFINING REGGAETON

Spelling reggaeton, for all the problems it poses, is a simpler

endeavor than attempting to define reggaeton and hence to extricate
it from related genres and from a direct stylistic genealogy in which
the term is but the latest and most widely used label to date. As noted
above, before it was called reggaeton, artists and audiences referred
to the music simply as reggae or sometimes as Spanish reggae or
reggae en espanol. The latter term, however, more often describes
Panamanian recordings from the 198os and early 199os than the
Puerto Rican productions that eventually coalesced into reggaeton.
Other terms, espe cially as used in Puerto Rico during the 199os-
such as dembow, underground, or melaza-are not interchangeable
with reggaeton; they describe stylistic precursors which depart from
reggaeton in their sonic and sociocultural profile, as Marshall explains
in his essay. Even more confusing, discussions of reggaeton
frequently make reference to other genres, especially hip-hop (and/or
rap) and reggae (and/or dancehall), which are themselves the sites of
a great deal of discursive contest, their meanings (and division into
subgenres) varying depending on the speaker and the context.
Although we attempt to exercise some clarity with regard to these
labels across the anthology, their various shades merit some
discussion here, especially for readers less acquainted with the range
of meanings and debates over dominant nomenclature among these
genres' practitioners, devotees, and documenters.

We might begin by unpacking a commonplace characterization of

reggaeton in all its hybrid glory. Take, for example, a description of
reggaeton's musical style offered by Puerto Rican hip-hop pioneer
Vico C: "Musically, reggaeton was born in a hip-hop environment,
with a little bit of Jamaican dancehall and Puerto Rico's own tropical
flavor and ritmo."R At first glance, this definition would seem apt
enough, though the emphasis here on hiphop-understandable given
Vico C's perspective-might be transferred by another narrator to
Jamaican or Panamanian sources, or to the Puerto Rican or more
broadly "tropical" input often glossed as an essentialized "Latin"
sabor. All of these connections are important, of course, opening out
into significant social and cultural articulations and disarticulations. It
is imperative, however, to interrogate this laundry list of genres
contributing to reggaeton's hybrid style, and to examine the ways that
its links to the United States, the wider Caribbean, Latin America, and
the African diaspora serve to inform the cultural work that reggaeton
does. Toward this end, it is necessary to be clear about what we
mean here by certain well-worn terms.

Hip-hop and reggae might both be understood as umbrella terms

describing a range of styles and subgenres (and cultural practices
more generally), not unlike rock, R&B, or salsa for that matter. Hence,
while hip-hop includes such subgenres as Miami bass, Atlanta
"crunk," and Bay Area "hyphy" (not to mention "extra-musical"
practices such as breakdance and "graffiti"), reggae often refers to
everything from dub and dancehall (sometimes called "ragga" or
"raggamuffin"-two terms that turn up in a good deal of '9os-era "proto-
reggaeton") to ska and "rocksteady," stylistic precursors of reggae
which nonetheless are sometimes grouped under the reggae
umbrella by listeners and practitioners. The term rap, often used
interchangeably with hip-hop, introduces additional ambiguity. For
many, rap and hip-hop are synonyms, both describing a U.S.-based
musical style marked by rhythmic, spoken-sung declamation over
prerecorded backing tracks or beats. Rap was the more dominant
term in the late '8os and early'9os, especially as record companies
began to market the music to a mainstream audience. Alongside this
practice, hiphop was often used-erroneously according to some
torchbearers-to describe a sort of nonhardcore rap, a derivative style
marked by elements of R&B and other pop forms. Hip-hop, however,
had long described the wider set of cultural practices which included
rap as well as breakdance, graffiti, and the art of the Di, and the work
of hip-hop journalists, historians, artists, and connoisseurs during the
'9os served to revise the dominant discourse, in many cases making
hip-hop the more common term for the genre. In this book the terms
will appear interchangeably to describe the U.S.-based genre wherein
rappers or Mcs declaim over beats, though the term rap may also be
used to refer to the more general practice of performing speechlike
vocals (whether in dancehall, reggaeton, or hip-hop). Although
musically speaking, hip-hop embraces a variety of forms, it is most
easily distinguished from reggaeton in its embrace of the downbeat
and the backbeat, emphasizing duple divisions of the meter rather
than the 3:2 cross-rhythms that mark reggaeton and other Caribbean
genres.' This form of sonic organization is one reason, for instance,
why Vico C is more commonly regarded as a rap or hip-hop artist
rather than a reggaeton performer, despite his occasional
collaborations with reggaeton producers.

Dancehall reggae-frequently referred to simply as dancehall and

sometimes as reggae-emerged as a distinctive subgenre of reggae in
the early '8os, deriving its name from the social spaces where the
music was played. It has tended toward a rhythmic minimalism, and a
moral "slackness," that causes many observers to wonder how the
music of Buju Banton, Beenie Man, or Bounty Killer could possibly be
related to that of Bob Marley and other proponents of "roots" reggae.
Though we do not have the space to indulge such a genealogical
exposition here, it is important to note that while dancehall is strongly
marked by a symbiotic engagement with hip-hop, especially audible
in vocal style, most Jamaicans hear dancehall as another form of
reggae, in part thanks to dancehall's familiar polyrhythms, dub
aesthetics, and the occasional "skanking" keyboard accent on the
offbeat-reggae's hallmark if any.10 Moreover, many of the same
artists and producers bridge roots and dancehall approaches, many
classic "riddims"-or accompanimental tracks-have been versioned for
dancehall remakes, and the two styles continue to coexist in the
social spaces of the dancehall." It is significant, however, that long
after roots reggae was embraced by mainstream Jamaican society,
due in part to its tran scendent themes and international success,
dancehall has continued to fuel local "culture wars," dismissed and
denigrated by the middle and upper classes as rude, crude, and
bound up with gun violence and explicit sexual content. For all its
continuities with roots reggae, then, dancehall tends to be associated
with a militant blackness and a particular class position and critique,
characteristics which have boosted its appeal in "foreign" contexts
such as the United States, Panama, and Puerto Rico. Musically
speaking, dancehall's prevailing rhythmic pattern from the late '8os
and early '9os has served as reggaeton's backbone-the boom-ch-
boom-chick that now resounds from cars and clubs worldwide.

If dancehall is indeed a latter-day form of reggae and can properly

be referred to simply as reggae, other historical factors in Puerto
Rican cultural development complicate attempts to explain why and
how the term reggae was conflated locally with reggaeton. As Jorge
Giovannetti has explained else- where,12 roots reggae enjoyed
considerable popularity in Puerto Rico as early as the 1970s,
although interestingly, it was middle- and upper-class youth, who
tended to be white and whose musical preferences were for rock,
who became reggae's most avid fans. While many of these
blanquitos fancied themselves as Rastas or at least fervent admirers
of Rastafarianism,13 they were much more interested in the
superficial trappings of Rastafarianism-wearing red, gold, and green
clothing, smoking ganja, and attending reggae concerts-than they
were in the trenchant social critiques that characterized Jamaican
reggae artists such as Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. In contrast, when
Spanish language dancehall reggae appeared in Puerto Rico in the
199os, it was adopted primarily by the same lower-class youth
listening to rap (and who, increasingly, had also been listening to
Jamaican dancehall, as Welmo E. Romero Joseph chronicles in his
essay). Though there was porosity between roots reggae, rap,
dancehall reggae, and underground, Giovannetti explains that there
were "clearly marked" boundaries between the upper- and middle-
class blanquitos who were roots reggae devotees and the lower-class
raperos who preferred rap, dancehall, and underground. These class
distinctions (which were also heavily racialized, as the essay by
Raquel Z. Rivera illustrates) regarding the consumption and
production of popular music in Puerto Rico were certainly nothing
new and had been most immediately preceded by the cocolos versus
roqueros (salsa fans vs. rock fans) antagonisms of the 198os.14

The sharp class and racial cleavages that separated roots from
dancehall reggae in Puerto Rico, as well as the routes that the music
traveled to get there from Jamaica, were quite different from the ways
in which reggae and its social meanings traveled to and were
incorporated into Panama's cultural landscape. While Puerto Rican
youths' identification with reggae was heavily mediated by the global
music industry, the development of reggae in Panama-though still
related to the global music industry-was also rooted in a history of
West Indian immigration and a resulting social context where
Jamaican music, patois, and Rastafarianism were not trendy
affectations but an integral part of Panamanian vernacular culture.
These issues are explored closely in part II of this volume, which is
devoted to Panama and includes an overview by Christoph Twickel,
as well as Twickel's interview with the reggae en espanol luminary El
General, and Ifeoma Nwankwo's interview with the seminal
Panamanian reggae performer Renato.
 Similar to the anachronistic use of reggae to describe precursors
such as rocksteady and ska, the term reggaeton is now applied,
especially in journalistic discourse, to such earlier instantiations as
reggae en espanol and dembow. This kind of elision, however, can
mask the moment of reggaeton's emergence as well as its significant
departures from earlier forms of sonic and economic organization.
Attention to historical context is hence of crucial importance here,
especially since a focus on reggaeton to some extent requires an
emphasis on the contemporary. By reggaeton, then, we refer to a
relatively new genre (and related set of cultural practices) strongly
marked both by a particular approach to musical style (e.g.,
dancehall's boom -ch-boom-chick as reshaped by urban Puerto Rican
sensibilities and informed by a fusion with hip-hop) and a relation to
the market (i.e., explicitly commercial, courting a wide audience).

In addition to teasing out reggaeton from reggae and hip-hop,

dancehall and rap, it is important also to extricate the genre from the
pool of putatively "Latin" styles with which it is frequently conflated.
Representations of reggaeton often tie the music to salsa, bachata,
merengue, plena, bomba, and other "tropical," Afro-Latin, Latin-
Caribbean, Puerto Rican, and Latin forms more generally. As noted in
Pacini Hernandez's and Marshall's essays, however, for all the
interaction and resonance with these forms, including more recent
trends toward infusing reggaeton with sonic markers from bachata,
merengue, cumbia and vallenato, to emphasize reggaeton's "Latin"
character serves to overlook its stronger connections to hip-hop and
reggae, connections crucial because of their links with a cultural
politics based more around race and class and transnational linkages
than national or pan-Latin identities.15 Ultimately, we hope to make
clear that reggaeton is neither hip-hop nor dancehall nor Latin nor
tropical in the traditional sense, yet it draws from all of these (and
forges imagined connections with them) in projecting a distinctive,
resonant sound.

VALUING REGGAETON
Reggaeton and its most immediate precursor, underground, have
been embroiled in multiple culture wars. Debates rage over charges
of appropriation, ethnic and racial tensions, sexuality and sexism,
questions of profanity, and fears that the genre is inextricable from
drugs and violence. Some of these debates have involved media-
propelled moral panics, state regulation and even censorship, as
chronicled in Raquel Z. Rivera's and Alfredo Nieves Moreno's essays.
Other indictments against reggaeton have centered on the genre's
purported lack of aesthetic merit, whether in comparison to Jamaican
reggae,16 or to music considered more "traditionally" Puerto Rican,
Caribbean, or Latin American." However, the reggaeton-driven
dispute best engaged by this anthology is that which pits the genre
against hip-hop.

Though reggaeton is indebted-historically, aesthetically,

discursively-to hip-hop, there are nevertheless deep rifts that
separate the genres in the minds of consumers, critics, practitioners,
and music industry insiders. The strain between reggaeton and hip-
hop in Puerto Rico is the backbone of Welmo Romero Joseph's
essay Titled "From Hip Hop to Reggaeton: Is There Only a Step?,"
Romero Joseph offers an overview of the development of reggaeton
in Puerto Rico from the perspective of a hip-hop artist who continues
to resist the pressure to embrace the upstart genre which now
dominates the island's soundscape. As we explained earlier in the
introduction, the perceived differences and rivalries between
reggaeton and hip-hop in the United States are related to tensions
between Latinos and African Americans-the U.S.-based ethnic or
racial communities each genre supposedly represents. But as
illustrated by the anthology contributors Wayne Marshall, Geoff
Baker, Jose Davila, and Welmo Romero Joseph, the connections and
contentions between reggaeton and hip-hop have widely different
underpinnings, manifestations, and interpretations, depending upon
the context and the observer in question. For example, while Baker
proposes that "revolutionary" ideals and the Cuban government play
a key role in the opposition between the genres in Cuba, Davila
suggests that aesthetics, language choices, and market forces drive
the rivalries in Miami.

One of the most prominent reasons reggaeton (as well as reggae

en espanol and underground) has been valued by fans and devalued
by detractors is the genre's defiant embrace of blackness and its
insistent connections to hip-hop's and reggae's race-based cultural
politics. Christoph Twickel's essay and his interview with El General,
as well as Ifeoma Nwankwo's interview with Renato, explore these
connections in the Panamanian context, while Raquel Z. Rivera's
essay addresses them within the Puerto Rican milieu.

Tego Calder6n is, undoubtedly, the reggaeton artist whose

celebrations of blackness and indictment of Latino and/or Latin
American racism-manifest in his music, lyrics, video imagery,
interviews-have had the most visibility, depth, and consistency. His
essay, titled "Black Pride," was originally published in the New York
Post. It is a rare intervention in printed public discourse by a
reggaeton artist, both because it is not crafted as an interview
(though it is based on one) and also because it is such a detailed and
cogent political statement on race. Calder6n contradicts the myth of
racial democracy in Latin America and proposes the U.S. civil rights
movement as a model for black Latin Americans to follow.

Reggaeton's engagement with blackness has been neither simple

nor static. As argued in Wayne Marshall's essay, one can hear a shift
in the genre's identity politics "from musica negra to reggaeton
Latino"-from a race-based "black music" to a pan-ethnic musical
expression. Alexandra Vazquez's essay also grapples with these
ethnoracialized tensions manifest in reggaeton's engagement with
blackness and pan-latinidad, while paying particular attention to the
intersections between race, ethnicity, and gender.

MAPPING REGGAETON
The genre known today as reggaeton is the product of multiple and
overlapping musical circuits that do not comply with geographic,
national, or language boundaries, nor with ethnic or pan-ethnic
expectations. And yet, reggaeton's history is most often explained in
linear fashion, abiding by and affirming these very boundaries. The
genre's ascribed point of departure may vary-Panama and Puerto
Rico being the most often cited-yet these historical narratives tend to
name a single origination point and to run in only one direction. For
example, as stated by many of the artists interviewed in The Chosen
Few: El Documental, reggaeton originated in Panama; was adopted,
transformed and popularized in Puerto Rico; and from there was
exported to other countries in Latin America, the United States, and,
eventually, the rest of the world.

But how, exactly, can we map reggaeton? In fact, how can we map
any genre? Do we privilege sonics or social context? In terms of
social context, do we privilege place of origin or location of
development? In terms of sonics, do we give more definitional weight
to the beats or to the lyrics? To the lyrics' meanings and language
choices or to the musicality of their delivery? How is our mapping
affected by the changing nomenclature and musical aesthetics of the
genre? Because we understand the careful balancing of all these
factors as paramount in the mapping of reggaeton, we propose
reggaeton as best understood through the image of overlapping and
multidirectional circuits rather than a bipolar axis.'8

Perceptive observers have long noticed that reggae en espanol,

underground, and reggaeton are best described as trans-Caribbean
genres whose history and aesthetics do not abide by nation and
language as chief organizing principles.19 Yet, the two most popular
competing discourses regarding reggaeton's origins locate the genre
in one of two Spanish-speaking countries: some point to Panama's
reggae en espanol of the i98os as reggaeton's genesis, while others
insist on locating its origins in Puerto Rico's early 199os underground
music. Both camps bring crucial points to the discussion, and it
seems unlikely that reggaeton would have ever emerged without the
inputs of both Panamanian reggae en espanol and Puerto Rican
underground. But these nation-based narratives are extremely
limiting considering how much reggae en espanol as well as
underground consisted of "versioning" dancehall reggae hits coming
out of Jamaica in the 198os and 1990s.20 Indeed, if anything is
certain in the reggaeton narrative, it is that without Jamaican
dancehall reggae there would be no reggaeton.

There is yet another key locale in the development of reggaeton

that, though rarely surfacing in popular discussions of reggaeton's
origins, will not surprise those acquainted with the last hundred years
of Caribbean and Afro-diasporic music history: New York City. In this
sense, reggaeton joins such genres as calypso, jibaro music, mambo,
reggae, salsa, and hip-hop as products of New York's distinctive
intercultural dynamics.21 Not only has the city served as a place
where different Caribbean groups come into intense social, cultural,
and musical contact; New York has also been a center for the
recording and international diffusion of Caribbean music.22 This
complex and multidirectional circuitry of musical production and
dissemination was acknowledged in the earliest academic articles
dedicated to the early undergroundlreggaeton scene in Puerto Rico:
Mayra Santos's "Puerto Rican Underground" and Jorge L.
Giovannetti's "Popular Music and Culture in Puerto Rico: Jamaican
and Rap Music as Cross-Cultural Symbols."23 This anthology builds
upon their work, and many of its essays contribute to the complex
project of mapping and making sense of reggaeton's geographical
contours and local significations.

Several essays in this book concern themselves directly with

reggaeton's geographical and cultural cartography. Wayne Marshall
explores reggaeton's historical, translocal socio-sonic circuitry, taking
into account the drawing and crossing of national and social
boundaries via musical, linguistic, and visual aesthetics. Deborah
Pacini Hernandez's essay places Dominicanness-in its national as
well as transnational dimensions-at the center of her remapping
efforts. Similarly, Christoph Twickel's essay and his interview with El
General, alongside Ifeoma Nwankwo's interview with Renato, bring
into relief the important role that Panama and its historical
connections to Jamaica played in the genesis of new reggae styles.
Marshall and Twickel both discuss New York City as a key locale in
the development and diffusion of reggae en espanol, while Jose
Davila explores reggaeton's resonance and interplay with hip-hop and
crunkiao in Miami. Although neither Geoff Baker nor Jan Fairley make
claims for Cuba in the genesis and development of the genre, their
ethnographic perspectives show how the island nation fits into
reggaeton's cultural geography, providing an intriguing vantage point-
within a Spanishspeaking, semi-socialist society-from which to view
the genre's international development and significance.

In contrast, Welmo E. Romero Joseph, Felix Jimenez, Alfredo

Nieves Moreno, Frances Negron-Muntaner, and Raquel Z. Rivera
focus on reggaeton in local Puerto Rican contexts, reading what
reggaeton tells us about contemporary Puerto Rican culture and
society. Although, as discussed above, we have given careful
consideration to representing reggaeton as a transnational
phenomenon, considering the genre's strong, if not prevailing, Puerto
Rican character, such an emphasis not only seems reasonable but
necessary. Moreover, this geographical focus enables a breadth and
depth of analysis, especially along the axes of such important
dimensions as race and class, gender and sexuality, aesthetics and
poetics. Rounding things out, Alexandra Vazquez's essay considers
reggaeton's racial and gender politics as grounded in Puerto Rican
social mores and practices but resonating in wider contexts. Finally,
"Chamaco's Corner," by Gallego (Jose Raul Gonzalez), a Puerto
Rican poet and recent reggaetonero, serves as a bridge between the
literary/ academic world, and the sphere of popular music; this
critically acclaimed poem is featured in Gallego's award-winning first
book, Barrunto, and served as the introduction to Daddy Yankee's
2000 debut album El cartel de Yankee.

ANTHOLOGIZING AND READING REGGAETON

The editorial collaboration that has produced this volume is the result
of several converging trajectories. As scholars, each of us has been
analyzing Caribbean popular music and culture-in both U.S. and
island contexts-for many years. Rivera has written extensively in both
academic and journalistic forums about Puerto Rican and Caribbean
Latino music-particularly hip-hop and reggaeton-focusing on the
intersections between nation, ethnicity, class, race, and gender.
Marshall's research has centered on the interplay between hip-hop,
reggae, reggaeton, and other (pan-)American urban genres as giving
musical shape and form to social and cultural processes in and
across the United States, the Caribbean, and the greater Americas.
Pacini Hernandez has also done extensive work on musical circuits in
the Spanish Caribbean: with particular attention to how globalization
and transnational migration have altered patterns of music production
and consumption typically bounded by common language and
nationality, she has examined how these changes have "re-
Africanized" Spanish Caribbean cultural identity.

Beyond our converging research interests, we were moved to

compile this anthology after observing that despite extensive media
attention, reggaeton had not yet received scholarly analysis
commensurate with its musical and cultural significance. To date,
there have been few academic articles on the topic, and no book that
takes reggaeton as its primary subject.24 Given our strong, abiding
interests in the region's musical, social, and cultural dimensions, and
our overlapping but distinct disciplinary orientations, we felt both
motivated and well positioned to take on the complex task of "reading
reggaeton" and thinking about how an anthology of essays might
attempt such a project.

While we sought to provide an appropriate balance of thematic and

location-specific coverage, we ultimately selected the most insightful
and provocative essays, even if that meant some aspects of
reggaeton are not fully covered here. For example, while Jan Fairley
offers her interpretation of reggaeton dance in Cuba from the
perspective of a British feminist, the cultural meanings of the perreo
(doggy-style) dance associated with reggaeton might be understood
quite differently in other Caribbean locations, such as Jamaica and
Trinidad, with long traditions of sexually explicit dances.

Most of the essays in this anthology are new and examine

reggaeton's history, musical and poetic aesthetics, discourses and
images, dance styles, and technologies, as well as issues such as
migration and globalization, from the multiple perspectives of
production, dissemination, consumption, and perfor- mance.25
Because of its historical importance, one of the earliest articles on the
emerging genre (even before it had become known by the term
reggaeton) is reproduced here (Raquel Z. Rivera's essay).26 We also
include here two essays that were previously published in English:
Jan Fairley's and Tego Calderon's. Christoph Twickel's essay was
published in Germany and translated for this volume. Gallego's poem
was also translated specifically for this publication from its original
Spanish by Juan Flores. The fourth part in this anthology, "Visualizing
Reggaeton," offers alternative strategies for "reading reggaeton":
these include a gallery of still photographs from Carolina Caycedo's
video/ performance piece about reggaeton dance, Gran Perreton;
selected pieces from visual artist Miguel Luciano's series Pure
Plantainum, a meditation on identity politics in the "bung-bung" era,
and from Filiberto Ojeda Uptowns-Machetero Air Force Ones, a
customized pair of Nike sneakers that explore the intersections
between hyperconsumerism and revolutionary ideals; and, finally,
photographs by the noted reggaeton videographer Kacho L6pez that
document Tego Calder6n's life-changing experiences in Sierra Leone
during the 20o6 filming of the vx1 documentary Bling'd: Blood,
Diamonds, and Hip-Hop.'

Although we do not entertain the notion that this anthology will

serve as the final or most authoritative word on reggaeton, it is our
hope and intention that it might provoke, as it focuses, further
discussion of the genre's vistas, borders, meanings, and significance.
The vibrant and varied discourses around reggaeton neither start nor
end here, but the collected contributions in this book should serve to
guide future conversations about how and why we value, name, and
map reggaeton in the ways that we do.

NOTES

Translations of Spanish-language quotations are those of this essay's

authors.

i. Jon Caramanica, "Grow Dem Bow," Village Voice, January io,

2006.

2. Byron Crawford, "Ban Reggaeton," Bol's Saturday Night Workout

by Byron Crawford, entry posted March 29, 2006,
http://xxlmag.com/online/?p=767 (accessed February 6, 2006).

3. See, e.g., Agustin Gurza, "When the Fad Goes Fizzle," Los
Angeles Times, April i6, 2006; Jordan Levin, "Reggaeton's Unrealized
Dream," Miami Herald, May 20, 2007; and Leila Cobo, "Reggaeton
No Longer Translates to Automatic Sales," Monsters and Critics, May
21, 2007, under "Music News,"
http://music.monstersandcritics.com/news/arti
cle_13o7425.php/Reggaeton_no_longer_translates_to_automatic_sal
es (accessed May 23, 2007).

4. Leila Cobo, "What the Numbers Tell Us: Latin Retail. Not as
Rosey, or Maybe Not as Dire, as You Think," Billboard, January 20,
2007, 12 (col. 1).

5. Kelefa Sanneh, "Celebrating the Sweet Beat of Reggaeton

Success," New York Times, February 5, 2007.

6. Maia Sherwood Droz, "Regueton: Una propuesta ortografica," El

Nuevo Dia (Revista Letras), May 2006.

7. Ifiaki Estivaliz, "Academia Puertorriquefia propondra que se

escriba `regueton;' Terra/EFE, November 7, 2006,
http://www.terra.com/ocio/articulo/html/oci'54833 .htm (accessed
June 7, 2007).

8. Raquel Cepeda, "Riddims by the Reggaeton," Village Voice,

March 28, 2005.

9. These musical relationships are clarified further in Wayne

Marshall's essay.

io. For more on the relationship between dancehall and roots

reggae, and between these related forms and hip-hop, see, e.g.,
Norman Stolzoff, Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall
Culture in Jamaica (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); and
Wayne Marshall, "Routes, Rap, Reggae: Hearing the Histories of Hip-
Hop and Reggae Together" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin,
Madison, 2007).

11. For more on reggae's concept of "riddims" and practice of

"versioning," see, e.g., Peter Manuel and Wayne Marshall, "The
Riddim Method: Aesthetics, Practice, and Ownership in Jamaican
Dancehall," Popular Music 25, no. 3 (20o6): 447-70.

12. Jorge L. Giovannetti, "Popular Music and Culture in Puerto

Rico: Jamaican and Rap Music as Cross-Cultural Symbols," in
Musical Migrations Volume I: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity
in Latinlo America, ed. Frances R. Aparicio and Candida F. Jaquez
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 89.

13. Blanquito is the diminutive form of the word blanco (white).

Though it can be used as a purely descriptive term for someone who
is phenotypically white, in this case, though using the language of
color, blanquito is a term that is class based as much as it is race
based.

14. Frances Aparicio, Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular

Music and Puerto Rican Cultures (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of
New England, 1998), 69-82; Cocolos y Roqueros, film recording,
directed by Ana Maria Garcia (Pandora Films, 1992).

15. For an early elaboration of this argument, see Mayra Santos,

"Puerto Rican Underground," Centro 8, nos. 1 and 2 (1996): 219-31.

16. As noted in Wayne Marshall's essay, reggaeton has been

derisively described by some as "polka reggae." See also the 2005
thread "Reggaeton Smeggaeton," http://
www.blackchat.co.uk/theblackforum/forum4/15744.html (accessed
February 1, 2007); or any number of contentious discussions at
dancehallreggae.com, e.g., http://dance
hallreggae.com/forum/archive/index.php?t-5lo8o.html (accessed
January 25, 2008).

17. Jaime Torres Torres, "De espaldas a la tradicion," El Nuevo Dia,

October 1o, 2004; Jaime Torres Torres, "Ojo critico al ritmo
delreggaeton," El Nuevo Dia, October 10, 2004.

18. Numerous other genres, such as salsa, have also generated

spirited arguments regarding their origins and trajectory. See, e.g.,
Peter Manuel, "Puerto Rican Music and Cultural Identity: Creative
Appropriation of Cuban Sources from Danza to Salsa,"
Ethnomusicology 38, no. 2 (spring/summer 1994): 249-80; Marisol
Berrios-Miranda, "`Con Sabor a Puerto Rico': The Reception and
Influence of Puerto Rican Salsa in Venezuela," in Musical Migrations
Volume I: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latinlo America,
ed. Frances R. Aparicio and Candida F. Jaquez (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003), 47-67; and Angel Quintero Rivera, Salsa, sabot y
control: Sociologia de la musica tropical (Mexico City: Siglo XXI,
1998), 87-104.

19. Santos, "Puerto Rican Underground."

20. Again, for more on the practice of "versioning," see, e.g.,

Manuel and Marshall, "The Riddim Method."
 21. For more on hip-hop's Caribbean influences and participation,
see Raquel Z. Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Jeff Chang, Can't Stop Won't
Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: Picador, 2005),
7-88.

22. Kenneth Bilby, "The Caribbean as a Musical Region," in

Caribbean Contours, ed. Sidney W. Mintz and Sally Price (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985),181- 218; Ray Allen and Lois
Wilcken, eds., Island Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular
Music and Identity in New York (Urbana: 'University of Illinois Press,
2001).

23. Santos, "Puerto Rican Underground"; Giovannetti, "Popular

Music and Culture in Puerto Rico."

24. The exception is the cursory and independently published

volume in Spanish by Raul Moris Garcia, El rap vs. la 357: Historia
del rap y reggaeton en Puerto Rico (N.p., n.d. [20051).

25. Ideally, we would have wanted to reprint many of the few

existing essays on reggaeton, but space constraints have forced us
to prioritize the publication of unpublished manuscripts. These
previously published texts are listed in the bibliography, along with
some key journalistic pieces on the subject.

26. This paper was presented at the Puerto Rican Studies

Association Conference in 1998 and served as the basis for various
journalistic articles by the author, but, as an academic paper, it
remained unpublished.

27. Bling'd: Blood, Diamonds, and Hip Hop, film recording, directed
by Raquel Cepeda (Article 19 Films and Djali Rancher Productions,
2007).
When Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" galloped up the charts on a catchy
chorus, some shifty snares, and a riff befitting a bullfight, it expressed
as much a sense of where reggaeton had come from as where it
might go. Though some detractors heard it as little more than the
latest quasi-Caribbean commercial confection (and a rather sexist bit
of ear and eye candy at that),' a closer listen, with ears attuned to the
genre's aesthetic history, reveals a number of ways that the song
embodies a complex history of social and sonic circuitry. In particular,
if one attends more carefully to the pista, or track, propelling the
lexically and musically suggestive vocals of Daddy Yankee and his
eager foil, Glory, one can hear Luny Tunes' sleek, powerful
production not only as a quintessential example of contemporary,
commercial reggaeton style but as a musical text engaging with a
long history of circulating sounds, people, and ideas about self and
other, race and place.

One might hear such social and sonic circuitry in the explicitly
electronic sounds of "Gasolina," which include brittle, chintzy, "preset"
virtual instruments from such popular music software as Fruity Loops
(or, as it has rebranded itself, FL Studio) as well as more
sophisticated "synth patches" offering sounds, such as orchestral
strings, with a greater verisimilitude. Ranging from bright and
needling to low and buzzy, the track's interwoven synthesizer lines
evoke engagements with contemporary hip-hop, pop and R&B,
dancehall reggae, and even techno as they provide a dense
harmonic texture for Yankee's sing-song, rapid-fire rap. Conjuring
club culture, the track's crescendoing kick drums and periodic
"breakdowns" seem more clearly borrowed from "trance" and dance
anthems than from any of reggaeton's more typically cited "tropical"
sources.' The harmonic movement of the track, shifting a semitone or
half-step every other measure-especially with its galloping figures,
adding 32nd note flourishes to propel the pista forward-may suggest
to some, including listeners who first heard such cliches via the
producers' namesake (i.e., Looney Tunes cartoons), the classic
contours of bullfight music or pasodoble, as typified by Pascual
Marquina Narro's well-worn sporting anthem, "Espana Canis"
Appearing to affirm such associations, Yankee boasts, "En la pista
nos Haman los matadores" (On the track they call us the matadors).
Figuring Spain in this manner, or Spanish colonial legacies (as
mediated by pop culture fantasies), "Gasolina" not only features the
harmonic movement and marchlike figures associated with bullfight
music, it also employs, as do many contemporary reggaeton
productions, a I-V or "oompah" style bassline, hence gesturing as
well to the polka and other social dance forms that have long
resounded across the colonial Americas (as can also be heard in
Mexican banda).

Daddy Yankee's vocal style similarly embodies a range of

forebears, from the nasally tinged projections of salsa soneros (or, for
that matter, of bomba singers), to the double-time deliveries and lilting
melodies of dancehall CIS, to the more complex rhyme schemes and
speechlike flows of hip-hop Mcs.; Accordingly, Yankee's lyrics touch
on themes resonant with the race- and classbased concerns so
central to these stylistic forebears-genres which, as we shall
examine, have long informed reggaeton. The song's blatant sexual
innuendo and apparently asymmetrical gender relations, for instance,
could be heard as celebrating simple pleasures, affirming patriarchy,
and challenging middleclass mores in a similar manner to hip-hop,
reggae, or salsa. Suffice to say, though, for all its obvious qualities,
Yankee's suggestive, central metaphor has been interpreted by
audiences and observers to mean any number of things, from
synecdoche for speed to an allusion to oral sex. Indeed, the song's
inclusion on the compilation Reggaeton Ninos (EMI Latin 2005) would
seem to confirm its inherently multivalent character.' Unsurprisingly, in
an era of gas hikes and instability in the Middle East, many heard
"Gasolina" as a rather literal reference, including some surprisingly
empathetic listeners in Iraq.5

But all these potential meanings only scratch the surface of the
track's suggestive figurations. Indeed, for many listeners and
dancers, it is no doubt the steady kick drum and syncopated snares,
marking out reggaeton's trademark, bedrock rhythm, which primarily
catches their ears and hips. Sometimes referred to as the dembow-
recalling a connection to Bobby Digital's and Shabba Ranks's early
'9os dancehall reggae recording "Dem Bow" (1991), a song and a
riddim (i.e., backing track) which has profoundly shaped the sound of
reggaeton-the snares in "Gasolina" play against the steady four-on-
thefloor kick pattern, creating a 3 + 3 + 2 groove that cross-cuts as it
reaffirms the downbeat emphasis of the track: boom-ch-boom-chick
boom -ch- boom -chick.' Overlapping in rhythmic orientation (and
embodied dance movement) with a wide variety of Caribbean genres,
from salsa to son to reggae to soca, reggaeton's prevailing pattern
allows the genre, for all its connections to hip-hop and reggae, to
circulate as a regionally inflected form of global pop.

Attending more closely to the snares, the production also takes on

a more particularly Puerto Rican character. Not only do the snares
play a rhythmic role; perhaps more crucially they delineate the song's
form while making direct, timbral connections to such foundational
source materials for the genre as the Dem Bow and Bam Bam
riddims-Jamaican dancehall "versions" (or instrumental sides) which
became staples of the "proto-reggaeton;" selfproclaimed underground
scene in Puerto Rico during the 199os. Rather than employing a
single snare drum sample for the duration of the track, as most pop
songs tend to, Luny Tunes alternate between a couple of particular,
familiar snare sounds, shifting the sample every four measures to
create a subtle, stylistically grounded sense of movement against the
otherwise repetitive structures of the track (though it should be noted
that the duo also manipulate the layers of synths in a similar, regular
manner). By directly indexing the classic building blocks of reggaeton,
the snares in "Gasolina" suggest connections to a long history of
pistas and mixtapes which preceded the breakthrough pop smash
and which remain as audible, palpable, if subtle remnants of an
unbridled, underground, sample-based past in a genre that has since
embraced slick synthesizers and commercial channels.

By beginning with this close reading of what many might dismiss as

a disposable, overly commercialized example of the genre, I hope to
have suggested some of the ways that contemporary reggaeton style
emerges from a longstanding, technologically enabled practice of
culturally charged musical engagement. Given how fraught
discussions of reggaeton's origins and history tend to be, especially
along the lines of nation and style (often putatively cast as national
provenance), it is worth taking a closer look at the particular ways that
so many social and sonic flows coalesced in Puerto Rico in the
199os, connecting North, South, and Central America and the
Caribbean in symbolic, sensual form. The aim of this essay is to
examine reggaeton's aesthetic history to date, tying its shifting
shapes and enduring forms to articulations of community
relationships amidst shared living spaces and soundscapes.
Considering such processes as migration, mediation, identification,
and commercialization, I attempt to tease out how the social and
sonic have been deeply intertwined in the history of the genre,
dialectically informing each other in the music's production,
circulation, and reception. Although I ana lyze verbal and visual texts
in order to explore the correspondence between musical style,
sartorial and linguistic symbolism, and the politics of culture, my focus
here is on musical texts-primarily, the genre's pistas, the underlying
tracks which propel reggaeton into the global mediascape and so
suggestively embody its complex twists and turns. Reggaeton's
driving rhythms and dense textures, I contend, give shape and form
to myriad movements across the Western Hemisphere, with
metropoles and labor centers serving as crucial sites for the music's
creation and dissemination. Connecting musical style to cultural
politics (as historically grounded and complexly cross-cut by race-
and class-commitments, ideologies of color, gender, and nation, and
market forces), I seek to lend you my ears-admittedly, the ears of an
engaged outsider-as I hear the genre's musical development
reflecting and informing the sonic and social flows of the postcolonial
Americas.

FROM WHERE? THE LOADED QUESTION OF ORIGINS

Despite some serious contention, reggaeton's publicly negotiated

narrative has tended to locate the music's genesis in Panama, while
other places-from Jamaica to New York to Puerto Rico-remain
significant, if secondary, sites for the genre's genealogy.' On the one
hand, all of these places have played a pivotal role in the music's
development. On the other, a number of important figures in the
music's history have moved back and forth between various sites
over the course of their careers, and so to some extent the most
wellworn arguments about national provenance tend to overlook the
imbrications of these places due to (circular) patterns of migration
and the reach of mass media. The established narrative also tends to
proceed in far too linear a fashion, for the interplay between hip-hop
and reggae in Panama, Puerto Rico, and New York was rather
simultaneous. As I will attempt to tease out, each of these symbolic
sites might better be understood as representing both distinctive,
local contexts as well as mobile, fluid sociocultural constellations.
Depending on where one draws the lines around reggaeton, one
draws different lines of community, and various observers,
enthusiasts, and participants have sought to circumscribe or expand
the genre's geographical-cultural borders according to incompatible if
overlapping ideologies of race, class, nation, and the like. Given how
heated such debates can become, it is imperative to attempt to clarify
the relationships between these various central sites of reggae/ton
history." In this section, I will consider and appraise some of the more
common connections made between the current, ascendant sound of
the genre and its alleged antecedents, namely reggae en espanol,
"meren-rap" and "merenhouse," bomba and plena, salsa and
merengue, (Latin) hip-hop, and reggae itself.
i. A skeletal sketch of reggaeton's boom-ch-boom-chick.

Journalists and cultural nationalists (or pan-nationalists) alike have

been eager to tie the sound of reggaeton to other Latin (or "tropical,"
to use the music industry term), Puerto Rican genres, or a
combination of them. The explicit, if exceptional, appearance of Afro-
Puerto Rican folk forms such as bomba on the recent recordings of
Tego Calder6n and La Sista has helped to encourage this perception.
Similarly, the increasing presence in the last few years of musical
figures (and direct digital samples) from salsa, merengue, and
bachata-as will be discussed in some detail later in this essay-serves
to fuel fantasies about reggaeton's inherent latinidad. Such
perceptions of Latin or Afro-Latin musical identity in reggaeton are not
without merit, though one would have to propose a more general
theory of Latin-Caribbean musical influence and Afro-American (in
the broadest sense) musical unity in order to reconcile history with
the imaginary.9 It is telling that some observers hear reggaeton's
musical structures not as "Latin" at all, but as essentially Jamaican or
African American in constitution, while others make reference to
concepts such as slave in order to place the genre firmly in an Afro-
Latin-Caribbean tradition. If we consider the prevailing, if not crucial,
rhythmic template of reggaeton, we can see and hear how it overlaps
with various regional styles (figure i).10

The rhythmic pattern in figure i-accenting a steady 4/4 pulse with 3

+ 3 + 2 cross-rhythms-is ubiquitous in the Caribbean and, given some
differences in emphasis and arrangement, can be heard in such
diverse genres as reggae and mento, soca and calypso, salsa and
son, merengue and "meringue," "konpa" and zouk." Such overlapping
structural features allow some listeners to hear reggaeton less as a
"Yankee" thing, as a symbol of cultural imperialism, than as a return
to Afro-Latin roots. With specific regard to Puerto Rican traditions,
one could understand how reggaeton's persistent kick drum and
polyrhythmic snares might dovetail in the musical imagination with
plena's steady pulse and playful syncopations or with similarly
structured, propulsive bomba rhythms such as sica, cuembe, or seis
corrido.'2

In this sense, we might compare articulations between reggaeton

and various Afro-Latin traditions with Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi
Johnson's proposal for hearing the minimal rhythms of 198os and
'9os dancehall reggae-the very rhythms that underpin reggaeton-not
so much as an example of a tech-heavy, northward-leaning
corruption of Jamaican style but as a modern return to Afro-Jamaican
folk forms:

With the discovery of digital recording, an extreme minimalism has

emerged-in the music of people like Steelie and Clevie, for
example. On the one hand, this music is totally technological; on
the other the rhythms are far more Jamaican: they're drawn from
Etu, Pocomania, Kumina- African-based religious cults who
provide the rhythms used by Shabba Ranks or Buju Banton. So
despite the extent of the technology being used, the music is
becoming even rootsier, with a resonance even for quite old
listeners, because it echoes back to what they first heard in rural
Jamaica.13

Whether or not one agrees with Johnson or, if you will, his
hypothetical Puerto Rican brethren, this rhythmic resonance between
dancehall's ultramodern rhythmic minimalism and traditional Afro-
Caribbean forms seems at best a subconscious phenomenon. At
worst, especially with regard to reggaeton, it encourages the
uncritical reproduction of stereotypes about an essential Latin sabor,
or "flavor," "hot" rhythms for "hot blooded" people, and so on. Such
ideas can support strategic mobilizations of racial or ethnic identities
in particular contexts and moments, but the historical record-not to
mention the musical record-offers a much more precise, and less
problematic, account of the connections between Jamaican reggae
and reggaeton.

For all the resonance with Afro-(Latin-)Caribbean music and with

Afrodiasporic music more generally, the predominant rhythmic
orientation of reggaeton is derived directly, and quite audibly, from
dancehall reggae (sometimes referred to as ragga, short for
"raggamuffin," connoting the music's rough-and-tumble environs).
Thus Jamaica-or more accurately, Jamaica via Panama and New
York-merits no small acknowledgment in a genealogy of reggaeton
aesthetics. (Explicit tribute is paid, of course, in the derivative name
of the genre itself.) One can hear the direct link between these
genres quite clearly in the dancehall-derived rhythms and riddims
underlying both Panamanian and Puerto Rican recordings and in the
borrowed melodies that propel so many of the "proto-reggaeton"
recordings from the early and mid-199os. Although "roots" reggae
maintains a degree of popularity in the same sites where reggaeton
now rules-such that one still finds "purist" scenes in which Bob Marley
is the model-dancehall reggae's synthetic textures, dance tempos,
rapid-fire rap, and minimalist focus on 3 + 3 + 2 cross-rhythms starkly
demarcated by heavy, synthesized drums, have much more strongly
influenced what is today called reggaeton. Indeed, demonstrating a
continued engagement with contemporary dancehall style, one
occasionally hears in reggaeton pistas, rather than the rhythms
illustrated in figure i, a stripped-down pattern more characteristic of
dancehall riddims from the mid- to late 199os. Sometimes referred to
as the bomp bomp-an onomatopoeic phrase gesturing to the
proclivity for tracing out the 3 + 3 + 2 by employing two kicks followed
by a snare-dancehall's distinctive rhythmic profile might be
represented as in figure 2.
2. Dancehall reggae's minimal "bomp bomp."

In contrast, roots reggae's predominant groove, often called the

"one-drop" in order to describe the spare but regular accent of the
kick drum, leaves room for plenty of polyrhythmic activity around the
downbeats (and, indeed, one can feel a great deal of 3:2 cross-
rhythms in roots reggae's live band interplay and studio-engineered
effects), but the prevailing feel is more duple-more easily counted in
groups of 2s (or 4s) than 3s and zs, as depicted in figure 3.

Beyond these structural rhythmic relationships, however,

dancehall's uptake among young Panamanians and Puerto Ricans
was no doubt related to its cultural connotations: its newness, its
rudeness, and its close relationship to rap or hip-hop (and thus to the
sounds and images of modernity, urbanity, and blackness). Whereas
roots reggae preached pan-African liberation and consciousness
raising, often couched in the millenarian language of Rastafari,
dancehall reggae embraced more earthy and local concerns, themes
resonant and in close conversation with contemporary hip-hop: crime,
drugs, violence, sex, poverty, corruption. Indeed, affirming their
relational character, dancehall and hip-hop have tended to travel
together, heard outside their principal sites of production as two sides
of the same coin."

It is no mere coincidence that dancehall exploded in popularity in

San Juan around the same time that the genre was enjoying one of
its periodic crests of "crossover" popularity in New York and in the
United States more generally. Dancehall's presence in urban
soundscapes was strongly mediated by hip-hop, and the new sounds
of Jamaica arrived in Puerto Rico less via Kingston than from New
York. Connected to the remarkable growth and influence of New
York's Jamaican community during the 198os-a decade during which
Jamaican drug-trafficking posses dominated the trade across the
Eastern Seaboard and representations of Jamaicans (in hip-hop and
Hollywood alike) constructed a fearsome, ruthless, exotic portrait of
the place and peopleby the early 199os dancehall reggae had
become a ubiquitous and culturally charged feature of the New York
soundscape.15 Because of (and adding to) its resonance with
contemporary hip-hop, videos by such Jamaican artists as Shabba
Ranks and Super Cat appeared on Yo! MTv Raps and BET'S Rap
City alongside popular rap videos, while blocks of dancehall favorites
worked their way into the sets of hip-hop DJS. It is worth noting that
the very dancehall tracks which found favor among hip-hop DTs at
this time-including such hits as "Murder She Wrote" (1992) by Chaka
Demus & Pliers, "A Who Seh Me Dun" (1993) by Cutty Ranks, and
"Hot This Year" (1993) by Dirtsman-not only tended to employ the
boom -ch-boom-chick drum pattern which would become reggaeton's
bedrock (again, see figure 1), but also popularized a set of riddims
and other sonic signposts (from basslines to drum timbres to vocal
melodies) which Puerto Rican producers and performers would
incorporate into the deeply, densely referential underground
recordings of the early 199os, laying the musical foundations for what
is today called reggaeton.

3. A (very) skeletal sketch of roots reggae's "one-drop."

As will be discussed in the next section, the "proto-reggaeton" of

the early and mid-r99os, as called by a number of other names,
draws almost equally on reggae and hip-hop. Notably, many
reggaetoneros (some of whom formerly called themselves raperos or
rapeadores) cite hip-hop or rap as their primary point of reference,
rather than reggae, and some go so far as simply to declare
reggaeton a subgenre of hip-hop. The 2004 documentary Chosen
Few, for example, includes a segment in which various reggaeton
artists name hip-hop artists they consider to be important influences
on their own development, among them Run DMC, Heavy D, Big
Daddy Kane, and Kool G Rap, as well asfor Puerto Rican rap pioneer
Lisa M-MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Salt- N-Pepa.'6 Notably these
influences all date to the mid and late i98os, marking a particular
generational orientation and a formative period for the artists inter
viewed. The segment, as well as other testimony to reggaeton's hip-
hop roots, stands in stark contrast to the conspicuous absence of any
similar testimonials about the influence of (Jamaican) reggae artists.
This somewhat lopsided genealogy might be explained, in part, by
the fact that many current reggaeton stars began as aspiring hip-hop
artists, rapping over hip-hop beats rather than reggae riddims, and
only switched to a reggaeton format when it became clear that the
burgeoning genre would provide a path to greater success. Thus,
Polaco professes that hip-hop is "what I love to do and what I learned
to do." Master Joe contends that the biggest influence on reggaeton
has come from hip-hop artists who rap "en americano."7 And Tego
Calderon feels little compunction about describing himself in the
following manner: "I sing hip-hop on top of a reggaeton beat. I don't
know how to write in any other way." Tego's additional commentary
on the tensions between hip-hop and reggaeton in Puerto Rico,
accusing some local hip-hoppers (and reggaeton detractors) of
wanting "to be real" while acting "blacker than Big Daddy Kane,"
shows that issues of race remain central to the discourse around
urban popular music in Puerto Rico. Despite foregrounding negritude
and racial solidarity in his own music and public image, Tego implies
that reggaeton is something that Puerto Ricans of all stripes can
embrace un-self-consciously ("This is our music," he adds), whereas
hip-hop remains strongly marked as the domain of African Americans
and thus tied to a particular notion of blackness (as he puts it, "You
can't be more of a priest than the Pope").

Any discussion of reggaeton's relationship to hip-hop, however,

would be incomplete without an acknowledgment of what is often
referred to as "Latin rap" or "Latin hip-hop"-a subgenre distinguished
not so much by musical style, which can vary widely within hip-hop's
broad sonic palette, but by language. As Juan Flores and Raquel Z.
Rivera have noted, rap in Spanish (and Spanglish), especially as
performed by Puerto Ricans (and/or Nuyoricans), has long played a
part in New York's hip-hop scene despite its marginalization in the
hip-hop narrative.18 Significantly, however, a good number of the
most prominent exponents of Latin rap-including Mellow Man Ace,
Kid Frost, and Cypress Hill-have been based in Los Angeles, with
family ties to Mexico rather than (or as well as) the Latin Caribbean.
The popularity of such acts in the early '9os served to validate
Spanish-language rap at a crucial moment, offering inspiration for
aspiring artists across the Spanish-speaking United States and Latin
America more widely. Other ostensibly "Latin rappers" such as Big
Pun, Fat Joe and the Terror Squad, and (more recently) N.O.R.E.-all
based in and around New York-have acknowledged their latinidad as
a significant part of their cultural, ethnic, or national identity, but they
tend to rap predominantly, if not entirely, in English. Nevertheless,
their popularity among Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking
audiences has further affirmed the place of Latin rap in hip-hop, in
some cases-and for some observers-"proving" that Latin Mcs "could
rhyme."19 And yet, despite their common articulations of solidarity
among people of color (e.g., freely employing the "n-word"), such
performers have also consistently registered strong ambivalence
around issues of race, often drawing or redrawing lines between New
York's Latino and black communities despite the common
racialization of Nuyoricans as black.20 Lyrics such as the following
fragment from Big Pun, for example, seem to reaffirm both hip-hop's
putative blackness as well as the assumed nonblackness of "Latin
rappers": "I'm the first Latin rapper to baffle your skull/ master the
flow/niggas be swearin' I'm blacker than coal [Cole] /like Nat King."21

In contrast to U.S.-based rappers of Latino heritage, many of whom

might be better described as peppering their rhymes with Spanish
words and phrases than actually rapping in Spanish, Puerto Rico's
Vico C stands as a foundational figure, as the artist who first
demonstrated that one could rap entirely and compellingly in Spanish
(if perhaps peppered with the occasional English phrase or hip-hop
slang). Although other Puerto Rican rappers, including Ruben DJ,
also emerged in the mid- to late i98os, far and away Vico C is cited
by raperos and reggaetoneros alike as the pioneer of rap en espanol.
In addition to releasing a number of popular recordings of his own
(including the 1989 touchstone, "La Recta Final"), he also played a
strong role as a producer and ghostwriter, assisting in the early
careers of other performers in the Puerto Rican rap (and pop) scene,
including Lisa M, Francheska, and El Comandante. It is additionally
notable that Vico C has participated in the reggae/ton movement
since its underground days-appearing, for example, on The Noise 7
and its accompanying video (1997)-showing again the degree to
which reggaeton not only engages with but emerges from (and blurs
into) the local hip-hop scene in Puerto Rico, despite deep and
enduring fissures between the two scenes.22

Not surprisingly, Vico C shares his compatriots' ideas about

reggaeton's basis in hip-hop, describing the genre (in the Chosen
Few documentary) as "essentially hip-hop but with a flavor more
compatible to the Caribbean." While maintaining that the two are of
the same essence, he demonstrates the main difference between
hip-hop and reggaeton by beatboxing brief examples of each genre's
quintessential musical style.23 In contrast to the 3 + 3 + 2
crossrhythms that underpin reggaeton, Vico C's representation of a
standard hiphop rhythm is, rather accurately (and audibly), more
"duple" in characterthat is, more oriented toward a metric accent
heard and felt in groups of 2 or 4-a "feel" produced by the steady
snares on the backbeat, anchoring the groove against the
syncopations of the kick drum, as shown in figure 4.

4. Vico C's version of a standard hip-hop beat.

This essential difference is not an insignificant one. Reggaeton's

prevailing rhythmic orientation derives rather directly from dancehall
reggae and as such overlaps with a great number of other Caribbean
(dance) genres. Indeed, it is reggaeton's danceability, its dance-
centric character-as achieved through the genre's 3 + 3 + 2 snares
and 4/4 kicks-which distinguishes it from hip-hop for a good number
of fans and practitioners and which often serves crucially to
"Caribbeanize" what otherwise would be heard simply as Latin hip-
hop. A number of interviewees in the Chosen Few documentary, for
example, distinguish reggaeton from hip-hop by noting that the former
is more of a baile- centric genre, more appropriate for couple dancing
than "b-boying" or breakdancing, where the focus (for many listeners
or clubgoers) is more often the beat than the lyrics.

The conventional story of reggaeton typically follows Vico C's

towering example with a discussion of another exemplar of Spanish-
language "rap," a Panamanian-born dancehall DJ (i.e., a rapping
vocalist, in reggae parlance) who, in a nod to the power of Panama's
military dictators, dubbed himself El General.24 Panama's links to
Jamaica, and hence to reggae, have long passed into reggaeton lore,
with El General serving as a prominent symbol of Panama's important
place in the story despite the ways that his own transnational
narrative complicates too neat an account of origins and outposts.
Invocations of the Panamanian roots of reggaeton are, often, all too
facile. Typically taking the form of a brief mention of migrant laborers
moving from Jamaica to Panama around the turn of the twentieth
century, such citations bolster some rather bold assumptions about
the transmission of culture between these places, often ignoring the
fact that Jamaicans worked and lived side by side with large numbers
of people from across the Anglo- and Franco-Caribbean. Many
accounts erroneously imply that Jamaicans "brought reggae" to
Panama in the early twentieth century, well before the genre came
into being, or, similarly anachronistic, that they emigrated to work on
the Panama Canal during the 197os.25 In contrast to such
conjecture, studies of Jamaican migration and nationhood might
better inform an understanding of the movements and connections
between the Caribbean and Central America, as well as the
sociocultural implications thereof. Indeed, for all the claims (and
dismissals) that reggae purists level at reggaeton, it is important to
note that cultural influence is rarely unidirectional and that
longstanding circuits of migration to the Latin Caribbean and to North,
Central, and South America have strongly shaped Jamaican
culture.26 In his influential work on Jamaican national identity, Mirror
Mirror, Rex Nettleford notably names Panama as a salient site in the
modern Jamaican imagination. "Jamaicans are a people who are
constantly exposed to external influences," argues Nettleford,

whose economic system traditionally depends on the caprice of

other people's palates, whose values are largely imported from an
alien set of experiences, and whose dreams and hopes have, at
one time or another, been rooted either in a neighboring Panama,
Cuba or Costa Rica, in big brother America and sometimes in
Canada, a Commonwealth cousin.27

Shoring up this assertion with yet another reference to the country,

Nettleford contends that Jamaicans have been "a migrating people
ever since the late nineteenth century when the first Panama Canal
project was started." He marshals some striking comparative
evidence for such a claim: "Between the 188os and 1920, net
emigration from Jamaica amounted to about 146,000- 46,000 went to
the U.S.A., 45,000 to Panama, 22,000 to Cuba (to work in sugar),
and other countries like Costa Rica (for railroad building and banana
cultivation) drew some 43,000."28 Similarly, the anthropologist
Deborah Thomas, in discussing the role that Jamaicans' "increased
mobility" played in local notions of nation, notes that prior to 1911,
when Cuba and the United States began to attract the majority of
migrant workers, Panama received 62 percent of all Jamaican
emigrants.29

For all the assumptions about the primacy of Jamaican cultural

influence in Panama, the degree to which Afro-Panamanian musical
culture has been shaped by Jamaican forms and practices is striking,
especially given that the canal construction projects first led by
France and then by the United States attracted migrant labor from
across the Caribbean, including significant numbers of workers from
Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. Such a
remarkable degree of influence, however, is not incommensurate with
what might be seen as a kind of late twentieth-century Jamaican
cultural hegemony across the Anglo-Caribbean and the African
diaspora more generally, especially with regard to youth culture and
counterculture.30 Even so, it is important to note that prior to reggae's
global heyday in the 1970s, when the genre found favor even outside
the major sites of Jamaican migration, AfroPanamanian popular
music was heavily based around calypso (popularized by
Trinidadians and Jamaicans alike), as performed by such local
favorites as Lord Cobra and Lord Panama, whose names nod to the
calypso tradition in the same way that Panamanian reggae artists
would later crown themselves after various dancehall DJs. By the late
1970s, calypso in Panama had been largely supplanted by soca-a
more modern version of the Trinidadian sound, engaging with
American R&B as well as Indo-Trinidadian styles-and by reggae,
which at that point was still defined by roots-style "one-drop"
rhythms." Largely based in the urban contexts of Colon and Panama
City, some of the earliest proponents of Panamanian reggae-and
hence some of the first to perform Spanish-language reggae-included
such touted pioneers as Renato y las 4 Estrellas (one of whom was
Edgardo Franco, a.k.a. El General), Nando Boom, and Chicho
Man.32

Because of such strong, direct links to Jamaica and the Anglo-

Caribbean, the embrace and transformation of reggae in Panama are
in some sense rather different from the parallel processes in Puerto
Rico, where reggae's presence was largely mediated via New York
(and hip-hop). Such a crucial difference, however, should not obscure
the degree to which reggae in both places has served a local cultural
politics based on a similar articulation of race, class, and generation.
Nor should it efface the ways that Puerto Rican reggae/ton has
influenced the Panamanian scene-in circular fashion-since itself
emerging, in part, out of engagements with the reggae recordings of
such performers as El General. Typically referred to in Panama
simply as "reggae" or localized as plena (not to be confused with the
Puerto Rican genre) or bultron, Panama's Jamaican-derived popular
music was also sometimes called petroleo, a descriptor-not unlike
melaza in Puerto Rico (discussed in detail in the next section)-which
strongly signified the perceived and projected blackness of the genre
and its adherents.33 Although roots reggae remains popular in
Panama, since the early '8os dancehall reggae, as in Jamaica, has
dominated the scene. Indeed, this roots-to-dancehall dynamic
illustrates the degree to which reggae in Panama has proceeded in
step with reggae in Jamaica, often quite audiblythat is, through the
consistent production of Spanish-language cover versions of
contemporary reggae hits (typically over replayed versions of the
original Jamaican riddims).34 In comparison, one finds far fewer
cover songs, melodic allusions, or re-licked riddims in, say, today's
Puerto Rican reggaeton scene than in contemporary Panamanian
reggae or plena. This would seem to confirm Tego Calderon's
assertion, even as he acknowledges the inspiring models of such
"purists" (as he calls them) as Nando Boom and El General, that the
Panamanian scene is "more an emulation of dancehall" than Puerto
Rico's reggae-derived music.35

Panamanian reggae's "emulation of dancehall" is certainly audible

in the early '9os recordings of El General and his compatriots, and it
is worth noting that such reverent remakes would play a strong role in
shaping the nascent (dancehall) reggae scene in Puerto Rico. A
compilation issued by Columbia Records at the peak of New York's
Panamanian-led reggae en espanol movement, Dancehall
Reggaespanol (i99i), serves as an instructive document, emphasizing
the role that cover versions played in this realm of production by
pairing "Spanish reggae" tracks by the likes of El General, Nando
Boom, Marcony, and Rude Girl (La Atrevida) with the Jamaican
recordings (by Super Cat, Cutty Ranks, Ninja Man, Little Lenny, and
others) which provided the models for these Panamanian performers'
faithful translations.36 Hence one hears quite clearly how El
General's "Pu Tun Tun" adapts Little Lenny's "Pun- nany Tegereg" or
how Marcony's "Mini Mini" translates Fab 5's song by the same
name. Typically, the riddims over which these covers were performed
sound almost identical to the accompanimental tracks underlying the
originals, but a closer listen reveals that they are often very
convincing rerecord- ings of the riddims-"re-licks" or "do-overs," in
reggae parlance. Sometimes the only distinction is a slight timbral
difference in the synthesizer or drum sounds. In other cases the
riddims are clearly pitched up or down into another key, presumably
to suit the vocal range of the artist performing the cover, while the
layers of the riddim-the basslines, keyboard chords, and drum tracks-
are manipulated in a different manner in order to highlight certain
passages in the new versions. Although such versioningis consistent
with the reggae tradition in general and had been put into practice in
Panama for some time, the use (and licensing) of such riddims on
these New York recording sessions was facilitated by producer Karl
Miller, a Jamaican New Yorker who had formerly worked at the
Queens-based reggae label, vp Records. Indeed, a year before being
reissued by Columbia and Prime/BMG respectively, El General's "Pu
Tun Tun" and "Te Ves Buena" (a remake of Shabba Ranks's "Gal Yuh
Good") were both released on Miller's own imprint, Gold Disc
Records, and distributed by vp.37

The tracks on Dancehall Reggaespanol not only attest to a close

engagement with contemporary Jamaican reggae; they also bear
witness, yet again, to the crucial role that New York has played
throughout the history of the music now known as reggaeton. As a
major Caribbean "cosmopole," to invoke Orlando Patterson's
description of the place's "ecumenical" and Caribbeanized culture,
New York offered aspiring artists such as El General various
opportunities for recording and performing, and its status as a major
media hub facilitated the broader circulation of such music, including
to Puerto Rico.38 Across the soundscapes of New York's boroughs-
where Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, and African
Americans often lived (and were racialized) side by side-such genres
as reggae and hip-hop resonated powerfully as "black musics" which,
for all the lines still drawn between such groups, could embody and
express new articulations of community. The liner insert for Dancehall
Reggaespanol underscores the strong Afro-Latin orientation of early
New York-based Spanish reggae, depicting, alongside Jamaican
artist Little Lenny, the black-and-proud faces of Afro-Panamanian and
Afro-Honduran reggae artists, including a shot of Marcony sporting
the sort of Afrocentric headgear very much in vogue at that time in
New York (figure 5).

5. Image from Dancehall Reggaespanol liner notes.

 And yet, despite such obvious connections between, as the liner
notes put it, "bilingual brethren," a quotation from Rude Girl implies
that contested notions of national cultural propriety-which continue to
animate discussions of reggaeton today-could still prove a potent
source of division: "Jamaicans like to think they're the only ones to
come off with reggae, but we in Panama have been chanting deejay
music for years."39

It is somewhat perplexing that the question of reggaeton's

Panamanian "roots" remains such a sensitive, hotly debated topic,
especially given the degree of documentation and firsthand testimony
confirming the connection. Panama remains an originary touchstone
in the established reggaeton narrative, of course, as countless
journalistic accounts and popular documentaries such as the Chosen
Few consistently reaffirm by starting with the story of Jamaican
workers in Panama. As the Chosen Few bears witness, plenty of
Puerto Rican reggae/ton innovators celebrate the foundational
influence that artists such as El General had on the scene there,
including DJ Negro, who recounts spinning the instrumental versions
of reggae en espanol recordings while local vocalists performed new
lyrics over them-a practice he says developed by necessity since
Panamanian performers proved too difficult to contact in order to
book for shows. Tellingly, for some Panamanian reggae enthusiasts,
reggaeton is simply "la plena Puertoriquena," a reaccented version of
an essentially Panamanian cultural product.40 And while this may not
be an invalid interpretation, it does tend to underplay the degree to
which Puerto Rican vocalists and producers radically revisioned (and
reversioned) Panama's more reverent approach to the reggae
tradition.

Beyond nationalist chauvinism, one reason for such prolonged

contestation and confusion may be the various ways in which these
New York-based Spanish reggae recordings, largely performed by
Panamanians, came to circulate in Puerto Rico. In addition to finding
their way into the island's soundscape via such ear-to-the-ground
cultural arbiters as Di Negro, who began operating the Noise
nightclub in 199o, the sounds of Spanish reggae were also brokered
in a somewhat top-down manner by the promoter and producer Jorge
Oquendo and his "meren-rap" project. Released in 1991 on the heels
of Karl Miller's Gold Disc releases of El General's Spanish reggae
hits, Oquendo's Meren-Rap compilation brought together established
merengue musicians and rising Puerto Rican rap stars. Issued on his
own label imprint, Prime Entertainment (and, significantly, distributed
by BMG), the disc was less a representation of actual, on-the-ground
musical practice than a calculated attempt to develop a Latin pop/rap
hybrid which might appeal to a wide audience-not just rap and reggae
fans, but devotees of merengue as well as Latin pop, freestyle,
house, and other "Latin" or "tropical" urban dance genres.4I Notably,
the majority of songs on Meren-Rap were written and produced by
Vico C.

In addition to tracks that simply add rap vocals and electronic

drums to otherwise typical merengue arrangements (e.g., "Meren
Rapero") and a number of merengue numbers with seemingly no rap
or reggae referents ("Otra Vez"), other songs present a more explicit
attempt to fuse contemporary pop and "black" music with merengue.
Alongside merengue-inspired piano figures and horn blasts, Brewley
M.C.'s "Neva Sexy," for instance, employs a number reggae's sonic
signatures, from a "skanking" keyboard pattern (i.e., accenting the
offbeat) to the vocalist's dancehall-inflected, double-time rap style.
And Lisa M's "El Pum Pum," a response record in the tradition of
reggae's "counteraction tunes," not only recontextualizes the melody
from El General's "Pu Tun Tun" (i.e., Little Lenny's "Punnany
Tegereg") over a merengue piano riff; it begins by invoking the drum-
break introduction to Bell Biv Devoe's R&B hit "Poison" (1990).
Significantly, Meren-Rap also includes a breakbeat-propelled hip-hop
remix of El General's "Te Ves Buena," juxtaposing synthesized
handclaps playing a 3:2 clave, a chunky sample marking the offbeat
in reggae style, a dominant "dubby" bassline, and various sampled
vocal interjections.42 Notably, as a dense, sample-based, hip-hop-
inflected attempt at a reggae-style track, the remix of "Te Ves Buena"
perhaps comes closest to sounding like the productions soon to
emerge from the parallel, grassroots development of rapreggae
fusions in San Juan's clubs and barrios and no doubt helped to affirm
the possibilities of such a hybrid genre.

Because of meren-rap's veritable popularity but debatable

influence, the studio experiment might best be understood as playing
a paradoxically important yet marginal role in the story of reggaeton.
The Meren-Rap album indeed made a splash on the island, and the
artists associated with Oquendo's experiment became visible and
audible in the Puerto Rican mainstream. At the same time, meren-rap
proved an utterly ephemeral and artificial phenomenon.43 Without
grassroots support the hybrid genre was soon supplanted, at least in
what came to be known as the underground scene (in contrast to the
mainstream), by a similar sort of fusion which, instead of Latin or
"tropical" signifiers, tended to foreground the black, urban,
transnational sounds of hiphop and reggae. In contrast to the vibrant
if raw recordings produced by and for lower-class youth and
circulated locally and informally via mixtapes (as will be discussed
shortly), Meren-Rap sounds overproduced, too "slick" and too "clean,"
and rather bourgeois despite the involvement of reputable rappers
such as Vico C. Targeted primarily at a commercial, middle-class
market rather than a street-level audience, meren-rap failed to inspire
a new generation of Puerto Ricans (and Nuyoricans) who had grown
up with hip-hop and for whom the sounds of Jamaica provided a
sufficiently Caribbean anchor for their urbane articulations.
Nonetheless, Oquendo's experiment presented possibilities that
would later be embraced, a full decade later, by yet another
generation of producers, who-following hip-hop's ascension to global
popwould reverse their focus from the underground to the commercial
sphere and seek to reach, once again, a mainstream, pan-Latin
audience in part by invoking the "tropical."

But before discussing reggaeton's turn (back) toward signifiers of

Latinness, such that it could eventually project itself into the U.S. and
global mainstream as "Reggaeton Latino," it is imperative to
appreciate how the genre first crystallized in Puerto Rico in the early
and mid-i99os as musica negra and melaza, dembow, and
underground-terms which directly marked and promoted the music as
connected to a particular racial and class formation. Although the
various antecedents considered above inform and resonate to
varying degrees with the San Juan underground scene of the 199os,
the unique and pronounced mix of hip-hop and reggae which defined
the nascent genre and provided the basis for what would come to be
called reggaeton offers the strongest evidence for Puerto Rico's
claims on the genre-Jamaica's and Panama's notwithstanding-as a
locally inflected and in some ways quintessentially Puerto Rican
cultural product. By exploring the distinctive character of early to mid-
i99os Puerto Rican reggae-rap fusions, I hope to clarify some of the
genealogical relationships which remain the subject of intense debate
in public discourse around reggaeton.

FROM "DEM BOW" TO DEMBOW: MELAZA

CRYSTALLIZES UNDERGROUND

Listening to Puerto Rico's underground music of the 199os, one

hears a series of "flip-tongue," sing-song vocalists performing risque
rhymes over dense collages made from contemporary reggae riddims
and hip-hop beats." A number of familiar loops and more fragmentary
samples cycle in and out of the half-hour to hour-long mixes put
together by pioneering producers such as DJ Playero, DJ Negro, DJ
Nelson, and their colleagues.45 Combining dozens of resonant
samples, the pistas that drive such nonstop sessions tug constantly
at the strings of musical memory, in many cases providing a
suggestive, propulsive alternation between the distinctive "feels" of
hip-hop and dancehall grooves (see figures 2 and 4)-an approach to
form still faintly audible in the shifting snares of today's synth-driven
hits.46 Such chopped-and-rearranged loops of recognizable
fragments hence provide a rather resonant, dynamic sort of
accompaniment. Adding to the allusive mix, such local, Spanish-
slanging Mcs as Ranking Stone, Alberto Stylee, Maicol and Manuel,
O.G. Black and Master Joe, Baby Rasta and Gringo, Ivy Queen, and
Daddy Yankee, among others, frequently propel their verses by
intoning one of the many familiar melodic contours that Jamaican
dancehall CIS have endlessly reworked since the early to mid-
198os.47 Especially for San Juan youth, these deeply referential
recordings thus engage and embody, as they directly index, the
popular and no doubt political musica negra (as it was called in song
lyrics), or "black music," which so powerfully resounded across the
shared soundscapes of Puerto Rico and New York, of home and
home-away-from-home (though which is which, of course, becomes
increasingly difficult to tease out in the contexts of circular migration
and "commuter nationhood").48

It is no surprise that the terms artists and audiences used to

describe the Spanish-language rap-reggae hybrids produced in
Puerto Rico during the 199os themselves index a number of
significant, overlapping relations and positions. Such terms as musica
negra and melaza (i.e., "molasses," signifying race as sugar products
do in postplantation societies) served to express an explicit cultural
politics of blackness within a context of enduring racism and
blanqueamiento.49 Calling the music underground and dembow, on
the other hand-not to mention rap or reggae (both of which were also
common)signaled an articulation with such putatively non-Puerto
Rican forms as hiphop and dancehall and therefore to New York, the
Afro-Caribbean, and the African diaspora. Moreover, the term
underground also embodied the music's marginalized (and proud!)
status vis-a-vis mainstream Puerto Rican economy, culture, and
society. But although terms such as underground and dembow were
derived from hip-hop and reggae, they took on rather local meanings,
signifying that San Juan's distinctive musical fusion was, as Raquel Z.
Rivera observed in early 1995, "una fusion tan intensa de rap con
reggae que no puede ser clasificada como una cosa o la otra" (such
an intense fusion of rap and reggae that it could not be classified as
one or the other).50

Despite being derived from other genres, the terms used to

describe the distinctive yet emergent genre necessarily took on
expanded and enriched meanings in Puerto Rico. The term
underground (sometimes shortened to under) came directly out of
hip-hop discourse, where it already enjoyed some currency as a
militant mode of self-identification for artists eschewing the
commercialization of rap music (associating such "selling out" with a
capitulation to mainstream aesthetics and a movement away from a
hardcore stance vis-a-vis copyright, local and national politics, or
street authenticity). But whereas self-proclaimed underground hip-
hop groups in New York often still participated in the commercial
economy via "independent" labels (frequently distributed by major
labels), in San Juan underground referred not simply to musical style
or ideologies of authenticity but to actual market position. In the early
'9os, Puerto Rican underground recordings literally circulated outside
of formal commercial channels and centralized modes of mass
production. Dubbed from cassette to cassette after an initial, small
run of master tapes, the mixes moved somewhat easily through an
informal economy until late 1994, when their appearance in certain
"aboveground" stores allowed the authorities, spurred by Christian
"watchdog" organizations such as Morality in Media, to commence a
series of high-profile, controversial, and essentially illegal seizures.51
(Raquel Z. Rivera cites DJ Playero as noting that he produced only
around twenty copies of each mixtape in the early days; of course,
these "masters" were rapidly reproduced within and outside the
scene, e.g., in New York, Connecticut, the Dominican Republic, etc.)
12 Moreover, even after flirting with local commercial channels,
reggaeton's reputation as the "obscene" music of the underclass
meant that it had little access to mainstream media channels (i.e.,
radio and television) before it proved itself commercially viable
beyond the underground market. Although the San Juan-based In the
House magazine offered regular coverage of the music beginning in
1995, for example, as with reggae in Jamaica (which did not have a
dedicated place on local airwaves until the launch of Irie FM in 199o)
it was not until much later that the genre was embraced by
mainstream media: San Juan's Mix 107.7 FM began its "24/7"
reggaeton format in 1999 through the efforts of DJ Nelson and DJ
Coyote.53
 The term dembow offers a similar example of resignification. A
minimal drum track with a hint of Latinesque percussion and a unique
timbral profile, Bobby "Digital" Dixon's Dem Bow riddim-i.e., the
instrumental underlying Shabba Ranks's "Dem Bow" (i99i), performed
and recorded by the production duo Steely and Clevie-became such
a ubiquitous feature of underground mixes that, especially in the mid-
to late 199os, one of the most common terms used to describe the
genre was simply dembow. Before long, at least for some, the term
came to refer more generally to the music's prevailing rhythmic
structure, the boom-ch-boom-chick that has defined Puerto Rican
reggae/ton since the early'9os (see figure 1). Notably, the term has
been so resignified that it has also, for the most part, lost much of its
connection to the idea of "bowing" or giving in to the forces of
oppression and corruption-ranging from the forces of neocolonialism
to "deviant" sexual practices (e.g., oral and anal sex)-which Shabba
Ranks decries on the original recording. Hence, while early Spanish
cover versions of the song such as Nando Boom's "Ellos Benia"
(1991) or El General's "Son Bow" (1991) appear to endorse Shabba's
conflation of macho sexuality and racialized social struggle, later
versions, such as Wisin and Yandel's "Dem Bow" (2003), seem to
imply that the term simply signifies dancing to the distinctive beat or
otherwise participating in the reggaeton scene.54 The concatenated
form I employ here (after popular use, though orthographies vary
widely) is thus meant to signify this transformation of the term's
meaning: from a specific allusion to a Jamaican precedent, to a rather
resonant bit of local argot describing San Juan's unique approach to
reggae production (with a hip-hop twist).

This is an approach and transformation signaled sonically as well,

for the instrumental from Shabba's "Dem Bow" has, aside perhaps
from early club and home-studio jam sessions, rarely been employed
for underground productions in its original form. Abstracted instead
into a particular rhythmic pattern (slightly altered from if faithful to the
original) and a set of specific drum timbres (as directly sampled from
the Dem Bow riddim and, tellingly, its reggae en espanol
variations55), the Dem Bow came to stand as a flexible set of musical
tools which could be used in combination with other resonant
signifiers while retaining a distinctive sonic profile (hence remaining
audible in the vast majority of reggaeton productions, even today).
Contemporary collections of reggaeton instrumentals such as Pistas
de Reggaeton Famosas (Flow Music, 2005), for example, often
contain one or more versions of the Dem Bow: the "original" or
"classic" version-a two-bar loop based closely on Dennis "the
Menace" Thompson's version of Bobby Digital's dancehall
instrumental (as heard on Nando Boom's "Ellos Benia") but often
reduced to pure percussion (i.e., not containing the keyboards or
bass from the original); and a more recent version, e.g., "Dembow
2004," which might employ different sounds and other effects but
audibly maintains the riddim's well-worn rhythms and timbres.
Notably, part of what makes the Dem Bow distinguishable from other
reggae sources is an element often identified, especially in its digital
and Internet circulation, as the timbal (presumably from timbales), a
short percussion sample that plays an easily recognizable, two-
measure rhythmic pattern which some might hear as congruent with a
3:2 clave (see figure 6).

As indicated in figure 6, the standard Dem Bow pattern in

reggaeton productions also features a tonally rich bass drum,
accenting beats 1 and 3 atop an underlying, "dryer" kick drum which
marks each beat of every bar. Together or in various combinations,
these musical signifiers can suggest the presence of the Dem Bow in
a particular pista. Depending on the whims of producers and the
extent to which they want to foreground the riddim's familiar sound,
the component elements of the Dem Bow might take more or less
pronounced forms.
6. The basic elements of Puerto Rico's localized Dem Bow.

Like the terms themselves, then, the sounds of underground,

dembow, melaza, and so on, also served to signal, for all their
putative foreignness, a local orientation (if always already
transnational). Embodying the process of localizing the foreign-but-
familiar, the influential mixtapes issued by DJ Negro for The Noise
album series and by Playero for his eponymous franchise offer a set
of sonic snapshots vividly illustrating the ways melaza crystallized in
San Juan in the mid-199os. The two series are remarkably similar in
aesthetic approach. Indeed, the creation of reggaeton's foundational
style and its veritable canon of samples, including the elevation of the
Dem Bow to basic building block, can largely be attributed to the long
shadows cast by Playero and The Noise. Mixing song into song, on
beat and without pause, their mixtapes resembled live DJ sets, not
unlike the sort that might be played by a hip-hop DJ or a dancehall
selector. In contrast to hip-hop or dancehall, however, songs recorded
by outside producers would not be featured (though they could be
sampled); instead the mixtapes showcased the work of the producers
and DJs who made them. Accordingly, the mixes were often identified
simply by the name of the producer or series and given a number,
though sometimes each side of the tape would also get its own, more
suggestive title, in many cases gesturing to dancehall or hip-hop
(and, yet, often signaling a certain distance via minor misspellings):
for example, "Dance Hall Mix" and "Ragga Moofin Mix" are the
individually labeled sides on Player037 (ca. 1992), while "Non Stop
Reegae" and "Raagga Mix to Mix" describe the contents of Playero
38 (ca. 1994). Affirming and informing the music's projections of a
modern, urban, Afro-Puerto Rican aesthetic, the artwork promoting
the tapes often employed graffiti-style lettering and featured city
skylines (as on Playero 37; see figure 7) and lots of images of stylish,
and often dark-skinned, denizens of the underground. On the cover of
Playero 38 (figure 8), for instance, a dreadlocked character sports an
Africa pendant, a rather popular hip-hop accoutrement in the early
'9os (as also depicted, you might recall, on Marcony's headgear in
figure 5).
7. Artwork for Playero 37.

8. Artwork for Playero 38.

As truly underground music (economically speaking), based on live

performance practice (where instrumental reggae recordings
provided the accompaniment for Mcs), and deeply informed by the
musical ethics of reggae's version-based "riddim method" as well as
hip-hop's sample-based collages, the recordings produced by the
likes of DJ Playero, DJ Negro, and DJ Nelson advanced an approach
utterly unconcerned with the strictures of copyright or bourgeois
attitudes toward ownership. The music brims with references to
resonant musical texts. In measure after measure, one hears layer
upon layer of samples from the hip-hop and dancehall hits of the day.
Taken together with the allusive tunes and texts of vocalists who often
quote lyrics or borrow melodies from the same familiar sources being
sampled, the music directly and suggestively indexes New York.
Remixing the sounds of home-away-fromhome for San Juan youth,
underground could thus express forms of Puerto Rican-ness
commensurate with the vistas (and pistas) of a new generation. The
degree of intertextuality on such recordings is not only rather
remarkable in its own right, then; it is also charged with significance.
A brief guided tour of an early, representative production by DJ
Playero, I hope, may suffice to impart some sense of this deeply
meaningful intertextuality.56

Given that Playero 38 is sometimes cited as having cemented the

centrality of the Dem Bow in San Juan's "Spanish reggae" scene, the
"Raagga Mix to Mix" side's hip-hop-inflected opening offers a telling
reminder of the genre's strong connections to rap as well as reggaes'
Beginning with a "wah-wah" guitar figure and the telltale snaps-and-
crackles of aged vinyl (and thus explicitly embodying a sample-based
approach), the introduction bears the unmistakable sound of early
199os, New York-style hip-hop, especially when a jazzy bass riff and
then a truncated siren and dusty breakbeat bring the song into a
solidly swinging funk. Along with the bass enters a looped voice,
slightly distant in the mix and punctuated by the siren sound: "La
gente sabe/que somos de la calle" (the people know/that we're from
the streets), it repeats, insistently, before delivering a rhyming punch
line, "mira como goza/cuando traigo un mensaje" (see how they
like/when I bring a message). Before long the vocalist, Manuel,
begins rapping in a "flip-tongue" style, as it is sometimes called in
Jamaica, doubling up the syllabic syncopation in the manner of
dancehall DJs. His change in flow accompanies the appearance of a
short but recognizable snippet from "goo Number," a two-measure
saxophone loop and a rather familiar reference for hip-hop devotees.
Produced by Mark the 45 King, a hip-hop producer based in New
York, the riff-as sampled from Marva Whitney's funky R&B single
"Unwind Yourself" (1967)-became well-known in hip-hop after being
featured repeatedly on Yo! MTv Raps from 1989 to 1995 as the
backing for the "Ed Lover Dance." Although the sample here is but a
beat long, it would be unmistakable for many listeners, especially as
a recurring favorite of underground producers at this time. As
Manuel's partner-in-rhyme, Maicol, makes an entrance, the duo begin
trading off rhymes which directly link "la casa" (with its connotations
of hip-hop and home alike), "la raza" (signifying racial commitments),
and "melaza."58 Highlighting the articulation of such symbols, the
texture of the music changes radically, dropping everything out save
for the dusty wah-wah loop and placing the refrain in the foreground:
"en la casa, para la raza" they repeat three times, before delivering
the punch line, "Maicol y Manuel que to canta melaza" (Maicol and
Manuel who sing melaza).

Notably, the punch line-and, significantly, the reference to melaza-is

followed immediately by the entrance of dembow-style drums, and
the dancehallderived boom -ch-boo m-chick propels their chant
forward. As the duo continue their enthusiastic interplay, alluding to
dancehall reggae melodies (e.g., Shabba Ranks's "Ting-a-Ling")-as
well as, in another nod to hip-hop and reggae tradition, nursery
rhymes (i.e., "London Bridge")-the underlying track mixes reggae
style with hip-hop style, augmenting the relatively sparse 3 + 3 + 2
drum pattern and synthesized bassline with the sort of truncated siren
sample popularized by Cypress Hill, as heard in the introduction.
Playero (and in this case, his coproducer, Nico Canada) create a fair
amount of variation in the track by pulling the discrete layers-kicks,
snares, bass, and other samples-in and out of the texture, a
technique for manipulating form rather related to dub-mixing in
reggae.59 In the meantime, Maicol and Manuel string together
various routines and, indeed, employ some of the same lyrics they
would also record on contemporary mixtapes issued by The Noise,
demonstrating once again a notion of originality closer to reggae's
and hip-hop's traditions of reuse, allusion, and versioning than, say,
the status quo for other pop music-and perhaps even more liberal
about reusing materials than such antecedents. About five minutes
into the track, after a spirited exchange between the Mcs, one hears
the repeated line-lest one miss it-"esta (es) la musica negra" (this is
black music).

To fast-forward a bit, Maicol and Manuel are followed by a series of

vocalists who perform their own allusive, resonant rhymes over a
constantly but often subtly shifting backing. For instance, elements
from the similarly popular Bam Bam riddim (as produced by Sly and
Robbie and popularized on Chaka Demus & Pliers' crossover hit,
"Murder She Wrote" [1992] ), especially a recognizable guitar "chop;"
appear soon thereafter in the mix, accenting the 3 + 3 + 2 snare
pattern while a pair of performers interpolate the melody from "Old
MacDonald," changing the text to signify again the importance of New
York in the underground imagination: "Yo me voy Para New York/E-I-
E-I-O" (I'm going to New York/E-I-E-I-O). Not long after, we hear an
interpolation of "Action" (1993), a contemporary dancehall reggae
track by Nadine Sutherland and Terror Fabulous and another
crossover hit in the New York hip-hop scene. Notably, the
performance is not quite a cover of "Action" in the sense that, say,
Panamanian reggae artists might version an extant song, but instead,
as a Jamaican dancehall artist might do, it loosely alludes to the main
melody of "Action" over a new backing. Similarly, rather than
replaying (or re-licking) the Fever Pitch riddim that underlies the
original, the pista brings together a number of different layers and
fragments, among them the Barn Barn guitar sample which itself
served to inspire elements of the Fever Pitch (via Sly Dunbar's Pitch
riddim, popularized by Cutty Ranks's "Limb by Limb" [1993], another
favorite in the underground scene), as well as drum samples drawn
from various sources and a heavy, newly synthesized (rather than
sampled) bassline.

Before long, that melange gives way to a reversed loop of a

breakbeat sampled from (or at least gesturing to) Slick Rick's "Mona
Lisa" (1988), a notably older but rather common musical reference in
underground productions, which is soon unreversed and augmented
by 3 + 3 + 2 snares (once again juxtaposing hip-hop and reggae
grooves in a striking manner). Cementing the connection to Slick
Rick's "Golden Age" hip-hop track, the next vocalist employs
melodies, affectations, and other formal features from "Mona Lisa" in
order to sing, "Oye Lisa," while a stomping, four-on-the-floor kick
drum enters and the hip-hop break is teased in and out of the mix. As
the pista changes once again, returning to the bright Barn Barn/Pitch
guitar sample, the same vocalist shifts to new melodic and textual
references, alluding to El General's "Pu Tun Tun" by chanting "boom
boom marijuana" as well as to Super Cat's "Don Dada" (which was
similarly covered, incidentally, around the same time, on El General's
"El Gran Pana"), all in the space of about thirty seconds. From there
the mix moves to another resonant sample-the distinctive drum break
from Audio Two's 1988 hip-hop classic "Top Billin," which had recently
been sampled for Mary J. Blige's 1992 hit single "Real Love"-while
two female vocalists rap to the tune of "Ten Little Indians," followed by
yet another sly reference to "Action" over a Bam Bam guitar propelled
dembow pattern. But perhaps you get the picture: the degree of
intertextuality on these foundational mixtapes is truly remarkable. The
sheer number of references surely rivals, if not exceeds, such
pastichelike, sample-based masterworks as Public Enemy's It Takes
a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) or the Beastie Boys'
Paul's Boutique (1989).

Despite bringing together such a wide variety of sources and hence

suggest ing a rather ecumenical outlook for the genre, the influential
mixtapes of Playero, The Noise, and other innovators also
established, not insignificantly, a fairly stable canon of resonant
references by reusing their favorite samples over and over again. As I
have argued, such an approach serves to directly index reggae and
hip-hop (and hence, "black music" and New York) even as it
advances a rather distinctive take on both traditions-and, notably,
violates a number of aesthetic conventions in the process. For one,
reggae producers rarely employ samples, preferring instead to
version or re-lick previous riddims by replaying (and reshaping) their
distinctive elements. Yet Puerto Rican underground producers, for all
their fidelity to reggae tradition, employ a primarily sample-based
approach and demonstrate no compunctions about sampling
whatever source seems appropriate. And whereas sample-based
hiphop producers tend to take a fairly liberal attitude toward the direct
sampling of other recordings, the underground practice of sampling
hip-hop tracks, especially recent releases, contravenes (at least for
some U.S. producers) a tacit but widespread ban on "jacking" other
producers' beats or the same samples used to produce such beats
(with the exception of well-worn breakbeats).60 It is worth noting,
then, that Puerto Rican producers and vocalists also depart from the
same traditions they so closely engage, extending even further hip-
hop's and reggae's central practices of reuse and allusion and
attendant notions of ownership or originality. In its own way, the
ubiquitous use of the Dem Bow (as well as such staples as the Bam
Bam or Drum Song riddims) offers a parallel to other digital age
genres, several of which have demonstrated the ability for a single
sample to serve as the basis for hundreds, if not thousands, of
distinct, discrete tracks: for example, the "Amen" break for UK
"jungle" and drum'n'bass, the "Dragrap" or "Triggerman" for New
Orleans "bounce," the "Volt" mix for Brazilian funk, or even, though
less demonstrably, the constitutive role such breakbeats as the
"Funky Drummer" played in late 198os hiphop. Puerto Rican
producers thus take reggae's "riddim method" and hiphop's
omnivorous approach to sampling to an unprecedented extreme.

The samples most commonly employed by underground producers

offer a telling profile of the specific sorts of sounds-namely, hip-hop
and reggaethat proved resonant for certain Puerto Ricans living in
San Juan and New York in the mid-199os. For the sake of illustration,
allow me to provide a short list of the most frequently referenced
samples during this period. Notably, the hip-hop-related sources
range from well-worn breakbeats (e.g., Bob James's "Take Me to the
Mardi Gras" or Lou Donaldson's funk-soul recording of "Ode to Billie
Joe"), to classics from the genre's so-called Golden Age (e.g., such
late i98os favorites as Slick Rick's "Mona Lisa," "Children's Story,"
and "Hey Young World"; Special Ed's "I Got It Made" and "The
Magnificent"; Marley Marl's "The Symphony"; Mark the 45 King's "goo
Number"), to contemporary hits and obscurities alike (e.g., Cypress
Hill's "Insane in the Membrane," especially, and often only, its
squealing siren; House of Pain's "Back from the Dead"; Craig Mack's
"Flava in Your Ear"; and De La Soul's "Talkin' Bout Hey Love," i.e.,
Stevie Wonder's "Hey Love"; as well as various other tracks by such
New York-based underground hip-hop groups as Gang Starr, Wu-
Tang Clan, and Das EFx). Raggamuffin rapper Mad Lion's "Take It
Easy," produced by KRSOne, also became a heavily sampled staple
shortly after its release in 1994. The resonance of such an already
hybrid rap-reggae hit in Puerto Rico calls attention again to the
broader currency of such fusions at the time; thus, for all its
departures, one can hear the particular melange of melaza as
coherent with simultaneous movements in New York and across the
Caribbean-U.S. cosmos.

With regard to reggae, as catalogued to some extent above, the

dancehall riddims most commonly sampled, replayed, and
reconstructed in Puerto Rico at this time were such recent, popular
productions (in Jamaica and New York) as the Dem Bow, Bam Bam,
Fever Pitch, and Poco Man Jam, as well as older but enduring
riddims dating from the '6os, '70s, and '8os: Drum Song, Real Rock,
Stalag, Tempo, to name a few.61 Dj Playero and his colleagues and
competitors either directly sampled (and "chopped and stabbed")
these riddims or alluded to them-especially those defined by their
basslines (such as Drum Song or Stalag)-by replaying the melodies
on synthesizers, which had long been used by underground
producers to augment their sample-based productions. It is also
worth noting, as has been mentioned above, that vocalists frequently
added yet another layer of intertextuality either by employing
melodies drawn directly from dancehall songs (as well as from hip-
hop or pop hits) or by borrowing some of the more generic melodic
contours that dancehall DJs have long used to propel their lyrics.
Shabba Ranks, Tenor Saw, Buju Banton, Super Cat, and Cutty Ranks
appear to be favorite models in this regard. (And the names of many
underground artists-with such appellations as Ranks, Stylee, Notty,
and Daddy-pay explicit tribute to such figures.) Even when specific
melodies do not appear, underground Mcs' flows tend to closely
resemble dancehall's sing-song, staccato, double-time, end-rhyme
orientation. Many underground vocalists seem also to have adopted
dancehall DJs' frequent disregard for conventional key relationships-
what some might brand "off-key" singing-which could be heard as
both an expression of these vocalists' "lack" of formal musical training
as well as an aesthetic orientation consistent with oral/aural
approaches more broadly.62

The dense, distinctive intertextual mix of hip-hop and reggae

embodied in mid-199os underground recordings thus supported a
youth- and class-inflected cultural politics of blackness and did so,
significantly, by embracing (if not amplifying) the Nuyorican
dimensions of Puerto Rican culture. Taking a hiphop hatchet to
reggae's pop-will-eat-itself aesthetics, underground producers and
vocalists crafted a rich musical fusion which gestured to New York as
the cultural crucible where Puerto Ricans, Panamanians, Jamaicans,
and African Americans, among others, encountered each other and
contributed to a shared, contested, and culturally charged
soundscape. Moreover, as noted above with regard to the mixtapes'
artwork, the transnational character of melaza emerged not only in
the sounds of the productions but in the images that accompanied
them. Significantly, similar articulations of race and place can be seen
in the promotional videos for the mixtapes. The video for The Noise 6,
for instance, with its shots of goose-down jacket wearing Mcs
hopping turnstiles in the New York subway and posing in front of the
Unisphere in Queens, offers a vivid illustration of what Juan Flores
describes as a "notable reverse in the direction of social desire for the
geographical other":

While traditionally the translocal Puerto Rican sensibility was

characterized by the emigrant longing for the beauties of the long-
lost island, in some rap texts and among street youth it was the
urban diaspora settings of the Bronx and El Barrio that became
places of fascination and nostalgia.63

In this sense, the expressive forms of reggaeton (and its rap-reggae

precursors) might be heard, seen, and read as embodying the
"cultural remittances" of "transnationalism from below," perhaps even
promising a rediscovery of Puerto Rican negritude and a
reconciliation of Puerto Rican national iden- tity.64 Nodding to
historian Frank Moya Pons, Flores compares such a potential shift to
the ways in which notions of Dominican self- and nationhood have
been reshaped by returning migrants. "Racial and cultural denial
worked for many years," argues Moya Pons, "but migration to the
United States finally cracked down the ideological block of the
traditional definition of Dominican national identity."65 Even so, as
Tego Calderon contends, despite some encouraging signs-such as
Don Omar's self-identification (and projection) as "el negro"-any real
change in racial ideologies on the island and across Latin America
more widely remains painfully slow: "There is ignorance and stupidity
in Puerto Rico and Latin America when it comes to blackness,"
Calderon bluntly states in a recent piece published in the New York
Post, and reprinted in this volume.

Resistance to hip-hop, reggae, and reggaeton in Puerto Rico is

thus consistent with certain cultural-national parochialisms which fail
to come to grips with what Flores calls "the full force of diaspora as
source and challenge in Caribbean music history." The communities
living in diaspora, Flores contends, "need to be seen as sources of
creative cultural innovation rather than as repositories or mere
extensions of expressive traditions in the geographic homelands."66
This is by no means new cultural terrain for Puerto Rico, as the
examples of danza and salsa demonstrate a similar process of
engaging with putatively "other" music (marked, say, as black,
Nuyorican, or Cuban), and of nationalizing as quintessentially Puerto
Rican expressive forms once coded as foreign.67 And yet, as the
"creole" character of danza or the blanqueamiento of salsa
demonstrates-with the latter genre's explicit "racial consciousness,"
as Deborah Pacini Hernandez puts it, "replaced by the lush orchestral
arrangements and insipid lyrical concerns of its stylistic successor,
salsa romantica"-the "nationalization" or public embrace of that which
was initially cast as musica negra in Puerto Rico can also lead to a
co-optation (or at least a transformation) of such genres for
commercial ventures.61 Indeed, as Puerto Rico's transnationally
forged rap-reggae hybrid moves from the underground to the
"mainstream" around the turn of the millennium, one hears (and sees)
some striking shifts in sonic, visual, and textual articulations of
community, especially as artists and producers seek more explicitly to
market the genre, especially outside Puerto Rico, as the sound of an
emergent, panLatino community.

FROM MUSICA NEGRA TO REGGAETON

LATINO: MIGRATION AND THE MAINSTREAM

As underground became more commercially lucrative over the late

'9os and especially in the first half of the present decade, it also
became, inevitably, less underground-both in aesthetic and economic
terms. The advent of accessible digital tools for producing and
distributing recordings radically changed the sound and reach of the
genre, and vocalists and producers alike began to target new markets
and audiences, often redrawing the lines of community in the
process. No longer bound by Puerto Rico's shores or even by
Nuyorican and wider diasporic circuits, reggaeton artists and record
labels began to address a new and increasingly diverse listenership
in the expanded contexts of national and international mediaspheres.
Infusing the music first with the propulsive and suggestive sounds of
techno (or tecno, as sometimes localized) and later with such
"tropical" sources (again, to use the industry term) as bachata and
salsa, the contemporary sound of reggaeton as a slickly produced
club music indeed, as the world came to know it via the galloping
synths of "Gasolina"- cohered around the turn of the millennium and
quickly assumed the sort of stylistic orthodoxy one might expect from
commercial ventures.

Despite subtle sonic reminders of the genre's roots and routes,

such as the persistent presence of the dembow rhythm, familiar
percussion samples, and certain vocal styles or flows, what had
formerly been ubiquitous and obvious nods to hip-hop and reggae-
and which seemed quite essential to the genre and its cultural politics
in the mid-i99os-grew further submerged with reggaeton's burgeoning
commercial success. Perhaps in part in order to avoid copyright
litigation given newfound prominence (and profits), reggaeton
producers increasingly favored synthesized backings, with the only
remaining samples being the snares, kicks, and other bits of resonant
percussion cut-andpasted from the genre's foundational dancehall
riddims (and, more and more, circulating as sample banks via e-mail
and CD-Rs). Reggaeton, as it came to be called during this time,
began to throb with the heavy, bombastic sounds of club and dance
anthems (i.e., house- and techno-infused pop). Grafted onto the
genre's dembow template, the music was increasingly produced and
promoted as the soundtrack of "perreo" and "bellaqueo" (i.e., doggy-
style dance and horniness), of highly sexualized dancing and highly
sexualized objects of the male gaze.
 Mirroring the commercialism and exaggerated sexual license
associated with club culture, as well as continuing a longstanding
preoccupation for the genre (and a common projection onto reggae),
song themes turned more squarely to sex-which is to say, macho
fantasies about sex-often bordering on the pornographic: see, e.g., Di
Blass's Reggaeton Sex series or albums such as Triple Sexxx. If
perhaps publicly challenging middle-class mores and Christian
values, reggaeton's emphasis on sex (and, more mildly, romance)
should also be seen as consistent with mainstream commercial
American culture, not to mention enduring stereotypes about "hot
blooded" Latin lovers.69 It is but a short jump from here to the video
for N.O.R.E.'s crossover hit "Oye Mi Canto," featuring an array of
bikini-clad women waving the flags of Latin American and Caribbean
countries. Reggaeton producers and performers thus seemed to
embrace, if not amplify, a number of stereotypes about race, gender,
and nation as the music moved into the mainstream marketplace.
Given such changes in context and content, the genre's cultural
politics might be seen (and heard) as undergoing a major shift around
the turn of the millennium, moving away from a sonically, textually,
and visually encoded foregrounding of racial community and toward
nationalist (and often sexist, or at least gendered) Latin/pan-Latin
signifiers-or, to put it in the words of reggaeton performers
themselves, from "musica negra" to "Reggaeton Latino," the latter
phrase enshrined and projected by a Don Omar crossover hit in
2005.

And yet, as far as the genre may have drifted from hip-hop and
reggae in some ways, the embrace by reggaeton producers,
performers, and record labels of "bling-bling" style and hustler
archetypes; aggressive cross-promotion and media savvy; and the
timbres and textures of hip-hop's and reggae's own overlapping
digital millennial aesthetics-all these features show how the genre
has remained in close conversation with its influences. Moreover,
reggaeton's rise to mainstream visibility, audibility, and marketability is
tied not only to such stylistic synergy but also to a certain degree of
fortuitous timing. In 2003, directly prior to breakthrough hits by
N.O.R.E., Daddy Yankee, and Don Omar, a wave of crossover hits
and high-profile collaborations by such Jamaican dancehall artists as
Sean Paul, Wayne Wonder, and Elephant Man had served to prepare
U.S. (and international) audiences for, if you will, relatively
unintelligible, dance-centric pop.70 (For the average monolingual
English speaker, Jamaican creole might as well be Spanish. )71
Further prepping the listening public for Spanish and Spanglish
songs, Jamaican dancehall's own success in the U.S. mainstream
was amplified (if also appropriated) by U.S.-based Latino/a
performers who employed the latest reggae riddims to support their
own chart incursions: e.g., Pitbull's "Culo" and Nina Sky's "Move Ya
Body" were both recorded over the Coolie Dance riddim, while
Lumidee recorded "Never Leave You (Uh-Oooh, Uh-Oooh)" on the
Diwali riddim, which had already propelled U.S. chart hits by Sean
Paul and Wayne Wonder. Thus, as dancehall reggae artists
piggybacked their way to new levels of international success on hip-
hop's national and global resonance, reggaeton artists did the same,
with the added assistance of their brethren from Jamaica, who
readied stateside audiences for a new wave of Caribbean-inflected,
foreign-butfamiliar, rap-infused dance music.

Other forms of audible commercialization consistent with the

mainstreaming of reggaeton from the mid-i99os to today can be
heard in the increasingly commonplace effects and affects of R&B
and American pop more generally, as also heard in the often
overwrought singing styles of Latin pop ballads. While the singsong
melodies of dancehall reggae as well as hip-hop's more monotonic
flows have continued to underpin reggaeton vocals, other kinds of
approaches-in particular, American Idol-style melismatic histrionics-
have become more prominent since the mid-199os, along with the
rise of romantic themes and crooner-and-rapper duos (e.g., Angel
and Kris, Alexis and Fido, Hector and Tito, Wisin and Yandel, Rakim
and Ken Y). Similarly, the ap pearance of group and solo albums and
compilations of discrete songs, as opposed to dense, nonstop
mixtapes, might be seen as another attempt to bring reggaeton into
the aboveground commercial marketplace. A similar shift has
occurred at the level of the song: whereas early and mid-i99os
productions were marked by more fragmentary routines following the
regular if whimsical shifts of their collagelike accompaniment, by the
late 199os and especially after the turn of the millennium, it became
far more common to produce separate songs following a verse-
chorus-verse form and without too many stark departures in musical
texture. Such discrete units and familiar forms are, of course, far
easier to promote and sell in the mainstream market. Related to this
push toward a certain orthodoxy, reggaeton's defining feature, the
boom-chboom-chick of the dembow pattern, has assumed a level of
rhythmic hegemony, such that one hears far fewer breaks into hip-
hop or contemporary dancehall style.72

At some point in the late 199os, though the exact date and
particular neologist remain in dispute, underground (or dembow,
melaza, etc.) was recrowned reggaeton, a name perhaps befitting the
genre's increasing commercialization as well as a sense that it had
emerged as a distinctive fusion, as neither hip-hop nor reggae
(though it was still frequently described using both terms by fans and
practitioners).73 DJ Nelson is frequently credited, and takes credit,
for renaming the genre. "In 1995 I put the name `Reggaeton' on one
of my albums," he told a reporter for the Fader magazine, "I started
thinking, Let me put like `Reggae Maraton' or `Maraton Reggae' on it.
And from there I started, like, simplifying words, and then I came up
with `Reggaeton. "74 According to DJ El Nino, a Bronx-born,
Connecticut-based DJ who plays reggaeton alongside house, hip-
hop, salsa, and a host of other styles, some people began using the
term reggaeton around this time to describe tracks employing
"original beats" -that is, those that did not rely on the well-worn
reggae riddims and hip-hop samples of the '9os but instead primarily
employed synthesizers .7 -1 Di Blass's popular Reggaeton Sex series
no doubt was crucial in popularizing the term as well as tying it to the
new production style emerging in step with digital music software (not
to mention significations of the sexual). And, of course, more recent
media attention and industry hype around the genre, especially from
2004 to the present, have served to cement the term's connection to
the music and to consolidate its resonance for producers and
audiences.

Around the same time the genre was becoming known by a new
name, the music had begun to accrue several of the stylistic features
that propel today's radio-friendly, club-ready confections. The advent
of new music production technologies, in particular synthesizer and
sequencer software, has a great deal to do with this shift in sound.
Programs such as Fruity Loops, with telltale "preset" sounds and
effects, served to expand and change the sonic palettes of reggaeton
producers. In part because such programs were often initially
developed as tools for techno producers, the genre started to move
away from reggae and hip-hop samples and toward futuristic synths,
cinematic strings, bombastic effects, and (especially just before a
"big" downbeat) crescendoing kick drums, snare rolls, and cymbal
splashes. The latter formal devices sound more derived from trance-
style techno anthems than anything else, if also, notably, sometimes
syncopated in a manner more reminiscent of breaks in salsa or
merengue. Established producers such as DJ Playero, DJ Nelson,
and DJ Joe, as well as relative newcomers such as DJ Blass, helped
move the genre's primary sound sources from samples to
synthesizers, introducing the use of heavier kick drums, ravey synth
"stabs," and trancey arpeggios as well as cartoonish digital sound
effects (wind blowing, explosions). Their productions were not uniform
or mutually indistinguishable, however, and each offers an interesting
look at the development of the genre during a crucial transition. A
brief survey will allow us to listen in on some of these changes.

For all the new sounds and technologies informing reggaeton style
in the late '9os, prior to a kind of commercial consolidation around
2002 many productions maintained audible links to the genre's
sample-laden days, and thus, perhaps, to the audible cultural politics
of mid-199os melaza. A number of familiar sources from hip-hop and
reggae, if often employed in a selfconsciously nostalgic manner, can
still be heard on, say, Playero 41: Past, Present, and Future (1998-
99), including a track tellingly titled "Old School View" which offers up
a classic collage in underground style, referencing an earful of
resonant samples in under thirty seconds: among other bits, we hear
fragments from Slick Rick's "Mona Lisa"; the familiar saxophone stab
from 45 King's "900 Number"; rapper Rob Base saying "I wanna rock
right now" (from "It Takes Two"); the well-worn breakbeat from Bob
James's "Take Me to the Mardi Gras" (as used in countless hip-hop
songs); Chuck D's heavily sampled shout "Bass! How low can you
go" (from "Bring the Noise"); a measure from House of Pain's "Jump
Around"; and the stuttered synth stab from the opening of Dirtsman's
"Hot This Year." More subtle connections to the genre's past also
remain audible in Playero's late 199os productions, especially in the
unremitting presence of Jamaican riddim staples, which nonetheless
appear in more fragmentary form as short "chops" and "stabs"
integrated into increasingly synthesized pistas.

Other tracks on releases such as Playero 41 strongly embody the

genre's new techno- and pop-oriented directions. Notty Man's
"Dancing," for example, features various techno synths, evoking the
distinctively "squelchy" sounds of the Roland TB-303 and employing
the characteristic filtering, or frequency sweeps, of electronic dance
music. Daddy's Yankee's "Todas las Yales" is another case in point.
The track begins with a "detuned" synth riff evoking any number of
trance or techno tracks. As a four-on-the-floor kick drum augments
the riff, one could easily mistake it for a standard, if not cliche 199os
club anthem, at least before the dembow drums enter. Once the 3 + 3
+ 2 snares come in, along with Yankee's voice, there is no mistaking
the track for anything other than reggaeton; nonetheless, it offers a
clear example of how synthesized (or sampled) techno references
came increasingly to supplant the genre's affinity for hip-hop and
dancehall sources. The track still moves somewhat starkly between a
hip-hop groove and a dembow rhythm, however, and such alternation
maintains connections to mid-i99os style. Moreover, at points Yankee
propels his lyrics with a couple (characteristically "out-of-tune")
melodies borrowed from Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" (1984)
and the Bangles' ballad "Eternal Flame" (1989).76 Although these
references to '8os pop hits might seem slightly odd here, not to
mention rather far from the symbolic links which borrowed hooks from
reggae or hip-hop songs might once have evoked, they are actually
consistent with what has long been an ecumenical outlook for the
genre-an approach derived in part from hip-hop's and reggae's own
voracious practices. Finally, "Todas la Yales" also offers a window into
the enduring presence of Jamaica via Panama: the term yales, which
Yankee at times interchanges here with mujeres (i.e., women), comes
from the Panamanian slang guiales, which itself adapts gyal, a
Jamaican creole version of girl or girls.77

Productions by The Noise and DJ Joe during this period

demonstrate similar trends. On The Noise 9 (2000), for instance, one
hears the telltale sounds of Fruity Loops presets and effects
alongside other synthesized sounds, especially the pounding bass
drums for which techno is known. One also hears, however, the same
big bass synths, chopped-and-stabbed hip-hop references (e.g.,
squealing Cypress Hill samples), repeatedly triggered vocal lines,
allusions to dancehall melodies (Ruben San crams several into a
single song), and Dem Bow samples (especially the snares, but also
the riddim's resonant bass drum) for which melaza had been known.
The Bam Bam, Fever Pitch, and Poco Man jam riddims also rear their
heads in the mix. Although the pistas still shift in shape and feel at
regular intervals, sometimes fairly radically, the music is less
pastichelike than on earlier recordings, and the song forms more
closely resemble standard pop fare. DJ Joe's millennial mixtapes also
seem to confirm these directions. Whereas the producer's late 199os
mixes retain a great deal of melaza style, shortly after 2000 the
influence of Fruity Loops and nods to techno become far more
pronounced. With the exception of Dem Bow drum samples, by the
release of Fatal Fantassy i (2001), big, cheesy club synths, digital
explosions, and melodramatic percussion crescendos dominate the
tracks' textures, overshadowing any sample-based connections to
earlier styles. Vocalists still employ dancehall-related melodies as
well as various pop allusions (including the '5os hit "Mr. Sandman"),
though one also hears a refinement of such a melodic approach: a
distinctively Puerto Rican approach to melodic contour and vocal
timbre-often evoking the nasal singing styles of many soneros-seems
to emerge after a decade of recycling a handful of tunes. A
connection between the sounds of techno and the sexual already
appears rather reified by this point, underscored in DJ Joe's case by
the suggestively (mis)spelled reference to a popular video game
(Final Fantasy) on the Fatal Fantassy series.

Despite these parallel movements across the reggaeton scene,

during the first few years of the new millennium DJ Blass might rightly
be credited as most audibly promoting the tecno sound, conflating it
with sexual license, and ushering in a good number of the elements
which remain staples of the genre today and mark most of its
mainstream hits. Blass's Reggaeton Sex series employs the futuristic,
tactile synths and bombast of rave-era techno and contemporary
trance to great effect, creating physically and psychologically
compelling music over which (male) vocalists and (female) "phone-
sex" samples repeatedly invoke the body and the bawdy. Over saw-
tooth synths and pingpong arpeggios, crescendoing kicks and snares
and cymbal crashes, vocalists exhort (and/or order) women to "move
it," perreo, and do a fair number of other, more explicitly sexual acts.
Rather than the pliant, reggae-derived basslines of the mid-i99os,
synthesized bass tones serve instead to accentuate the kick drums
on each beat, often with a I-V ("oompah"-style) movement and
sometimes tracing out simple chord progressions-a rudimentary
rhythmic and harmonic role for the bass which has remained a
feature in a great many commercial reggaeton productions.78
Against these steady bass tones and heavy kicks on each beat, the
snares-sampled from Dem Bow, Bam Bam, and other favorite reggae
riddims-frequently come to the fore, pulling against the foursquare
feel with their 3 + 3 + 2 accents and making quite prominent what is,
at times, the only audible, timbral connection to the genre's
underground roots. Gesturing to the regularly shifting forms of the
mid-199os, Blass often switches between different snare samples at
4-, 8-, or 16-measure intervals, creating a subtle sense of form
against the otherwise rather static synth vamps.
 One strong contrast to what seems like a creeping sameness
among reggaeton producers around this time can be heard in the
productions of DJ Nelson, even if, remarkably, he is also partly
responsible for ushering in the most hegemonic force in recent
reggaeton style, the duo known as Luny Tunes. Beginning with his
production work for The Noise in 1992, Nelson's productions have
consistently put forward an ecumenical orientation, as well as one
that remains closely connected to contemporary movements in hip-
hop and reggae. During an interview segment in the Chosen Few
documentary, Nelson characterizes himself and his style as
"adventurous": "I like to experiment," he says, "to fuse different
genres, for example: salsa and reggaeton, electronic music and
reggaeton. I always try to bring something new to the genre, to give
people new rhythms." (Appropriately, while he is describing himself in
this manner a bachata-reggaeton fusion plays in the background.)
Most recently, Nelson has been at the forefront of salsa-reggaeton
fusions and infusions, but his premillennial productions also
demonstrate a great deal of variety. Nelson's album The Flow (1998)
balances early synth explorations with a hefty number of samples and
obvious references to other songs (e.g., Eurythmics' "Sweet
Dreams"). Notably, as many tracks on the album employ hip-hop
grooves (see figure 4) and dancehall's distinctive stomp (figure 2) as
reggaeton's well-worn boom-ch-boom-chick; indeed, the second half
of the album might best be described simply as Spanish-language
hip-hop, suggesting that reggaeton could have gone in a rather
different direction altogether. A series of popular productions by
Nelson's former apprentices, Luny Tunes, however, seems to have
pushed the genre most firmly into a kind of dembow orthodoxy.

The rise and runaway success of Luny Tunes and the defining role
they played in shaping what is today known as reggaeton would
seem to symbolize the central role that migration has played in the
ongoing formation (and reformation) of the genre. Both Luny
(Francisco Saldana) and Tunes (Victor Cabrera) were born in the
Dominican Republic and moved to Massachusetts as teenagers. But
rather than settling in Roxbury or Dorchester or Springfield -local
areas known for their sizeable Spanish-speaking communities-the
two found themselves (and found each other) living in Peabody, a
relatively affluent, suburban town on the outskirts of Greater Boston.
Although not far from the larger, more established Latino community
in Lynn, the Spanish-speaking community in Peabody was fairly small
and encouraged a kind of tight-knit fraternization. As Cabrera once
framed it: "Since most of the Latin people there didn't speak English,
and we were all together, we had to listen to our own thing."79 In this
case, "our own thing" primarily meant bootlegged reggaeton
recordings circulating from Puerto Rico through familial and peer
networks. The duo's deep, abiding engagements with reggaeton
hence says a great deal about the longstanding transnational appeal
and reach of the music. To some extent the emergence of such an
important production team from such a seemingly marginal set of
spaces (both the Dominican Republic and the Boston suburbs)
suggests yet another decentralization of Spanish-language reggae-
rap, a shift connected to migration and fueled by technology."0 Of
course, the fact that the duo eventually moved to Puerto Rico to set
up shop speaks volumes about the enduring (industrial) center of the
genre, new regional nodes of production notwithstanding."'

As can be heard on such Luny Tunes productions as "Gasolina" or

any number of the pistas on Mas Flow (2003), The Kings of the Beats
(2004), or Mas Flow 2 (2005), the duo's penchant for synthesized
textures, plucky melodic filigree, techno crescendos, and cinematic
bombast builds on the prior innovations of Nelson, Blass, Joe, and
others. Even so, Luny Tunes-and such cohorts as Nelly, Noriega, and
Tainy-set themselves apart from their forebears through their facility
with the latest generation of music production software and
keyboards. (Scrutinizing Luny Tunes' sonic signatures as well as
photos and videos of the duo at work, studio gear "trainspotters" have
noted the presence of such keyboards as the Yamaha Motif 8 and
software including Nuendo and Fruity Loops, especially the latter's
brittle-sounding Pluck! synthesizer, as well as various VST plug-ins,
or Virtual Studio Technology instruments and effects-e.g.,
SampleTank 2 XL, Sonik Synth 2, Hypersonic 2, and
HyperCanvas.)82 Using such synthesizers, Luny Tunes introduced
and advanced a distinctive, pop-oriented melodic and harmonic
language to the genre. Drawing on the latest technologies and
employing musical devices more common to pop and R&B, the duo
produced sleek, shiny tracks which seemed to embody in sonic form
the flashy style of blin-blineo (or "bling-bling"), an aesthetic borrowed
from commercial hip-hop and thus resonant with the predilections of
the U.S. music industry and contemporary mainstream or urban
radio. The duo's use (and recycling) of 2, 3, and 4 chord vamps,
accentuating their simple but moving chord progressions with melodic
lines and arpeggios that follow and bring out the underlying harmonic
motion, has facilitated the kind of affective, often overwrought
crooning which presumably appeals, American Idol-style, to a
cherished market demographic: teenyboppers.

Maintaining audible connections to contemporary pop and hip-hop

while eschewing reggaeton's well-worn sample sources-save for the
indispensable percussion of the Dem Bow and Bam Bam riddims-
Luny Tunes also proved crucial in moving the genre more squarely
into the realm of "Latin" or "tropi cal" music by invoking the distinctive
piano riffs of salsa and merengue and, especially, the trebly, swirling
guitars of bachata. Imbuing their productions with a crossover appeal
which had eluded more hardcore recordings, and tapping into a
growing Latin-urban music market in the United States, the duo's
productions served as significant sonic symbols, accelerating the
genre's move from musica negra to "Reggaeton Latino," from a
principally AfroPuerto Rican or Puerto Rican audience to a pan-Latino
and mainstream U.S. consumer base. Their heavy use of the
dembow-derived boom -ch- boom -chick, moreover-which has come
to stand as another important signifier of the genre's Latinness,
despite its foundations in Jamaican reggae-seems to have played a
major role, especially via their most successful singles, in establishing
what many hear today as reggaeton's rhythmic conservatism (or its
monotony, to put it more pejoratively, as many detractors do). It is
important to note, however, that despite their formidable influence on
the "tropicalization" of the genre, Luny Tunes were not the first to
infuse reggaeton with "tropical" sources. DJ Joe's Fatal Fantassy 3
(2002), for example, offers some relatively early attempts to
incorporate salsa into the mix: on Ranking Stone's "Todas las
Mujeres" a salsa-style piano figure, as played on a chintzy digital
synthesizer, dovetails with dembow drums; Noemi's "Voy Caminando
Reggae Lento Mix" finds propulsion in a sampled salsa riff; and
Negrito Truman's "El Phillie" employs a replayed version of the
opening ostinato from El Gran Combo's "Ojos Chinos" (notably, a
year or so before DJ Nelson would reanimate the same piano riff for
Tego Calderon's "Dominicana").

In some ways, the timing was fortuitous for such sonic shifts,
especially toward bachata, a Dominican genre originally confined to
the slums of Santo Domingo which, like reggaeton, had been gaining
prominence among urban, U.S.-based, Spanish-speaking audiences
since the turn of the millennium or so.83 The integration of bachata
into reggaeton (and, it is worth noting, vice versa), fueled in part by
producers of Dominican heritage with a love for both genres, again
speaks to the role migration has played in reggaeton's formation.
With increasing numbers of Dominicans living in San Juan and New
York alike, bachata's unmistakable, shimmery guitar timbres became
an increasingly common feature of these cities' soundscapes.
According to DJ El Nino, the embrace of bachata by reggaeton
producers was a marriage of convenience: "People who were into
reggaeton hated bachata," he recounted via e-mail, "it even got
dissed on some early reggaeton tracks ... as things became more
mainstream (including bachata) and not so underground it becameok
and then u see watt happens now they all have at least 2 `bachata'
tracks per cd ... loll!"84 Indeed, based on my own daily listening while
commuting from Hum boldt Park to Hyde Park in Chicago during the
2006-7 school year, contemporary Hispanic-urban, or "hurban," radio
appears increasingly drawn to reggaeton-bachata hybrids
(sometimes referred to as bachaton). Crooning R&B-style over
dembow-propelled bachata guitars, "Dominican York" boybands such
as Aventura and Xtreme seem to be contributing in their own way to
this broader shift in reggaeton's cultural profile that is pop oriented
and pan-Latin."s

This is not to say that reggaeton is not still heard and projected as
"black music" by performers and audiences alike, or that genres such
as salsa, bachata, or merengue are not (or perhaps, were not)
themselves cast as musica negra. For all its mainstream, pan-Latin
strivings, reggaeton continues to be racialized as black in the same
way that Dominicans and Dominican music and culture are racialized
as black in Puerto Rico and, indeed, as Dominicans and Puerto
Ricans are, in such places as New York, together racialized as black
according to the binary racial logic of the United States. Especially
due to the genre's enduring articulations-musically, sartorially, and
discursively-with hip-hop and reggae, reggaeton remains, for many, a
"morenos" thing (i.e., African American, not Afro-Latin), as Tempo
calls it while explaining in the Chosen Few documentary that he
"based [him] self on the hip-hop culture." A quick glance through In
the House magazine or at any reggaeton video reveals a plethora of
visual markers of hip-hop generation, African American culture:
braids and dreadlocks, chains and jewelry, oversized clothing, and
symbols of "thug" glamour more generally. (Notably, these same
culturally charged markers of visual style, prompted a Puerto Rican
percussion teacher with whom I was studying to give voice to
enduring prejudices, remarking that Daddy Yankee should dress in a
manner more consistent with his fair complexion, taken as an index of
his assumed [high] class position in the same manner as he took
Tego Calderon's and Don Omar's phenotypical features to be signs, if
misleading ones, of their lower-class background .86) Moreover, the
implicit and explicit racialization of women as sexual objects in song
texts and videos plays on and reanimates longstanding myths about
negra and mulata sexuality. Demonstrating the genre's strong
significations of race and raciness as it finds favor among audiences
in Central and South America, recent debates and viral video
phenomena on what we might call the Latin American
YouTubosphere have consistently portrayed reggaeton artists and
devotees as sexually licentious, morally depraved, and racialized
Others.87

For all its audibility, then, the increasingly projected pan-Latino

character of reggaeton is also inextricable from visual and textual
cues. It is telling that a number of the genre's biggest crossover hits,
especially N.O.R.E.'s "Oye Mi Canto" and Don Omar's "Reggaeton
Latino," offer explicit attempts to represent reggaeton as the music of
a wider community (and market). Both songs address a "Latino"
audience in the lyrics, and yet they do so, interestingly, without
invoking musical signs of the "tropical," tending instead toward
dembowdriven R&B. Instead of sonic signifiers, the songs attach
themselves to iconic images of "Latin pride" via their videos,
employing grainy footage of political figures, artists, and athletes in
"Reggaeton Latino" and (light-)brown-skinned, bikini-clad women
dancing under giant flags in "Oye Mi Canto." The panLatino,
multinational flag-waving in "Oye Mi Canto" finds correspondence in
the song's chorus, which invokes a now well-worn litany of Spanish-
speaking identifications: "boricua, morena, dominicana, colombiana,"
sing Nina Sky, a Puerto Rican-born, New York-based duo, at times
substituting cubana and mexicana to round things out. Notably, both
songs were produced by Boy Wonder, a New York-born producer with
family ties to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico who has been
among the genre's biggest boostersespecially via his Chosen Few
franchise. A revealing moment in the Chosen Few documentary
portrays Boy Wonder in the studio coaching Nina Sky to add
"mexicana" to the refrain. The young producer has proven himself
rather savvy in promoting reggaeton (and his own efforts in the
genre), at times embracing the for-hire, your-ad-here, self-
commodification that commercial hip-hop has so successfully
leveraged toward cultural and market dominance. "Every kind of
message can be said with this music," he says at one point during the
documentary, "and you can put a face on any product."

As somewhat cynically expressed in Boy Wonder's aspirations and

productions, the genre's shift from musica negra to "Reggaeton
Latino" seems connected to, even as it informs (especially with
reggaeton's growing visibility, audibility, and marketability), such
broader phenomena as mass media marketing in the United States.
Take, for example, the programming and on-air practices of Spanish-
language media giant Univision's La Kalle radio franchise, which
broadcasts on two signals in the Chicago area and which has sister
stations in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and San
Antonio, to name a few. Seeking out the so-called hurban market and
offering what they bill as "reggaeton y mas" (but not too much mas),
La Kalle's DJs and promotional materials, presumably in an attempt
to reach a wider audience, tend to downplay invocations of particular
nationalities, addressing instead a general, Spanish- and Spanglish-
speaking audience united under an implicitly racialized, urban
American "street" identity (kalleis a misspelling of calle, or "street" in
Spanish). Callers-in, for instance, are now prompted simply to say
their name and the catch-phrase, "Yo soy La Kalle," rather than, as
was previously the practice, representing themselves as both
belonging to a national group and to the wider Hispanic community.""
Reggaeton's success on such radio stations as La Kalle suggests
that the genre's own marketing strategies-as advanced by artists,
producers, and music industry executives-dovetail quite well with
corporate media's initiatives to entice a prized demographic, the
substantial and growing numbers of Spanish speakers in the United
States.

At the same time, reggaeton's aesthetic shift toward latinidad and

away from (explicit) negritude seems also to play into current debates
in the United States about immigration, citizenship, and civil rights-
debates which often erupt into a host of xenophobic, racist, and
nationalist arguments on all sides. In this context reggaeton often
emerges in the words of detractors as parasitic (on hip-hop and
reggae in particular), and it is revealing that discussions (or
dismissals) of reggaeton's musical value tend to come to the fore in
such discourse, with allegations of monotony and lack of originality as
the most common epithets. In the most provocative examples of such
discourse, critics accuse reggaeton of horning in on hip-hop's and
reggae's market share in the same way Latino immigrants are
accused of stealing American jobs.119 Thus one might infer that
despite the repeated, inclusion of "morenas" in reggaeton's
established litany of community relationships (which still serves to
draw lines even as it connects dots), such an articulation with
blackness functions rather differently in the broader context of U.S.
and Latin American race relations than it did in the specific context of
mid-i99os Puerto Rico. Similar to hip-hop and reggae, but with its
own particular points of provocation, reggaeton has thus served in
recent years to animate intense public conversations about race,
nation, gender, and generation across the Americas. Given what can
seem a tumultuous redefinition of social relationships in the wake of
new migrations amidst competing projects of national and
transnational (not to mention local) unity, it is hardly surprising that so
much heated debate rages over the past and future of reggaeton.

TO WHERE FROM HERE? (WHERE'S "HERE"?)

As this essay has attempted to trace across time and space,

reggaeton can be claimed and located as Jamaican, Panamanian,
Puerto Rican, Latin, and/or black music. Depending on the particular
sociocultural context and historical moment, reggaeton may be heard,
embraced, and projected as representing any or all of these people
and places, with significant implications for local cultural politics.
Despite the genre's history of movement and shifting centers, with its
recent rise to mainstream American and global prominence
reggaeton today may stand as even further decentered, diversified,
and subject to rearticulation in various sites of production and
reception. The music is now crafted and consumed across the
Americas and the wider world. That a number of the biggest hits of
the genre have been pan-national, flag-waving affairs has further
cemented a growing perception-a perception resented by some
Puerto Rican cultural nationalists-that reggaeton is yet another genre
in the global/Latin pop pantheon. This is a perception from which
Puerto Rican artists still benefit a great deal, for they remain the
major players in the scene and comprise the vast majority of
international stars. But as the genre continues to grow and new
regional centers develop, Puerto Rico may find itself as decentered in
the reggaeton universe as is New York in global hip-hop's sphere of
influence-an inevitable outcome of various artists and labels rushing
headlong toward mainstream visibility, audibility, and profitability.

Lest my narrative come across as overly cynical in describing

reggaeton's shift toward a pan-Latin profile, I should emphasize that
the changes in musical style I have described emerge not simply out
of Puerto Rican artists, managers, and labels' calculations about how
to reach a wider market, but from the genre's increasingly and
genuinely pan-Latino, grassroots popularity. Aspiring producers and
performers from across the Latin Caribbean, Latin American, and
Spanish-speaking communities in the United States have embraced
the music as the sound of their generation, as a style that embodies
signifiers of their Latino or national heritage as well as dimensions of
the global, the modern, the urban and urbane. For all its core
connotations, mainstream success has allowed the sound and style
of reggaeton to escape local control; the genre is but the latest Latin
dance style to find favor in popular U.S. culture. As such, it appeals to
producers and consumers of all kinds. The advent of reggaeton
cristiano, or Christian reggaeton, and the appearance of such
compilations as Reggaeton Ninos serve as telling confirmations of the
genre's new status and significations. In some sense, this move from
the margins to the mainstream-complete with a radical shift in the
genre's perception and reception in Puerto Rico, moving from a target
of censorship to a cause for celebration (if with an enduring
ambivalence and anxiety) -follows a familiar arc for a lot of popular,
and eventually national, music. Writing about the mbira in Zimbabwe,
Thomas Turino observes: "As with the tango, the rumba, steelband,
and merengue in the Caribbean and Latin America, it is often foreign
interest in a local tradition that causes it to be selected and
popularised as a paramount national musical idiom at home."90 At
this juncture we might rightly add reggaeton to the list.
 As time goes on, the term reggaeton may come to describe a far
wider, or narrower, field of musical activity. As the genre's influence
sinks deeper into Latin, U.S., and global pop, it could simply be seen
as an umbrella term for a range of styles-as, say, rock functions
today, or perhaps even hip-hop at this point (which, according to
some, including Vico C, would contain reggaeton). However, such
diffusion might completely obscure the genre's presence, perhaps
leading devotees (and no doubt marketers) to restrict the meaning of
reggaeton to a more specific sense of style. Indeed, this may already
be true: for many, reggaeton is simply the sound of synthy, dembow-
driven Puerto Rican pop from the Luny Tunes era. Yet while such
synth-driven, snare-shifting compositions remain at the heart of the
genre (at least according to the radio, the media, and record sales),
already such hybrid offshoots as salsaton, bacha- ton, cumbiaton,
chutney-ton, ra'i-ggaeton, and bhangraton, among other novelties,
point to further localizations and new possibilities for the genre's
distinctive sonic footprint to propel the politics of culture (not to
mention offering fresh opportunities to cash in on the latest global pop
trend).91 At the same time, a growing number of major pop acts-from
Shakira to Britney Spears to R. Kelly to Ricky Martin-have employed
reggaeton's telltale boom-ch-boomchick in order to imbue their tracks
with resonant, club-ready beats. And reggaeton's dembow drums,
especially the use of snares to mark out a 3 + 3 + 2 polyrhythm, have
also turned up increasingly as new rhythmic accents in rock en
espanol as well as bachata, merengue, norteno, and so on.

Finally, although most mainstream reggaeton hits to date display

something of a stylistic orthodoxy, a number of prominent acts from
Puerto Rico have also infused their music with a great deal of variety,
expanding the sonic palette of the genre with the help of adventurous
producers such as Di Nelson, Danny Fornaris, and Visitante. In some
sense, then, reggaeton could be described as fairly heterodox today,
displaying at least as ecumenical an outlook as in the days of the
sample-dense melaza collage (which, interestingly, has been rearing
its head of late as a nostalgic, "retro" signifier for "old school" style).
Tego Calderon has done a great deal of stylistic stretching in this
regard, incorporating many of the Puerto Rican genres journalists so
often take for granted as part of reggaeton's DNA (e.g., bomba,
salsa), not to mention experimenting with dancehall and roots reggae,
hip-hop, and blues. For their part, Calle 13 (a.k.a. Residente and
Visitante) have brought an art-school/classclown attitude to the
genre, expressed musically in their irreverence for any sort of stylistic
purity. While referencing the Dem Bow and Bam Bam enough to
convince the reggaeton faithful of their belonging, the group also
nods to klezmer, cumbia, tango, and contemporary electronic pop, to
name a few. Such eclectic, idiosyncratic musical approaches-in these
cases combined with both Tego's and Residente's combination of
reflexivity, earthy humor, and incisive social commentary-seem to
suggest that the genre maintains a healthy degree of insurgent
creativity. Similarly, we can trust that with bedroom producers from
Minneapolis to Medellin seeking to put themselves on the map,
reggaeton will not be "running out of gasolina" anytime soon, contrary
to premature predictions of its demise.92 Where the next fuel
injection comes from, however, and how the music's future will
embody where it has been, where it resides, and where it is going,
are things that remain to be seen. And heard. (I'm going to keep my
ears on the snares.)

I hope that in attempting to construct a metanarrative about

reggaeton-a story about the stories people tell about the music, as
well as a story I hear the music tell-that I have not proposed too
overbearing (or overdetermining) a master narrative of my own. Part
of what compels me to listen so closely to reggaeton is that it seems,
especially in its mainstream manifestations, to challenge a number of
master narratives about American culture and society. For all the
conflicts and debates around the music, it also holds the promise-or
perhaps gives voice to the postcolonial dream-of a convivial,
cosmopolitan multiculture, as Paul Gilroy might put it, suggesting that
our cities already sound so and that musical communities might as
well act as political commu- nities.93 Whether reggaeton has the
potential to change the status quo is deeply unclear to me, for it
appears at this point to be co-opted by (and/or willingly "pimping"
itself to) a system that thrives on, sells, and sows difference,
distinction, and division. I do think, however, that I hear a different
America in reggaeton, a different kind of mainstream-or perhaps the
disappearance of the mainstream altogether. With regard to the
emergence of an increasingly diverse, global, public archive of videos
and other media, Jace Clayton has observed, "I enjoy watching the
notion of a mainstream dissolve into a trillion scattered data-bites."94
I feel similarly when I listen to today's digital dembow tracks and
Spanglish raps. Can't we all just dance along?

NOTES

Thanks to Deborah Pacini Hernandez and Raquel Z. Rivera for their

indispensable feedback, as well as to the many interlocutors who
engaged with earlier versions of these ideas via various blog posts,
e.g.: http://wayneandwax.blogspOt.com/2005/o8/we -use-so-many-
snares.html; and http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/2Oo6/o6/cabron-
que-reggaeton.html.

1. For criticisms of the song (and the genre) as sexist, see, e.g.,
http://blogging.la/ archive s/2005/o9/latino_963-more _la_ radio-
sucki.phtml, andhttp://www.lacocte lera.com/eme/ post/2005 / 09 /16/
-no-al-reggaeton-perfil-del-fan-del-reggaeton#comen tarios
(accessed January 6, 2007).

2. By "breakdowns" I refer to the sections in the song when most or

all of the percussive elements drop out (in the case of "Gasolina,"
e.g., from 1:1o to 1:2o or 2:12 to 2:22), thus creating anticipation for
their return-an expectation typically intensified, in reggaeton and
trance/techno alike, via the (re)entry of the drums, especially in
rapidly subdividing form. Like a crescendo (or hypermeter) in
classical music, these dense percussive passages highlight the return
of the regular meter, or groove-or the beginning of a new section-by
creating what is felt as a "big downbeat," sometimes further
emphasized by a crash/splash cymbal or an explosion, etc. With
regard to "tropical" music, I am referring to a category used by the
music industry (e.g., Billboard) which tends to lump together various
Latin Caribbean (dance) genres (e.g., salsa, merengue),
distinguishing them from other Spanish-language music such as
Mexican banda or norteno.

3. Daddy Yankee, a.k.a. Raymond Ayala, happens to have direct

family ties to a number of bomba performers, e.g., Los Hermanos
Ayala, which included his late father (Ramon "El Negro" Ayala) and
his cousins. Hence, I would argue that the bomba connection I make
here is not as perfunctory an observation as most invocations of the
genre in writings about reggaeton, which tend to rehearse such
connections (as I will discuss in this and later sections) despite the
actual rarity of audible bomba references in reggaeton recordings.
(Tego Calderon and La Sista, both of whom have explicitly
incorporated bomba into their albums, stand as exceptional in this
regard.)

4. From a description at cduniverse.com, an online vendor: "As one

of the most popular musical styles of the mid-200os, reggaeton
gained favor across racial, ethnic, and even age boundaries. It was
only a matter of time, then, until a `reggaeton for kids' disc found its
way to shelves, and REOOAETON NINOS VOL. i is just that. While
many reggaeton raps concern themselves with sexual themes or the
hard-knock thug life, the tracks on REOOAETON NiNOS have been
edited for content and language, so concerned parents can at last
feel safe letting their young ones groove out to these infectious
songs. The album includes several singalong tracks (identified as
such) that feature a chorus of children singing the hook, adding to the
charm and youth- accessible appeal of the set":
http://www.cduniverse.com/ search/xx/music/ pid/ 6996932/ a/
Reggaeton +Ninos+Vol.+i.htm (accessed October 20, 2006).

5. Spencer Ackerman, e.g., describes the ironic resonance and

popularity of "Gasolina" among Kurdish "gas-hustlers" in early 2006 in
an article hosted at openDemoc- racy.net:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-iraq/kurdistan_3369.jsp
(accessed October 20, 2006). Moreover, for listeners in Panama,
where reggae has long been associated with "oil" and "petroleo"
because of their metonymic connotations of blackness, "Gasolina"
might have seemed like yet another familiar derivation of reggae en
espanol (about which, more in the next section).

6. Moreover, as will be discussed in greater detail below, the track

frequently features a "timbal" figure also associated with the Dem
Bow riddim in Puerto Rico, thus creating additional sonic links to Afro-
Latin styles. Also, allow me to clarify here my various spelling
choices: when I write "Dem Bow," I refer to the Shabba Ranks song;
when I write Dem Bow, I refer to the riddim produced by Bobby
Digital; when I write dembow, I refer to the abstracted rhythmic
pattern derived from the Dem Bow as well as the genre in Puerto
Rico named after the ubiquitous rhythm, which was/is sometimes also
rendered, in local discourse, as dembo or denbo (and which is
synonymous with "underground," "under," melaza, etc.).

7. The story of reggaeton's Panamanian origins has become such a

commonplace in journalistic coverage that it seems almost a
perfunctory gesture. Online message-board discussions, on the other
hand, tend toward fairly heated disputes over which place truly lays
claim to the genre. See, e.g.,
http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/show thread.php?
t=64392&page=3 (accessed October u, 20o6);
http://www.reggaetonline.net/ forums/threadnav805-1-lo.html
(accessed June 25, 2006).

8. At times throughout this essay I employ the construction

"reggae/ton" when referring both to reggae and reggaeton, especially
in cases where I am discussing reggae in Puerto Rico or Panama
prior to the advent of the term reggaeton or seeking to describe the
genre across historical periods. For examples of some rather
contentious debates around reggaeton's geographical and cultural
provenance, see, e.g., http://foro
.univision.com/univision/board/message?
board.id=reggaeton&message.id=9158o; and
http://www.bacanalnica.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=11646,
http://abstractdynam ics.org/2004/o8/reggaeton.php (accessed
January 6, 2007).

9. Among a great deal of other scholarship, the writings of John

Storm Roberts-see The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American
Music on the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
[19791), or Black Music of Two Worlds: African, Caribbean, Latin, and
African -American Traditions (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998
[1972])-and of Ned Sublette- Cuba and Its Music: From the First
Drums to the Mambo (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004) -stand
as persuasive efforts toward advancing and elaborating such a
theory. The work of Ken Bilby, such as his essay "The Caribbean as a
Musical Region," in Caribbean Contours, ed. Sidney W. Mintz and
Sally Price, 181-218 (London: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1985), also offers a compelling narrative lens into these connections.

1o. Audio samples illustrating the examples discussed in this essay

are available at the following URL: http://wayneandwax.com/?
page_id=139.

11. The differences in emphasis and arrangement between these

genres are not inconsequential, however. One can thus get into
vociferous disagreements about whether reggaeton and, say, salsa
indeed share a similar rhythmic orientation or "feel." See, e.g., the
"2005 Rolling Reggaeton Thread" at http://ilx.p3r.net/thread.php?
msgid=5625584 (accessed January 6, 2007), which features such
opinions as the following (made in response to a comment of mine):
"There is a world of difference between the quarter note pulse
existing (which yeah, of course it does) and being explicitly stated. It's
not stated in most dancehall, Afro-Cuban, New Orleans, etc. music.
There's also a big difference between stating it on top with a cowbell
or cymbal than on the bottom with the bass drum."

12. I should note that in my own experience taking bomba lessons

in Chicago during the fall of 2006, however, such connections
between these traditional genres and reggaeton were never
elaborated by the instructor, and, indeed, reggaeton was at times
denigrated-more because of its lyrics than musical style-as a
dangerous, corrupting influence on Puerto Rican youth. The
connections I make here, then, are largely my own attempts to
provide a generous reading of what are perhaps, more often than not,
tenuous attempts to connect reggaeton to traditions other than its
most direct forebears, hip-hop and reggae (though I would like to
acknowledge the expertise of Anton Kociolek in helping me to
articulate these connections). Finally, I hasten to distinguish such
structural rhythmic similarities from more specious assertions that
particular elements in reggaeton were borrowed directly from bomba
or plena, e.g., "While reggaeton is very similar to reggae, a notable
difference are the extra claps and high hats derived from Bomba and
Plena": http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/life/003326.html (accessed
January 6, 2007).

13. Linton Kwesi Johnson, "Introduction," in Tougher than Tough:

The Story of Jamaican Music, CD liner notes (London: Island
Records Ltd., 1993), 5. It is significant that the DJs and producers
Johnson names here are among the major touchstones for Puerto
Rican producers and vocalists in the early and mid-199os: Shabba
Ranks's "Dem Bow," as discussed in the previous and following
sections, became reggaeton's bedrock riddim; Buju Banton's gruff
tone inspired a good many Puerto Rican DJs/MCS; and several
riddims played and produced by Steely and Clevie, such as Poco
Man Jam (1990) and indeed the Dem Bow itself, became staple
samples for "underground" producers.

14. See, e.g., various essays in Tony Mitchell, ed., Global Noise:
Rap and Hip-Hop outside the USA (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
University Press, 2001), a good number of which bear witness to a
conflation of dancehall (often glossed as "raggamuffin") and hip-hop
style in various contexts outside the United States.
 15. There is a rich and growing literature on Jamaican (and West
Indian/Caribbean) migration to New York in the late twentieth century:
see, e.g., Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant
Dreams and American Realities (New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 1999) ; Philip Kasinitz, Caribbean New York: Black
Immigrants and the Politics of Race (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1992); Nancy Foner, Islands in the City: West Indian Migration
to New York (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); and, for
a volume focusing on music, Ray Allen and Lois Wilcken, eds., Island
Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music and Identity in
New York (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). As for musical
texts, Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded, CD (B-Boy
Records, 1987) is perhaps the best example of the currency that
Jamaican style had come to assume in New York by this point. Full of
direct references (as sampled, as replayed, and as rapped/sung) to
contemporary dancehall, the album nonetheless allowed BDP to
advance their claims to interborough dominance (as in the battle with
the Queens-based Juice Crew). That a "hardcore" New York rap
group could represent the Bronx so convincingly with the sounds of
Jamaica at this time speaks volumes. For similar, more widespread,
and perhaps more pernicious representations of Jamaica as the locus
of an exotic source of hardcore violence, see, for example, such
Hollywood films as Marked for Death (1990) or Predator 2 (1990),
both of which feature fearsome, dreadlocked villains.

16. Chosen Few: El Documental, cD/DVDS (Chosen Few Emerald

Entertainment / Urban Box Office, 82520110152, 2004).

17. The documentary's subtitles, which occasionally offer slightly

odd interpretations of the interview texts, translate Master Joe's "en
americano" to "in English" in order to distinguish from Spanish-
language rappers. In the other cases here, unless noted, I directly
quote the subtitles (after reviewing for serious discrepancies).

18. The Mean Machine, Ruby Dee and Whipper Whip, and Charlie
Chase are among the earliest, New York-based "Latin rappers." For
further discussion of the phenomenon, as well as the implications of
its marginalization in the hip-hop narrative, see, e.g., Juan Flores,
From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); and Raquel Z. Rivera,
New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003).

19. See, e.g., a tribute to the late Big Pun in XXL, which begins with
the lede "Four years ago, we lost Big Pun, a legendary lyricist who
changed the game with his furious flow. In tribute, we examine his
jump-off-Capital Punishment, the classic LP that proved Latin MCS
could rhyme and go platinum": http://xxlmag.com/Features/2004/
0204.BigPun/index.html (accessed February 1, 2007).

20. See, for instance, Victor M. Rodriguez, "The Racialization of

Puerto Rican Ethnicity in the 'United States," in Ethnicity, Race and
Nationality in the Caribbean, ed. J. M. Carrion (Rio Piedras:
University of Puerto Rico, Institute of Caribbean Studies, 1998), 233-
73.

21. Big Punisher, "The Dream Shatterer," Capital Punishment, CD

(Relativity, 1998).

22. For more on the tensions between hip-hop and reggaeton in

Puerto Rico, see Mc Welmo's essay in this volume. See also, Jesus
Trivifio, "Spanish Fly," The Source, March 2004, 99-101.

23. The segment in question can be found in chap. 8 of the Chosen

Few DvDS, "HipHop Latino vs. Reggaeton." Interestingly, Vico C's
examples also differ in terms of tempo, as he performs the reggaeton
rhythm noticeably faster than the hip-hop beat. Although hip-hop and
reggaeton tracks alike can range fairly widely in terms of bpm (beats
per minute), it is not altogether inaccurate to represent reggaeton as,
on the main, generally faster than hip-hop. This, in part, relates to
reggaeton's dance-centric character.
 24. Not insignificantly, Vico C and El General are often discussed,
and even marketed, together. For example, BMG issued a joint
greatest hits CD for the two, despite that it simply offers alternating
solo tracks from each: See El General/Vico C, Juntos (BMG 74321
92210-2, 2002). Also, it is worth noting that El General's influence on
the Puerto Rican hip-hop/reggae scene is perhaps as pervasive as
Vico C's. El Comandante's Asi Asi (1991), for instance, in addition to
a song written by Vico C ("She Likes My Reggae"), includes covers of
El General's "Tu Pun Pun" and "Te Ves Buena."

25. An online search turns up a number of references in this vein,

some asserting that reggae was brought to Panama in the early
twentieth century, others alleging that Jamaicans came to work on the
canal in the 1970s. See, e.g., http://www.reggaetonfever
.com/reggaeton_history.php;
http://www.rhapsody.com/latin/latinraphiphop/reggae ton/more.html;
and http://www.hispanicscene.com/html/reggaeton.html (all accessed
on January 6, 2007).

26. For examples in which reggae connoisseurs dismiss (as well as

defend) reggaeton, see, e.g.,
http://www.bloodandfire.co.uk/db/viewtopic.php?
t=2282&highlight=reggae ton, and
http://www.bloodandfire.co.uk/db/viewtopic.php?
t=3425&highlight=reggae ton (both accessed January 7, 2007); or
http://www.dancehall reggae.com/forum/ showthread.php?
s=5aoba2o9bcd27a57513564dee2of2f27&t=99529 (accessed
January 29, 2007).

27. Rex Nettleford, Mirror Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in

Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: LMH Publishing, 1970 [2001]), 20.

28. Ibid.

29. Deborah Thomas, Modern Blackness: Nationalism,

Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 2004), 43.
 30. Panama Canal Authority, "Panama Canal Gallery":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ his tory/britishIvictorians/Panama- gallery-
o4.shtml (accessed January 25, 2007).

31. The local interplay between these styles, not to mention what
was referred to as haitiano music as well as Latin Caribbean and
Central American genres, has yet to be analyzed in depth. (El
General, for instance, in the interview with Christoph Twickel
published in this volume, mentions the popularity of Haitian music in
Panama at the same time reggae was catching on.) As the work of
Carla Guerrbn-Montero suggests, the ways these genres articulate
with Panamanian cultural politics is a complex, interesting, and
understudied story. In particular, it would be useful to know how and
why reggae eventually came to such cultural prominence among
Afro-Antilleans in Panama. See Carla Maria Guerron-Montero, "Can't
Beat Me Own Drum in Me Own Native Land: Calypso Music and
Tourism in the Panamanian Atlantic Coast," Anthropological Quarterly
79, no. 4 (fall2oo6): 633-63.

32. One well-circulated account also names an immigrant called

"Guyana" as having "introduced" reggae to Panama, though this story
sounds somewhat apocryphal given the already longstanding
musicocultural links between Panama and Jamaica. See, e.g.,
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plena_(Panam%C3%A1) (accessed
January 29, 2007).

33• Thanks to Mario Luis Small for telling me about petrbleo (via e-
mail, January 2007). For a colorful discussion of the differences
between plena, bultron, and reggaeton in Panama, see the following
message-board discussions: http://foros.latinol .com/cgi-
bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=47&t=ooo683; and
http://foros.latinol .com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get-
topic&f=38&t=000051&p=3 (both accessed February 20, 2008).

34. Surveying some of the latest songs produced in Panama, one

finds the practice continuing: hence, in 20o6, one could hear the
Panamanian DJ Principal proclaiming himself "El Rey del Dancehall"
with the same cadences and over the same riddim that Jamaica's
Beenie Man used to crown himself "King of the Dancehall" a few
months earlier, or Panama's Aspirante employing for "Las Cenizas
Dijeron Goodbye" (The Ashes Said Goodbye) the melody from
Jamaican singer Gyptian's "Serious Times" over a reverent re-lick of
the strikingly acoustic Spiritual Warriddim that propels the original
(though Aspirante changes the text from a meditation on the state of
the world to a failed relationship). For elaboration on Jamaica's
"riddim system" and the practice of re-licks, covers, and other kinds of
versions-as well as a discussion of vocal or melodic approaches-see
Peter Manuel and Wayne Marshall, "The Riddim Method: Aesthetics,
Practice, and Ownership in Jamaican Dancehall," Popular Music 25,
no. 3 (2oo6): 447-70.

35. Raquel Cepeda, "Riddims by the Reggaeton," Village Voice,

March 28, 2005,
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0513,cepeda,62467,22.html
(accessed February 1, 2007). Moreover, for all their commitments to
upholding and engaging with reggae tradition, Panamanian artists
have also transformed and left their own mark on reggae as the world
knows it-and not simply by adapting the form for Spanish, which
would eventually spur the reggaeton revolution in Puerto Rico. Here
again Tego seems to hit the mark: "In Panama, there's more soca
influences. It's faster," he told Raquel Cepeda (ibid.). And though that
observation is not true across the board, it is consistent with El
General's memory, as recounted in the Chosen Few documentary, of
performing over sped-up reggae riddims during the formative days of
Panama's plena scene, playing the instrumental sides of 33 rpm
records at 45 rpm. In addition, although one finds a wide range of
tempos across Panamanian reggae recordings, there is also an entire
subgenre called "11o," which directly refers to the number of beats
per minute-an above-average bpm for most dancehall (or recent
reggaeton, for that matter). And yet, in other ways, the Panamanian
reggae scene has long been in conversation with developments in
Puerto Rico, though the global rise of reggaeton and the more recent
advent of new communication and information technologies have
accelerated this exchange. Panamanian producer El Chombo, whose
very nickname signifies "piel morena" (dark skin) in Panama,
collaborated with Puerto Rico's DJ Negro in the late '905 for the first
of his Los Cuentos de la Cripta (Tales from the Crypt) series, e.g.,
while a disc from another series, "Spanish Oil"-a reference to petrbleo
reinforced by the name of Chombo's label imprint Oilers Music-
apparently carried the subtitle "From the underground with class,"
which clearly makes reference to the mid-'9os discourse around
Puerto Rico's hybrid of reggae and hip-hop. (This bit of information
surfaced in an online discussion about Panamanian reggae, as left in
a comment by "cristo," May 31, 2005: http://www.fly.co
.uk/fly/archives/2005/o4/reggaeton-the-story-so-far.html [accessed
January 28, 2007].) More recent Panamanian artists-such as El
Roockie, Kafu Banton, Dicky Ranking, Aldo Ranks, Danger Man, and
others-differ in the degree to which they engage directly with
Jamaican dancehall or with a reggaeton-inflected style.

36. Notably, the compilation also includes contributions by both

Afro-Honduran reggae singers such as La Diva and Arzu, as well as
the Puerto Rican rapper Lisa M, demonstrating the rapid spread of
Spanish-language dancehall reggae across cosmopolitan New York
and its postcolonial networks.

37. For discographical information on these releases, as well as

photos of the labels, see http://www.discogs.com/release/366596 and
http://www.discogs.com/release/3666 oo (accessed February 2,
2007).

38. Orlando Patterson, "Ecumenical America: Global Culture and

the American Cosmos," World Policy Journal 11, no. 2 (1994): 103-
17.

39• Dancehall Reggaespanol, liner notes (Columbia Records,

1991), 3.

40. See, e.g., the message board debate at

http://www.bacanalnica.com/foros/view topic.php?
t=11646&postdays=o&postorder=asc&start=32&sid=d94a213b33ao1
69fa191c 3o1c8ao9565 (accessed January 28, 2007). As with all of
my Internet sources, I have preserved the ("incorrect") orthographical
renderings here, despite that "puertori- quefia" would not be
capitalized in Spanish, etc. For more on Panamanian perceptions of
reggae, see Ifeoma Nwankwo's interview with Renato elsewhere in
this volume.

41. See Deborah Pacini Hernandez's essay elsewhere in this

volume for a detailed description of Oquendo's project, as well as its
implications for understanding reggaeton's interplay with Dominican
music.

42. Although many of these terms will be familiar to readers, I

realize that for others this shorthand may appear esoteric. Briefly
then, by "breakbeat" I refer to the sampled, looped, funk-derived
drum tracks (also called "breaks") used in countless hip-hop tracks;
and when I refer to a "clubby" bassline, I mean that it features a lot of
repeated notes (at the level of the 16th note), a signature approach
for reggae bass players.

43• A group such as Proyecto lino, who emerged from the New
York merengue, merenhouse, "Latin house" and hip-house scenes
with a similar fusion around the same time (i.e., the early '9os) and
sustained a career throughout the decade (and, to some extent, into
the present), stands as an exception to meren-rap's brief bubble of
popularity. It is noteworthy that such groups, however, as well as
individual members such as Magic Juan, have in recent years
incorporated the sounds and styles of reggaeton into their merengue-
centered pop (see, for instance, Magic Juan's 2003 hit "Meniando La
Pera"), not unlike the similar incorporation of reggaeton into
contemporary bachata and salsa, among other popular, "Latin"
genres.

44. "Flip-tongue" is a term I learned in Jamaica by which dancehall

D j s refer to the double-time style of rapping for which they have
become known and which served as a touchstone for many early
underground Mcs in Puerto Rico. This vocal approach, which usually
involves an alternation between virtuosic double-time passages (often
at the level of the 32nd note) and slower, regular cadences, can also
be found on a great number of reggae-influenced hip-hop recordings
from the early and mid-199os.

45. Other notable producers of the period include DI Eric, DJ Adam,

DJ Goldy, Mister G, DJ Joe, and, later in the decade, DJ Blass and
DJ Dicky. The forms such recordings took, of course, were directly
tied to the media on which they circulated: thus, typically a mixtape
contained two 20-30 minute continuous mixes (one for each side of
the cassette).

46. As discussed in the opening of this essay, the alternating

snares in contemporary productions such as "Gasolina" can thus be
heard as subtly embodying a connection to this earlier pastichelike
practice of alternating between recognizable, resonant samples from
hip-hop and reggae. Moreover, recent songs such as "Reggaeton
Latino" by Don Omar or "Sola" by Hector "El Father," continue, for all
their commitment to the bedrock boom-ch-boom-chick, to employ
contrasting grooves in order to propel the songs forward and,
perhaps, to appeal to different audiences.

47. Again, just to be clear here, when I refer to hip-

hop/underground "MCS" and reggae "DJs" in this context, I describe
an essentially equal function-that of the rapper (rather than
turntablist/selector). The terminology may differ depending on local
parlance, but both Mcs and DJs (in hip-hop and reggae, respectively)
are descended from the radio and "talkover" DJs of the '50s and '6os
who inspired early hip-hop and dancehall vocalists. For more on this
nomenclature, as well as an explanation of the recycling of certain
melodic contours in dancehall, see Manuel and Marshall, "The
Riddim Method."

48. For extensive accounts of Puerto Rico's (and the Caribbean's)

increasingly circular migration patterns and the social and cultural
implications thereof, see Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz and Carlos
Santiago, Island Paradox: Puerto Rico in the 199os (New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 1996); Carlos Antonio Torre, Hugo
Rodriguez Vecchini, and William Burgos, eds., The Commuter Nation:
Perspectives on Puerto Rican Migration (Rio Piedras: University of
Puerto Rico Press, 1994); Patricia Pessar, Caribbean Circuits: New
Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration (New York: Center for
Migration Studies of New York, 1996); and Jorge Duany, The Puerto
Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United
States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

49. One of the most salient examples of such an invocation of

melaza can be found in Ismael Rivera's version of Catalino "Tite"
Curet Alonso's "Las caras lindas de mi gente negra": "Somos la
melaza que rie/la melaza que llora/la melaza que ama..." (We are the
molasses that laughs/the molasses that cries/we are the molasses
that loves ... ). Linked to ideologies of mestizaje, or race mixing,
blanqueamiento refers to the processes, practices, and ideologies of
social "whitening" in the Latin Caribbean and Latin America. Often
linked to individuals' desire for social mobility or to elite and middle-
class nationalisms (with all the exclusions and internal colonialisms of
such projects), blanqueamiento has been explored by a great many
observers and analysts of the region. See, e.g., Peter Wade, Race
and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 84-87.

50. Raquel Z. Rivera, "Del underground a la superficie," Claridad,

February 10-16, 1995, 29.

51. The following website, prepared in 2002 but referring to the

debates of 1995, offers a series of talking points for those who
oppose the morality expressed in "rap y reggae obsceno":
http://www.moralidad.com/alertas/alertal.htm (accessed February 7,
2007).

52. Raquel Z. Rivera, "Del underground a la superficie," 29.

53. See the Chosen Few documentary for DJ Coyote's testimony

about putting reggaeton on the radio as well as a segment on In the
House magazine.

54. For an extended discussion of the movements and meanings of

"Dem Bow," see Wayne Marshall, "Dem Bow, Dembow, Dembo:
Translation and Transnation in Reggaeton," Lied and populare
Kultur/Song and Popular Culture: Jahrbuch des Deutschen
Volksliedarchivs53 (2008): 131-51.

55• Significantly, it appears (to my ears) that the most common

versions of the Dem Bow riddim circulating in Puerto Rico may in fact
be sampled from Lando Boom's "Ellos Benia," produced by Dennis
"the Menace" Thompson, rather than directly from Shabba Ranks's
"Dem Bow" (though elements from the Bobby Digital version crop up
as well).

56. I should confess that although I am able to identify a good

number of the references in such recordings thanks to my
acquaintance with the hip-hop and reggae repertories from that
period, I am no doubt missing many others, especially, perhaps,
references to Puerto Rican (pop and folk) songs-a testament to the
sort of listening competency expected, rewarded, and engendered by
these underground productions.

57. See, e.g., a message-board discussion at reggaetonline.com

from November 2006, which offers the following opinion: "The use of
the dembow beat came in Playero 38 first, with the song `La Musica
I\egra-Hispana' by Blanco. That song, in its pure and simple self,
including the timing of the start of the song after Daddy Yankee's 'Me
Quieren Ver Muerto En Mi Funeral, dropping the beat like that, is the
essence of Reggaeton right there. If that doesnt make you get up and
perrear and dance, I don't know what will." The same author,
gsus25th, continues by contending "You can safely say that Playero
popularized the dembow beat with Playero 38": http://www.reggaeton
line.net/forums/threadnav'5418-1-1o.html. I am not sure why Playero
37, however, which features pistas that also employ dembow-style
rhythms and Dem Bow samples, would not be given consideration in
this respect, unless it was simply less popular. Appearing to affirm (or
perhaps inform) this account, as of the date of access, the Wikipedia
entry for DJ Playero describes Playero 38 as having "established the
dembow as the official rhythm of reggaeton":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di_Playero (both accessed February 14,
2007).

58. Affirming this connection between "la raza" and blackness in

mid-199os Puerto Rico-as opposed to, say, the Mexican-accented
meaning of "la raza," which signifies that country's particular, mixed
racial heritage-Mayra Santos writes: "If before, 'Cocolos' (salsa fans)
were the ones looked upon as the biggest delinquents in the
community, and the ones to develop the discourse of a `Latino' and
`black' identity, now they're the rappers, the ones who, through their
songs, create a new identity designated with the epithet of `the race'.
" "Puerto Rican Underground," Centro 8, nos. 1 and 2 (1996): 229.

59. Although I have not been able to find sufficient documentation,

it is alleged that DJ Black and Dj Manuel were also involved in the
production of Playero 38. It should be noted that most of these
mixtapes were quite the collaborative endeavors, though many of
these stories have yet to come to light.

6o. See Joseph G. Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-

Based Hip-Hop (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press,
2004), 114-19.

61. For examples of (reggae) songs that employ these riddims, one
can browse any number of online databases, e.g.,
http://www.dancehallmusic.de/riddimbase.php (accessed February
28, 2007).

62. For more on the use or reuse of such melodic contours and on
unconventional relationships to key in the dancehall tradition, see
Manuel and Marshall, "The Riddim Method," esp. 459-60.

63. Juan Flores, "Creolite in the 'Hood: Diaspora as Source and

Challenge," Centro Journal 16, no. 2 (fall 2004): 289.
 64. Ibid., 285.

65. Frank Moya Pons, "Dominican National Identity in Historical

Perspective," Punto 7 Review (1996): 23-25 (quoted in Flores,
"Creolite in the 'Hood," 289).

66. Flores, "Creolite in the 'Hood," 288, 283.

67. See, e.g., Peter Manuel, "Puerto Rican Music and Cultural
Identity: Creative Appropriation of Cuban Sources from Danza to
Salsa," Ethnomusicology 38, no. 2 (spring/summer 1994): 249-80.

68. Deborah Pacini Hernandez, "Dancing with the Enemy: Cuban

Popular Music, Race, Authenticity, and the World-Music Landscape,"
Latin American Perspectives 25, no. 3 (May 1998): 113-14.

69. Carolyn Cooper, e.g., has argued that dancehall reggae's so-
called moral slackness often served as a kind of class- and race-
based critique of bourgeois values in Jamaica. See, e.g., Noises in
the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the "Vulgar" Body ofJamaican Popular
Culture (London: Macmillan, 1993). Although reggaeton's increasing
emphasis on sex may seem an insignificant shift for a genre that had
long represented itself, if perhaps wishfully, as "Para la chica que le
gusta el sex" (for the girl that likes sex; a sound bite from The Noise 1
[ca. 1992]), it is worth noting that this turn also represents a
commitment to commercializing the hardcore rather than cleaning it
up for the mass market. Such a strategy stands in contrast, for
instance, to the attempts at commercialization via romantic themes
and "clean lyrics" during the mid-199os in response to calls for
censorship and seizures of cassettes. See, e.g., TheNoise3 (ca.
1993), which bills itself as "temas romantiicos al estilo de reggae"
(romantic songs in a reggae style) in the fauxradio intro, or The Noise
4 (ca. 1995), which advertises "Clean Lirics" on the cover.

70. It is worth noting as well that especially for audiences in Europe

and Latin America, the Panamanian artist Lorna's 2003 hit "Papi
Chulo (Te Traigo El Mmmm)," produced by El Chombo, exposed
international audiences to reggaeton style prior to Daddy Yankee's
breakthrough.

71. My assertion here is supported only by anecdotal evidence, but

various informal polls I have taken of students, friends, and
colleagues have affirmed that few English monolinguals in the united
States understand any significant portion of dancehall reggae lyrics,
even by artists such as Sean Paul who strive for a certain level of
"mainstream" accessibility.

72. See figures 1, 2, and 4 above for examples of such rhythmic

patterns.

73. Well into the new millennium, I still routinely heard people refer
to the genre simply as reggae. While working as a substitute teacher
at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and as a digital music
instructor in Roxbury, Mass., from 2002 to 2003, I heard students
discussing, or asking how to produce, "reggae," only to discover
eventually that they referred not to Jamaican-style reggae but to the
distinct timbres and rhythms of "Spanish reggae" or reggaeton.

74. Francis Jargon, "DJ Nelson," Fader 40 (September 2006): 158.

75. E-mail correspondence, September 28, 2006.

76. For a discussion of unconventional key relationships or "out-of-

tune" singing in reggae (from which reggaeton seems to derive its
own similar vocal practices), see Manuel and Marshall, "The Riddim
Method," esp. 459-60.

77. Thanks to Mario Small for bringing this connection to my

attention, as well as for offering other examples of localized Jamaican
terms in Panamanian discourse, such as liquiyu (from likkle youth).

78. Given the "oompah" feel created by such bass patterns and a
pronounced fouron-the-floor, it may be of little surprise that, according
to an attuned observer in Chicago, some Jamaicans refer to
reggaeton, presumably pejoratively, as "polka reggae." See
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/ rap-hip-hop-engineering-production/
39561-where- does-reggaeton-fit-all.html (accessed April 14, 2007).

79. Jon Caramanica, "The Conquest of America (North and

South)," New York Times, December 4, 2005.

80. See Deborah Pacini Hernandez's essay in this volume for a

more detailed account of the role that Dominicans have played in
reggaeton.

81. It is worth noting, however, that Saldana (a.k.a. Luny) also grew
up in Puerto Rico, living with his mother and sisters before moving to
Massachusetts to finish high school. Hence, his move to San Juan
also represents a return, further complicating (or perhaps remaining
consistent with) reggaeton's circuitous geography.

82. See, e.g.,

http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130753
&page=2 (accessed May 8, 2007).

83. Of course, the mainstreaming of bachata in the United States

and in Puerto Rico was preceded by the genre's rise to the
mainstream in the Dominican Republic via such middle-class
mediators as Juan Luis Guerra. For more on the historical
development and social status of bachata, see Deborah Pacini
Hernandez, Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music
(Philadelphia: Temple 'University Press, 1995).

84. E-mail correspondence, September 28, 20o6. I have left the

spelling and punctuation, fairly typical of the informality of Internet
discourse, largely unchanged here in order to preserve the tone of
the exchange.

85. Adding to this impression is some additional, admittedly

anecdotal, evidence. I have noticed since I began writing online about
reggaeton and bachata that such search strings as "bachata guitar
sample loops"-presumably, by aspiring reggaeton producers -bring
people to my site fairly frequently; similarly, I have gathered a fair
amount of informal evidence about the popularity of certain
techniques and technologies used to produce reggaeton. Countless
strings with some variation on the phrase "reggaeton samples Para
fruity loops," e.g., have led search engine sleuths to my blog. See,
e.g., http://www.flickr.com/photos/wayneandwax/366562442
(accessed January 22, 2007).

86. For a provocative discussion of race and class stereotypes as

projected onto reggaeton artists, see Raquel Z. Rivera's August 2006
blog post "Will the Real Blanquitos Please Stand Up?: Class, Race,
and Reggaeton," http://reggaetonica.blogspot.com/2oo6/ o8/will-real-
blanquitos-pleas- 115637030500548739.html (accessed May io,
2007).

87. I am thinking here of such examples as "Yasuri Yamileth,"

"Chacarron," and "Perreo Chacalonero," all of which inspired
countless "karaoke" versions posted to YouTube. These responses to
the original videos, and to other responses, frequently feature blatant
performances of race and class stereotypes by the transnational,
Latin American "digerati" who have access to such tools and
technologies. I have written about these videos and their social and
cultural implications in the following blog posts:
http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/2oo6/o7/jajaja.html;
http://wayneandwax.blogspot .com/2006/o7/mas-chacarron.html;
http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/20o6/07/ chaca-riggity-ron.html;
http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/20o6/1o/we-are-all-yasuri-
yamileth.html; http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/2oo6/1o/pooh-bear-
yo-le-conozco- apenas.html;
http://wayneandwax.blogspot.com/2oo6/1o/ni-chicha-ni-
limonada.html (all accessed May 10, 2007).

88. I'd like to thank a student at the University of Chicago, Diana

Lester, for calling my attention to these changes in on-air practice.
 89. For some fairly provocative, if perhaps tongue-in-cheek,
examples of this sort of rhetoric, see a number of contentious posts
by prominent hip-hop blogger Byron Crawford: e.g., "Ban reggaeton"
http://xxlmag.com/online/?p=767, and "Rap against fence jumpers"
http://xxlmag.com/online/?p=961 (both accessed May 10, 2007). A
similar set of tensions can be read into Jon Caramanica's early 2006
article on reggaeton for the Village Voice, which concludes by
speculating that Eminem is the least of hip-hop's worries: "Fuck a
Slim Shady," writes Caramanica, "Hip-hop's race war begins here"
("Grow Dem Bow," Village Voice, January 10, 2006).

9o. Thomas Turino, "The Mbira, Worldbeat, and the International

Imagination," World of Music 40, no. 2 (1998): 86.

91. While fusions with salsa and bachata might be expected, more
far-flung attempts to mix reggaeton with rai (by Spain's
ooSHERMANos) and bhangra (by such groups as Tigerstyle and
Panjabi Hit Squad in the United Kingdom) suggest, again, an
interesting loosing of reggaeton from its Latin/American moors. At this
point, however, desitonl bhangraton tracks have yet to go beyond
reggaeton remixes of bhangra or Bollywood tracks (and vice-versa),
while rai-ggaeton appears to be little more than a one-song
experiment. There may yet be a future for such fusions, however,
especially considering hip-hop's and reggae's longtime Orientalist
leanings. For example, calling herself Deevani, Luny's sister has
taken a couple stabs at a Puerto Rican version of Hindi-esque vocals.
(Thanks to Ana Patricia Silva for calling my attention to these
phenomena.)

92. For a detailed description of the reggaeton scene in

Minneapolis, see Peter Scholtes, "Reggaeton Animal," City Pages,
November 22, 2006, http://citypages.com/ databank/ 27 /1355 /article
149 o 6. asp (accessed May 12, 2007). Although I've yet to see a
sustained study of the scene in Medellin, a U.S. blogger describes
speaking with some young people there, noting, significantly, that
"they were avid fans of reggaeton music above all else":
http://www.katherinehouse.com/bendan/archives/20o6/o3/this_is_
why_i_t.html (accessed May 12, 2007). And ethnomusicologist
Michael Birenbaum Quintero has detailed the thriving reggaeton
scene in Tumaco, Colombia, on his blog
http://laguayabita.blogspot.com/2007/o4/baila-negra-del-trasero-
grande.html (accessed May 29, 2007). Finally, to read an early
account of reggaeton's fall, see, e.g., Agustin Gurza, "When the Fad
Goes Fizzle," Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2006.

93• Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia (New York: Columbia

University Press, 2005).

94. lace Clayton, "ATLAS IMPRESSIONISTIK,"

http://www.negrophonic.com/2007/ atlas-impressionistik (accessed
May 14, 2007).
Although Puerto Rico would seem to have a rather strong claim on
reggaeton, Panama has long occupied a special place in the story of
the genre. As the birthplace of Spanish reggae, or reggae en
espanol, the Central American country stands as an important link-
New York notwithstanding-between Puerto Rico and Jamaica, which
sent thousands of laborers there in the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth, fostering the creation of Afro-Antillean communities
where reggae, calypso, and other Caribbean genres would later take
hold. While histories of reggaeton often pay lip service to the
construction of the Panama Canal as establishing a sociocultural
milieu for reggae en espanol, the story of how reggae became
popular and was localized in Panama remains murky. Similarly, while
reggaeton artists and aficionados frequently cite Panamanian
DJ/rapper El General (a.k.a. Edgardo Franco) as a founding figure of
the genre, the strange circuits he traveled to success have not
become as enshrined in public memory, despite the important ways
they bear witness to the role of migration in the story of the genre. El
General's early singles "Pu Tun Tun" (i99o), "Te Ves Buena" (1990),
and "Muevelo" (1992) provided inspiration for a generation of aspiring
vocalists across the Spanish-speaking world. Although these hit
records were recorded in New York, calling attention again to the
transnational dimensions of reggaeton, El General cut his teeth as a
performer in Panama, notably as a member of the pioneering
Panamanian reggae group, Renato y las 4 Estrellas.

Despite an acknowledgment of Panama's place in the reggaeton

narrative, detailed accounts of reggae's presence and resonance in
Panama have yet to come to light. Part II in this volume attempts to
remedy this absence by presenting an overview of reggae in Panama
alongside interviews with El General and Renato (a.k.a. Leonardo
Renato Aulder), allowing these seminal artists to tell their stories in
their own words. Christoph Twickel's "Reggae in Panama: Bien
Tough" was originally published in the German reggae magazine,
Riddim. Translated into English for this volume, it offers a wide lens
perspective on the social history of Panama's reggae scene.
Importantly, the essay also portrays reggae in Panama today as a
living, vibrant thing, in dialogue with Puerto Rican reggaeton but still
closely linked to contemporary movements in Jamaica. Following the
overview, Ifeoma Nwankwo's interview with Renato places the advent
of Panamanian reggae in much needed historical and cultural
context, and Twickel's conversation with El General fills out the
picture further, giving a firsthand account of reggae in Panama and
reggae en espanol in New York. Providing heretofore undocumented
details of these foundational figures' careers; discussing the myriad
connections between Panama, Jamaica, the United States, and
Puerto Rico; and offering a lens into the cultural politics of reggae and
Rastafari in Panama-among other contributions-these three pieces
begin to flesh out an important but largely unexamined chapter in the
story of reggaeton.
While reggaeton booms in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic,
the only Latin American country in which there is a real tradition of
reggae is Panama. It is there that the pioneers of reggae en
espanollive, there that the most serious reggae radio stations are
found, there that reggae is improvised on rickety buses, and there
that Marcus Garvey found enlightenment on the canal. In short,
Panama is the forgotten republic of reggae.

For a small country, there are many singers. Just 2.8 million people
live in Panama, not counting the Colombian immigrants. But it sure
doesn't lack artists. La Fabulosa, La Mega, Wao, Super Q ... during
the reggae boom at the end of the nineties almost a dozen CIS
played the sound in the narrow stretch of land between Panama City
and Colon, between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, just eighty
kilometers from each other. Twenty-four hours full power. The
Panamanian dancehall compilations were called El Imperio, Zona de
Guerra, The Squad, or Cuentos de la Cripta (Stories from the Grave).
Every few weeks there was a new one, packed with cranked-up,
technoid riddims, machine-gun fire, sirens wailing, battle rhymes,
male and female choirs which hurl vulgarities at the other sex; they
call it la plena.

What Panama was missing was record presses to cheaply produce

singles and a sound system culture to play them. Thus a reggae
scene which always lived "hand to mouth" but managed somehow to
keep going. The record labels never really existed. The producers
such as the legendary Pucho Bustamante or Rodney Clark, otherwise
known as El Chombo, brought a few singers for 200 to 40o dollars a
song into the studio, and mixed a compilation with 20 to 30 tracks;
and the Djs pushed the CD on the market. Cheaply produced and
heavily promoted, they used to sell a few thousand. But meanwhile
Panama is also full of CD burners. Artists, radio DJs, producers-no
matter whom you ask on the Panamanian isthmus-they all give the
same answer: the market is dead. "The DJs on the radio promote
albums differently because of the piracy," explained Rolando Guillen,
one of the first radio DJs in the country and now at WAO 97.5 FM.
"During rush hour, cars with speakers drive around and sell CDs for
$5 at the intersection. This makes them more than if they sold them in
the record stores. So they are competing directly with the pirates."

There is a sense of crisis in the motherland of reggae en espanol.

And this just at the time when reggaeton-"Jump-up-Dancehall" with
many hooklines and hardly any lyrics-conquered the dance charts of
the Spanish-speaking world. Everything is produced in Miami, New
York, and Puerto Rico. Panama Music Corp. is the only label in the
country which can profit from the boom and produce reggaeton for
export. In Mexico, Colombia, and Spain it has done well. The
Panamanian teen sensation La Factoria is touring worldwide.

Every kid in Panama knows the story of Edgardo Franco, a.k.a. El

General, the singer who has achieved the greatest international fame.
In 1985 he ended up in New York, not so much hoping to become
famous, but rather hoping to leave his teenage years as Dread in the
outskirts of Panama City behind him and to study accounting.' A year
later, his old friend Nando Boom visited him and told him that in
Panama everyone was now singing in Spanish. He had already
noticed that Spanish was better received on the occasions when he
played parties with his Bachelor Sound System. In 1990 a producer
brought him into the studio to give him a try. The result was "Tu Pun
Pun,"2 a beatbox, bassline and the squawking DJ Style of El General.
"Tu pun pun, mami, no me va a matar"-"Your boom-boom, mamma,
doesn't kill me." It was the first Spanish dancehall song to make it
onto the radio in the United States. Hits such as "Te Ves Buena,"
"Muevelo," "El Caramelo," "Las Chicas," or the "Borin- quen Anthem"
with C&C Music Factory followed.
 El General sits in his apartment in a skyscraper in the posh district
of Paitilla, high above the bay of Panama City, and he recalls how it
all began back in 1978. One of El General's friends was cleaning in a
disco where they could pick up the B-sides of Jamaican singles on
tape from the DJ stand-always higher pitched (i.e., sped-up) for
greater effect. They forced the tapes on bus drivers and improvised
live over them during the ride: Reggae Sam, Renato, Nando Boom,
Mauricio, Chicho Man, and others. "You have to be able to improvise,
and I was so good, that they called me `El General,' because General
Torrijos had the highest command." At that time it was still in Patois,
and with dreadlocks that were as long as possible given that the
police under the military dictatorship-first under Torrijos and then
under General Noriega-would routinely cut them off. "Everyone
thought we were crazy because of our hair. People didn't want to sit
next to us on the bus." In 1979 in the Teatro Rio there was the first
battle between singers from Panama City and Colon. "The people
from Colon bussed in their people. And they won. But not because of
the singing, but because they had longer dreads. One of them, Rasta
Nini, had hair to his butt."
i. From left to right: Rasta Nini and a friend in Colon, Panama. Photo
by Christoph Twickel.

Today Rasta Nini's dreadlocks reach his ankles (figure i). He is the
first Rastafarian of Panama; he is wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt, and
above his beatup sofa hangs a giant Lion of Judah made of glitter
paper. "Today Spanish reggae is popular all over the world, everyone
knows the Dominicans and the Puerto Ricans, but people don't know
that the pioneers came from Panama," says Nini. "Kafu Banton, Aldo
Ranks, Junior Ranks, Killa Ranks, Nes y Los Sensacionales, Tony
Bull ... Colon is the cradle of champions."

Here in his apartment in Calle 9 in Colon, they took up Spanish

Reggae for the first time. The group was called Cheb, and Supa
Nandy was the singer. In 1985 they put out an LP, one side in
English, the other in Spanish.

Nini lives in a condemned house. A couple of years ago his balcony

fell, and last year the ceiling of his living room caved in. But in this city
at the Caribbean end of the Canal, 95 percent of the residents live in
condemned houses. These are old houses built in the colonial style
with wooden verandas, where one imagines that the higher-up
employees of the U.S.-American Panama Canal Company lived in
the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time around ioo,ooo
Afro-Antilleans came to the country, to work on the canal. Around
30,000 of them died between 1881 and 1914 of malaria, yellow fever,
or consumption. Most of them came from Barbados, Trinidad,
Tobago, or Jamaica. Rasta Nini also found in the story of the West
Indian martyrdom on the isthmus the beginnings of his religion.
Panama should be considered the "Motherland of Rasta, the
Rastafarian movement and black culture," he explains, and further
states:

Rastafarianism was born in the republic of Panama, in the

province of Colon.

Marcus Garvey worked during the building of the canal as a

journalist, and he fought for better wages as a trade unionist. At
that time wages were set according to the so-called Silver Roll for
the blacks and the Gold Roll for the whites. It was here that he met
prophets like Freddie Douglas. They foretold that a black king
would come from the East who would free the black race from its
suffering. And this emperor would be called Haile Selassie I. All
that happened here. Then Garvey returned to Jamaica and
preached what Freddie Douglas and the others had taught him.

In the year 2000 Rastafarianism was recognized as an official

religion in Panama, not the least because of Rasta Nini's work in
raising awareness. He also fought unstintingly for "roots and culture"
in the Reggae scene, that is, for the turn to social and spiritual
themes. One of the converted sits on Nini's sofa and argues about
music and responsibility. "When you have a lot of twentysomething
muchachos in front of you," says Kafu Banton, "you can't just sing
culture, they want to jump around as well. But one has to begin to
form them, to teach them, even if they don't accept it right away, they
must swallow it." Kafu won a prize in 2003 with the song "Vivo en el
Ghetto" (I live in the Ghetto), though it did not play very often on the
radio. Banton continues:

Before there was the censorship of the junta, but now it is the DJS,
who do not bring up conscious things, because they are worried
that people will turn to another station. But the nis also have the
responsibility not to play ten gunfight songs in a row. Here it's easy
to get any kind of weapon; you bump into a twelve-year-old on the
street and he shows you a 9-millimeter. And they use them too.
Calle 2 has problems with Calle 5 over nothing, no one knows why
they are fighting, but if you walk along the wrong street, they shoot
you. The idea of One Love is opposed to all that.

Rasta Nini estimates that there are a couple hundred Rastafarians

in Panama. In the eighties everyone wanted to go around like a
Rasta, not because of the religion, but because it was cool. Today
Jah has competition in the battle for lost souls in the ghetto. Many
singers who were evangelized through the widespread Pentecostal
churches of Central America promote the Christian God. "I made a
mistake, I worshipped a foreign god," explains El Roockie, for
instance, the most successful singer of the young generation. "I was
just very influenced by Sizzla, and so I mentioned Selassie I in a
song." His manager stands next to him, clearly a brother in the faith,
and nods energetically. El Roockie, just twenty, grew up in San
Miguel, one of the barrios populares of Panama City, the slums. "We
had a kind of another reality in music," he says.

I grew up with one of the worst gangs in the neighborhood Los

Topa y Muere, but I had learned already that the lives of these
people lead either to prison or death. When I became famous, I
founded a crew with six of seven of my brothers, La Nueva
Amenaza (The New Threat). I made money from our shows and
could buy guns, I was their arms dealer. In time, I learned that we
can't protect our lives with weapons; I had friends who died though
they were carrying pistols. I needed to find something else to help
 me feel strong and safe and that could only be God. From then on
I began to fill my songs with positive content and with what I have
come to know of the lives of other people.

El Roockie is currently the number one star among teens in

Panama. At the big free concert for the hundredth anniversary of the
founding of the Central American minirepublic, he stood alone on the
open-air stage and lip-synched his songs. One is called "Grave
Error": "They believe they have the power of my God-what a grave
error." Another is called "Falta Otro en el Barrio" (Another Is Missing
from the Barrio) about a companero who was caught. A good 50,000
kids sing along with him on the waterfront in Panama City. And once
El Roockie begins to sing his romantic songs, they really lose it. "I'll
go to the ends of the earth for your love," he sings, as the girls storm
the stage, holding banners and swinging their hips. His debut album,
signed to Sony for the international market, is three-quarters full of
such love songs, and they are tolerably, tastefully produced by El
Roockie.

"Before, everything was bien tough. But today those who are
singing about the hard life are not as successful as those who are
dealing with romantic themes," according to radio D7 Rolando
Guillen. "Today you rarely hear a vulgar song on the radio any more."
The new Panamanian compilations are full of " romanticos," Latin pop
ballads which try to sound like reggae. This has little to do with
"lovers rock;" but rather with the long tradition of bolero in Latin
American countries. El Roockie relates that he played the bolero
records of his mother, who kept them after she split up with his father.

In the classic bolero, which appeared in the forties and fifties, the
male singer bemoans the false love of a woman-a sentimental
symptom of the changing relationship between the sexes: With the
movement from the country to the large cities of Latin America and
the United States, women began to work outside the family and to
escape the control of the men. Boleros were the pop-culture, macho,
social reaction to the erosion of male dominance.
 Naturally, Panama's reggae scene is dominated by men-the guys
on stage, the ladies in the audience. But for over a decade now the
Panamanian female singers have been busting in. Lady Ann (figure
2) launched one of the first female reggae offerings in 1993, when
she was a dancer for Renato, with "Quiero Sentir un Hombre." "I want
to feel a man," runs the title somewhat misleadingly, since the lyrics
say: "Papi, you should behave yourself, because I know the law
against sexual harassment."

"Men always want to one-up me, but I dominate." Lady Ann, alias
Anina, twenty-eight years old and already a veteran of the genre, sits
in her beauty salon in a shopping mall in La Chorrera, one and a half
hours by bus from Panama City. "I want to be a sexy woman on
stage, but I'm tough with them. If a man comes on the stage, I see to
it that he stands there like an idiot." Lorna, Demphra, Kathy, Caterine
... while there are some female singers in Panama, it is definitely
Lady Ann who most insistently makes the battle of the sexes her
theme. "Dejalo Que Aprenda, Mama" (Leave Him Alone, So He
Learns It, Mama) is the name of one song, a message to the
generation of mothers: The mammas should stop cleaning up after
their men. "If you want to eat, go to a restaurant or learn to cook." Her
specialty is trabalenguas, tongue twisters: "Apa-ni-pi-na-pa" is the
name of her anthem, which the Panamanian girls in preschool
already have figured out: "Apa-nipi-napa-espe-mipi-nopom-brepe,"
which decoded means "Anina es mi nombre" (My Name Is Anina)
and even this is not lacking a message: "You have to understand that
the woman has the say here."

On a hill above the shanties of Chorrillo the government has given

permission for a kind of Panamanian mini-Disneyland to be built. It's
called Mi Pueblito, and for a dollar one can see all the folk cultures
which are to be found in the "rainbow of races" of Panama: in the
camps of the Kuna Yala they sell real indigenous jewelry; in a village
square in the style of the Chiriqui municipality, a tipico band is
entertaining a wedding party; and in an Afro-Antilleanstyle wooden
house, there is a screening. Professor Gerardo Maloney, who runs an
Afro-Caribbean library here, shows his documentary about calypso in
Panama. The sleepy Caribbean town of Bocas del Toro at the border
with Costa Rica is the birthplace of national calypso. Old men,
descendants of the canal or banana plantation workers from Trinidad,
show what they can do: Lord Wimba, Sir Valentino, Black Majesty,
Two Gun Smokey, Lord Delicious, and Lord Kontiki. At the top is,
naturally, Lord Cobra, "King of Calypso," ever since he outsung
Mighty Sparrow in the Club National in the '5os, blowing him off the
stage. "Sparrow will never come back to Panama," Cobra sings in a
hoarse voice.
2. Lady Ann poses in front of her beauty salon in La Chorrera,
Panama. Photo by Christoph Twickel.

El General is also there. "Calypso was really big here," he says.

"Actually it was through it that we learned what it meant to improvise.
Because these guys had unbelievable skills." Professor Maloney is
proud that the man who has brought the Afro-Caribbean culture of
Panama to the world has come to the screening. At that time, at the
end of the '7os, the professor was the only one who had the desired
stuff which El General and the other teenagers needed. Besides
books on Rasta culture, Maloney brought back reggae singles from
his trips to Jamaica. "Thus we always came to him, borrowed the
records, and made our tapes with them. He was the only one who
had them."

NOTES

A version of this essay was first printed in Riddim magazine in

May/June 2004.

1. Editors' Note: Dread is used here as a synonym of Rasta and

points both to El General's adherence to the Rastafarian religion as
well as to wearing his hair in "dreadlocks."

2. Editors' Note: Although El General refers to the song as "Tu Pun

Pun," which is what he sings as well, the record was released under
the title "Pu Tun Tun," presumably to avoid censorship.
Reggaet6n, as most people outside Latin America know it today, and
as many within Latin America represent it, is associated with Puerto
Rico above all. This essay complicates conventional histories of
reggaet6n by focusing on Panama, and on the genre's roots in the
black West Indian descended communities of the Isthmian nation.
Especially foregrounded here is Renato (Leonardo Renato Aulder),
an individual widely recognized throughout Latin America as a key
founding father of reggae en espanol, the broad genre of which
Puerto Rican reggaet6n is one manifestation. Renato and his fellow
pioneers blended Jamaican beats, U.S.-American style, and
Panamanian language and culture to produce the first reggae-based
songs in Spanish. Renato's career was launched in 1984 with "The
D.E.N.L," which became a hit thanks to DJ Hector Tun6n. In 1985,
Renato created the song "La Chica de los Ojos Cafe;" the first reggae
en espanol song to become an international hit. In the first few years
after he first made the song, it was so popular that other Latin
American musicians began to do covers of it. For instance,
Dominican artists such as Wilfrido Vargas and Richie Ricardo did
merengue versions. Renato was pleasantly surprised by his and the
song's continued popularity during a trip to Ecuador in 1994, almost
ten years after he first recorded it. Here he provides significant insight
into the cultural milieu and context out of which the song and the
genre arose, as well as into his own development as an artist and as
a Panamanian man of West Indian descent. From Renato's
"American" childhood on the Canal Zone; to the birth and growth of
the "sound systems" and their role in the creation of the genre; to the
formative influence of Jamaican reggae and U.S. R&B on him and on
the genre; to the similarities, differences, and connections between
the Panamanian and Puerto Rican manifestations of the genre; to the
future of both-this piece allows us to gain a more developed sense of
the man, the history of the genre, and the interactions between the
nations and cultures that met and meet "inside the heart of Panama."'

1. Renato at the studio. Photo by Rose Cromwell.

As Renato reveals, the Jamaican connection was especially crucial

to the formation of the genre, from the Pounder or Dem Bow rhythms
that are still the base of virtually all reggaet6n, to the ways the music
was made and spread (sound systems), to the content, phrasing, and
delivery of the songs. Even the names of a substantial number of
Panamanian reggae artists then and now are Hispanicized
reworkings of typical Jamaican reggae musicians' names or key
phrases (El General, Nando Boom; Kafu Banton; Raices y Cultura
[Roots and Culture]). According to radio DJs Fussa and Rudy (from
Panama's "Fabulosa Stereo" 100.5 FM radio station), "Panama has
always had the influence of Jamaican reggae, the Jamaican
rhythm."2 As both DJs have noted, Sizzla and other Jamaican artists
are still quite popular on the isthmus. Panama was actually the first
Latin American country to produce and popularize Jamaican reggae
rhythms with Spanish lyrics, a new musical form that drew Puerto
Rican artists such as Vico C and Ivy Queen to visit Panama
repeatedly during the genre's Panamanian early heyday. Renato
himself has succinctly noted: "we are [the Jamaicans'] sons and the
Puerto Ricans are our kids."' The impact of U.S.- produced R&B and,
more recently, hip-hop should also not be ignored: "Many of us come
from the R&B music because it's what we knew." Gladys Knight and
the Pips were among Renato's favorites. Out of this All-American (in
the continental sense) stew came Renato the man, and reggae en
espanol, the genre.

AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD

I'm from Pedro Miguel in the Canal Zone. My father and mother were
moving when I was in the womb. They were moving to a place in Rio
Abajo called Parque Lefevre. When it was time for me to be born,
there was a problem in Panama between Americans and
Panamanians. It was 1961, and they were trying to cross to Gorgas
Hospital ... There were students from the National Institute fighting
with the soldiers in the Canal Zone. They decided to take me to Saint
Thomas Hospital. I was born there, and the day after they took me to
Gorgas Hospital because my father was a worker in the Canal Zone,
in the dredging division. My mother also worked in the zone in
Amador. My grandfather was a security guard at the Gamboa prison.
Now they call it "El Renacer."

... My upbringing was completely American. I didn't know I was

Panamanian. I spoke English. I didn't know how to speak Spanish.4 I
played American football. Then we had problems, like always
happens in families, my grandfather with my grandmother. In '72 my
mother went to the United States, and when she went, it was hard for
us, because we were kids. I was eight years old ... We were all just
kids. So I grew up with my grandmother. My grandmother raised me,
and my grandmother was a little superstrict. I was in Saint Mary's
School, a private school with English nuns, Sister Bonaventure and
all them. [Later, when] Attending the Panama school, I learned
Spanish. I can't complain about my childhood. My grandparents loved
me. They gave me everything I wanted: Tonka trucks, a pool table,
American football. I played basketball. I played baseball. I played
tennis, hockey on skates. I had a childhood full of sports. I was an
athlete, and I liked to dance, because at that time, all kids liked the
Jackson 5. It was what we were hooked on. At that time, it was all
about the Jackson 5.

(All Panamanians like R&B. I got into Whitney Houston, the

Manhattans. We listened to the Manhattans, Whitney Houston, the
O'Jays, Marvin Gaye. I liked their music. All Panama was listening to
Kool and the Gang, Lionel Ritchie, the Commodores. This was the
music that came into Panama. All adults, whether white, black,
whatever color, knew their music. Everyone danced to it. They still
dance to it.)

ROOTS AND ROUTES OF THE GENRE:

PANAMA, JAMAICA, AND THE U.S.

When I moved to Panama [from the Canal Zone in 1978], I found a

bunch of friends who danced in groups. I thought I was going to be a
dancer, because I danced.5 I did choreography for quinceaneras
[celebration of a young woman's fifteenth birthday], weddings, and I
started to put together a group. I met Raul, known as Panchez,
Frankito, known as El General. I met Everett. (Also Reggae Sam.) I
also met Mario, who is in the United States and is a teacher, who was
also part of the group. Gregorio Bellamy who is a pastor of the
Tabernacle of Faith. There was another boy. We were a group. At
first, everything started in Rio Abajo as a game. I made songs for the
public buses, because the buses in Panama had music. At that time,
there was a man named Mauricio who had a recording studio called
6A, and another who had [a sound system called] Dracula Sound ...
When I was in the Zone, I listened to the American Top 1o, Casey
Kasem. I knew what was happening, what was new, what was
coming up. (I knew about music of Bob Marley, and the music of
Haiti-Tabou Combo, DP Express. Here they listened a lot to Bob
Marley, Steel Pulse, Gregory Isaacs and other singers from Jamaica,
like Yellow Man, who was [the one] who caused us to make our type
of dancehall in Spanish. Yellow Man sang fast, more animated. We
could get that feeling ... Also Peter Metro ... those were the artists we
heard and attempted to imitate, but with our own style.)

We started to do songs for politicians [in 1980].... We used to rap

for the politicians. This was like a game. People liked it, because it
was another way to say something political. In the buses, there was a
time when the bus drivers .. . would ask us, "I want you to make me a
song that says, I'm the hottest, the best looking, that my ride is the
best, that all the people want to get on my bus, that I have the best
music." They wanted their fame. We got instrumentals, the versions
that came from Jamaica on the 12-inch record, and we sang on top of
that. One person who changed it up was Wassabanga, who was
popular in all the discos in Rio Abajo at night. I had this desire to
learn ... at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. I was a kid, sixteen,
seventeen years old. Well, he came here, played, went out with
women, was very famous, and I liked him for his music. All the people
followed him for his music, and that's how I learned. He told me,
"Look, you have to learn how to move a crowd." He said to the people
`Alright mamita, move you batty, man, lift up you han." He said it all in
English because it was a West Indian thing and I know it in English.
There came a time when the club [Brooklyn 54] was filling up so
much.... He would get the crowd hyped in Spanish, "Todo el mundo
con una mano arriba. Yes, mam ... Mueve to bam bam, mami"
[Everybody put your hands in the air ... Yes, man. Shake your booty,
mami]. I started to listen and learn from him.

When I was working in the most famous sound system in Panama

[starting in 1983], which had the "electro disco" sound, I had recorded
several songs on cassette. I had one that was called, "Me Voy a
Viajar" (I'm Going to Travel), [another was a version of Yellow Man's]
"Zungu Zungu" [but] in Spanish, and these were played in buses.
There was a time when there was a sound system contest, and at
that time, Revelation Viekito from Colon had made [the song]
"Babylon Boops" hot. [They announced] "We're the ones who made
this record hot, we are the Revelation." The people screamed. The
other sound systems (like one named Sony Tape) ... said no, we're
the ones who make things hot-[with our record] "Don't Bend Down"...
It was about making the people know that they were the ones making
this hot record. (Both "Don't Bend Down" and "Babylon Boops" were
songs by Jamaican artist Lovindeer.)

... [My song "The D.E.N.I." 19851 was a Spanish version of

"Babylon Boops,"6 but since I didn't know much Spanish, I couldn't
translate it, so I started to create a story similar to the melody of
"Babylon Boops." That was what I could do. "The D.E.N.I." was at
that time like the police, but they were more rude than the police.
They were like the CIA here, so I said in the song what D.E.N.I. could
do, what they can do, like saying what the policeman can do. We had
the song on cassette, and we distributed it to the buses. We charged
three dollars for a cassette. The bus drivers liked that song more than
any other, so there came a time when the song was so popular that a
man named Hector Tun6n took the song and put it on the radio, and it
was played over and over, and it was requested and was in the top
ten on BB radio. My boss said, "Hey, I'm getting calls in the office
about your latest record. They want a hundred 45s of your record.
Others want 200 of the record."

Well, there came a time when they had a sound system

competition. I was thinking about what I should do. I said, "Look,
we're going to make a record and put out a 45." He ordered a
thousand 45s and had orders for 2,000. He came and said, "They
asked me for 2,000 45s of your record." I didn't believe that man, but
500 arrived, and they sold out in one day, so I ordered 3,000, and
"D.E.N.I." sold 1o,ooo copies, so much that my first payment as a
recording artist was almost $800. Eight hundred dollars in '85 was like
a million dollars. I didn't know what to do, because I was working as a
Di, and as a DJ at that time, I earned $ioo something for two weeks,
according to how much I worked, and it wasn't bad. My mom sent
money from the United States, and I didn't know what to do with the
money. I knew I was going to buy what I wanted. In Panama
everything was expensive, my Nike shoes and everything else. [...]
The record was so popular. I started to get sponsors. The Harari
family got me the Nike sponsorship. We did the "La Chica de los Ojos
Cafe" (The Girl with the Coffee-Colored Eyes). "La Chica de los Ojos
Cafe," for me, was a protest, because at this time there were too
many soap operas. Soap opera fever was starting, and one was [La
Muchacha de los Ojos Cafe], so I took the names of all the soap
operas. I changed the verses. I wrote three verses and did the song
called "La Chica de los Ojos Cafe" [and kept adding and changing
verses as it became more popular and as I performed it more, making
it more melodious]. In Panama there was a Jamaican group called
Digital West or something like that, and they did a loop of a song
called "Don't Run Him Down." We did it on piano and played it almost
the same, [and used it as the base for "La Chica de los Ojos Cafe"]
but you can tell it's not the "Don't Run Him Down" track. It doesn't
have the same sync. It sounds the same, but it's not the same sync.
They played it the way it sounds on the record. There's a part were
they [turntable DJ scratching noise] so it would sound like the record.
I liked that record ... It was the longest song in the world, more than
six minutes [once all the new verses were added in]. We made a
cassette first to see if the song would be popular, and we made a 12-
inch record, and my boss made, if I'm not mistaken, like 5[,000] or
6,000. They were all sold. The record caught on so much that it
reached Colombia. After Colombia, then it went to Venezuela. It went
to Ecuador. The record caught on in all of Latin America and in
countries where I didn't know it had caught on. I didn't know anything
about author's rights or copyrighting lyrics. I didn't know any of that.
The record went to Puerto Rico, Chile, Peru, Argentina and many
places, and it became so popular that I said I have to follow up. (The
song stayed especially hot for at least eight years because as the
soap opera moved from country to country, the audience for the song
in that country increased.)
 Eloy Pincay made a hit-"Xiomara la Pipona." I still hadn't conquered
the art of translating. I had a friend named Xiomara who had a
problem with her parents. She got pregnant, and they kicked her out
of the house. I did this for her. It was a record that caught on so much
that they censored it, and afterward they stop censoring it, because it
was a record that talked about how I trusted in you. As your father,
I'm not going to abandon you. Very cool, right? The song caught on.
There I became more of a singer. More people started becoming
singers.

I was going to record with Reggae Sam. I was going to record "La
Chica de los Ojos Cafe" with a group and then with a guy from Collin,
but they cheated us, as we say. They didn't call us so they could
record an LP. They made an LP at the same time that I did "The
D.E.N.I. but the difference is they did it in Spanish and English. Mine
was just Spanish. It was a 45, and the people bought it. The LP they
recorded didn't catch on ... "The D.E.N.I." caught on. "La Chica de los
Ojos Cafe" caught on. "Xiomara" caught on, and I started making
records, and there started to be more singers, like Coco Man, then
Nando Boom ... Many came, like Dominique. Later came Nes y Los
Sensacionales. Chicho Man came. More guys started to sing, and
they started to get more ratings, more fame for the genre reggae en
espanol.

PANAMA TO PUERTO RICO AND BACK

It became popular in all countries. In Puerto Rico, Vico C rose up, but
he had the rap influence. Vico C used the footsteps of rap. He didn't
do reggae, but really rap in Spanish. For me the first to do rap in
Spanish was Vico C of Puerto Rico. In the revolutionizing of reggae in
Spanish, the Puerto Ricans had the rap style. They started to adopt
the style pretty fast. Their records started to come out and arrived in
Panama. We listened to their records because they were short
records. They were short records ... One was "Para las Chicas Que
Le Gusta el Sex" [Sings] They were repetitive records so that the
people could learn them rapidly. Ivy Queen, started to catch on.
Alberto Stylee, Baby Rasta y Gringo, OG Black, Mexicano, Don
Chezina. They were the ones catching on. Ivy Queen came along (in
the 199os) ... and she hit big here in Panama. She got "Reggae
Respect"7 [Sings] ...

... From there, there was another change. El Chombo entered.

Other Panamanian producers (like Gumy and Celia Torres, and later
Elian Davis) got into doing Spanish reggae, making records quickly.
That's when La Cripta came on." This rhythm caught on in Colombia
and many other places. That rhythm was real hot, and then Mr.
Pucho Bustamante came back from New York. He knew Dennis
Halliburton, who did a record called "Pounder" that really caught on,
and also was big in Panama. The base of the record was [Shabba
Ranks's] "Dem Bow." When [Halliburton] was in Panama, he did a CD
that caught on because it had the same rhythm as "Dem Bow." This
is what was called "Dem Bow." This "Dem Bow" got really popular in
Panama, but in Panama things are always advancing and changing.
We started to look for a new rhythm, and "Dem Bow" was not
completely the base.

Some boys from Puerto Rico came. And they saw that in Panama
there were ballad singers in reggae en espanol, "animadores" [hype
men or crowd movers] in reggae en espanol, rappers in reggae en
espanol. We didn't have one genre like them. Here there were a lot of
romantic singers. The only one from Puerto Rico who sang like the
Panamanians was Alberto Stylee, and for that reason he caught on....
He had a melody. The others shouted, but his was "pretty." ... They
were records that really caught on. But here in Panama, we had
everything in sectors. Nando Boom was a rapper ... Nes and I sang.
We were different. We weren't all the same. We all had a different
style, and the time came when the Puerto Ricans started arriving,
little by little. They started to come in. Ivy Queen started coming in
again ... from 2000. Daddy Yankee started to show up.... Records by
various artists started to arrive in the hood in Panama. Nicky Jam
arrived.... Nicky Jam had been in Panama, had sold records when he
was younger, but now he was catching on. Daddy Yankee started to
catch on. Ivy Queen. Wisin and Yandel's "Dem Bow" started to hit
hard.... They came to Panama, charging $5,000 for the first tour four
years ago.'

Then a person arrived who, for me, really opened things up. It
[happened through] Hector and Tito, the Bambino [who had a really
popular television show called jams]. It was Don Omar. He started to
sing records like "Pobre Diabla," and the record that hit was ["Otra
Noche," 2004]. This was the song that took him to a higher level.
After Don Omar arrived, it opened up the market, and television . . .
had the Puerto Ricans in heavy rotation. More singers from Puerto
Rico started to show up. Now they were no longer just rappers, all
about rapping. You could see there were more singers. And singers
are accepted by the women because of the things they sing about.
So, then came the first rapper who attracted the young people and
the older people. It was Tego Calderon. This is what was hot here in
Panama, Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Tego Calderon, Ivy Queen ....
When reggaeton was really blowing up big, Daddy Yankee came and
put "Gasolina" on the fire. Boom. With the "Gasolina," he did all the
work. Many say-I believe the Puerto Rican guys did a good job at
commercializing reggae. To not give such a long name as reggae en
espanol, they said, "el reggaeton of Puerto Rico," "this is the
reggaeton of Puerto Rico." Saying Puerto Rican reggaeton is
localizing it, but in reality, many people believe that the Puerto Rican
reggaeton is the reggaeton of Panama. It was born in Panama....
(Reggaeton was made first in Panama and then Puerto Rico, and
commercialized in Puerto Rico and the U.S. We created it, but did not
promote ourselves enough. The record companies did not have faith
in us or in the music.) [The Puerto Ricans] changed the flow,
[because of the influence of ] the Dominicans who came in and mixed
the music. It was introduced by DJ Nelson [for example]. We're
talking about Luny Tunes and Noriega. They changed the form of the
melody to what Puerto Ricans were singing, because it sounded like
the melody was missing. And there it was. Panama doesn't just sing
reggae [though]. Panama sings soca. Panama sings salsa. The
reggae singers in Panama, we are very versatile. We're not just rap,
rap, rap completely. No. We're not completely rap. We sing rap, but
we're more singers than rappers, so now there is Mach & Daddy, that
have caught on internationally, Aldo Ranks. There is La Factoria. I'm
still hot in certain countries in Latin America. There is Eddie Lover; El
Roockie, who has a contract with Luny Tunes; Latin Fresh, who also
has a Puerto Rican style; and there are many more. There are many
more singers than those the Puerto Ricans have already seen and
said they're worth looking at ....

(In Panama there are different divisions, in the "Culture" music,

there's Kafu Banton, Raices y Cultura. There are people who are
dedicated just to "Culture." There is dancehall. There is Renato.
There is ... Comando Tiburon, Aldo Ranks . . . Junior Ranks . . .
There's the dancehall clan. There is La Factoria. Now in romance,
there is Aspirante, Eddie Lover, Roockie. Roockie is "culture" and
dance. He does both. Rappers: Latin Fresh, Japanese, Gone
Business, Danger Man. If you talk about the barrio, 50 Cent here is
Danger Man. We have different genres. They are not all the same,
and they all have their style.)

(... Lady Ann was the first [female reggae en espanol artist] to hit
here in Panama. Lady Ann was a singer. She caught on, and Ivy
Queen caught on ... There was Mami K, and then Denfra, and then
Wila Rose, and at this time, they were the only ones who caught on.
Ivy Queen had problems. Everybody knows that. Lady Ann got
married. Mami K got into religion. Rose stopped singing ... but they
played a very, very principal role ... You have to have women in
reggaet6n, reggae en espanol ... I listened to others who weren't so
popular, but they are getting into it ... The women also have their
participation.

Kathy [Phillips] was a [very young] girl who was with us, who had a
lot of potential ... She was a child but she got into this. She was the
daughter of the boss and she liked this [music thing]. Kathy was a
child, six or seven years old, and she was singing like [us] ... I gave
her chocolate to sing with me, and she started to make records, and I
don't remember the name of the record. She recorded three or four
records after that. She had a promo CD that caught on last year. She
has evolved, and now she is a TV personality. She has a program ...
on Telemetro called Reggae Mania ... She is finishing a new CD that
she gave me. She is going to move ahead, and I hope she continues
... All the girls should come on. The more people we have, the better
it is for all of us.)

The history is written. It's a genre that isn't going to die. It's going to
continue. What one always asks for is respect for the veterans ... Vico
C ... Renato ... Nando Boom ... Chicho Man, Ivy Queen ... We are the
people who suffered the discrimination. "Don't turn black. These are
thugs. They sing for the thugs." We suffered all this discrimination.
After we did all this work, now the youth has arrived, and they are
reaping the economic benefit and publicity benefits. Because many
people don't know how to use what they're given. They should use it,
and maybe because of their age, some continue to sing, but if it
weren't for the veterans, there would be no genre called reggaet6n. If
it weren't for the producers who suffered and struggled like a Louis
Philip (Wicho), a DJ Nelson, a DJ Negro, a Luny Tunes and Noriega,
a Chombo or a Nayo, or a DJ Greg. If it wasn't for all them, the things
they did, there wouldn't be this genre now. Now they have worldwide
respect. Before, we didn't have it, and now we do.

NOTES

Extra special thanks to Cleveland Cooper/iCliff, without whom this

contribution would surely not exist. Parentheses-( )-mark text from the
interviews positioned "out of order" to facilitate the flow of this piece.
Square brackets[ ] -indicate text inserted by this collector/ editor to
clarify or contextualize statements made during the interviews. This
interview was translated from the Spanish by Premier Transcription
Service.
 i. Ruben Blades, "West Indian Man," Amory Control, CD (Sony
Records, 1992).

2. Personal interview, February 2007.

3. Personal interview, March 30, 2007.

4. The upbringing Renato describes was common. British West

Indians were brought to Panama by the United States to build and
staff the canal, and the descendants of these workers, known as "los
zonians" (the Zonians) developed a distinctive (some in Panama
would say insular) culture that blended Anglophone West Indian and
U.S. culture, and were, in many ways, more culturally U.S. American
than Panamanian, but at the same time not really fully U.S. American.
As another respondent put it in a conversation with this collector/
editor "[you were] born under the flag (but) you were not American;
living in Panama but you weren't considered Panamanian." Interview
with Ruthibel Livingston, February 2007.

5. Renato and his group did, among other things, R&B "flow shows"
in which they re-created the shows of the Manhattans and other U.S.
African American soul groups.

6. This song was a complaint about the police, called Babylon in the
Jamaican songs.

7. "Reggae Respect" is a song by Ivy Queen. It is included on her

2005 compilation album Flashback (Univision Music Group).

8. Cuentos de la Cripta is a series of mixtapes/cos (like Playero's or

The Noise) released by El Chombo.

9. Panamanian singers were being paid $500.

Considering that the genre has roots in Panamanian reggae as well
as Puerto Rican hip-hop, Panamanian Edgardo Franco-a.k.a. El
General-is frequently cited as one of the founding figures of
reggaeton. When El General began his career in New York in the
198os, he was coming from an underground movement born in
Panama City and Colon barrios. From his apartment in the
prestigious Paitilla neighborhood of Panama's capital, Edgardo
speaks about the history of reggae in the isthmus.

Reggae in Panama started when and how?

Basically, this began in the early seventies in the Rio Abajo barrio
where I come from. That was where the majority of the people that
came to build the Panama Canal went to live. Many of them were
from Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados. And one of the things they brought
was their music and some seeds of the food they ate. There was a
professor, Gerardo Maloney, a professor of communications. He
always traveled to Jamaica. He made documentaries and he always
brought back records. We would go to his house to get the records.
We had a DJ friend who worked at a discotheque. In the morning,
when people were cleaning the discotheque, we would go in and
record. Then we would take the recordings to the buses. We would
sell them to bus drivers. That was the biggest way to promote
yourself here in Panama.

When was that?

i. El General, Panama City, Panama. Photo by Christoph Twickel.

We're talking 1978-79. Buses here in Panama are peculiar; back then
they were like a moving discotheque. The school kids always waited
for the bus that had the latest cassette-the newest plenas,' the latest
songs. That's how we started to make a name for ourselves.
 Back then there were sound systems?2

There were some. There was one called Sound Power Disco. That
was where I started. Nando Boom, Renato, Mauricio all started there
... and also a man called Guasabanga. Guasabanga was one of the
best-known DJs at that time because every time there was an
instrumental section, he would start making things up. He would grab
the microphone and get everybody to dance. It was really him who
started this whole thing.

And always in Spanish?

No at the beginning we sang in English, in Jamaican patois.

You speak patois ...

Yes. Both languages. We saw people liked it-but the only obstacle
was that they didn't understand, so we translated the songs to
Spanish.

What year are we talking about?

I'd say that was around '82,'83. Renato was the best-known DJ back
then. Every time he played at a party, he invited us. He would give us
the microphone and then we would pass the hat. We would go to
girls' quinceanos parties [celebration of a young woman's fifteenth
birthday]. We would go everywhere. And we really did it with passion.
We loved it. We never saw it as a way of making a living, like a
business or something like that. Those were really great moments,
really beautiful. If there was the opportunity to get on a microphone-
we would be there singing.

Was it a movement accepted by the "mainstream"?

No, in the beginning they said we were crazy. That all started in the
bus. Not only reggae but also Haitian music, because those two
things were really fused together. There was a place called El
Garbutt, and there they waited for the bus of a driver called Calixto
because he really liked reggae. So everybody waited for that bus and
danced there ....

Reggae was not in the discotheques?

No, they still weren't playing reggae unless it was in Rio Abajo or in
Colon. I remember the first time I told my father I was going to sing
reggae, he said: "Reggae? What's that? I'll give you a bucket of
lemonade so you'll go out and sell it. You're not going to sell anything
with your voice!"

And the first recordings that were made on vinyl?

A group came-I can't remember if that group was from Jamaica or

Costa Rica-and they were looking for artists to record. That day I got
there late, Reggae Sam got there late, but they recorded Renato and
also a group from Guyana that were from Colon; they were all
Rastafarian.3 And then I had to go to the United States in 1985. And
the music here was growing and growing and growing. It was
incredible. If you didn't put reggae music at a dance, people would
get mad and stop dancing.

And how did you get the name El General?

One of the things that dominated in this music was improvisation. You
had to know how to improvise. Somebody could come up on stage
when you were singing, start improvising and steal your audience. So
we always had to be really sharp at improvising. I loved to improvise
so much they named me El General because I was always
improvising, and the maximum authority here in Panama was a
general-General Torrijos.4

And that didn't cause problems for you? I imagine that the military
didn't like that an Afro-Panamanian young man proclaimed himself
a "general."
Well, our movement was really underground. It was small parties. At
that time we had Rastas-dreadlocks-and when we went to the parties,
the police would go after us. They would say, "Oh, so you call
yourself El General, huh?" And they would cut our hair. It was a very
difficult moment for us because that was a part of our religion, our
music ....

So religion was an important part of that movement?

Yes, yes.

And is it still an important part?

Well, I'm not Rasta like in the beginning. I am in my heart but not in ...
certain things. That was one of the things that gave us more strength,
because we read the papers that came from outside the country and
we would see there were Rastas that were doctors, that were
lawyers. And we would ask: "Why do they treat Rastas like that
here?" They wouldn't let people have their hair like that in school.
Those were hard times and we expressed everything through music,
everything that was happening. And people liked that.

And then you left for New York?

In '85 I went to New York to be with my mother. There I finished my

degree in business administration. There was no time for music. In
New York, life was a lot faster. Until a friend of mine, Nando Boom,
came to New York one time. He had stayed in Panama doing music.
He recorded and everything. He was a hit. He told me: "What
happened, man? You have to sing. You're the one who put me on to
this." Nando Boom's sister and my brother have kids together, so I
always went to visit my nephews and would take Nando with me to
sing. So I said: "OK, I'm going to start recording again."

You recorded in New York?

Yes. I met a Jamaican producer,5 and that was where I recorded my
first hit that was called "Tu Pun Pun."6 And that's when my career
started, three years after I left Panama.

Had you recorded anything before you left Panama?

Cassette. Everything in cassettes. I worked as a business manager in

New York. I recorded the song to do something, so I wouldn't have
that in my mind later when I got older: "Oh, I could have been. . ." So
I said: "No. I'm going to do it to see if it works. If it doesn't work, then
at least I won't have that bothering me like a thorn, because I already
tried it." I was surprised when the producer called me: "That song is
number five in American radio!" He was Jamaican so he didn't know
anything about Latino radio stations, so he was trying to promote the
song in American radio. So he says: "Listen, I have a place called
Red Zone. How much will you charge them?" So I tell him: "Well, in
Panama I would charge around a hundred dollars, fifty dollars. How
much do you think I should charge here?" And he says: "No. You
should charge them more. Charge them around a thousand!" I say:
"ox, then let's do it for a thousand." But the guy said: "No. Seven
hundred." So I sang. When I got to the place a lot of people were
outside, and the firemen were closing up the place because there
were too many people. So I got there and I said: "Hey, I'm here to
sing tonight." So the guy says: "Who are you?" I say: "I'm El General."
Then the guy said: "Sure. I'm Prince!" He didn't believe I was El
General. So I called the other guy: "Listen, I'm here outside the
discotheque. How am I going to get in to sing?" And the guy says:
"What? I'm coming to get you."

"Tun pun pun" was the only song I had recorded, but I had a lot of
songs I had done in Panama. That night I saw how people reacted. I
saw that there was a hunger for that music. So I decided to leave my
job and dedicate myself to music.

Reggae in New York was really strong at that time, but there was
no reggae in Spanish. Did you have the option of singing in
 Spanish or in patois?

Yes, I had to make that decision. But since I had been working when I
went to the United States, I bought my sound system. I had my sound
system in New York that was called Bachelor Sound. So I did parties,
just like I had done in Panama. When I would do it in Spanish, I would
see a stronger reaction. That was why I decided to record in Spanish
instead of patois.

Latinos were your audience back then?

No, basically the audience was American, Anglo-Saxon. Like I told

you before, that producer didn't know how to reach Latinos. So I sang
for an American audience. Imagine, I used to sing with Cold Crush
[Brothers], C&C Music Factory. When I was starting I used to sing
with them on the same bill, with Martha Walsh, with all those people
from back then. They would put me there like a bonus track. Little by
little the audience started getting into me. I started opening up shows
for Shabba Ranks, but then the guy said: "No. I don't want him to
open for my show any more." It was because a lot of Latinos started
coming. Latinos were starting to identify with me.

So he didn't want that competition?

He didn't want the competition.

Did you still have contact with the movement in Panama?

Everything was through the telephone because when I got there [to
the United States] I was undocumented. I had a hit everywhere and
couldn't travel because I didn't have my visa, didn't have a green
card. I traveled as a student but when it was time to come back [to
Panama] after I graduated, I stayed over there. Then in Latin America
the news that El General had died started spreading. People were
saying he had thrown himself off the fifteenth floor of a building in
Puerto Rico, the same hotel where this guy had jumped off. This guy
...
Hector Lavoe?

... Hector Lavoe. I had gone to Puerto Rico and I stayed in that room,
so everybody started saying that I had jumped off like Hector.
Because of that many groups came out like El General y los Gatos,
El General and this, El General and that. They were interpreting
songs and taking advantage of the fact that I couldn't travel. Later
they finally gave me a visa for extraordinary talent, and I was able to
travel. The first tour was "La resurrecci6n del General" (El General's
Resurrection). It was hard getting people to go because everyone
knew El General had died. I had to go on Tv and invite people.

What year are we talking about?

This was like 1990-91. I already had a whole bunch of hits like "Tu
Pun Pun," "Te Ves Buena," "Muevelo, but I couldn't travel. In 1992 I
performed again in Panama, but like a star from outside, from the
United States. The show was at Atlapa. It was an amazing show. I
was reunited with my friends. It was a very emotional show because
there in the audience were all those people that I had sung for at a
dance, or at a Christening. They had become my fans. It was a very
exciting moment-and I could only come for two days. Then the tour
kept going to Ecuador, Salvador, Chile.

Then I get to Chile and this crazy situation happens. Pinochet didn't
want me to come into the country, or that I call myself El General, or
that I wear the uniform. He was saying he was the only general. That
no other general can go there. So when we get to the airport in Chile,
we had to stay like for three hours. They inspected our bags, then
closed them, then inspected them again. They confiscated all of El
General's uniforms. Everything having to do with El General they
confiscated. And they made me sign a document saying that if I sang
I couldn't say I was El General. I had to say I was Edgardo Franco. I
did that concert with regular clothes and as Edgardo Franco.

What do you think of today's movement, those CDs with titles like
Sin Censura, Panamanian plena with violent and explicit lyrics?
It's a totally different spirit. Before, we didn't do it for the money. Now
there are a lot of rivalries. We ... Renato, Sam, myself ... Every time I
had a show and they didn't hire Sam and Renato, they would come
up on stage. But now I see these CDs made by different producers;
they try to put the artists "you against this one," "you against this
other one." They manipulate artists a lot. Back then we didn't let
ourselves be manipulated because for us the music was sacred. No
one could tell us: "Sing this" or "Don't sing that." Actually, we got into
a lot of trouble because we sang things the government didn't want to
hear.

For example?

There were a lot of protest songs against racism during that time. The
racism that existed was impressive. We would protest about our hair
being cut. We would ask if they would like it if we just grabbed one of
their family members and cut off their hair.

Has the situation in Panama changed with regards to racism?

Yes, it has changed a lot. Not only in Panama. You can see it in many
places. Now people camouflage it-in other words, racism is a thing of
the past, now it's about money.

In the 198os racism was very visible in Panama ...

When we would get on the bus with our long hair, people would get
up. No one wanted to sit next to us. They'd say: "Nah, those guys are
crazy." They saw it as a crazy thing because here it's so normal that
people cut their hair and keep it neat. Then suddenly you see a guy
with dreads. Sometimes buses would pass by and not stop for us,
taxis too.

You mentioned the rivalry between Colon and Panama.' How did
that play out?
There was always a competition between Panama and Colon
because those were the strongest groups in this movement. There
was a lot of migration to Colon, even people from Guyana, Rastas
that came to live here in Colon. In those days someone gave me a
flyer for the first competition between Panama and Colon, in 1979,
around there. First they did it here at the Teatro Rio. It was one of
those famous theaters that don't exist anymore. People would come
in buses from Colon to support the folks from Colon. And the
Panamanians would come to support Panama. But the folks from
Colon won here in Panama! Everyone was mad because they hadn't
done it" because of the singers, or their careers. They did it because
it was the first time that they saw Rastas with their hair down to here
in the capital! For them it was very impressive. Rasta Nini-he was
part of one of the groups because he was always the president of the
Rasta Association. His hair drags on the floor now. Back then that
was a novelty. Sam that day put on fake Rastafarian hair, and it fell
off. So Panama lost.

Later we went over there to Colon. And the day before we got to
Colon, the police got us and shaved off our hair. Many of us were
minors. At thirteen, fourteen we were singing in these places and
talking about strong topics, so people would say: "What's going on
with those kids, someone has to do something about them."

None of you had visited Jamaica?

No, it was all through books. The only one that traveled was
Professor Maloney. He would bring Rastafarian books about religion,
about how they lived and everything, their food. He is still a
communications professor here at the university.

Was calypso also an influence here?

Yes. Calypso was very strong. That's where we really learned what
improvisation was. Those guys had an impressive gift of
improvisation. There was a rivalry between the calypso singers from
here against the ones from Trinidad. Every time a singer from
Trinidad would come here, there was this thing against them. One of
the greatest, Mighty Sparrow, came here and had a competition with
a singer called Lord Cobra. Cobra won so they made a song that
said, "Sparrow will never come back to Panama."

Have you been to Jamaica at some point in your career?

Yes. I've gone on a few occasions. I've recorded a few things over
there. And, in New York, almost all Jamaicans went to a studio called
ACNF. That's where they all recorded, Shabba Ranks, all of the
Jamaican artists recorded in that studio and it was like you were in
Jamaica.

NOTES

This interview was conducted in Spanish, November 2003. Many

thanks to George Priestley, Larnies Bowen, and Yvette Modestin for
their assistance in translating Panamanian vernacular terms.

i. Editors' Note: Reggae in Panama is also known as plena.

2. Editors' Note: Sound systems are mobile discotheques, typically

comprising not only the sound-playing and amplification equipment
(e.g., turntables and speakers), but a crew of personnel to set the
system up, run it, protect it, etc. Sound systems became a common
feature of public musical practice in Jamaica in the 195os and have
been a staple of reggae scenes worldwide ever since.

3. He is probably referring to the group Cheb.

4. Omar Efrain Torrijos Herrera (1929-81) was leader of the military

junta between 1968 and 1981. He died in an accident under unclear
circumstances after General Manuel Noriega took over the position.

5. Editors' Note: The producer is, most probably, Karl Miller.

 6. Editors' Note: Although El General refers to the song as "Tu Pun
Pun," which is what he sings as well, the record was released under
the title "Pu Tun Tun," presumably to avoid censorship.

7. Editors' Note: Here, Panamanian and Panama refer, not to the

whole country, but only to Panama City and its residents.

8. Editors' Note: "They hadn't done it" refers to the judges awarding
the prize to the artists from Colon.
In February 1995, the Drugs and Vice Control Bureau of the Police
Department of Puerto Rico raided six record stores in the San Juan
area. Hundreds of cassettes and compact discs of underground rap
and reggae music-a genre known in the Island simply as
underground and which later developed into reggaeton'-were
confiscated. These recordings were said by the police to violate local
obscenity laws through their crude references to sex and their
"incitement" to violence and drug use.2 The high-profile raids brought
underground music to the forefront of public discourse and triggered
a fierce debate regarding morality, censorship, and artistic freedom.

Underground was indeed often vulgar and violent. Sex, marijuana,

and guns figured prominently in many of its lyrics. This led to the
conclusion that underground was part of a "subculture of violence,
drug use, sexual libertines and a lack of respect for others"-to quote
the conservative media-monitoring group Morality in Media3-that
incited young people to engage in "illicit" sex, violence, and drug use.
It was statements like these that dominated and shaped the public
discussion of underground.

This simplistic relation drawn between music and youth behavior

constituted one of the pillars of the moral panic unleashed by the
music's growing popularity and the widespread public support for
state censorship.' Art and reality were taken to be one and the same.
The declared state of national moral emergency precluded an
analysis of greater complexity which could acknowledge that though
art may influence reality and vice versa, there is no plain and direct
causal relationship between artistic representation and lived relations.
 It was partly because of this assumed causal relationship that
underground triggered such an enormous moral panic-which reached
a high point in 1995 but which has had lasting influence over the
public imagination. But then again, there were other crucial factors
fueling the panic directed at this genre.

First, the youthfulness of underground audiences exalted public

apprehensions. Young people, much more so than adults, are thought
to model their behavior after the lyrics they listen to. Furthermore,
since the principal contradiction in our society has been most often
portrayed as one of values (and not as one of structures of
oppression), a key battle for social order and safety was imagined to
be taking place in underground: the forces of good and evil (or
morality and immorality) were confronting each other through youth in
the underground arena. Whereas one youth sector was seen as the
susceptible target of wayward influences, another sector was
imagined to be the main agent of social disorder. Youth were being
perceived as inhabiting the fragile juncture where order and
compliance met disorder and transgression.

Second, the evil image of underground was inflated by the fear that
a cultural form developed by "marginal" youth was becoming
popularized among the wider population. As a music primarily
developed by and identified with youth of the laboring-impoverished
classes, underground spoke the voice of those demonized in the
public imagination.5 The youngsters accused of spreading mayhem
through underground were branded by the presumed markings of the
ghetto. Barrios, barriadas (slums), and caserios (public housing
projects) were taken to be the epicenters from which underground, as
a cultural malaise, was radiating. The "periphery" was thus perceived
as threatening the "core" with cultural contagion.

Third, rap and dancehall reggae have been accused by many of

being "foreign" forms of musical expression which threaten the
integrity of Puerto Rican national culture.6 Thus, underground music
was further debased for being a cultural product of United States'
ghetto culture, which was pronounced as the original source of
contagion for local youth.

Underground was monitored and repressed in the name of public

morality; that morality was policed in the name of social order. This
essay illustrates through the case of underground how the policing of
public morality serves to strengthen social consensus and demonize
transgressors, as well as cement power relations, social prejudices,
and structures of oppression. It also discusses how issues of power
influence the definition, enforcement, and contestation of morality and
social order.

GROUNDING UNDERGROUND

Rap and reggae music have been a vital part of youth culture in
Puerto Rico since the early i98os. Grouped under the term
underground in the early 199os, its most direct musical sources have
been U.S. rap, and Jamaican and Panamanian dancehall reggae.' Its
lyrics have been either rapped or sung (dancehall style), and its
underlying rhythm tracks have typically been either funk heavy in the
U.S. rap tradition or have followed the Caribbean-influenced
hipshaking aesthetic of dancehall grooves.

Tricia Rose's proposition that rap "is a complex fusion of folk orality
and post-modern technology" also rings true in the case of Puerto
Rican underground music.' Rap, dancehall reggae and, by extension,
underground, are part of a continuum of longstanding African
American and Afro-Caribbean (including Puerto Rican) musical
practices.9 Cheryl Keyes describes rap, along with other hip-hop art
forms, as an example of "cultural versioning-the foregrounding (both
consciously and unconsciously) of African-centered concepts in
response to cultural takeovers, ruptures, and appropriations.""'

The term underground, as it has been used in Puerto Rico, is

somewhat elusive. It has been the name of a music genre that
existed from the early to late 199os. But it has also been used as a
more general term to differentiate mainstream commercial rap and
reggae from that produced and distributed in the informal economy.
And it has also been used to describe a music that is perceived as
"hard" and "raw." Underground has been usually boisterous, vulgar,
violent, or otherwise hard edged. It has been identified by its
participants with a street-oriented, vernacular, spontaneous, and
uncensored mode of expression, as opposed to the studio-oriented,
glossy, sanitized aesthetic of the mainstream market. DJ Playero has
described it as music that is faithful to the "underground ghetto
aesthetic," even if it has had mainstream commercial success.''

DJS were originally the business people at the core of the

production and distribution network of underground recordings. In the
early 198os, DJ Playero, DJ Negro, and other DJs like them began
making a modest and erratic number of copies of recordings (typically
close to twenty) and then selling them at clubs, at work, and around
their neighborhoods. Those copies were then quickly bootlegged and
distributed all over Puerto Rico. Given the constant migratory flow of
people between the island and the continent, these tapes soon
reached Puerto Rican communities in the United States. Despite the
simplicity of its production, promotion and distribution, the early
underground market still covered extensive ground.

In Puerto Rico, underground rap (reggae came a bit later) had been
a popular music-albeit outside the scope of the mainstream media-for
close to a decade when it began catching the general public's eye in
1994. It was then that underground recordings began to circulate
within the formal economy. Wiso G: s Sin Parar, released in 1994,
was the first underground production by an "aboveground" record
label and sold in stores. Later in the year, Playero #38, already
enormously popular through informal channels, made its appearance
in stores and became one of the biggest-selling underground
productions.

Whereas commercial rap and reggae had been tailored to fit media
requirements regarding language and themes, underground music-
until the release of Wiso G. 's Sin Parar-developed and thrived with a
great measure of independence from the prospect of media policing
and censorship. Thus, underground had not been forced to rid itself
of language considered to be too crude, vulgar, or violent for mass
media exposure. While the language of mainstream productions was
closely monitored, underground artists12 prided themselves on being
faithful to their everyday language.

Vico C's "De la Calle" was a rap song that became wildly popular in
the mid-198os, strictly through informal channels.13 It is remembered
as one of Vico's "classics," partly for its lyrical deftness, but also for
its embodiment of the ultraviolent early underground aesthetic. "De la
Calle" is today a nostalgiafilled symbol of a pre-mass-media, pre-
state censorship age of (raw) innocence. Vico introduces the track by
establishing that his "dirty language" is justified, "valuable," and
necessary. Then he goes on to warn a rival:
"De la calle" is a good early example of how the underground
aesthetic was constructed by its participants. Underground, as an
expressive form, was developed as hypermasculine, violent, foul-
mouthed, hard, street savvy, ghetto identified, and lawless-the very
same adjectives that in the public discourse define urban marginality.

Underground's self-identification with ghetto hardness and

lawlessness was an attempt at vindicating urban marginality. At the
same time, underground's self-construction can also be argued to be
a defeatist celebration of the stereotypes associated with poor urban
populations. Given the scope of this essay, I am unable to elaborate
on these issues for now.

The increasing popularity, visibility, and mass availability of

underground eventually began generating concern among parents,
educators, activists, and government authorities regarding the
possible effects of this music on its largely youthful audience.
However, the urgency of the problem was not so much related to
underground's existence. After all, it developed without major
interference until 1995. Underground became a public safety issue
once it was no longer confined to "marginal" spaces. Its power
resided in threatening "the center" with contagion.

Milton Picon, leader of the conservative media-monitoring group

Morality in Media, explained how the group became aware of
underground music and why they began campaigning against it. In
doing so, he also illustrated how the music was constructed as a
menace only after it was no longer contained in "marginality."

Teachers and social workers began calling our attention to this

type of music, which we were completely unaware of. When we
began interviewing school children and realizing the crudeness of
this type of material, and when we realized that this material was
no longer really in the underground but was being openly sold in
stores, we alerted the police, who then undertook an
investigation."
 To Morality in Media's satisfaction-and in no small manner thanks to
Picon having previously worked in the Police Department-the
investigation undertaken by the police soon led to the 1995 raids, the
confiscation of underground recordings, and charges being filed
against some commercial establishments that sold them.

BUSTING UNDERGROUND, MANO DURA STYLEE

The raids conducted during the first week of February 1995 were
nothing less than spectacular. They were a high-profile affair that
garnered prominent media coverage and captured the public's
attention. Six record stores were targeted; three of them were located
in Plaza Las Americas-one of the most prestigious shopping malls in
San Juan. Four hundred and one cassettes and compact discs were
confiscated. Six store employees were issued court citations. '6

Media time and space were dominated by arguments condoning

state censorship on moral grounds. Underground was obscene and
pornographic, thus immoral, thus dangerous; thus it should be
censored. It was that simple. Underground was seen as filth and
degeneration posing as art." It was portrayed as a cultural expression
eroding the fiber of morality and decency upon which social order
rests. The mainstream media's "discovery" of underground and its
irreverent lyrics came as a great shock and created a sense of
national alarm. Numerous TV and radio shows, as well as
newspapers and magazines, took up the topic of underground and
censorship. It was open season on underground.

The way in which the media coverage proceeded and the public
debate unfolded put in evidence an intense public fascination with
new cucos (bogeymen) and scapegoats that can explain social fear
and disorder. It was also a display of a morbid public fascination with
an issue that included the core components of both yellow journalism
and the social imaginary of fear: crime, violence, and sex. The shock
and alarm with which the news was received included a dimension of
voyeuristic pleasure through indulgence in scandal, in dirt, in
immorality.

A few days before the raids, Carmen Teresa Figueroa moderated a

TV special which promised to "uncover the `secrets' of
underground."',, The show was aimed at parents who wanted to know
how this "noxious" music was affecting their children. Several days
later, TV show host Luis Francisco Ojeda joined the underground
bashing crusade. His star guest was Waldemar Quiles, president of
the Puerto Rican House of Representative's Commission on
Education and Culture. The legislator expressed that his objective
was to amend the Puerto Rican Penal Code in order to typify the
production of underground rap as a serious crime. In both TV shows,
the "noxious" character of underground was treated as a proven fact.

Yolanda Rosaly, media critic for El Nuevo Dia, one of the most
prestigious and powerful daily newspapers, wrote an impassioned
column five days after the raids alerting parents against the dangers
of this "submundo" (underworld) music. Rosaly's word choices were
quite telling of the classist hysteria fueling the attack on underground.
She deemed underground to be equivalent to the music of a sinister
"underworld," that is, the criminal underworld of the poor and young.
For her, the lyrics were "simply horrendous and revolting" and
reflected the perverse attitudes and beliefs of criminals; therefore, the
Police Department had acted in the defense of social order and the
public well being by censoring them.

In the process of constructing underground as a criminal

subculture, critics circulated ample distortions and misconceptions
regarding this genre. A common charge was that lyrics advocated the
use of "all types of controlled sub- stances."19 Some went as far as
claiming that "underground is a front for the drug trade, by stimulating
the use of drugs and the creation of new clients, new addicts."20
However, in reality, the only controlled substance ever mentioned in
underground was marijuana. In the frenzy to indict this music, wild
myths were circulated.
 The fact that media time was monopolized by procensorship views
does in no way mean that there were no voices being raised against
state censorship. Dissenting voices were still heard over the airwaves
and made their way to the pages of several newspapers such as the
San Juan Star, Dialogo, and Claridad.2' The token rappers present in
radio and TV shows also argued strongly against censorship and the
myths being propagated about underground. One of the principal
myths they had to debunk was the equation of the off-stage lives of
underground artists with their performative personae; in other words,
the assumption that there was no separation between the off-stage
person and the performer, or between artists and their texts.

The charges brought against the commercial establishments that

sold under- groundwere eventually dismissed by the Superior Court
of San Juan. This court decision prompted the following reaction from
Police Chief Pedro Toledo: "We will investigate where it was that we
failed. We will continue our struggle.... If the courts want to permit the
sale of this type of pornographic material, we have to figure out a way
to fight this evil."22

The court decision was greeted with relief by all of us who treasure
tolerance and artistic freedom. However, the paranoia unleashed by
the state's dramatic censorship actions could not be overturned by a
court order. The most profound effect of the raids and the public
discussion that ensued was that the hysterical misconceptions and
prejudices circulated about under ground lingered on. Furthermore,
the attempt to criminalize underground solidified the public
legitimization of state efforts to control the youths most closely
engaged with this genre. I will return to this topic in a later section.

The raids also prompted a visible change in underground lyrics.

The threat of state censorship and public scandals resulted in a vastly
different lyrical content. This is not to say that artists completely
turned away from the raw lyrics of the preraid heyday, but that overall
rawness dropped considerably. The content of recordings and videos
was the aspect of the music most clearly affected, whereas live
shows continued to provide a safer space for uncensored material.

REALITY AND REPRESENTATION: "NO ES LO

MISMO NI SE ESCRIBE IGUAL" (IT IS NEITHER THE
SAME NOR IS IT WRITTEN THE SAME WAY)

The primary accusation directed toward underground was that it had

a dangerous influence on youth. For censorship advocates such as
Reverend Milton Pic6n, the columnist Yolanda Rosaly, and Police
Chief Pedro Toledo, the alleged fact constituted sufficient grounds for
censoring this music. In contrast, for more moderate critics such as
Jose Luis Ramos Escobar, a professor of theater arts at the
University of Puerto Rico, nothing productive is accomplished by
censorship.

To censor is to refuse to debate, confront, educate. The greatest

risk of censorship is that there will always be a reason to censor:
today it is underground music, yesterday it was the pro-
independence struggle, tomorrow it will be whatever doesn't
please the authorities or those that proclaim themselves the
keepers of the dominant values of a society. Censorship is the
impotence of those in power: since they can't convince, they
repress.23

Nevertheless, despite their disagreement on the issue of censorship,

conservative and moderate critics agreed that underground had
indisputable harmful effects on society, particularly children and
adolescents.

A frequently unchallenged assumption shared by the procensorship

as well as the anticensorship positions was thus the question of
meaning and effect, or representation and consumption. Much of the
moral panic ensuing from the disclosure and "decoding" of
underground lyrics was based on the assumption of a simplistic
connection between lived relations and artistic representation. Art and
reality were conflated as most critics refused to acknowledge that
there might be a distance between rappers and their texts. The
difference between art and reality was also ignored when audiences
were assumed to consume passively and mimic obediently. For
example, Ramos Escobar stated in an article in Diklogo, the
University of Puerto Rico's monthly newspaper, that "there is no
doubt that underground is an element of incitement and stimulus to
certain types of conduct that frequently threaten human dignity and
the common good, defined in communal and not institutional
terms."24

Underground music was accused of promoting and inciting certain

types of behavior. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to assess
effect. Two U.S. legislative commissions on pornography and dozens
of scientific research teams have not been able to settle the issue of
how violent art influences reality.25 So even though many claim that
common sense is proof enough that there is a direct correlation
between artistic representation and action, there is no conclusive
evidence to support this.

Carmen Oquendo and Lilliana Ramos, in the following month's

Dialogo, questioned Ramos Escobar's assumption that underground
lured children into depraved behavior. For Oquendo and Ramos

it is innocent to think of a neat causal relationship between rap and

violence without scientifically examining how much teen violence
stems from rap and how much from violent homes and divorces,
parents' alcohol abuse, incest, neglect and abandonment.26

The act of art consumption is not uniform across individuals,

groups, or contexts. Theorists such as Stuart Hall and Michel de
Certeau assert that consumption is such a complex process that it
should be considered another act of production.27 In order to
understand consumption, the possibility of multiple interpretations
needs to be taken into account. John Fiske argues that texts must be
understood as "producerly texts,"2S allowing the consumer room for
interpretation. I agree. Some people who take the Bible as their
spiritual guide are respectful and tolerant people; others are
intolerant, rabid homophobes. Similarly, some people who read the
Bible are sex offenders; other sex offenders prefer porno magazines.
The Bible and porno magazines, like underground lyrics, are texts.
The impact that they might have on people's beliefs and actions
varies widely. They cannot be said to "make" anybody do anything.

But how about the relationship between underground artists and

their lyrics? Once again, we can rely on Fiske's notion of "producerly
texts," where meanings are not fixed, sober, intelligible, but often
tightly linked to fun and the carnivalesque. Lyrics cannot be taken as
windows to artists' souls. Some rappers express their deepest
feelings in their lyrics; others step up to the microphone as actors
playing whatever character they please.

There is no denying the violent misogyny in a popular Guanabanas

Podrias rhyme:

However, this does not necessarily mean that the members of the
Guanabanas do (in real life and outside the sphere of artistic
representation) engage in such behavior.

The Guanabanas Podrias could, in fact, be gang rapists who go

around spitting and urinating on their victims. But they could also be
disgruntled young males who would never spit on a woman but seek
to assert their masculine power through their lyrics; they could be
constructing their superiority at the level of artistic representation,
since in real life that power is constantly being questioned.
Furthermore, they could also be purposefully writing outlandish lyrics
just to laugh at the mainstream outrage and shock. Another possibility
is that they are expressing a deep-seated violent sexism in halfjoking,
hyperbolic terms. Yet another possibility is that the artists are writing
their lyrics according to what they think their audience likes; if images
of violent sex are popular (and they are), then violently sexual lyrics
will sell. Finally, all or some of the above statements could
simultaneously be true.

The Guanabanas indictment of "loose" women should come as no

surprise. Our society constantly punishes and stigmatizes sexually
aggressive or promiscuous women. These lyrics have been taken by
critics of underground as proof of the aberrational low regard that
these rappers have for women. But, really, are they any different from
the venerable Sonero Mayor of salsa, Ismael Rivera, telling "his"
woman in the song "Si Te Cojo" (If I Catch You) that if he comes
home and his potatoes aren't ready, she will catch a beating? How
much do they differ from Marvin Santiago in "La Pela" (The Beating) -
another salsa classic-promising to beat his lover for deceiving him?
Perhaps the great big difference only resides in underground's use of
vulgar and explicit language.

Though the crass language of underground intensified the danger

attributed to it, this music was not merely targeted for censorship
because of its raw language and violent imagery. The issue was not
only about rhymes and images, but about who was rhyming and
constructing those images.
"MARGINALITY" AND CONTAGION

The public discussion of underground was invested in separating "the

margins" -where immorality and chaos are presumed to breed-from
"the center"where order is maintained. Underground artists were
imagined as infectious elements, posing the threat of cultural
contagion. These artists were most often construed as pathological
agents (nature makes them do it), though at times they were
portrayed as victims of circumstance (nurture made them do it). But
let's leave aside the issue of causality. What remains is that they were
considered "marginal," which in the public discourse was
synonymous with "deviant."

"Marginality" and "deviancy," though used as self-explanatory and

obvious categories are anything but. Marginal from what? Deviant
from what? Where and who are the core against which marginality is
defined? What is the norm against which deviancy is defined?

Marginality and deviancy are purported to be defined by behavior-

lest our society's democratic "innocent until proven guilty" axiom is
breached-not by living conditions. Thus, ghetto living or poverty, in
and of themselves, are not supposed to be the crucial markers of
marginality. However, "deviant" or criminal behavior is in actuality not
sufficient to classify someone as marginal. Marginality has both a
behavioral and a class or racial component. Never will white-collar
criminals, for example, be defined as marginal. The very definition
and construction of crime are implicated in class and racially based
hierarchies and structures of oppression.30 In short, you are marginal
if you break the social contract of order, but you must also belong to
the lower, phenotypically "darker" classes.

The reason why underground was a target for censorship had as

much to do with structures of economic and racial oppression as with
moral concerns. As in the United States, hip-hop culture and
dancehall music in Puerto Rico have become commercialized and
popularized among mainstream audiences; however, in both cases
they are still very much ghetto-identified artistic expressions.31
 One of the reasons underground was a target for censorship was
that within the social climate in Puerto Rico, youth from poor
communities were being seen as the main perpetrators of crime and
social disorder.32 Policing and restricting underground could,
therefore, be easily portrayed by government authorities as a logical
extension of anticrime state policies. The "Mano Dura Contra el
Crimen" (Tough Hand against Crime) policy that went into effect
during Governor Pedro Rossello's first term in 1992-96 featured the
National Guard takeovers of public housing projects, increased
surveillance and harassment of citizens, a failed attempt at restricting
the right to bail, along with numerous other tactics. Under the Mano
Dura, while the military occupation of housing projects was about
control of movement and places in order to reimpose "order," the
censoring of underground was an attempt to control a much more
abstract or elusive aspect of "disorder"-ideas and cultural expression.

In such a climate of apprehension, where crime and social decay

were virtually synonymous with youth of the (racialized) laboring-
impoverished classes, underground destabilized the prevailing social
structures by speaking the voice of marginality.33 Regardless of
whether the lyrics were innocuous, randomly violent, or insightfully
indicting state violence against poor communities, they provided this
youth sector with a voice and a platform that the general public had
problems grappling with. The predominant public perception of
underground as morally reprehensible was closely related to these
youths' position as the scapegoats of the government's rhetoric and
policies.

A month before the raids, Ranking Stone-a popular rapper among

both underground and mainstream audiences-described how ghetto
youth were stigmatized as criminals.34 The outward markings of
social marginality, according to him, were "being black" and "dressing
like a rapeeo."35 Ranking Stone charged that "black," "poor,"
"criminal," and "rap fan" were perceived as virtually interchangeable
categories.
 Puerto Rico is a racially mixed society organized according to a
hierarchy in which people of darker hues are disproportionately at the
base of the socioeconomic pyramid.36 Race, poverty, and
unemployment operate as categories that are "synchronized. 37
Furthermore, since poverty is constructed with respect to race, and
poverty is associated with criminality, crime is also racialized.38

Underground was identified (from within this realm of musical

expression, as well as from its outskirts) as the music of the poor,
"black," and young. Since this was precisely the same sector
demonized in social discourse as the embodiment of criminality, it
was no surprise that this music was portrayed as the musical
expression of a sinister, incomprehensible, marginal, and criminal
subculture.

The construction of behavior or a segment of the population as

"marginal" serves as a way to cement and enforce group
cohesiveness and compliance with the social order. Equating
marginality with danger enforces obedience in one sector of the
population and legitimizes surveillance and repression over another.
As Mary Douglas has stated: `Attributing danger is one way of putting
a subject above dispute."39 So as underground participants were
demonized, the general public found comfort in understanding the
source of evil and disorder. This demonization also served to assure
public approval of state repressive measures.

Rap was derisively described by renowned poet Edwin Reyes as a

"primitive form of musical expression" hailing from the ghetto, which
transmits "the most elementary forms of emotion" through its
"brutalizing and aggressive monotony."40 His insidious description is
an example of how rap was perceived as the cultural expression of
that most primitive, dark, and dangerous sector of the population.
Rappers were the feared "techno-aborigines,"41 disdained for being
part of a marginal population allegedly unable to express itself in an
intelligent, sublime, or profound manner.
 The state censorship of underground and the public debate that
ensued highlighted the perceived looming threat of a sector of the
population labeled as criminal brutes. In other words: Not only will
these guys carjack you, and not only will they come into your home
and rob you, but they will corrupt your family from the inside, targeting
your children through their so-called music! Underground participants
were deemed a fear-inspiring marginal population whose primitive art
forms merely transmitted their pathological culture and behavior to
other segments of the population.

There was yet another element contributing to the powers of

contagion attributed to underground music: its perceived
"foreignness" to Puerto Rican culture. Given that rap and dancehall
have their origins in New York and Jamaican ghettoes, underground
was posed as an "alien" cultural element which threatened the
integrity of "truly" Puerto Rican forms of expression via local marginal
youth.

Fernando Clemente asked from the pages of the leftist weekly

Claridad:

And who benefits from the "rapper look" and-even worse-the

"rapper conduct"? Puerto Rican culture? Definitely not! Where it
leads us to is, whether we like it or not, to our colonial condition
and the vulgar dominance of the United States' economic
power.42

Clemente wrote as if rap were not already an integral part of Puerto

Rican culture, as if rap were not already the most cultivated musical
genre among Puerto Rican youth, and as if Puerto Rican culture were
not the one that is lived but the one that he would like to see.

From the pages of the same newspaper, Edwin Reyes expressed a

similar sentiment when he posed "la tonteria del rap" (the silliness of
rap) as a counterpoint to "our music, learned and popular, multiple,
beautiful, irreducible, the one that Juan Antonio Corretjer always
exalted: the sublime music of Puerto Rican-ness."43 Rafael Bernabe,
in an article entitled "Rap: Soy boricua, pa' que to lo sepas" (Rap: I'm
Puerto Rican, Just so You Know), criticized Reyes's position for
"dripping with classist prejudice" and attempting to pose itself as "the
arbiter of national identity" by seeking to uplift rap enthusiasts from
"tuserias" (lowliness) to Puerto Rican-ness.44

These accusations of underground music as a lowly, aesthetically

worthless, and pathological cultural expression of a marginal sector of
the local population, and also as a foreign destabilizing menace for
Puerto Rican culture, were certainly not unprecedented phenomena.
Similar pronunciations against other musical forms have previously
consumed the public imagination and been the subject of heated
national debate.

Bomba and plena, today largely considered either harmless or vital

components of the national culture, have faced similarly virulent racial
and class prejudices. Bomba, for example, was at one point
characterized by certain "folklorists" as possessing "grotesque
rhythms" and being an "expression of primitive frenzy" where "the
dancers gesticulate and scream songs of naive contents, some of
them unintelligible."45 Regarding plena, Juan Flores notes how "the
epithets `vulgar' and `lumpen' accompanied [it] for the first three
decades of its existence, and here they are once again, in 1988, in
the assessment of Cortijo."46

Various popular genres of the first half of the twentieth century-

among them rumba, guaracha, son, bolero, jazz, and tango-were
accused of being degenerative outside influences for Puerto Rican
culture.47 Mareia Quintero Rivera describes these accusations as an
attempt to "whiten the nation's image" by drawing imaginary
boundaries around "true" Puerto Rican national culture. Furthermore,
she sees in those earlier charges of racialized "foreign" musical
genres that corrupt the national culture a similar impetus to the one
present in the more recent debates surrounding underground music,
for they all "manifest at the discursive level an attempt to characterize
marginality as an `other,' in opposition to what is defined as
`authentic' culture."48

As Edgardo Diaz Diaz remarks of the musical debates during the

early decades of the twentieth century, the contentions regarding
underground music must be understood as "neither purely moral nor
merely racial, but also a political matter, especially after the U.S.
invasion in 1898."49 Underground was viewed as a threat to Puerto
Rican culture not only for being deemed the lowquality and morally
reprehensible music of a racially and socially marginal sector of the
local population, but also because it was imagined to be an outside
force corrupting what is truly Puerto Rican.

NEUTRALIZING CONTAGION

It has been a longstanding historical trend that material and structural

issues get displaced to the realm of culture and values. Given the
complexity of addressing "social problems" in political-economic
terms, the realm of culture provides a more manageable target.-10
The socioeconomic crisis of the mid-199os in Puerto Rico was thus
frequently explained away in terms of an alleged erosion of traditional
moral values that had provided fertile ground for criminal activity.

Underground, with its violent topics and aesthetics, was taken as a

concrete manifestation of the immoral or amoral behavior that was,
supposedly, at the bottom of the social crisis. Censoring a music
genre is, of course, a much more manageable task than reducing
unemployment, improving the quality of public education, providing
healthcare, or lowering the murder rate. It was also a concrete action
that could be taken against intangible moral infractions.

It was only after underground became identified as a source of

cultural contagion that the authorities moved against it. It was the
threat against "good" kids that drove the authorities to action.
Underground, as a tangible manifestation of a "deviant" value-
system, was threatening to "poison young minds," in the words of TV
talk show host Pedro Zervig6n. This music was deemed a "poison," a
source of contagion, a soiling agent, a polluting element.

Mary Douglas's notion of symbolic pollution proves a useful concept

in illuminating this situation. She proposes that notions of symbolic
pollution provide the possibility of redemption, through the
physicalization of moral infractions. If immorality is represented
physically as dirt or disease, then redemption is only a matter of
cleaning up or purifying.51 As Carol SmithRosenberg has noted in
relationship to the same phenomenon, there is in the notion of
symbolic pollution a fusion of the moral and the physical.52

In the case of underground, this genre and its participants were

identified as embodying a deviant morality. Once identified as a
concrete agent threatening to pollute the rest of society, the stage
was set for condemnation and censorship as methods for scrubbing
out the polluting element.

Julia Kristeva brings to our attention the connection between social

structures and notions of pollution: "Pollution is a type of danger
which is not likely to occur except where the lines of structure, cosmic
or social, are clearly defined."53 Or as Mary Douglas puts it: "The
potency of pollution is therefore not an inherent one; it is proportional
to the potency of the prohibition that founds it."54

In the case of underground in Puerto Rico, class and racial

boundaries were being strictly policed given a discourse that
assigned blame and polluting qualities along class and racial lines
and reinforced a sharp "us vs. them" attitude. The force of the
crackdown on underground was thus related to the strength of class
and racial divisions, and hierarchy. After all, this music became a
public safety issue once it was perceived to pose a threat to those
social structures by having spilled over ghetto boundaries and by
threatening middle- and upper-class kids with "infection."

POWER AND PLEASURE

Michel Foucault describes the social surveillance and control of
sexuality as not only an extension of domination but also "a
sensualization of power and a gain of pleasure."55 This concept aids
in the understanding of the simultaneous indignation, horror, and
pleasure with which underground was monitored and suppressed.
The censure and censorship of underground were as much about the
pleasure of domination, as they were about preserving social order.

The tone of secrecy and confession that pervaded mass media

coverage was an integral component of the perverse public pleasure
which peeked from behind a veneer of apocalyptic worry and self-
righteous indignation. The general public, the government authorities,
and the mass media were partly invested in their roles of surveyors,
classifiers, and censors because of the pleasure derived from these
activities.

These perverse (partially) hidden pleasures stemming from the

policing of underground do not negate the serious concern for social
stability and public morality that also prompted the action and
provided its rationale. On the contrary, these seemingly disparate
experiences coexisted and reinforced each other. Similarly, the
indignation against prejudice and censorship with which underground
artists and audiences reacted was accompanied by a mischievous
delight in their transgression. Those doing the policing relished the
pleasures of exercising power and enforcing social norms; those
being policed got off on evading power and social norms.

In explaining the connection between pleasure, and enforcing and

subverting power, Foucault mentions some of the agents involved.
Not coincidentally, many of these agents were central participants in
the game of "capture and seduction" that enveloped underground:
parents and children, adults and adolescents, educators and
students.

Power, however, does not only reside within the agents engaged in
policing morality. An explanation that only visualizes those who claim
to be preserving social order through their suppressive activities as
the sole wielders of power provides an incomplete picture of the
existing power plays. Of course, if we limit our understanding of
power to the capability of suppression and enforcement of social
norms, then the morality police is the one with the power. It was
government agents, "responsible" public figures, and other
"respectable" adults who had the power of confiscating recording
material and monopolizing the media with justifications of censorship.
Underground artists and audiences could never reproduce such
actions and public reactions even if they tried.

The alleged agents of social disorder had no power of enforcement

or suppression. They were not the ones enforcing public policies and
making economic decisions. They had little to no economic power.
However, at the symbolic level, they had the power of the threat.
Their marginal status linked them with danger, which invested them
with the symbolic power of disruption and corruption. This was a
power that, ultimately, served as justification for the repressive
actions taken against them and which cemented even further their
marginality from social structures and discourses.

The threat posed by underground participants resided not only in

their presumed marginality (whether this status is held to describe
class position or "deviant" behavior), but also in their "liminality." Carol
Smith-Rosenberg explains that a liminal person "is in movement
between two states and consequently possess[es] the roles and
responsibilities of neither." Adolescent youth are the quintessential
liminal beings.56 They are perceived as having left behind the
innocence of childhood, but not having yet acquired the responsibility
and mature sensibility of adulthood. As youth, underground
participants were liminal; as racialized and criminalized youth from
poor communities, they were marginal.

Whereas order is associated with the center, disorder is related to

the margins and transitional states. Disorder is a threat to existing
patterns; it is related to both danger and power. The so-called
underworld of underground was, thus, a powerful, marginal, and
liminal space capable of instigating dangerous transformations.

During the eighteenth century in the United States, pubescent

males were seen as both marginal and liminal. The bulk of Victorian
sexual discourse was aimed at them. As apprenticeship as a
sociosexual institution disappeared and young men started going to
boarding schools and moving into cities, a fear began developing of a
youth culture that could thrive independently of adult and institutional
supervision. The situation that Smith-Rosenberg describes in the
United States during the eighteenth century is oddly similar to that of
199os Puerto Rico.57 A marginal and liminal population-defined in
one case as young males and in the other as young males of a
certain social class-is identified in the dominant social discourse as a
primary agent of disorder. Both cases evidence a fixation on youth
sexuality as an important sphere that functions as both source and
manifestation of disorder.

The attack on underground was informed by a profoundly

conservative ideology that lumps together violence and drug use with
youth extramarital sex as the evils eroding social order. Youth
sexuality is deemed, by definition, precocious, libertine, and illicit.
Knowledge or discussion of sexual matters is thought to lead to
promiscuity. Promiscuity is a big, bad, horrible thing. Young people
should not know about sex, let alone talk about it, rap about it, or
engage in it.511 The problem is that youth do. Underground music
allegedly incited them to do it more.

Underground was bashed for being "obscene" and "pornographic."

The proverbial "community standards" according to which obscenity
laws are defined went largely unquestioned.59 The charge that
pornography is inherently harmful went unrefuted, for the most part.
The issue, therefore, reached beyond the repression of youth
sexualities to seeking a wider sort of sexual repression. Around the
same time that the underground raids took place, Condomania-an
adult novelty shop and bookstore-was raided. The Police Vice Squad
also raided Cups, a lesbian bar of the San Juan area. The target was,
thus, not only youth sexuality, but sexualities that were deemed "illicit"
or "peripheral." Nonheterosexuals and the libidinous were also
considered threats.

A discussion of power, pleasure, and underground would be

incomplete without acknowledging how underground was an agent of
power in terms of enforcing patriarchal structures of oppression.
Underground was, with precious few exceptions, wholeheartedly
implicated in reproducing our society's sexist and homophobic
norms.60 Though challenging class and racial struc tures of
oppression, underground was in strict compliance with sexism and
homophobia.

Misogyny in underground ranged from excluding women from

active participation in the genre, to lyrics where female domesticity
was exalted and reinforced, to the uninvited groping of women's
bodies at clubs, to lines about violently punishing a woman for being
"loose," to rhymes about rape.

Many censorship advocates took up the issue of misogynous lyrics

in underground as one of their central arguments. Underground
indeed had a role in the perpetuation of a sexist and violent culture.
However, this music was merely one aspect of a fundamentally
misogynous culture. So why just target underground? The answer
goes back to the scapegoating of a youth art form mostly cultivated
by a stigmatized sector of the population.

The youths engaged in underground were portrayed as misogynous

deviants who took part in a pathological criminal culture. What was
seldom mentioned was that they were mimicking the dominant
cultural values learned through passive and acritical consumption.b'
Underground lyrics took part in the reproduction of the dominant
sexist ideology that perpetuated the myths, stereotypes, repressions,
and double standards that cement patriarchy. The crucial difference
between the misogyny that passed largely uncommented and that
which triggered a vociferous public reaction is that the latter-in this
case underground-expressed vulgarly and without the least bit of
decorum the same sexist ideas prevalent in the rest of society.

CONCLUSION

Underground was partly a target for censorship because of its crude,

outlaw, and violent themes and aesthetics. In this manner,
underground challenged notions of proper moral behavior and law-
abiding citizenship that are held by the dominant public perception, as
well as in governmental and ecclesiastical rhetoric, to insure social
order. But had underground not been so tightly linked to young males
of the local laboring-impoverished classes, we can question whether
its aesthetics would have triggered the repressive measures and
moral panic that it did.

The public discourse surrounding underground was firmly grounded

in the "Mano Dura" scapegoating of this youth sector. Underground
was perceived as the physicalization of their moral infractions; it was
also invested with powers of moral contagion. Censorship was
framed as the way to scrub out the infractions and neutralize the
contagion.

Ironically enough, as the general public viewed underground with

increas ing horror and paranoia, the delight in transgression
augmented for its audience. The demonization and suppression of
underground actually boosted its transgressive mystique.

The construction of underground as a public threat gave further

legitimacy to state repression and surveillance. It fostered a climate of
fear and paranoia where civil liberties were set up to be relinquished
in exchange for the state's soothing surveillance and control.
Ultimately, the persecution of underground cemented the class and
racial divisions, inequalities and frictions that fuel unhappiness,
instability, and rage.

AFTERWORD
The debates and moral panic that greeted the rising popularity of
underground music during the mid-199os in Puerto Rico were quite
different from the relatively more measured arguments brandished
against its later incarnation as musica del perreo at the time of the
2002 legislative hearings spearheaded by Senator Velda Gonzalez.
As chair of the Puerto Rican Senate's Special Commission for the
Study of Violence and Sexual Content in Puerto Rican Radio and
Television Programming, Senator Gonzalez became the leader of a
muchpublicized campaign that, in theory, sought to address all
sources of "offensive" and "indecent" material in the media but that, in
reality, focused on the video images, song lyrics, and brazen style of
dancing of the music genre that was still not uniformly referred to as
reggaeton.62

While in 1995 the logic of extreme censorship ruled the public

discussions surrounding underground, in 2002 the state-led actions
and the positions advanced in the Puerto Rican media tended to
favor a more moderate regulation over outright banning of perreo. In
both cases, the public debates over these music genres were prime-
time news fodder and generated much public scrutiny, debate, and
anxiety. Back in 1995, and still in 2002, it would have been hard to
imagine that the much-maligned and marginalized genres known then
as underground and musica del perreo would only two years later rise
to international prominence as reggaeton-the prime musical export of
Puerto Rico, the "reggaeton nation."63

NOTES

This paper (save for the afterword) was presented in 1998 at the
Puerto Rican Studies Association Conference and served as the
basis for various journalistic articles, but, as an academic paper,
remained unpublished. Though some of my views have changed, I
have resisted the urge to update the essay substantively, so that it
can fully serve its purpose as a historical document. Translations of
Spanish-language quotations are my own. "Stylee" is a term
borrowed from Jamaican dancehall reggae slang and often used
during the 19905 in the rap and reggae scene in Puerto Rico to mean
"style."

1. See Wayne Marshall's essay in this volume for a discussion of

the porous boundaries between the genres known as underground
and reggaeton.

2. John Marino, "Police Seize Recordings, Say Content Is

Obscene," San Juan Star, February 3,1995 San Juan Star, "Court
Dismisses Charges against Music Stores," February 24, 1995.

3. Jorge Luis Medina, "Rappers Rap Bum Rap and Hypocrisy," San
Juan Star, February 19, 1995.

4. On moral panics, see Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral

Panics (London: Mac Gibbon and Kee, 1972); Stuart Hall et al.,
Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (London:
Macmillan Press, 1978); and Madeline Roman, "El Girlie Show:
Madonna, las polemicas nacionales y los panicos morales," bordes 1
(1995): 14-21.

5. See Pedro T. Berrios Lara, "Underground: zObscenidad o

realidad?" La lupi, January-February, 1995; Raquel Z. Rivera,
"Rapping Two Versions of the Same Requiem," in Puerto Rican Jam:
Rethinking Colonialism and Nationalism, ed. Frances hegron-
Muntaner and Ramon Grosfoguel (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), 243-56; and Mayra Santos, "Puerto Rican
Underground," Centro 8, nos. 1 and 2 (1996): 218-31.

6. Rafael Bernabe, "Rap: Soy boricua, pa' que to lo sepas,"

Claridad, January 19-25, 1996; Raquel Z. Rivera, "Cultura y poder en
el rap puertorriqueflo," Revista de Ciencias Sociales 4 (1998): 124-
46.

7. Santos, "Puerto Rican Underground."

 8. Tricia Rose, "Orality and Technology: Rap Music and Afro-
American Cultural Resistance," Popular Music and Society 13, no. 4
(1989): 38.

9. Juan Flores, "Rappin, Writin' & Breakin," Centro de Estudios

Puertorriquenos Bulletin 2, no. 3 (1988): 34-41; Dick Hebdige, Cut 'N'
Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music (New York: Methuen,
1987); Peter Manuel, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from
Rumba to Reggae (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995);
Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in
Contemporary America (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New
England, 1994); David Toop, Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip
Hop (London: Serpent's Tail, 1991).

lo. Cheryl L. Keyes, "At the Crossroads: Rap Music and Its African
Nexus," Ethnomusicology 40, no. 2 (1996): 224.

11. DJ Playero, interview with author, January 25, 1995.

12. There was no absolute separation between mainstream and

underground artists. Many artists did both mainstream and
underground productions.

13. This song was never released "aboveground." To listen to this

and other early songs by Vico C see
http://www.myspace.com/elfilosofodelrap (accessed June 1, 2008).

14. Residencial Luis Llorens Torres is a public housing project in

San Juan.

15. Milton Picon made this statement in a TV show hosted by Pedro

Zervigon called Al Grano, February 5, 1995.

16. Marino, "Police Seize Recordings."

17. See Pedro Sandin Fremaint, "Los cuentos no son todos

iguales," Diklogo, May 1995: "Rap, with the help of some academics
has proclaimed itself art." See also Yolanda Molina, "Un llamado
contra el rap," Diklogo, March 1995: "They dare classify underground
lyrics as art and attribute an aesthetic dimension to it." See also
Lilliana Garcia Arroyo, "'Rap underground': zNueva alternativa o
pornografia?" Claridad, March 24, 1995.

18. The TV show was known as Hablando con Carmen Teresa.

This episode aired January 30, 1995.

19. Yolanda Rosaly, " Alto a la musica `underground'!" El Nuevo

Dia, February 7, 1995.

20. Statement made during Pedro Zervigon's Al Grano TV show,

February 5, 1995.

21. See Carmen Luisa Oquendo and Raquel Z. Rivera, "Rap:

zCensura o represion?" Diklogo, February 2005; Jose Luis Ramos
Escobar, "Rap underground: Entre la censura y la ingenuidad,"
Diklogo, March 1995; Rafael Bernabe and Nancy Herzig, "Sobre
sexo, sexismo y censura," Claridad, April?-13, 1995; Raquel Z.
Rivera, "Two Guanabanas and a Little Mayhem," San Juan Star,
September 10, 1995.

22. El Nuevo DIa, February 17, 1995.

23. Ramos Escobar, "Rap underground." The subtitle of this

section, "No es lo mismo ni se escribe igual," is from a saying in
Spanish that literally means "it is neither the same, nor is it writen the
same way."

24. Ibid.

25. See Edward Donnerstein et al., The Question of Pornography:

Research Findings and Policy Implications (New York: Free Press,
1987); Neil M. Malamuth and Edward Donnerstein, Pornography and
Sexual Aggression (Orlando: Academic Press, 1984); Linda Williams,
"Second Thoughts on Hard Core: American Obscenity Law and the
Scapegoating of Deviance," in Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography,
Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson (London:
British Film Institute Publishing, 1993), 46-61; United States,
Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, The Report of the
Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (New York: Random
House, 1970); United States, Attorney General's Commission on
Pornography, Attorney General's Commission on Pornography: Final
Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of justice, 1986); United
States, Department of Justice, Beyond the Pornography Commission:
The Federal Response (Washington, D.C.: National Obscenity
Enforcement Unit, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of justice,
1988).

26. Carmen Luisa Oquendo and Lilliana Ramos, "Censura docta,

censura pastoral," Dicilogo, April 1995.

27. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1984); Stuart Hall, "Encoding,
Decoding," in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (New
York: Routledge, 1993), 90-103.

28. John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (New York: Unwin

Hyman, 1989)

29. The Noise i (ca. 1992).

30. James W. Messerschmidt, Capitalism, Patriarchy and Crime:

Toward a Socialist Feminist Criminology (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1986); Kelvin Santiago- Valles, "Policing the Crisis in the
`Whitest' of the Antilles," Centro 8, nos. 1 and 2 (1996): 43-55.

31. Kevin Arlyck, "By All Means Necessary: Rapping and Resisting
in Urban Black America," in Globalization and Survival in the Black
Diaspora: The New Urban Challenge, ed. Charles Green (Albany:
suNY Press, 1997), 269-87; Peter McLaren, "Gangsta Pedagogy and
Ghettoethnicity: The Hip Hop Nation as Counterpublic Sphere,"
Socialist Review 25, no. 2 (1995); Rose, Black Noise; Santos, "Puerto
Rican Underground."

32. See Carlos Fortufio Candelas, El auge de la actividad criminal

en Puerto Rico (Levittown: Ediciones Bandera Roja, 1993); and
Santiago-Valles, "Policing the Crisis in the `Whitest' of the Antilles."
Though I speak here of a specific time period in Puerto Rico, this
phenomenon of criminalizing youth of the most impoverished classes
is neither exclusive to Puerto Rico nor limited to that time period, but
is a more generalized phenomenon.

33. I use marginal to describe a position with respect to social

discourses and structures, not to impute any kind of "deviancy."

34. Patricia Vargas, "Entrevista con Ranking Stone," TeVe Guia,

January 14-20, 1995, 65.

35. Rapero, in Puerto Rico, has been used to name both rap artists
and audiences; whereas in the United States, rapper has been a
noun restricted to those who rap.

36. Samuel Betances, "The Prejudice of Having No Prejudice in

Puerto Rico," Rican 2 (1972): 41-54; Santiago-Valles, "Policing the
Crisis in the `Whitest' of the Antilles."

37. Hall et al., Policing the Crisis.

38. Ibid.; Santiago-Valles, "Policing the Crisis in the `Whitest' of the

Antilles."

39. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of

Pollution and Taboo (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969), 40.

40. Edwin Reyes, "Rapeo sobre el rap en Ciales," Claridad,

December 28-January 3, 1995-96.

41. Santos, "Puerto Rican Underground."

 42. Fernando Clemente, "Entrando For la salida," Claridad,
February 18-24, 1994. My first publication ever was a response to
Clemente's article, which I titled " zQue el rap no es cultura?"
Claridad, March 4-10,1994.

43. Reyes, "Rapeo sobre el rap en Ciales."

44• Bernabe, "Rap."

45• Isabelo Zenon Cruz, Narciso descubre su trasero, Tomo I (El

negro en la cultura puertorriquena) (Humacao, P.R.: Editorial Furidi,
1974), 290.

46. Juan Flores, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity

(Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1993), 95. Rafael Cortijo was a famed
Puerto Rican musician, composer and bandleader.

47. Edgardo Diaz Diaz, "Puerto Rican Affirmation and Denial of

Musical Nationalism: The Cases of Campos Parsi and Aponte
Ledee," Latin American Music Review 17, no. 1 (1996):1-20; Mareia
Quintero Rivera, "Musica `inmoral' de las Antillas," Dialogo,
September 1995.

48. Quintero Rivera, "Musica `inmoral' de las Antillas."

49. Diaz Diaz, "Puerto Rican Affirmation and Denial of Musical

Nationalism," 5.

50. George Yudice, "Postmodernity and Transnational Capitalism,"

in On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture, ed.
George Yudice, Jean Franco, and Juan Flores (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1992),1-28.

51. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger.

52. Carol Smith-Rosenberg, "Sex as Symbol in Victorian Purity," in

Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, ed. Jeffrey Alexander
and Steven Seidman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).

53. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 69.

54. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, 113.

55• Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume i, trans.

Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

56. Ibid.; Smith-Rosenberg, "Sex as Symbol in Victorian Purity."

57. Smith-Rosenberg, "Sex as Symbol in Victorian Purity" 166.

58. Around the same time that the underground debate was raging,
there was a huge uproar when the secretary of public health, Carmen
Feliciano, dared suggest that masturbation should be presented to
young people as a safer sex alternative. See Rafael Bernabe and
Nancy Herzig, "Sobre sexo, sexismo y censura."

59. See the Penal Code of Puerto Rico, articles 112-17.

60. The same can be said of underground's direct heir: reggaeton.

61. Santos, "Puerto Rican Underground"; bell hooks, Outlaw

Culture: Resisting Representations (New York: Routledge, 1994),
173-82.

62. The newspaper and magazine articles devoted to the

controversy boasted headlines such as "Perreo Has Constitutional
Guarantees," "Perreo Videos before the Senate," "Agencies Set to
Attack the `Perreo," and "In Its Final Phases the Anti-'Perreo' Bills."
See Leonor Mulero, "Garantia constitucional al perreo," El Nuevo Dia,
May 16, 2002; Israel Rodriguez Sanchez, "Ante el Senado los videos
del perreo," El Nuevo Dia, May 30, 2002; Carmen Millan, "A atacar
las agencias el `perreo," El Nuevo Dia, June 11, 2002; and Sandra
Morales Blanes, "En su fase final los proyectos anti `perreo," El
Nuevo Dia, June 12, 2002.

63. See Frances Negr6n-Muntaner and Raquel Z. Rivera,

"Reggaeton Nation," NACLA Report on the Americas 40, no. 6
(November/December 2007): 35-39.
I have been writing about Dominican communities and their music
since the early 198os, and have followed the trajectories of merengue
and then bachata as their popularity spread beyond the Dominican
Republic to New York and subsequently to other parts of the
northeastern United States with large Dominican communities (e.g.,
Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island). Since
1960, more than i million Dominicans have migrated to the U.S.
mainland. Another ioo,ooo have settled in Puerto Rico, largely in
metropolitan San Juan's most poverty-stricken neighborhoods
alongside similarly poor Puerto Ricans. I became curious about the
musical implications of this island-to-island migration and the nature
of musical exchanges between these two Spanish Caribbean
populations with long histories of musical exchanges, particularly in
the wake of the international explosion of reggaeton, whose epicenter
was precisely the sort of inner-city neighborhoods (such as Villa
Palmeras in Santurce) where Dominicans were likely to have settled.
As I examined the burgeoning number of narratives regarding the
emergence of reggaeton, I was struck by how little was being said
about Dominican participation beyond the obvious contributions of the
Dominican production team Luny Tunes, which seemed strange given
that Dominicans were occupying the same marginalized urban
spaces from which reggaeton was said to emerge. Indeed, Puerto
Rican and Dominican artists regularly collaborate, merengue and
bachata influences permeate reggaeton, and reggaeton lyrics are
peppered with references to the Dominican Republic and its culture.
Moreover, many of reggaeton's most important artists have at least
some Dominican ancestry-although they are seldom represented as
such. Why, then, have Dominicans been so invisible in most
reggaeton's "birth stories"?' One can also ask why it matters,
especially since the circumstances of musical genesis are usually
unverifiable, especially in the context of the constant musical
exchanges that have characterized musical developments in the
Americas for centuries. Nevertheless, it is important to analyze how
competing narratives of musical origins and ownership are
constructed, because of what they tell us about Dominican-Puerto
Rican relations and, more broadly, about the formation of Spanish
Caribbean racial and ethnic identities on the island and in New York.

DOMINICANS IN PUERTO RICO: SOCIOECONOMIC CONTEXT

On first glance, the geographic and cultural proximity between the

Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico might make musical interactions
between the two groups seem easy and natural. Nevertheless,
relations between the two populations have historically been vexed,
alternating between solidarity and collaboration, and conflict and
mutual hostility, which have influenced their musical interactions in
profound ways. I begin, therefore, with some brief observations on
the sociocultural contexts in which these musical interactions have
been taking place over the past decades, in order to construct a
broader framework for thinking about reggaeton history and
development.

Large-scale Dominican migration to the United States and Puerto

Rico began largely as a result of two events: first, the fall of the
dictator Rafael Trujillo, who had restricted emigration for decades, in
1961; and the institution of the Family Reunification Act, which gave
U.S. visa preferences to immigrants' family members, in 1965. The
first Dominicans to arrive in U.S. territoryprimarily New York but also
Puerto Rico-were in large part middle class and educated; after the
1965 coup and subsequent occupation of the Dominican Republic by
U.S. troops, they were joined by political activists who had been given
visas in order to reduce political pressure on the island. These
pioneer Dominican immigrants established anchor communities in
both New York and San Juan, which provided later arrivals, whose
socioeconomic levels fell with each succeeding decade, with
assistance in finding housing and jobs as well as social and cultural
resources.2 The majority of Dominican migrants headed to New York,
where they settled primarily in Manhattan's Washington Heights and
Inwood neighborhoods; another 12 percent of them entered Puerto
Rico. Many of those who entered Puerto Rico believed the island was
only a stepping stone on their journey to the U.S. mainland, but they
ended up settling in Puerto Rico, which offered the advantage of
being Spanish speaking and culturally similar, as well as an economy
and social service sector directly linked to the United States.
Furthermore, living in Puerto Rico allowed Do minicans to acquire
permanent U.S. residence and citizenship, since the island is
considered a U.S. territory for immigration and naturalization
purposes. Currently, the total number of Dominicans in Puerto Rico is
estimated to be approximately ioo,ooo, of whom about one-third are
believed to be undocu- mented.3 Dominicans are thus the island's
biggest ethnic minority, accounting for 56 percent of the island's
foreign-born population.4

Some Dominicans have arrived in Puerto Rico on tourist visas and

overstayed, but the majority of undocumented immigrants cross the
dangerous forty-mile Mona Straits between the eastern end of the
Dominican Republic and the western coast of Puerto Rico in flimsy
open boats called yolas, because it is easier and cheaper to take a
yola than trying to enter by airplane, where the INS presents a much
higher obstacle. Thus, much like the Mexicans who risk their lives
crossing into the United States on foot, the Dominicans who enter
Puerto Rico by yola have been, in sociocultural terms, the sending
nations' poorest, most uneducated citizens. Moreover, coming from a
nation where class correlates closely to race, they are also, in
general, the nation's darkerskinned citizens.-' The Dominicans who
arrived in Puerto Rico, itself beset by significant socioeconomic
problems, such as high unemployment rates and widespread poverty,
have thus had more trouble integrating economically there than their
generally better-educated counterparts who have taken up residence
alongside Puerto Ricans in New York.'
 The presence of so many Dominicans in Puerto Rico created the
same sort of resentments as those generated by poor immigrants in
the United States (or Haitians in the Dominican Republic, for that
matter): that they fray the social safety net, they take jobs away from
locals, they lower wages, they are responsible for an increase in
crime, they refuse to assimilate, and so on. These fears have been
compounded, however, by racial anxieties. As other authors in this
volume, such as Raquel Z. Rivera and Tego Calderon, note, Puerto
Ricans have long denied, ignored, or rejected people and culture
considered "too black." Dominicans, arriving by the thousands,
threaten to "blacken" a population that considers itself to be much
whiter than the Dominican Republic's-indeed, in 2000 80.5 percent of
Puerto Ricans identified as white.7 (Note the relatively high
percentage of self-identified black Dominicans in Puerto Rico-37.8
percent, according to the 2000 census.) As Jorge Duany notes, "The
social construction of race and ethnicity in contemporary Puerto Rico
increasingly conflates black with Dominican,"8 and he concludes,
"Anti-Dominican sentiment has proven to be a ... formidable barrier to
interethnic relations. Many Puerto Rican residents harbor strong
resentments against foreign newcomers to the island, especially
Dominicans. . . . An ever expanding repertoire of ethnic jokes and folk
stories perpetuates the myth of the dumb, ignorant country bumpkin
from the Cibao."9

In San Juan, Dominicans settled in the city's poorest and most

undesirable neighborhoods, such as Barrio Obrero and Barrio Gandul
in Santurce and Barrio Capetillo in Rio Piedras. Unlike in New York,
however, where Dominicans in Washington Heights are ethnically
dominant, in Puerto Rico Dominicans are much more likely to live
side by side with Puerto Ricans who are similarly poor, poorly
educated, and dark skinned: 52 percent of the black population in
Duany's Barrio Gandul study were Dominican, while the other 48
percent were Puerto Rican; in contrast, 87 percent of Barrio Gandul's
white population were Puerto Rican.10 This breakdown corresponds
to 2000 census data, which show that only 36.2 percent of
Dominicans in Puerto Rico classified themselves as white, while the
remaining 63.8 percent said they were black or "other" (mostly
meaning mulatto).11 Duany goes on to observe, "Whether or not they
liked it, Puerto Ricans lived side by side with Dominicans in most
residential areas of Santurce. 1112

Duany's 1998 essay on Dominicans concluded that "despite their

physical proximity [to Puerto Ricans in poor neighborhoods]
Dominican immigrants tend to be culturally isolated and socially
distant from Puerto Rican residents . . . [and] . . . many immigrants
are reasserting their own cultural background. This move may be
taken as an example of what has been called an oppositional or
reactive identity."" His 2005 study, however, includes information
suggesting that Dominican isolation may be more characteristic of the
first generation than of the second: demographic data demonstrate
that the majority of immigrants-6o percent-have been women, and
most of these have arrived young and single.14 Census data also
indicate a high rate of intermarriage with Puerto Ricans: in 1990,
5,558 persons were born in Puerto Rico of two Dominican parents,
but a far larger number-13,944-had only one Dominican parent.15
Thus, while first-generation Dominican immigrants may have tended
to maintain their cultural practices and identities, their Puerto Rican-
born children, many of whom have a Puerto Rican parent, have
grown up attending public schools alongside Puerto Ricans and
absorbing whatever music is being listened to by their counterparts-
and throughout the 199os that music consisted of the (often
overlapping) genres known as rap, reggae, and underground. The
influences have not been unidirectional, however: as Duany notes,
"The growing Dominican presence in Santurce and Rio Piedras has
visibly transformed the physical and cultural landscape of several
neighborhoods ... [and] is most evident in popular language, music,
religion, and food preferences"-more about which will be said in later
sections.16

MUSICAL INTERSECTIONS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF

REGGAETON
Musical-and more broadly, cultural-exchanges in the Caribbean have
been longstanding and extensive," but they have been particularly
active between the two neighboring islands of Puerto Rico and the
Dominican Republic, indeed, going back to the nineteenth century. '$
Puerto Rican jibaro music, for example, was a major influence on the
development of Dominican bachata in the 196os, and in the 19706
Dominicans joined much of Latin America in embracing salsa
(including Johnny Pacheco, the Dominican-born salsa musician and
founder of the seminal salsa record label Fania Records).19 In the
other direction, merengue has long been familiar to Puerto Ricans on
both the island and in New York. The i98os, however, witnessed a
confluence of musical influences swirling through Puerto Rico as well
as through the Dominican Republic and Spanish Caribbean New
York. In New York City, the coexistence of multiple Latin American
and Caribbean musics associated with various immigrant groups has
always been a characteristic feature of the city's soundscape, and
working musicians have been expected to be familiar with all of
them.20 In Puerto Rico, by contrast, the presence of non-Puerto
Rican musics has generated public controversies regarding their
impact on the island's national culture and identity.21 In the i98os, for
example, young roqueros (rockers), were seen by cultural nationalists
as cultural traitors for embracing the music of the colonizers, and
compared unfavorably to cocolos, the vernacular term for those who
preferred the more "authentic" salsa. These debates also had class
and racial undertones, as many of salsa's most passionate fans were
working class and dark skinned, while rock fans were more likely to
be whiter and more affluent.22

Below the surface of the public controversies between salsa and

rock during the i98os, Puerto Rican youth living in the island's poorest
barrios were actually gravitating toward rap-which was clearly not a
native Puerto Rican music. Rap generated similar objections from
cultural nationalists, but it nevertheless seeped into poor
neighborhoods, brought to the island by New Yorkbased Puerto
Ricans who had grown up listening to and performing rap alongside
their African American neighbors in the South Bronx and East
Harlem. By the end of the i98os, rap had been indigenized by rappers
such as Vico C, whose Spanish lyrics and vernacular language
assertively articulated oppositional working-class sensibilities. Some
rap en espanol was released commercially by artists such as Vico C,
Lisa M, Brewley, and Francheska in the early 199os, but most Puerto
Rican rap en espanol artists at the time had little access to the media
or commercial distribution because of their explicitly sexual and
violent lyrics-hence the term underground applied to the style.

Concurrently, another non-Puerto Rican music was making inroads

on the island (as well as in Latino New York): merengue. In the 198os
a number of Dominican merengue bands such as Conjunto
Quisqueya and Jossie Esteban y La Patrulla 15-and, later in the
decade, Tono Rosario-took up residence in Puerto Rico because the
economically better-off island offered more performance
opportunities. In spite of its Spanish Caribbean roots, merengue also
generated controversy, although the concerns were more economic
than cultural: Puerto Rican musicians accused Dominican bands,
who were willing to work for less, of taking work away from salsa
musicians; Dominicans countered that they were simply providing
fresh sounds to fans losing interest in salsa's trajectory toward
increasingly formulaic arrangements and romantic balladlike lyrics.23
Both Puerto Ricans and Dominicans were, of course, aware that
merengue's dominance over salsa represented a turning of tables, as
salsa had previously overshadowed merengue in popularity in the
Dominican Republic in the 1970s. By the 199os merengue was so
entrenched in Puerto Rico that Puerto Ricans themselves began
forming merengue groups, and some of them, such as Olga Tanon
and Elvis Crespo, even began winning Grammys for their
merengues.24

One Puerto Rican entrepreneur, Jorge Oquendo, took advantage of

these popular but nonintersecting musical trends, and by doing so
participated in laying the foundations for what was later to become
reggaeton. Oquendo was born in the United States but raised on the
island by his well-off Puerto Rican father and Spanish mother. In the
mid-i98os he lived in Harlem while attending Columbia University, and
became immersed in hip-hop. When he returned to Puerto Rico in
1987, he noticed that young working-class Puerto Ricans were
listening to the same music. Oquendo recalls that around 199o, when
he and his partner Miguel Correa started producing concerts of
American hip-hop, "Vico C comes along asking to do an opening act,
I think it was for Public Enemy. I asked him what he sang, because I
didn't know anything about Vico C. He brings me a demo, and we
decided to let him open the concert and then to record a record. 1125
Oquendo's record label, Prime Records, went on to successfully
market Vico C and then recorded Vico C's dancer Lisa M (whose
mother was Dominican); her similarly successful recordings opened
doors for Francheska and other women rappers. In the late 198os,
when Dominican merenguero Tono Rosario separated from his group
Los Hermanos Rosario and moved to Puerto Rico to develop his own
career, he was signed by Prime Records and went on to become one
of the island's most successful merengue performers.

Oquendo then conceived the idea of combining the two genres-rap

and merengue-by encouraging collaborations between his most
popular rap artists-Vico C, Lisa M, Francheska-and his most popular
merengue artists- Tono Rosario and Jossie Esteban. Oquendo recalls
that it was not easy to convince any of the artists to participate,
because no one had previously tried to mix the two genres, but his
Dominican arranger Israel Casado agreed to the project and did the
arrangements. The resulting fusion, called merenrap, was primarily
driven by merengue's signature 2/4 rhythm accented by the genre's
indispensable tambora drum and guira scraper as well as its
prominent horn sections and saxophone arpeggios, but the fusion
with rap was expressed in lyrics that were rapped rather than sung,
and synthesized drums that occasionally augmented the more
traditional rhythm section. These experimental sounds sold well in
Puerto Rico as well as in the United States, and stimulated musicians
who had originally held back to try their hand at merenrap. In 1991
Prime Records released a compilation entitled Merenrap, containing
merenrap songs that had appeared on individual artists' previous
recordings. Another version was released in the United States (and
beyond) that same year by BMG, which was followed by another
similarly titled compilation in 1993.26

Around 199o, within months of Prime Records' first merenrap

experiments, Oquendo accompanied Tono Rosario on a tour to New
York, and was approached by a young Panamanian musician who
said, as quoted in an interview on July 23, 2006, "'I hear you are
making rap in Spanish. I do reggae in Spanish: And so we signed El
General.... [who] was established in New York and had 2 songs ['Tu
Pun Pun' and `Te Ves Buena']. We produced four more, on a record
with six songs." The profound impact of Prime Records' 199o release
of El General's "Te Ves Buena," with its catchy Spanish lyrics over
Jamaican dancehall rhythms, is documented in Wayne Marshall's
essay in this volume. It is noteworthy that a remix of "Te Ves Buena"
was also included in the 1991 BMG version of Merenrap; since it did
not appear on Prime Records' version released earlier that year, its
inclusion on the BMG version appears to be opportunistic. Even the
original Prime version of the 1991 compilation, however, already
contained songs fusing reggae en espanol with rap and merengue:
Lisa M and Santi y Sus Duendes' version of El General's wildly
popular "Tu Pun Pun" (listed as "El Pum Pum"27), and Brewley
M.C.'s "Neva Sexy." The sounds of reggae en espanol in this widely
heard CD even further confused the already blurred distinctions
between rap, reggae en espanol, and merenrap. As Lisa M recalled
in an interview, "El ambiente y la industria nos confundian a nosotros
mismos los artistas porque, por ejemplo, acababa mi disco yen vez
de ponerme en rap o en hip hop, me ponian en tropical o en pop,
porque acuerdate que antes no existia el genero. Entonces, Para
entrar al mercado, claro esta, teniamos una variedad de ritmos y de
fusiones. Pero nunca dej6 de ser rap, yo nunca deje de ser rapera."
(We artists were confused by the general public as well as the
industry, because, for example, I finished my record and instead of
putting me in rap or hip-hop, they put me in tropical or pop, because
remember that the genre [reggaeton] didn't exist before that. In those
days, to enter the market, of course, we had a variety of rhythms and
fusions. But it never stopped being rap, I never stopped being a
rapper.)29

It is important to note that meren-rap was a studio experiment

rather than a grassroots cultural phenomenon like Puerto Rican
underground, and it was short lived. As musicians adopted reggae en
espanol's dancehall beats, the style all but eclipsed meren-rap in
Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, as Oquendo notes, it was a milestone at
the time: "At first people didn't see that [fusions could work], because
merengue and rap existed before, and both were strong for years, but
they hadn't been fused. They marked the precedent of fusing popular
rhythms, with the result also being popular."30

The role of meren-rap in the evolution of reggaeton is subject to

interpretation: for some it was a parallel development that had no
direct influence on reggaeton, while others, including Oquendo, see it
as part of the musical stew from which reggaeton emerged.
Oquendo, of course, has a vested interest in promoting a history of
reggaeton in which his record label plays a central role, but his
thoughts are nonetheless worth reproducing: "Remember reggaeton
was an evolution, it didn't emerge from one day to the next. First rap
and merengue, then rap and reggaeton, then the three of them mix....
Meren-rap is the foundation of reggaeton, the essence, reggaeton
comes out of it. On one hand, its all rap, because that's the form of
interpreting it. Then there's merengue and there's reggae. The fusion
of the three is called reggaeton."31

If fusions of rap and merengue were no longer being produced in

Puerto Rico, they continued to develop in New York City throughout
the 199os, with the music of Proyecto Uno and DLG (who also fused
salsa and rap); both groups were composed of New York-based
Dominican and Puerto Rican musicians. The Dominican group
Fulanito, in contrast, fused rap and the more folkloric merengue
tipico. Successful as these recordings were, such fusions of rap and
merengue and bachata did not coalesce into a new genre, nor were
they in dialogue with developments taking place in Puerto Rico's
underground scene, where, as Marshall points out in this volume,
fusions of rap and dancehall reggae predominated. It was not until a
decade later, after reggaeton had emerged as a distinct style, that the
sounds of merengue, and the relative newcomer, bachata, appeared
(or reappeared).

The appearance of Dominican styles in reggaeton coincided with

the arrival in Puerto Rico of the Dominican-born production team
Luny Tunes-although they are not solely responsible for this
development. Luny (Francisco Saldana32) moved to Puerto Rico
from the Dominican Republic with his mother and sisters as a child,
where he "[grew] up listening to underground Puerto Rican rap' ;33 as
a teen his family moved to Peabody, Massachusetts, just outside of
Boston. Luny met Tunes (Victor Cabrera) in Peabody, where both of
them attended high school (Tunes' family had immigrated directly
from the Dominican Republic). The two friends listened constantly to
reggaeton tapes brought from Puerto Rico, and began working
together as producers, with Luny producing the drum patterns and
sound engineering while Tunes provided melodies. In 2000 Luny
received an opportunity to work in the studio of the reggaeton
producer Di Nelson in Puerto Rico, and Tunes accompanied him.34
They began producing a string of successful releases for reggaeton
artists from Ivy Queen to Tego Calderon to Daddy Yankee. Luny
Tunes collaborated with Tego Calderon on his influential 2002-3
recording El Abayarde'35 considered to be a milestone in reggaeton
development, not only because his lyrics explicitly addressed the
issue of racism, but also because of his extensive use of live and
sampled instruments, and the extraordinary diversity of the rhythms
he engages with, from Puerto Rican bomba and salsa, to hip-hop, to
Jamaican reggae/dance- hall.36 Another song, "Pa' Que Retozen
[sic]," features the unmistakable guitar sounds of Dominican bachata-
although it was produced not by Luny Tunes but by DJ Joe. (In a
video of a live performance of this song, a guitarist sits behind the
rapping Calderon, playing bachata's characteristic arpeggios.) Luny
Tunes' own 2003 hit compilation, Mas Flow, also included a Tego
Calderon song, "Metele Sazon," which exhibits bachata's signature
guitar arpeggios as well as merengue's characteristic piano riffs.37

In the wake of the success of these songs, other musicians began

incorporating merengue and bachata into reggaeton.38 Of these two
Dominican genres, the guitar-based bachata has been incorporated
into reggaeton more frequently than merengue, although it is
important to note that bachata can also be played in merengue
rhythm; in other words, a reggaeton song can simultaneously have
bachata's guitar-based sound and merengue's rhythm. A smaller
number of reggaeton songs incorporate merengue aesthetics-
particularly its repeating piano patterns-without references to
bachata. Ivy Queen's "Te He Querido, Te He Dorado" and "La Mala,"
for example, contain bachata's signature guitar sound and slower,
more romantic rhythm; in "La Mala" Ivy Queen also adopts bachata's
exaggerated emotional singing style. Don Omar's "Dile," in contrast,
incorporates the bachata-merengue style-bachata's characteristic
guitar sound over a merengue rhythm. Daddy Yankee's "Brugal"
(whose song title refers to the popular Dominican rum of that name)
incorporates only merengue's characteristic keyboard riffs.

Noted Puerto Rican hip-hop DJ, Mc, and radio host Velcro (the
Puerto Rico-born child of a Dominican mother and Mexican father)
noted, "In the same way you can mark reggaeton before and after
Tego, there's a before and after Luny Tunes.... Luny Tunes
contributed something very positive, because they solidified the
marriage between bachata and reggaeton. It made it what it is, a
tropical music, in that way it distinguished it from hip-hop."39 Today,
as producer Boy Wonder (himself of Dominican descent, born and
raised in New York) notes, "Bachata and merengue is hot, it's been a
major success ... and now every album has to have some Latin
influence."40

These changes have transformed reggaeton, as Wayne Marshall

has noted in this volume: "the genre's cultural politics might be seen
(and heard) as undergoing a major shift around the turn of the
millennium, moving away from a sonically, textually, and visually
encoded foregrounding of racial community and toward nationalist . . .
Latin/pan-Latin signifiers-or, to put it in the words of reggaeton
performers themselves, from `musica negra' to `Reggaeton Latino."
Not everyone has appreciated these developments, particularly
hiphop artists, who felt that the new style-more melodic and party-
oriented, and far more commercial-was distancing reggaeton from its
original role as "the primary voice of the street."41

A further development in the use of bachata occurred in 2005,

when producers began remixing existing reggaeton hits with
bachata's characteristic guitar sounds and marketing them as
bachat6n, defining it as "bachata a lo boricua" (bachata, Puerto Rican
style). In addition to the infusion of Dominican musical aesthetics,
textual and visual references to the Dominican Republic and
Dominican culture abound in reggaeton songs and videos. The video
for Angel y Khris's hit song "Ven Bailalo," for example, was filmed in
the Dominican Republic's resort town Boca Chica, and features
stereotypically tropicalized images of the Dominican Republic (e.g.,
black women carrying large pans of fruit on their heads, multicolored
parrots, straw hats, painted buses) and scenes of the artists dancing
with light-skinned Dominican women. Similarly, the multiple
references to Dominican places, beers, and rums (and women) in
Daddy Yankee's song "Brugal" clearly locate the singer as a visitor in
the Dominican Republic, as Tego Calderon similarly does in his song
"Do- minicana."42 Tego Calderon and Don Omar have also
performed duets with the New York-based bachata stars Aventura.

REGGAETON AND DOMINICANS BEYOND PUERTO RICO

Such amicable references to Dominican culture are not altogether

surprising, given the longstanding popularity of Dominican musics (if
not Dominican people) among Puerto Ricans, and the fact that the
Dominican Republic is a popular vacation destination for Puerto
Ricans.43 More important, Dominicans represent reggaeton's primary
non-Puerto Rican fan base, so such references also have economic
benefits:44 as Jorge Oquendo notes, "Everyone has the same goal,
to sell records, so the Puerto Rican producer will use Dominican
elements that he knows about, and the Dominican producer will use
the Puerto Rican elements, and mix them as well as he can."45 Even
though the Dominican Republic is not a lucrative market for record
sales-it is poorer than Puerto Rico, and piracy there is rampant-
reggaeton artists routinely travel to the Dominican Republic to
perform, as salsa and merengue singers did before them.
Commenting on the frequency of these tours, the Dominican
journalist Maximo Jimenez argued that the Dominican Republic has
become an important stepping stone for Puerto Rican artists wanting
to make headway in the United States, because there are more radio
and television stations playing Spanish Caribbean popular music in
the Dominican Republic than in Puerto Rico, thus offering Puerto
Rican musicians easier access to the media. Miami-based radio
stations, he goes on to claim, routinely monitor what is popular in the
Dominican Republic in order to identify upcoming hits.46 (He did not
mention, however, that radio stations in Puerto Rico are monitored as
well.)

Unlike in New York, where reggaeton's popularity is relatively new,

reggaeton has been circulating in the Dominican Republic since its
inception in the 199os. Indeed, the concurrent presence of rap en
espanol and reggae en espanol (including the experimental meren-
rap) that characterized the underground music scene in Puerto Rico
was virtually paralleled in the Dominican Republic -as were the fuzzy
boundaries between these genres. Orquidea Negra, the twenty-
seven-year-old female rapper in the New York-based reggaeton duo
L.D.A., was born in the Dominican Republic and lived there until she
was seventeen; she recalls that as an adolescent in the early 199os,
she and her friends listened to rap en espanol and reggae en
espanol-and meren-rap. "It was initially reggaeton, not only from P.R.
but also from Panama. But mostly from P.R., the tapes that were
famous at the time were the Playero tapes. There were some
beginnings of Dominicans rapping and singing Spanish hip-hop and
reggaeton. I recall the first [Dominican] group that I knew back then
was Mc Connection, they used to do Spanish reggae and hip-hop."47
Enough of it was Puerto Rican, however, that the common term for
underground artists in the Dominican Republic was playeros, a
reference to the seminal Puerto Rican DJ Playero.48

Orquidea Negra also remembers listening to fused merengue and

rap by a group called Sandy y Papo, which she distinguishes from the
Puerto Rican productions, which were collaborations between
merengue and rap artists, while Sandy y Papo were rappers rapping
to a merengue beat: "This was not a collaboration; it was not a
merengue featuring rap artists. The real meren-rap was rappers
doing merengue."49 Sandy y Papo released their first recording in
1996 so but the Dominican fusions did not flourish as well as the
contemporaneous productions of their Puerto Rican counterparts.
One reason was that the then more authoritarian Dominican
government subjected young rappers to even greater levels of
censorship than in Puerto Rico, hindering Dominican rappers and
reggaetoneros in their ability to access the media and develop a
mass public fan base.5' Orquidea Negra, who listened to rap as an
adolescent in the early 199os in Santo Domingo, recalled:

When it first started making a lot of noise it was perceived as a

very negative music and a lot of people didn't support it. My father
was one of the first individuals to do parties that would play that
type of music. The neighbors would send narcotics [agents] there;
they would send the police, because it was different.... People
used to dress very baggy, wear their clothes backwards, their hair
style was wild, so most people in the Dominican Republic, adults,
they were not so fond of the music. When the music started I saw
it as a rebellion type of thing for youth to express themselves. The
topics were very raw: there were sexual topics, about the
government, the police, about parents, and it wasn't accepted at
all when it came out.52

In addition to experiencing greater levels of censorship, Dominican

artists also lacked the advantage of access to the resources-capital,
technology, mediaafforded by the United States that were available to
Puerto Rican musicians. Puerto Ricans' success, however, opened
doors to their Dominican counterparts, and as reggaeton's
international popularity spread in the wake of recordings such as
Daddy Yankee's 2004 Barrio Fino (much of which, including the
mega-hit "Gasolina," was produced by Luny Tunes), reggaeton from
the Dominican Republic began finding more outlets. Among them
were Don Miguelo, whose 20o6 "Cola de Motora" was the first
Dominican reggaeton to become a hit in Puerto Rico and New
York,53 and Papi Sanchez, who has released two recordings with
Sony since 2004.54 Another Dominican group, Aguakate,
distinguished itself by mixing reggaeton with the accordion-based
sounds of merengue tipico.55

In New York City, on the other hand, where young Dominicans and
Puerto Ricans born or raised in the United States were more attached
to hip-hop, reggaeton didn't really take hold until a few years ago.
Orquidea Negra, who moved to the United States in 1996, suggests
some of the reasons why this may have been so:

It started the same way-not during the same time-but the same
influence: first we were doing more Spanish hip-hop and then
evolved more towards the reggaeton side. Our influences are
more hip-hop, moreno [black] hip-hop, so our styles are different
because the way of living is more different; we are more hip-hop,
you know? Like I'm hearing Busta Rhymes, Method Man; we listen
more to that type of music, and so I think it influences our style to
be a little more different. Now, ever since reggaeton became so
mainstream-you see every artist whether they are from Dominican
Republic, Puerto Rico, or from here-they dress like from the hip-
hop culture from the United States. It was not like that before. Two,
three years ago if you look at the CD covers they used to dress
more like with slacks; they look more preppy, but artists from
United States who do hip-hop and Spanish reggaeton, we always
dress baggy.56
While reggaeton had been quietly circulating on tapes in New York
(as it had in Boston when members of the Luny Tunes production
team were living in Peabody), its public arrival in New York was
marked by the sold-out August 2003 Reggaeton Summerfest concert
at Madison Square Garden. Another subsequent milestone was the
December 2004 release of the first reggaeton documentary, The
Chosen Few, a DVD with interviews and live performances by the
likes of Vico C, El General, Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Tego
Calderon, Luny Tunes, and many more. The DVD documentary was
packaged with a CD containing recordings by the featured musicians.
The Chosen Few's producer was Manuel Alejandro Ruiz, a.k.a. Boy
Wonder, born and raised in New York by his Dominican mother.
Around 2003 Boy Wonder went to visit his mother's family in the
Dominican Republic, where he discovered a music scene immersed
in both hip-hop and reggaeton: "It was crazy, here were Latinos
making new sounds, not just imitating what had come before, or
ripping beats. I had seen the future!"57 After returning to New York,
Boy Wonder was determined to make a documentary about
reggaeton, notwithstanding his lack of any experience with
filmmaking. Fortunately his maternal uncle July Ruiz was able to
open doors to key music industry personnel: July Ruiz was one of the
Dominican Republic's most important sound engineers, who had won
a Grammy credit for his work on Juan Luis Guerra's 2000 No Es Lo
Mismo Ni Es Igual.5S The Chosen Few CD and DVD set, which sold
over 500,000 copies, ranked on Billboard charts for months, many of
them in the top five. Indeed, The Chosen Few's success in
disseminating this new music-as well as its associated images,
spaces, fashions, and cultural ideologies-did for reggaeton what the
films Wild Style accomplished for hip-hop in 1983 and Our Latin
Thing for salsa in 1972.

Today, a few years after reggaeton triumphed in New York, the

economic potential of the city's powerful Latin music and hip-hop
media and hundreds of thousands of Latinos of all nationalities have
helped transform New York into an important center of reggaeton
production. As Orquidea Negra responded when asked if she had
encountered any resistance within a rapidly exploding music scene
dominated by Puerto Rican artists:

The music was considered only a particular race could do this type
of music; I've heard that mentality.... When we were not at the level
we are at now, it was more difficult to go to a record label and say
"hey this is mine"; they would be like "you are an outsider."
Because you are an outsider, before they would even listen to the
music it would influence the way they see the music that you
present to them.

Orquidea Negra went on to say, however, that things have changed,

and indeed, in New York the collaborations between Puerto Rican
and Dominican artists-and African American artists-have been
extensive and significant, one well-known example being N.O.R.E.'s
"Oye Mi Canto," which features U.S.-Dominican artists Gem Star, Big
Mato, and L.D.A. Another of N.O.R.E.'s collaborations with New York
Puerto Ricans and Dominicans is his song "Mas Maiz," a version of a
Dominican merengue originally performed by Raul Acosta of the
popular merengue group Oro SOlido (which was censored in the
Dominican Republic because of its lyrics).59

Boy Wonder's label Chosen Few has been particularly active in

supporting New York-based talent of Dominican descent, such as
L.D.A. Scores of other Dominican reggaeton groups are beginning to
emerge. Some, such as Jhosy & Baby Q and Noztra, have been
signed by record labels and are releasing recordings that identify the
musicians as Dominican via their use of Dominican vernacular and
references to Dominican merengue and bachata; other hopeful
Dominican newcomers promote themselves on the Internet.

In summary, on the U.S. mainland, where both Puerto Ricans and

Domini cans are both marginalized ethnoracial minorities, relations
have been generally more cooperative than on the island-reggaeton's
"home base"-where the differences in status and power between
native Puerto Ricans and immigrant Dominicans has been more
pronounced. On the mainland, constructions of reggaeton as a solely
Puerto Rican creation have also been challenged by notions of
reggaeton as an Afrodiasporic and/or a pan-Latin genre characterized
precisely by its hybridity. Indeed, reggaeton's hybridity has been
credited with enhancing its appeal to young Latinos throughout the
hemisphere. Opinions about reggaeton's origins and ownership have
thus become more dependent on locality. As Boy Wonder observed,
"Somebody from here [New York] who knows reggaeton who's never
been to Puerto Rico would probably see it from that angle, but
someone who knows reggaeton who's only lived in Puerto Rico and
saw reggaeton start and sees how big it is now would judge it as
music from the island. I see it both ways. "60

REGGAETON AND THE NEGOTIATION OF

DOMINICAN AND PUERTO RICAN IDENTITY

Reggaeton's explosion into the international music arena, and the

concomitant growth of its economic value, has stimulated cultural
observers (including those contributing to this anthology) to propose
historical narratives of reggaeton's origins, which now abound in the
press and on the Internet. Reggaeton's Jamaican, Panamanian, and
African American antecedents are widely acknowledged; with the
exception of the incontestably influential Luny Tunes, the
contributions of Dominican musicians and Dominican styles have
been far less visible. Additionally, there has been little recognition that
among the residents of the poor, black, marginalized neighborhoods
in Puerto Rico from which reggaeton emerged and whose voice
reggaeton is assumed to represent, are thousands of poor, black,
ethnically Dominican, and thus triply marginalized, youths. Both the
Puerto Rican Don Omar and hip-hop artist SieteNueve, of Dominican
ancestry, for example, were raised in Villa Palmeras, a San Juan
barrio with a rapidly growing population of Dominican immigrants.
The Dominican-origin O.G. Black and his Puerto Rican collaborator
Master Joe came together in San Juan in just such a location: "We
united in Puerto Rico Cazerillo [sic; caserio is the slang Spanish term
meaning "public housing projects" or "'hood"] and that's when the first
CD was born, `Playero 37,' which featured artist [sic] such as Daddy
Yankee. It was just made for all the local kids in the hoods and just to
have something to play in the stereo during parties.""

In short, if reggaeton, like other grassroots forms of popular music,

is the expression of a community that shares a particular kind of
social contextwhich most reggaeton observers and critics indeed
claim-the Dominicans who shared the same spaces and the same
experiences of class- and race-based discrimination must be taken
into consideration as part of the cultural matrix from which reggaeton
emerged. Moreover, second-generation Dominicans born and/or
raised in Puerto Rico have also been producing and consuming
reggaeton since its inception. Francisco Saldana (Luny), whose
immersion in Puerto Rican underground took place in the San Juan
barrio where he spent his early adolescence,62 is the best-known
example, but many of Puerto Rican reggaeton's biggest stars appear
to have one or both Dominican parents, including Eddie Dee,63 Baby
Ranks (both parents Dominican), Nicky Jam (Puerto Rican father,
Dominican mother, born in Dominican Republic), O.G. Black'64 and
Javia.65 Interestingly, while their Dominican parents are
acknowledged on fan websites, these artists are seldom represented
as Dominican. Indeed, the island's slippery ethnoracial terrain seems
to be producing fewer Dominicanidentified groups than in New York.
Mc Welmo E. Romero Joseph (born in Puerto Rico of Dominican and
Haitian parents) notes that a reggaeton artist of Dominican ancestry
but born and/or raised in Puerto Rico who identifies as Dominican
has not emerged: "It's strange that after fifteen years of reggaeton
there hasn't been a Dominican identified artist.... It's interesting; [it's
like] I can take your music and I can use your music, but in the
production space. But as Mc then they can't participate."66

Some of the individuals I interviewed ventured that one reason

Dominicans are not more visible in Puerto Rico's reggaeton scene is
because the Puerto Rican-born children of Dominicans assume a
Puerto Rican identity. There is nothing new about this process: during
the early twentieth century, when the direction of migration was
reversed as Puerto Ricans migrated to the Dominican Republic and
Cuba to take advantage of the neighboring islands' more robust
economies, Puerto Rican children born abroad tended to assume the
identity of their parents' adopted nations. Similarly, the children of
Cuban exiles who settled in Puerto Rico after the revolution tended to
identify as Puerto Ricans-all of this suggesting that the similarities
between these Spanish Caribbean cultures facilitates this
reidentification.67

Moreover, unlike multiethnic locations such as New York, where

children of immigrants are more likely to maintain some degree of
ethnic identity (whether as a proactive political stance or as a
defensive response to their marginalization), Puerto Rico's more
ethnically homogenous population may discourage such
"hyphenated" identities. Puerto Ricans' intense preoccupation with
cultural identity in the context of its colonial status might further push
island-born youth to assume a Puerto Rican identity rather than to
assume a mixed identity. The example of mainland-based Puerto
Ricans, whose Puerto Rican-ness is constantly challenged by their
island counterparts because of their biculturality, surely serves as an
additional deterrent. Nevertheless, the preference for assuming a
Puerto Rican rather than a hyphenated identity may also be the
product of pervasive anti-Dominican sentiments, which would not
encourage public displays of ethnic affiliation and pride. Raquel Z.
Rivera raises this very issue when she interprets a song called "Ji-
baro-jop" by SieteNueve, in which he openly celebrates both of his
national heritages: "Considering the rampant discrimination and ill
feelings existing towards Dominicans in Puerto Rico, it is doubly
significant that SieteNueve actually opts for flaunting his
Dominicanness. To add even more complexity to the matter,
SieteNueve is not explaining that he is Puerto Rican even though his
parents are Dominican. He is proudly celebrating that he is Puerto
Rican and Dominican."68

Under such circumstances, the efforts of second-generation youth

to negotiate a mixed Puerto Rican and Dominican identity is perilous
indeed, as a blog by a young man of mixed Puerto Rican and
Dominican heritage, but raised in New York, painfully conveys. The
young man's anxieties about his identity are generated not only by his
location in New York, which makes his Puerto Rican-ness vulnerable
to challenge by island Puerto Ricans, but also because in New York,
unlike in Puerto Rico-where Puerto Rican-born Dominicans are
expected to assume a Puerto Rican identity-he is expected to
embrace both of his heritages, even though his Dominican heritage
renders him vulnerable to Puerto Ricans' anti-Dominican
discrimination.

If Puerto Rican identity wasn't difficult enough to define and

maintain, try being half-Puerto Rican. Try having the other half
being Dominicanthe unwanted immigrant class of Puerto Rico. I
am not one to deny my ancestrial [sic] bloodline, which 50% is
Dominican, but I really did not grow-up loving D.R. (Even though I
seek new knowledge on that nation all the time) I grew-up loving
(and still to this day love) Puerto Rico. Sadly, it is inferred by many
Boricuas that because I am half-Dominican then therefore I am
less than a "true" Boricua, or whatever that means. Whenever I
disagree with a fellow Boricua's point of view on a particular island
theme, my Dominican heritage is thrown into my face. I am also
tired of people thinking, especially Boricuas that believe because I
look like a mulatto, that I must be Dominican.69

There are many gestures of collaboration in spaces occupied by hip-

hop and reggaeton musicians and fans, but the longstanding tensions
between the two nationalities simmer just below the surface and can
easily flare up, especially around questions of musical ownership and
participation. Raquel Z. Rivera, for example, noticed equal numbers
of Puerto Rican and Dominican flags at the 2003 Reggaeton
Summerfest concert at Madison Square Garden, and that the artists'
"shout outs" to Puerto Ricans and Dominicans provoked equally
enthusiastic responses. But she contrasts this scene of ethnic
solidarity with fan behavior at a Tego Calderon performance she
witnessed in a New York club the evening of the annual Puerto Rican
day parade, when nationalist sentiments were running high. A young
man mimicking Calderon's every word and gesture was invited up on
stage and given appreciative applause, but when the song was over
and Calderon asked the young man his name, the audience became
noticeably disgruntled when he identified himself as Dominican.
"Having violated the public's nationalist presumptions, the mini-
Tego's declarations of love and respect for Puerto Ricans did him no
good at all."70

Similar tensions underpin an online discussion between Puerto

Rican and Dominican participants about Dominican participation in
reggaeton. The following selections from a long discussion began
with a simple question, but quickly heated up when questions of
musical ownership fanned out to encompass other points of conflict,
including the impact of racism and the economic and political
disparities between the islands. (Note: I deduced nationalities from
references contained in the longer thread.)

ANTILLANO

07-17-2005, 09:11 AM

Do any of you know of any popular Dominican Reggaeton stars? I've

noticed that as Reggaeton has hit the mainland U.S. mainstream,
most of the genre's fomented stars have been Puerto Rican, but there
must be some Dominican Reggaeton artists, since it is P.R.'s closest
neighbor and Boricua Reggaeton artists routinely perform there.

YARI [PUERTO RICAN]

08-26-2005, 10:01 PM

Yes some BACHATA & MERENGUE ARTIST are jumping on the

wagon which I think is rediculous because it is not their genre, they
are just wanting to go with what's popular .... PLUS this music been
on the scene, underground that is, for forever.
DADDY1 [DOMINICAN]

08-27-2005, 07:02 AM

in another year or so ... that same beat duplicated for every song will
tire out, and all of you know que Puerto Ricans saturate everything,
just like they did with there bomba style merengue" . . . that music
can only survive for so long ... before it sticks badly between your
ears and makes you sick to your stomach after seeing one hundred
artist from P.R. do the same thing and play the same damm beat over
and over again.

MAMI-TE-LA-COMO [PUERTO RICAN]

08-27-2005, 08:01 PM

I know that the merengue bomba us Puerto Ricans took it and made
it look like it was all the same and maybe people got bored with it, but
at the same time we made merengue more popular than any other
merengue players have. We won a bunch of premio lo nuestro, latin
gramys and not only that but if u put attention to the words of the
puertorican merengue bomba is more about love, gurls beauty, and
stuff like that not like LA VACA or LA POPOLA u see the difference?
72

About reaeggeton . . . its a combination of Jamaican reaegge and

Puerto rican flava ;) ... Same here we are the best at it . . . . we
invented reaggeton and we have take it to every corner of the world
inch by inch u cant say no about it .... This is for daddyi

DRAGONFLY32837 [DOMINICAN]

08-27-2005, 09:00 PM

Please don't say that all Dominican merengues talk about popolas
and vacas. And please don't say that Puerto Rican merengue is
better than Dominican merengue. Please! And it is not that you made
it popular. Ever heard of payola? It happens with most American radio
stations that play Hispanic music. Especially La Mega.

LESLEY D [DOMINICAN]

08-27-2005, 09:34 PM

I so agree with Dragonfly's post. I wasn't going comment but I just

want to remind Puerto Ricans (who I think have great music in their
own right don't get me wrong) if it weren't for Tono Rosario who
moved to P.R. when he formed his own band in the early 9o's there
would be nothing to boast about when it comes to merengue from
P.R. Merengue began to have renewed popularity in P.R. thanks to
Tono.

YARI [DOMINICAN]

08-28-2005, 04:30 AM

You cannot even seriously believe that pr put merengue on the map
... not so missy!! Es algo muy dominicano y no lo puedes negar [It's
something that's very Dominican and you can't deny it]. but on the
other hand, maybe the elvis crespo or the olga tanon music TO You
sounds better than some of our music. para los gustos se hicieron los
colores [different strokes for different folks], your ears, your choice.

You guys have salsa (for the most part cuz we have some dope
salseros too as well as colombia, venezuela etc . . . ) please dont try
to claim merengue too. JUST NOT ACCURATE. whats next, gonna
take credit for putting bachata on the map?? :lick:

ASOPAO [DOMINICAN]

08-28-2005, 02:48 PM

Ps: this is for the PR guy or girl (cant fig it out) who made the original
comment... no one country is better than the other.
 Puerto Rico is not a country, it is a COLONY. They can call it so
called "Estado Libre Asociado", but it is just a cover up name for
colony.

They don't have their own passports

They don't have their own currency

They don't have their own military

They can't make diplomatic decisions withouth Washington's

approval

So, Please, don't call Puerto Rico a " country" ever again. P.R.
never has been a " country"

MAMI-TE-LA-COMO [PUERTO RICAN]

08-28-2005, 03:05 PM

No we r not going to claim bachata and we r not claiming merengue

either we just help out merengue when it was in this time where
merengue were not winning anything or when people in Europe or
other parts of the world were not listening to it .... Merengue is very
very dominican and yea i cant denied that but u cant denied that we
helped merengue when it was in a crissis. 0011x11 and one more
thing .... If bachata get in a crissis then why not us taking it and help it
out and put it back on the road, we know how to do that;)

The thing is that we r not trying to keep merengue we just gave it a

boost when it was dead, thats all.

MAMI-TE-LA-COMO [PUERTO RICAN]

08-28-2005, 03:22 PM

jajaja asopao, u dont even know what ur saying about PR I dont

answer u the way im sopposed to because i respect DR and most of
my friends r dominicans and not only that but my gurl is dominican
and i have a daughter and another baby comming that r half
dominicans so if u want to know who rule this world even tho u r
disque "independent" thats U.S.A. yup u read rigth U.S.A. every
country if they make a bad decision in something theres U.S.A. a little
war or something there goes U.S.A. So study more watch the news
and then talk ok. I dont even know why u change the subject
anyways we r talking about merengue or regaeton not Politics.

ASOPAO [DOMINICAN]

08-28-2005, 07:14 PM

you're right, USA is the richest country on Earth and the boss/police
of the world and Puerto Ricans are smart in keeping the colonial
status. Otherwise they would be the ones taking up the yolas and
going to DR instead of viceversa. I don't think a single Dominican
would take a yola to PR if it were an indepentent country instead of a
U.S. Colony. D.R. is mad poor but we are very proud of our
independece and our history (didn't have to wait for uncle sam to
liberate us from Spain as far as 1898!). Anyways, this is not political
thread, you're right

On the music topic, where do you get the idea that P.R. "rescued"
merengue? hahaha, merengue was in a crisis?? you got to be joking?
Wilfrido Vargas alone with his baile del perrito took merengue even to
Mars ! what you say about Juan Luis Guerra? please, I respect
Puerto Rican talent, you can say that they help to " pump it", but to "
rescue it from a crisis"?? that is ludricous ! haha, talking bunch of
babosadas. D.R. merengue has always been the best and most
prominent merengue,and always will be.

MAMI-TE-LA-COMO [PUERTO RICAN]

08-28-2005, 08:10 PM
Going back to the music, I agree with u that talents like Wilfrido and
Juan Luis have put the merengue up there but u have to give props to
us that we have done it and is not our music not only that but our
musicians are as good as dominicans u can ask all those
merengueros that lived in PR that u guys mentioned before like Tono
or Jossie Esteban, Sandy Reyes, Angelito Villalona, Wilfrido, they
played with puertorican musicians . . . hows that? ;)

LESLEY D [DOMINICAN]

08-28-2005, 08:18 PM

Asopao,

I think you should leave the political piece out of this thread that
is flowing nicely. There is no correlation between the thread topic
and politics so I think we should respect the O.P. and not
disrespect Puerto Rico in the process.

In my opinion P.R. has its own version of merengue not to be

confused with Dominican merengue. Personally, I think D.R.
merengue bands have the edge but their marketability has been
lost to the P.R. market. That's the problem!

YARI [DOMINICAN]

08-28-2005, 11:24 PM

since you adamantly proclaim that merengue was put on the radar
by P.R.... I'll tell ya what, maybe you might think this because on tv
or on American radios you heard more pr merengue. you may be
right, u may be wrong. im not going to argue that. but if you are
right, it is because of RACISM that pr artists like elvis crespo are
being marketed better or portrayed more in mainstream America.
on these award shows, why would they pick an artist of the mostly
black populated dr when they can choose one from pr? countries
 populated by dark skinned people are always scapegoated. look at
the many countries of Africa that are in turmoil, or even our
neighboring Haiti.

sorry guys, I know I got heavy here, but I think that the cause of
many trivial injustices such as this, is racism. call me bitter, I don't
really care. lick:"

REGGAETON: BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED BORDERS?

It is in the context of such complex, highly flammable interethnic

relationships that narratives of reggaeton's history and development
are being constructed; therefore, they must be interpreted with these
tensions in mind.74 A longer historical view underscores the
importance of approaching controversies regarding musical
ownership with a critical eye, especially in the case of quintessentially
hybrid musics that coalesce in a particular location during a crucial
period of their development. The debates about "who owns salsa" are
a case in point: The Cubans, because of the foundational importance
of Cuban son as the aesthetic backbone of salsa? Or Puerto Ricans,
because the style that emerged in New York was the expression of
the city's working-class Puerto Rican community? Attempts to
untangle the exact origins and definition of salsa have been greatly
complicated by the long history of intertwined relationships between
Puerto Ricans and Cubans sharing the same social spaces in New
York.75 Yet, even as Cuban genres overshadowed Puerto Rican
styles in the Latin music boom in the 1940s and '5os, when Puerto
Rican musicians were numerically dominant as performers as well as
fans in New York, the relations between immigrants of these two
nationalities were less precarious than those that developed between
native Puerto Ricans and Dominican immigrants to the island in the
198os.

It is instructive to compare the Puerto Rican/Dominican equation in

reggaeton's development to the similarly close but unequal
relationships characterizing African Americans and Puerto Ricans in
New York during the early years of the development of hip-hop,
because it illuminates the importance of both demographics and
economics in shaping public perceptions of musical ownership. In
New York, where Puerto Ricans were in the numerical minority
relative to their African American counterparts in overall population,
contributions of the former were largely erased as rap became
commercially successful and the economic stakes involved in issues
of cultural ownership became higher-leading to widespread
perceptions that hip-hop was an exclusively African American
creation. It wasn't until the 198os, when Juan Flores and in the
199os, Raquel Z. Rivera, revisited and reinterpreted the cultural
matrix from which hip-hop emerged, foregrounding the impact of
shared social context rather than focusing on narrowly defined racial
identities, that Puerto Ricans' participation in the development of hip-
hop could be appreciated.76 At the same time, as the purchasing
power of Latinos increased alongside rising levels of immigration,
Afrocentric narratives of rap's origins became, as Raquel Z. Rivera
noted, more "ghettocentric," a more inclusive narrative space in which
both historical and contemporary participation by Puerto Rican
musicians and fans could be acknowledged.77

In summary, if it is unassailable that reggaeton emerged as a

popular commercialized genre in Puerto Rico during the 199os and
that to date, the majority of the genre's most successful artists are
Puerto Rican, it is also true that Dominicans have been part of the
mix since its inception. The historic tensions between the two groups
have muted the visibility of Dominicans in public discourse about
reggaeton, but the future maybe brighter, since contemporary
reggaeton in New York as well as Puerto Rico (and in the Dominican
Republic itself) seems to be providing and nourishing a common
ground for creative and productive cultural interactions between the
two groups. As Orquidea Negra observes, "We have come a long
way to prove that it doesn't matter where you are from. You can still
have the same passion for the music and do it as well."78

NOTES
I want to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Raquel Z. Rivera,
Jorge Duany, and Wayne Marshall, whose thoughtful comments
made major contributions to this essay. Translations of Spanish-
language quotations are my own.

1. One exception is Irmary Reyes-Santos's Ph.D. dissertation

"Racial Geopolitics: Interrogating Caribbean Cultural Discourse in the
Era of Globalization" (University of California, San Diego, June 2007),
in which she notes "Though reggaet6n has been widely recognized
as a Puerto Rican genre, Dominicans have participated in its
production in the island and abroad since its beginnings." As an
unpublished manuscript, however, it has not yet affected the
discourse about reggaeton's origins.

2. For more detail on the causes of Dominican migration, see

Ramona Hernandez, The Mobility of Workers under Advanced
Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002).

3. The statistics on the Dominican population in Puerto Rico are

often confusing because they are sometimes based on the number of
visas issued (some of these people then proceed to the U.S.
mainland) while others estimate the actual numbers residing on the
island. I asked Jorge Duany, whose work I cite in this essay, to clarify:
"The 2000 Census found 61,455 residents of Dominican birth in
Puerto Rico, clearly an undercount. In addition, my fieldwork and
other studies have suggested that roughly one third of all Dominicans
in Puerto Rico are undocumented. Plus, the INS estimated that
34,000 undocumented immigrants were living on the Island in 1996.
So, one could guesstimate that at least 1oo,ooo Dominicans are
living in Puerto Rico as of 2006." E-mail message to author, August
10, 2006. The 2005 Puerto Rico Community Survey, administered by
the U.S. Census Bureau, estimated that there were 66,117 persons of
Dominican origin in Puerto Rico.

4. Jorge Duany, "Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico: A

Transnational Perspective," Centro journal 17, no. 1 (2005): 247.
 5. Jorge Duany, "Reconstructing Racial Identity: Ethnicity, Color and
Class among Dominicans in the united States and Puerto Rico," Latin
American Perspectives 25, no. 3 (1998): 147-72. In the Dominican
Republic darker-skinned people are referred to as indios; the term
black is reserved for Haitians.

6. Duany, "Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico," 248. Jorge Duany

draws these conclusions about the relative success of Dominican
immigrants in Puerto Rico and New York based on the percentage of
Dominicans engaged as managers and professionals and in retail
trade and light manufacturing in New York compared to their
counterparts on the island, who are more likely to work as domestics
and in construction.

7. Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on

the Island and in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2002), 248.

8. Duany, "Reconstructing Racial Identity," 166.

9. Ibid., 163.

io. Because race was a topic of "considerable unease" among both

Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, Duany's investigators classified their
subjects by observation as white, black, and mulatto; in New York
they also added another category, mestizo.

11. Francisco Rivera-Batiz, "Color in the Caribbean: Race and

Economic Outcomes in the Island of Puerto Rico" (paper presented at
the conference "Puerto Ricans on the Island and in the Mainland:
New Directions in Social Research," Russell Sage Foundation, New
York, May 21-22, 2004).

12. Duany, "Reconstructing Racial Identity," 161.

13. Ibid., 164.

 14. Duany, "Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico," 258.

15. Ibid., 260.

16. Ibid., 263.

17. Kenneth Bilby, "The Caribbean as a Musical Region," in

Caribbean Contours, ed. Sidney W. Mintz and Sally Price (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).

18. Paul Austerlitz, Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican

Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997). Nineteenth-
century musical exchanges between the islands produced variations
on the European contredanse that developed into the danzbn in
Cuba, danza in Puerto Rico, and merengue in the Dominican
Republic. For more on cultural exchanges between Dominicans and
Puerto Ricans, see Rita de Maese- neer, "Sobre dominicanos y
puertorriquefios: zMovimiento perpetuo?" Centro Journal 14, no. 1
(spring 2002): 53-66.

19. Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Bachata: A Social History of a

Dominican Popular Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1994).

20. Ruth Glasser, My Music Is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians

and Their New York Communities (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1995).

21. Raquel Z. Rivera, "Will the `Real' Puerto Rican Culture Please
Stand Up?: Thoughts on Cultural Nationalism," in None of the Above:
Puerto Ricans in the Global Era, ed. Frances Negron-Muntaner (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

22. Jorge Duany, "Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an

Anthropology of Salsa," Latin American Music Review 5, no. 2 (1984):
186-216; Frances Aparicio, Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular
Music and Puerto Rican Cultures (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of
New England, 1998), 69-82; Cocolos y Rockeros, film recording,
directed by Ana Maria Garcia (Pandora Films, 1992).

23. Regarding competition between Dominican and Puerto Rican

merengueros, Welmo E. Romero Joseph (whose essay is included in
this volume) recalled that in the 199os Puerto Rican merengue
groups were publicly criticized for paying "counterpayola," or payola
to radio stations not to play Dominican merengue groups. Interview
by author, May io, 20o6. For more on the competition between Puerto
Rican salseros and Dominican merengueros in the 198os, see Pacini
Hernandez, Bachata, 108-10.

24. On the rise of merengue singers in Puerto Rico, see Jorge

Duany's essay "'Lo tengo dominao': El boom de las merengueras en
Puerto Rico," reprinted in La Cancibn Popular 14 (1999): 21-24.

25. Jorge Oquendo, telephone interview by author, July 23, 20o6.

26. The 1991 compilation is Meren-rap (Ariola, 3277-2-RL); the

1993 compilation is Merenrap II (Prime/RCA, 3469-2-RL).

27. Oquendo, interview, July 23, 2006.

28. As Wayne Marshall notes in this volume, the title of this song,
originally released as "Pu Tun Tun," has appeared in many versions;
the name changes may have been an attempt to get past censors.

29. Mariela Fullana Acosta, "Lisa M llega a recuperar su lugar en el

reggaeton," Primera Hora, February 14, 20o6,
http://www.puertadetierra.com/figuras/artistas/lisa %2om/Lisa_M.htm
(accessed August 20o6).

30. Oquendo, interview, July 23, 2006.

31. Ibid.

32. The Spanish surname Saldana is very common, while Saldana

is not, so Spanish speakers assume the n rather than an n is a
typographical error; however, I use it here because it is the version
used in the artist's own website, http://www.masflowinc.net/
(accessed April 2007).

33. EMI Music Publishing, "Luny Tunes,"

http://www.emimusicpub.com/world wide/artist-profile/luny-tunes-
profile.html (accessed August 2006).

34• Ibid.; Jon Caramanica, "The Conquest of America (North and

South)," New York Times, December 4, 2005.

35. According to Raquel Z. Rivera, the album was originally

released in 2002 by White Lion, but then more widely rereleased (and
re-pressed) by BMG in 2003. Personal communication with the
author, September 7, 20o6.

36. Jorge Oquendo, interview, July 23, 2006. Jorge Oquendo was a
pioneer of sorts in fusing bachata and rap as well. After he signed
bachata musician Zacarias Ferreira to Prime Records, he tried,
unsuccessfully, to convince Ferreira to experiment with a fusion of rap
and bachata. Oquendo produced some mixtapes for radio and
discotheques, including a 2002 version of bachatero Joey's song
"Paloma" by a DJ called Chiclin, but he never released any of it
commercially.

37. In terms of musical structure, merengue piano riffs resemble the

repeating piano patterns in Cuban music called guajeos or montunos.

38. Sometimes bachatas played in merengue rhythm are called

bachata-merengues or merengue-bachatas-but not always. If
bachata is characterized by its guitar-based sound, "classic"
merengues-i.e., the styles that predated guitar-based merengues-are
characterized by their reed-driven sounds produced either by the
accordion (in merengue tipico) or the saxophone (in tfpico moderno
and merengue de orquesta).

39. Mc Velcro, interview by author, May io, 2006.

 40. Boy Wonder, telephone interview by author, July 22, 20o6.

41. Mc Velcro, interview, May io, 2006.

42. Tego borrowed the tune of "Dominicana" from a song by El

Gran Combo called "Ojos Chinos," but he added his own (highly
erotic) lyrics.

43. In addition to air travel, Puerto Ricans can easily visit the
Dominican Republic via a car ferry from Mayaguez, and with their
U.S. passports (and until recently, government-issued I D cards) they
have no difficulty obtaining short-term tourist visas. Dominicans can
also avail themselves of the ferry, but they need U.S. visas to enter
Puerto Rico-a much more difficult proposition even for tourist visas.

44. Puerto Rican reggaeton is also widely popular in Cuba, but

since Cuba does not have a well-developed commercial music
market, and thanks to the blockade, profit streams from that island to
U.S.-based record companies are negligible.

45. Oquendo, interview, July 23, 2006.

46. "No es casual que Daddy Yankee considere a Republica

Dominicana como su `segunda patria' Mucho antes de que el
afamado interprete de `La gasolina' se convirtiera en la estrella de la
musica que es hoy, venia al Pais a principios de los 9o, con el claro
objetivo de conectar con el publico dominicano, que es mas exigente
de lo que se considera.... En Miami hay varias emisoras muy
pendientes de cuales son los exitos del momento en el Pais.... [T]
ambien influye la proliferacon de medios de television, radio, Internet
y prensa escrita que tiene a su disposicion el mercado local. En
Puerto Rico son dos o tres emisoras que programan musica tropical,
mientras que en Republica Dominicana tenemos mas de seis
periodicos, mas de 200 emisoras y un numero considerable de
canales de television" [It is not an accident that Daddy Yankee
considers the Dominican Republic as his "second home." Long
before the famous interpreter of "La gasolina" became the music star
he is today, he used to come to the country in the early 9os, with the
clear objective of connecting with the Dominican public which is more
demanding than commonly thought. The proliferation of television,
radio, Internet and print media that takes into consideration the local
market is also influential. In Puerto Rico there are a few stations that
program tropical music, but in the Dominican Republic we have more
than six newspapers, more than two-hundred stations and a
considerable number of television stations]. Maximo Jimenez,
"Artistas de P.R. Usan," El Caribe, June 2, 20o6, http://
www.elcaribecdn.com/ articulo_multimedios.aspx?
id=87927&guid=5CAFA5A36B5741
DB9EACBEDF341oB747&Seccion=66 (accessed August 2006).

47. Orquidea Negra, telephone interview by author, July 24, 20o6.

48. Los Que he Oido, "DJ Playero,"

http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/munne/oido.htm (accessed August
2006). Orquidea Negra recalls that rappers and anybody wearing
baggy clothes were also called "Joes"; rockers were called GQs.
Orquidea Negra, interview, July 24, 2006.

49. Orquidea Negra, interview, July 24, 2006.

50. The entry from the All Music Guide by John Bush notes:
"Meren-rap duo Sandy y Papo blend the rich rhythms of classic
merengue with hard-hitting beats reminiscent of American club music,
both house and hip-hop. Recording for Parcha Records, the group
debuted with the 1996 EP Hora de Bailar. Otra Vez followed one year
later, and Sandy y Papo's Remix Album was released in July 1998."
http://www.allmusic.com/ cg/amg.dll (accessed August 2006).

51. Puerto Rican reggaetoneros, including Tego Calderon and

Daddy Yankee, have also been banned from performing in the
Dominican Republic because of their lyrics, and the offending songs
receive no radio play. See for example, "No reggaeton en D.R.," April
9, 2006,
http://www.ahorre.com/reggaeton/musica/music_business/(accessed
August 2006). It should be noted that censorship in the Dominican
Republic has never been applied consistently, and class-based
biases often determine what is considered too lewd for public
dissemination; see Pacini Hernandez, Bachata, 176. More recently,
the innocuous song "Camisa Negra" by the popular Colombian rocker
Juanes was banned because of its "negative lyrics" and double-
entendres, despite the fact that the Dominican Republic's popular
music is known for far more erotic sexual double-entendres.

52. Orquidea Negra, interview, July 24, 2006.

53• "Cola de Motora," in Contra el Tiempo, CD (Sony International,

BoooFDFSiS, 2006). A highly controversial remix of Don Miguelo's
"Cola de Motora" called "Cola de Camiona" transposes the original
double-entendre story of a girl riding on the singer's motorcycle and
urging him to go faster, to a dialogue between a policeman and an
undocumented Haitian immigrant who refuses to get off the truck
deporting him to Haiti.

54• Yeah Baby, CD (Sony International, B0002ZMILC, 2004);

Welcome to the Paradise, CD (Sony International, BoooBQ7JES,
2005).

55. De Otra Galaxia, CD (Universal Latino, Bo002C4I.MM, 2004).

56. Orquidea Negra, interview, July 24, 20o6.

57. Karl Avanzini, the American Society of Composers, Authors and

Publishers, "The Chosen One,"
http://www.ascap.com/playback/2oo6/winter/radar/boy_wonder .html
(accessed July 2006).

58. Interestingly, in the 198os, years before the (then) disreputable

bachata was legitimated by Guerra's earlier Grammy-winning
Bachata Rosa (1999), many struggling bachata musicians rented
studio time from Santo Domingo's EMCA Studios where Ruiz worked
at the time. Pacini Hernandez, Bachata, 186-87.
 59. Miguel Cruz Tejada, Alcaldia de Jersey City en I.J. reconoce a
Raul Acosta el `Presidente del Merengue' y orquesta Oro Solido,"
Primicias, April 6, 2007, http://
www.primicias.com.do/articulo,2378,html (accessed August 2006).

60. Boy Wonder, interview by author, July 22, 2006.

61. "Master Joe y O.G. Black,"

http://masreggaeton.com/masterjoeogblack.php (accessed July
2006).

62. EMI Music Publishing, "Luny Tunes,"

http://www.emimusicpub.com/worldwide / artist-profile / luny-tune
s_profile.html.

63. The artists' bios posted on Internet sites are often unreliable
because they are written by fans, but on the other hand, such sites
are often the only source of information on artists whose record labels
do not provide authorized biographies. In the case of Eddie Dee, his
Dominican background was mentioned by several of the individuals I
interviewed, including no less of an authority as Boy Wonder-himself
of Dominican extraction-but I could find no mention of Eddie Dee's
Dominican heritage on the Internet.

64. "Master Joe y O.G. Black,"

http://masreggaeton.com/masterjoeogblack.php (accessed August
2006). O.G. Black is identified as Dominican on a reggaeton website,
but it does not specify whether he is Dominican by birth or ancestry,
or both.

65. Boy Wonder, interview, July 22, 2006. The information on

Javia's Dominican ancestry was conveyed to me by Boy Wonder. As
Raquel Z. Rivera notes, Javia is also spelled Jahvia and Javiah,
personal communication with author, September 7, 2006.

66. Mc Welmo E. Romero Joseph, interview by author, May ll,

20o6.
 67. See Jorge Duany and Jose A. Cobas, Cubans in Puerto Rico:
Ethnic Economy and Cultural Identity (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1997); Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel, Caribe Two Ways:
Cultura de la migracibn en el Caribe insular hispdnico (San Juan:
Callejon, 2003). For more on the identity of the children born to
Puerto Rican migrants to the Dominican Republic, see Duany,
"Dominican Migration to Puerto Rico," 246. Raquel Z. Rivera, who
has Puerto Rican / Cuban relatives and who has also participated in
the Center for Puerto Rican Studies' efforts to document the Puerto
Rican diaspora in Cuba, notes that the children of Puerto Ricans
living in Cuba have historically identified as Cuban-although some
individuals have retained their claims to Puerto Rican ancestry for
various reasons, including obtaining authorization to relocate in the
United States. Personal communication with author, September 7,
2006. See also Raquel Z. Rivera, "Cubano-boricua busca historia de
sus antepasados," Siempre, July 14, 2004, 3; and Sandra Mustelier,
Ecos boricuas en el oriente cubano (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial
Makarios, 2006).

68. Rivera, "Will the `Real' Puerto Rican Culture Please Stand
Up?," 230.

69. Xavier, "DominiRican?," Trescaminos Blog, entry posted July

21, 2005, http:// trescaminos.blogspot.com/2005/07/ dominirican.html.
The word unwanted was boldface in the original.

70. Raquel Z. Rivera, "De un pajaro las dos patas," El Nuevo Dia,
April 4, 2004.

71. For more on "bomba-style merengue," see Paul Austerlitz,

Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Philadelphia:
Temple 'University Press, 1997), 95• The writer's reference to "bomba
style merengue" probably refers to a style of merengue originally
popularized in a hit song called "Bomba" by Dominican merengue
group Los Hermanos Rosario. The style, adopted by Puerto Rican
merengue groups, is characterized by a particular beat called maco,
which Paul Austerlitz defines "as a two-beat pulse evocative of disco
music"; he continues, "recording engineer July Ruiz attributes the
maco's popularity to its similarity to North American dance rhythms.
Indeed, party goers often abandon the ballroom dance position and
dance disco-style to maco arrangements."

72. The writer incorrectly identifies the song "La Popola" as

Dominican, most likely because the song's musical aesthetics lean
heavily toward merengue. The song is Puerto Rican and made
famous by reggaeton singer Glory (discussed in this volume by Felix
Jimenez).

73. The preceding discussion was edited from the original:

http://www.dri.com/ forums/general-stuff/41767-reggaeton-
dominicano.html (accessed August 2006).

74. Thanks to my husband, Reebee Garofalo, for his apt rephrasing

of Simon and Garfunkel's phrase.

75. Peter Manuel, "Puerto Rican Music and Cultural Identity:

Creative Appropriation of Cuban Sources from Danza to Salsa,"
Ethnomusicology 38, no. 2 (1994): 249-80. I should note that some of
the claims in this essay have been intensely contested by other salsa
scholars; see, for example, Marisol Berrios-Miranda, "'Con sabot a
Puerto Rico': The Reception and Influence of Puerto Rican Salsa in
Venezuela," in Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural
Hybridity in Latinlo America, ed. Frances R. Aparicio and Candida F.
Jaquez (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

76. Both Juan Flores and Raquel Z. Rivera have published many
articles on the subject of Puerto Ricans in hip-hop. See, for example,
Juan Flores, "Wild Style and Filming Hip Hop," Areito 10, no. 37:
1984; Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip Hop: Puerto Rican Culture
and Latino Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000),115-
39; and Raquel Z. Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

77. Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone, 97.
78. Orquidea Negra, interview, July 24, 2006.
This essay is not a brief history of Cuban reggaeton. Such a history
should focus partly, or perhaps predominantly, on Santiago de Cuba,
the country's second-largest city.' Rather, this is an introduction to the
controversies stirred up by reggaeton in Havana, the Cuban capital.
Havana is the center of Cuban cultural politics and intellectual
debate, the media and the music industry, and is also the heart of the
rap scene-a pertinent detail given that a number of leading
reguetoneros are former rappers who have been, or still are,
managed by the Havana-based Agencia Cubana de Rap (ACR).
Reggaeton has ruffled feathers across the Caribbean and Latin
America, but the arguments provoked in Havana, while overlapping in
some respects with those in other contexts, also present distinctive
features that reflect the marked differences between Cuba and other
societies in the hemisphere. The verbal, musical, and corporeal styles
of reggaeton have posed unprecedented challenges to dominant
conceptions of Cuban national culture, and the resulting debates
illuminate both recent developments in Cuban cultural politics and
also, more broadly, the contradictory and conflicted relationships
between socialism and capitalism, ideology and pleasure that are
characteristic of Havana in the new millennium.

In 2003 I began observing Havana's rap scene, which has

burgeoned since the early 199os, but reggaeton has been a constant
and growing presence during my research. The formation of Cubanito
20.02 by ex-members of pioneering underground rap group Primera
Base was both a pivotal moment in the emergence of reggaeton in
the capital and a watershed in Cuban rap. In the wake of this
successful bid for a higher commercial profile, most rappers have
followed one of two paths: dancing with the enemy and embracing
reggaeton, or resisting the new genre vociferously. The resisters
deride reggaeton for being trite and mindless, for promoting pointless
diversion and dancing over social commitment and reflection: Los
Aldeanos' song "Repartici6n de Bienes" begins with a parody of a
reggaet6n track by Cubanito 20.02, "Matame;" and is just one of
many barbed critiques that have circulated within underground rap
circles since 2004.

The relationship between rap and reggaet6n has been one of the
most common (and contentious) topics of conversation within hip-hop
circles in recent years. Despite resistance from some other artists,
however, reguetoneros have emerged as clear winners; reggaet6n
has developed rapidly into the dominant form of popular music
among young Cuban listeners, and this has provoked a significant
widening of the debate.

Several articles critical of reggaet6n have been published in the

Cuban press since 2004, in particular in Juventud Rebelde, the
newspaper of the Union of Young Communists (Union de J6venes
Comunistas). The most notable, entitled "zProhibido el reguet6n?,
criticized the repetitive beats, suggestive lyrics, and licentious dance
moves associated with the genre, which the author perceived not just
as "banal, corny, trashy" but also as potentially inciting vulgarity, lust,
vice, and drug abuse. While not actually proposing prohibition, the
article suggested that something needed to be done.2 Even a more
balanced analysis by the cultural commentator Alberto Faya Montano
centered on a lengthy critique of international reggaet6n's supposed
corruption by commercialism.' State figures have also pronounced on
reggaet6n, with Alpidio Alonso, president of the Asociaci6n
Hermanos Saiz, publicly declaring at the Eighth Congress of the
Union of Young Communists in 2005. "Careful ... with so much
terrible reggaet6n, with so many second- and third-rate groups."4 Yet
the anxieties provoked by reggaet6n are much more widespread.
Many professional musicians see it as damaging to the broader
panorama of Cuban popular music, eroding traditional genres, and
betraying their high professional standards with amateurish yet
addictive musical creations.-' One distinguished musician recently
claimed that reggaet6n had set the country back by fifty years in
musical terms.6 At times, it seems hard to find anyone over the age
of thirty with a good word to say about reggaet6n, a genre which
appeals predominantly to those in their teens and early twenties in
Havana and which leaves many older listeners cold (or worse).

The aura of negativity around reggaet6n has rarely been countered

by academic interventions on the subject. There has been a plethora
of studies of Cuban rap in recent years, but these predate, ignore, or
dismiss the boom of reggaet6n. Alan West-Duran, in an otherwise
valuable contribution to the rap literature, relegates reggaet6n to a
single footnote, as "often a bad equivalent of what might be
considered Jamaican dancehall at its most frivolous." Advocating one
form of music over another is nothing new among those who study
popular music, often occurring in the context of championing a
supposedly "resistant" form over more commercialized genres. Rap
has often been the beneficiary of such an approach in Cuba and
other non-U.S. contexts in which "message rap" a la Public Enemy
has been taken as the primary template for local production, whereas
commercialized, dance-oriented genres such as reggaet6n have
tended to lose out within academic circles."

To date, the only serious attempt to provide an academic analysis

of reggaet6n in Havana is an unpublished report produced by a team
of researchers from the Centro de Investigaci6n y Desarrollo de la
Musica Cubana (CIDMUC) in Havana in 2005.9 This valuable study
employs a wide range of analytical tools and is an important
milestone in the investigation of the genre. Nevertheless, despite the
principal researchers' efforts to remain evenhanded, their
backgrounds in research on rap and timba-popular genres often
regarded as counterposed to reggaet6n-surface occasionally in
concerns over reggaet6n's supposed deficiencies in comparison with
its longer-established cousins: negative perceptions include a poverty
of ideas (in relation to rap) and discontinuity with Cuban popular
traditions and artistic standards (in relation to timba). While keen to
point out the positive aspects of reggaet6n, they struggle to find
many, regarding most Cuban reggaet6n production as mediocre or
worse in terms of both musical and lyrical content and describing the
genre in terms such as "lexical violence," "impoverishment," and "loss
of the most basic aesthetic standards"; the "simplistic" results, the
report notes, "may retard the individual listener in the evolution of
his/her aesthetic personality." 10 This report is a genuine and
significant attempt to understand reggaet6n, containing much
valuable data, but it also reveals the depth of reggaet6n's challenge
to Cuban cultural and intellectual traditions.

The negative responses to reggaet6n across artistic, critical, and

institu tional spheres suggest that some important issues are at
stake. Susan McClary's discussion of the politics of music making is
highly relevant in this respect: urging greater attention to body-
centered genres (of which reggaet6n is a prime example), rather than
those which focus on politicized lyrics, she claims that "the musical
power of the disenfranchised ... more often resides in their ability to
articulate different ways of construing the body, ways that bring along
in their wake the potential for different experiential worlds. And the
anxious reactions that so often greet new musics from such groups
indicate that something crucially political is at issue." " I will take this
as a call to move beyond the widespread dismissal of reggaet6n as
simply music "for shaking your ass" and ask: Is reggaet6n's appeal to
the body stimulating "different experiential worlds" among Havana's
youth, and, if so, what is their significance? Why has reggaet6n
provoked such anxieties? And what are the social and political issues
at stake?

"LINGUISTIC VIOLENCE," GLOBALIZED

SOUNDS, AND THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL
CULTURE

Reggaet6n in Havana has several faces. The sounds heard in the

streets are often imported from Puerto Rico and the Dominican
Republic. There are also three broad strands of locally produced
reggaet6n: music produced by officially sanctioned reguetoneros who
receive airplay in the media and support from government institutions
(e.g.) Cubanito 20.02, Eddy-K, Gente de Zona), recordings produced
by underground artists and circulated via informal distribution
networks, and the reggaet6n-timba fusions created by many leading
timba groups in order to maintain their popularity in the face of this
new wave."

Even reggaet6n's critics have often admitted the seductiveness of

its beat, but the words are another matter: in his key press article,
Osviel Castro Medel sums up the genre as "a very rhythmic music,
but one with rather poor lyrics." 12 Critiques of Cuban reggaet6n
center on the banality of the ideas expressed-which focus on sex,
dancing, and the singer himself, in various combinations-but also on
the language in which these "non-ideas" are articulated. Locally
produced reggaet6n in Havana is not contentious in the same way as
gangsta rap, or indeed reggaet6n, in some other countries;
references to weapons or drug use, for example, appear to be very
infrequent. In an interview with a BBC reporter, Oneilys Hevora of the
Havana group Los 3 Gatos claimed, with some justification, "I don't
move anyone to violence with my music."13 The authors of the
CIDMUC report, however, disagree, though they locate the
aggression at the level of language, describing reggaet6n texts using
terms like "lexical violence." Indeed, their highlighting of a perceived
flow of slang from reggaet6n lyrics to everyday popular speech
suggests that their concern about reggaet6n centers on the "violence"
that it does to established conceptions of national linguistic culture.

In fact, the authors are careful to distinguish between three

registers of language, corresponding broadly to the three strands of
local reggaet6n: the only one that they regard as seemly, however, is
that used by professional timba groups in their fusions. The texts of
"official" reggaet6n groups are characterized as banal and generally
mediocre, while those of "underground" groups are considered
variously as vulgar, obscene, or even pornographic. The authors
reveal a sense of regret that the Cuban popular linguistic tradition of
picardia (puns, double-meaning, euphemism) has given way to blunt,
obvious signifi- cation.14 There is certainly some justification for
these judgments, but it is also worth considering that these texts-with
their directness, simplicity, and hedonistic focus-offer a particular
challenge to a national culture framed by Marxist ideology, in which
respect for and the dissemination of elaborated ideas are so
fundamental.15 The high profile of ideas is immediately apparent to
the visitor to Havana: political slogans displayed prominently on large
billboards include "Battle of ideas, a struggle for our times" and "Ideas
are more powerful than weapons." Language, too, is prized. Gabriel
Garcia Marquez's recent portrait of Fidel Castro began, "His devotion
is to the word. "16 In reggaet6n, however, there appears to be a
conscious refusal to engage at the level of ideas or lyrical discourse,
coupled with a transgression of linguistic norms.

This marks a clear departure from most Cuban rap production.

Cuban rap, after difficult early years in which it was associated with
U.S. cultural imperialism and racial divisiveness, became gradually
accepted as a part of a national culture conceived in terms of
linguistic and intellectual excellence: rappers made a name for
themselves both at home and around the world because of the
elaboration and commitment of their lyrics, something which
ultimately made their work comprehensible or even attractive to the
state. Rap has been successfully assimilated in part because of the
many points of coincidence between the philosophy of underground
hip-hop and the revolutionary ideology of the Cuban state." By
focusing on the level of verbal discourse and ideological commitment,
rap could be incorporated more easily into official visions of the nation
and presented as a "revolution within the Revolution." But reggaet6n
shares little or no discursive space with the state: reggaet6n artists
tend to stand outside socialist principles altogether, refusing to
engage with ideology on any level. Their perceived banality or
vulgarity and yet extreme popularity among Cuban youth raises
rather thornier issues about national culture and identity than rap,
explaining the bewilderment or hostility of many cultural
commentators who had come round to the idea of rap cubano.

Concerns over the relationship of reggaet6n to a national culture

traditionally focused on linguistic dexterity and ideological exchange
are exacerbated by the musical aspects of reggaet6n in Havana,
which is dominated by Puerto Rican models: in contrast to more
established Cuban dance musics such as timba, electronic sounds
predominate and characteristic Cuban musical elements, such as
instrumental timbres and rhythmic or melodic virtuosity, are notably
scarce. This, too, has caused anxieties in intellectual circles. While
Cuba has long absorbed external influences, a compromise between
international musics and nationalist intellectual traditions has typically
been brokered through a discourse of "Cubanization"-an adoption-
adaptation model which stresses the transformative power of Cuban
culture. This discourse eventually opened the gates of national
culture to include rap cubano, the lyrics and music of which were
slowly recognized as bearing distinctive national characteristics. Rap
groups such as An6nimo Consejo and Obsesi6n- by incorporating
traditional Cuban musical elements such as African-derived drums
and Yoruba chants and by reflecting in a sophisticated, critical
manner on Cuban realities-have been widely accepted as
representing an organic development of Cuban musical and lyrical
traditions. Reggaet6n, however, has so far proved somewhat
resistant to such indigenization. Not only are the musical
"backgrounds" (the term used in Cuba for instrumentals) perceived as
relying excessively on foreign models, but there is little sense as yet
of a distinctive Cuban reggaet6n vocal "flow." The CIDMUC report
includes a critical description of a popular reggaet6n song which
imitates Puerto Rican slang and vocal intonation, while Cubanito
20.02 told me that although they did not see themselves as heavily
influenced by Puerto Rican reggaet6n, they felt a strong affinity with
Jamaican ragga (something which is immediately audible in their
vocals). Although a few artists, such as Eddy-K and Gente de Zona,
have made moves toward "Cubanizing" their music, the general
critical view is that this process still has a long way to go before
reggaet6n can be considered an "authentic" manifestation of national
culture.

Indigenization may simply be a matter of time: most accounts of

Cuban rap stress an initial "mimetic" phase followed later by
adaptation and assimilation, and the recent growth of timba-
reggaet6n fusions suggests a move toward a certain kind of
"nationalization.""' Nevertheless, the range of reggaet6n fusions is
thus far somewhat narrower than those found in rap, and these
fusions tend to be imitations of those created in other parts of the
Caribbean (such as bachata-reggaeton) rather than mixtures with
more obviously Cuban styles, though there have been a few notable
exceptions. One factor currently working against indigenization is that
of audience demand: consumers of reggaeton in Havana currently
show a marked preference for Puerto Rican reggaeton and local
imitations thereof, and enthusiasm for "Cubanized" reggaeton by
critics and foreign record companies has not been matched by that of
young habaneros. The reasons for this preference for foreign
reggaeton are debatable: some regard it as simply reflecting the
higher quality of overseas musical production, stemming from
superior technological resources, though it could also be argued that
the attractiveness of reggaeton to young Cubans, few of whom have
left the island or have access to the Internet, may relate precisely to
its transnational character. Whatever the causes, the pervasiveness
and appeal of Puerto Rican reggaeton have had an undeniable effect
on local production: the most audible reggaeton artist in the streets of
Havana in 2007 was Elvis Manuel, an underground performer whose
productions invariably combined perreo (Puerto Rican-derived)
musical backgrounds with often hardcore lyrics. At the time of writing,
Cubanized reggaeton certainly exists, but it is yet to emerge from the
shadow of its Puerto Rican elder sibling.

Musical nonadaptation has thus proved persistent and, in the eyes

of some observers, problematic: the journalist Osviel Castro Medel,
while trying to be evenhanded about reggaeton, nevertheless refers
to the genre in terms of "a possible aggression against national
culture;" suggesting again that reggaetbn's refusal to conform to
national cultural canons is partly responsible for its negative
reception.'9 In contrast, though, to the early days of rock or rap on the
island, there seems to be no suggestion that this aggression has an
imperialist aspect or that reggaeton is politically suspect due to its
association with the United States, in this case via Puerto Rico. The
perceived threat seems to relate rather to the sheer dominance of
reggaeton in Cuba, its overwhelming popularity among young
listeners (to the exclusion of "national" genres), and its association
with the transnational music industry, a frequent target of criticism;
most observers suggest that this threat could be readily reduced by a
greater effort toward local adaptation and production. In the articles
and studies quoted in this essay, reggaeton is presented primarily as
an "authentic" Caribbean genre which is unfortunately corrupted in
many cases by the commercialism characteristic of nonsocialist
societies and even by a lack of discernment on the part of the Cuban
media, rather than as an inherently problematic cultural form,
inescapably tinged by U.S. imperialism, as rock and rap were initially
perceived by most cultural authorities.

The dependence on Puerto Rican models within Havana reggaet6n

is tied to the transgression of hegemonic notions of national culture in
more ways than one: not just the dominance of foreign music, but
also the irruption of amateur, often untrained musicians into the
professionalized, highly skilled sphere of Cuban popular music. For
all the anxious reactions (or nonreac- tions) to the emerging dance
music of timba in the 199os, this music was characterized by a high
degree of musical complexity and its leading performers were
musicians of formidable skill and training, many of them graduates of
Havana's impressive music education establishments.20 In many
other countries, there has been much more of a DIY ("do it yourself")
ethos within the sphere of popular music-best exemplified, perhaps,
by the genre of punkand it is quite normal for musicians to have had
little or no formal training, but Cuban popular music has long been
distinguished by its rigorous, hierarchical training programs and by
the quality control imposed by state systems of musical employment.
Rap and reggaet6n, however, have shifted the goalposts over the last
decade, as their central musical component consists of electronic
backgrounds; knowledge of and access to computers and music
technology have become more important than traditional musical
training, posing a major challenge to established ideas of a
professionalized popular music scene. These newer genres have
opened a door for those without formal musical training, a democratic
step, in many ways, but one which has caused anxiety among some
professional musicians and cultural observers at the disturbance of
the hierarchical structures of Cuban popular music. Such observers
fear, quite simply, that amateur reguetoneros are lowering the high
professional standards that made Cuban popular music a productive
symbol of national identity during the twentieth century; practicing
musicians in other genres are also clearly concerned that the rise of
reggaet6n threatens their position in the emerging musical
marketplace in Havana.

It could be argued that the amateur status of many reggaet6n

producers feeds back into the widespread preference for Puerto
Rican sounds. Such producers often lack both training in Cuban
musical traditions and the kinds of connections necessary to open up
the possibility of working with live musicians. Experimenting with
fusions with Cuban music is a risky path for those without formal
training, as Cuban audiences are likely to be much more discerning in
their judgment of more familiar musical styles. There is a perception,
then, that such fusions are best left to the professionals. With many
reguetoneros falling into the amateur category, the nonadaptation of
much local reggaet6n production may be linked to the greater
difficulties that such adaptation poses.2' Given their experience and
resources, it is much more practical for them to imitate Puerto Rican
backgrounds and to adopt a more overtly electronic sound; this is
also a solid commercial strategy, given the popularity of Puerto Rican
artists in Cuba. Furthermore, a combination of the recent expansion
of computer ownership and a relatively liberal cultural climate has
resulted in reguetoneros becoming the first stratum of popular music
producers in socialist Cuba to be freed from the pressure to fit in with
dominant cultural norms. In the 199os, the emergent hip-hop
movement found that the quickest way to gain a space in the official
cultural sphere, and thus access to scarce production and recording
facilities, was to engage in a dialogue with cultural gatekeepers and
move away from a "mimetic" approach toward one of Cubanization.
Today's reggaet6n producers have their own equipment and are
therefore much more independent from the state; the wider
availability of resources has freed up these amateur musicians to
make their own rules.

The amateur/ professional divide runs throughout the CIDMUC

report, in which many of the perceived negative characteristics of the
genre, such as musical and lexical poverty, are attributed primarily to
amateur producers; the future "transcendence" of the genre is seen
to be dependent on greater adoption by professional musicians,
particularly by timba groups. This notion of transcendence-the idea
that a new music emerges as a kind of rough diamond which can
then be polished-is characteristically Cuban, for it encompasses not
just the incorporation of "foreign" elements into national culture, which
is encountered across Latin America, but also the unique structure of
the music profession in Cuba and the equally distinctive idea of
superacion, or selfimprovement. Transcendence in the case of Cuban
popular music is not just a question of local adaptation: it specifically
implies the elaboration by professionally trained musicians of musical
styles developed by amateurs and/or the professionalization of the
amateurs themselves through a structured, formalized process of
superacion.
 This process is one toward which rappers have taken some steps.
With the creation of the Agencia Cubana de Rap, a number of rap
groups turned professional and some participated in cursos de
superacion at the Ignacio Cervantes "professional improvement
school" in La Vibora, Havana, allowing them to deepen their formal
music skills and knowledge of Cuban musical traditions, but also
facilitating the incorporation of these artists and their music into
hegemonic constructions of national culture.22 The mere act of
engaging with the process of superaci6n, whatever the results, is a
sign of assimilation of ideals of self-improvement and incorporation of
national traditions. Thus while rap, too, was critiqued in the 199os for
its lack of professionalism, this view has been tempered as some
groups have taken state-sponsored music courses and have gained
experience and, more recently, the kudos associated with working
within a formal agency, the ACR. Rap is today regarded by most
cultural observers as having "transcended" to a new level-that of
national culture. Most reggaet6n production, however, currently
stands outside this formalized, distinctively Cuban process; its
homemade feel and simplicity, its preference for globalized electronic
sounds and often scant regard for Cuban musical traditions, and its
insistence on provoking pleasure without necessarily adhering to
traditionally defined notions of "quality" (based on criteria such as
rhythmic, melodic, and timbral virtuosity and variety) all suggest a
lack of engagement with the striving and serious intent behind the
concept of superaci6n.

Reggaet6n has shaken up Cuban popular culture in unprecedented

ways. It has challenged the indirect, playful linguistic traditions of
Cuban popular music with often vulgar straight-talking and has
invaded its formerly professionalized musical world with the
homemade, computer-generated creations of amateurs who have
learned their skills through experimentation rather than the extended,
state-supported education received by their peers in genres such as
timba and jazz. The resulting music continues to rely heavily on
foreign models and is thus somewhat resistant to incorporation within
the canons of national culture via the discourse of "Cubanization."
The disturbance of the rigid hierarchies of Cuban popular music has
been seen as much more transgressive and threatening in the case
of reggaet6n than of rap, not least because of its unprecedented
popularity across the island. Cuban rappers never received the level
of exposure of leading reguetoneros today. While rap was initially
perceived as more dangerous because of anxieties about U.S.
cultural imperialism, those associated with the nascent "movement"
perceived a way toward state acceptance in the social commitment of
"message rap" and its association with U.S. black radicalism, long
viewed in a positive light by the Cuban government. Reggaet6n,
however, currently offers no comparable route to ideological
compatibility. With both music and texts attracting censure, it poses a
rather more intractable problem for both its defenders and for the
guardians of Cuban culture.

THE POLITICS OF DANCING

The challenges of reggaet6n are not to be found solely in the fields of

musical and lyrical production, but also in its audiences. One thing
shared by all the variants of reggaet6n in Cuba is a focus on dancing,
often at the expense of lyrical elaboration. This has provoked the
scorn of those rappers who have not been tempted over to the "other
side." Cuban rap has been predominantly "conscious" since the mid-
to late 199os, and many rappers espouse the strict dichotomy-music
for listening (positive) versus music for dancing (negative) -articulated
by Los Aldeanos.23 This hierarchical mind/ body division is also
constructed much more broadly within Cuban political and intellectual
spheres: as Robin Moore notes, Cuban socialist thought prefers
music that contains an ideological element and a politicized message,
and the same could also be said of many who discuss and write
about music, both in Cuba and around the world.24

Where rappers, intellectuals, and state officials may characterize

bodycentered music simply as an ideological vacuum and the
negative pole of "music for the mind," it is also possible, following
McClary, to discern something rather more active and challenging. It
has been suggested by more than one writer on timba that dance
music and its attendant pleasures and physicality may be an
oppositional space in Cuba; in a highly politicized context, being
apolitical or perhaps nonideological, may be an effective form of
political statement. Vincenzo Perna claims that dance music has
been at odds with officialdom for much of the revolution.25 The only
form to meet with official approval has been rumba, which was
recuperated as a useful symbol of national identity shortly after the
revolution. The white elite preferred serious styles such as cancion
and nueva trova, which focused on individual performers, were meant
for listening and not for dancing, and lacked the carnivalesque nature
of Cuban dance music. "Conscious" rap has numerous parallels with
nueva trova, parallels that are emphasized by members of the rap
community in order to boost acceptance of their music. Both genres
were initially misunderstood but later supported by the state. Their
shared distrust of dancing-expressed by leading underground rappers
such as Los Paisanos, Papa Humbertico, and Los Aldeanos in song
lyrics, interviews, and public discussions-is one similarity that is
mentioned less often. Robin Moore, meanwhile, has talked about the
resurgence of timba in terms of an "antisocialist" aesthetic of
hedonism and materialism.26 He discusses the opposition between
pleasure and thinking in official ideology, with the former seen as
working against efforts to persuade people to elevate themselves: as
a result, politicians and cultural officials have promoted "serious"
music with political or socially conscious lyrics.27 The recent
espousal of reggaeton and its ethos of personal gratification by
Cuban youth may be interpreted as a rejection both of such
politicized music and, more generally, of the state's enthusiasm for
thought-provoking culture.

Moore regards the avoidance of seriousness and political

correctness in timba and the emphasis on pleasure as a form of
liberation from cultural norms. The idea of dance as liberation was
evoked by many interviewees cited in the CIDMUC report, who
perceived reggaeton dancing in terms of freedom from the social and
choreographic conventions of Cuban couple dancing.2S As with the
despelote-the newer, solo style of timba dancing, performed by
women-which emerged in the 199os and came to overshadow the
coupledancing style known as casino, the traditional physical
dominance of the male partner has been reversed in reggaeton: men
play a subsidiary role while women are the main focus of attention
and the principal driving force behind the dance. Unlike in couple
dances, in the despelote and reggaeton the female does not need a
partner and does not need to be "led"; during live shows, female
dancers are often prominently placed on the stage, and in the
audience, female dancers invariably dance alone or in front of their
partner, to whom they have their back turned and who thus dances in
their shadow, his role reduced from leader to follower or even
observer. Reggaeton dancing is not only female centered but also
transgressive in its open sexuality. Perna has argued, in the case of
timba, that this reflects changing gender dynamics linked to the social
and economic upheavals in Havana since the early 199os, and these
new dance styles may thus be seen as participating in renegotiations
over gender roles and liberation from social conventions.29

Yet, more broadly, dancing and bodily pleasure can provide

temporary freedom from hardships and pervasive ideology, whether
the Marxist principles of Cuban society or the capitalist ideologies of
productivity and exchange value found elsewhere. Reggaeton is a
music of pleasure par excellence; pleasure is constantly referenced in
both lyrics and movements. Cubans often consider sexuality to be an
important aspect of life that lies outside government control, and the
body may thus be perceived as a key site of freedom and self-
expression. Yet it is also a site of contestation, for the phenomenon of
jineterismo (literally "jockeying," covering a range of activities from
mild hustling to prostitution), which has assumed a major role in
Havana's social imaginary and informal economy, is periodically the
target of efforts at state control. Since the early 199os, with the
explosion of jineterismo and consequent efforts at its policing, the
bodies of young habaneros have been a nexus of struggle with the
state for access to the benefits of tourism: hard currency, material
goods, the possibility of travel, and so on. Bearing in mind McClary's
comment that "the musical power of the disenfranchised ... more
often resides in their ability to articulate different ways of construing
the body, ways that bring along in their wake the potential for different
experiential worlds," the rise of an exhibitionist pleasure-
centeredness in dance, specifically timba and reggaet6n, may be
interpreted as resistance to the reduction of the body to a productive
machine and rejection of socialist values of hard work, in line with the
shift from a socialist to a "sociocapitalist" economy.3o

In the context of the profound crisis in Cuban society since the

"Special Period" of the early 199os, during which the body emerged
as an important source of social and economic capital, the fact that
reggaeton refers constantly to the body and sex in both lyrics and
movements cannot be produced-as it is often by observers-as
evidence of its inconsequentiality. A celebration of the body and
sexuality, whilst not literally rebellious, can be read as a statement of
liberation from social, political, and even economic constraints, as
constructing a "different experiential world" and reinventing the body
as a site of pleasure, personal gain, and social mobility rather than
productive, collective labor. It is also a refusal to engage with the
state on the state's preferred terms, at the level of ideology and
articulated discourse. The government is able to exercise some
control over the field of verbal discourse, for example through
censorship and restrictions on media content, but dancing bodies are
much harder to reign in. The body might be perceived as a prime
articulator of free "speech" in a context in which ideas and verbal
expression are subjected to regulation by the state. "Ideas are our
weapons" proclaims a political sign in Havana; "bodies are our
weapons" might be closer to the truth for many young Cubans today.

The body may thus be perceived as a creator of complex meanings

rather than, as many rappers and critics would have it, simply the
absence of mind, and this perspective can be brought to bear on the
issue of reggaet6n's problematic relationship to national culture. As
noted above, the fact that Puerto Rican reggaet6n is so popular in
Havana and that local producers have tended to copy its models has
caused anxieties for intellectuals whose prime model for analyzing
the interaction of global and local is one of adoption and adaptation at
the level of production. Yet it appears to be primarily in the sphere of
reception-of dancers' bodies-that local and global, traditional and
modern are mediated. Local reggaeton dance styles have evolved (to
a greater extent than the music) from the Puerto Rican perreo to a
more indigenous blend of reggaet6n and breakdance moves with
those derived from timba (tembleque), rumba, and various other
Cuban dances of African descent, giving rise to distinctive
movements known as el reloj, el tranque, la onda retro, and so on.31
For all that reggaet6n dance holds the power to scandalize and
counterrevolutionize, it seems to be in the sphere of bodily movement
that the transformative capacity of Cuban culture-Cubanization-is
most in evidence.

BICI-TAXIS, BONCHES Y VENDEDORES

AMBULANTES: THE DISTRIBUTION OF
REGGAETON

Thus far the challenges of reggaet6n have been located in its

production and reception, but another key reason reggaet6n has
provoked concern at state level is its distribution and diffusion to an
unprecedented extent via unofficial channels, independently of the
state-run media. The drivers of bicycle-taxis played an important role
in popularizing reggaet6n in the capital in the first years of the new
millennium, blasting out the suggestive songs of the Santiagoborn
Candyman and others from stereos mounted on their vehicles, and
the music then spread via pirated CD sellers who set up temporary
stalls on the street and through informal street parties known as
bonches. Despite the existence of a few high-profile, officially
sanctioned reguetoneros, Havana's reggaet6n "scene" is one in
which recordings predominate over live performances, informal
distribution networks-dependent on the recent spread of CD copying
technology-overshadow the official media, and public dances are
often planned at short notice and therefore unsupervised and
unregulated. All of these factors pose new challenges to the Cuban
state, which has relied for the last half century on its control of the
media and of performance spaces in order to filter the musical
products reaching the ears of most Cubans. Reggaet6n, however, is
a "street" music that exists to a considerable extent under the radar in
Havana: it is everywhere yet nowhere, heard on almost every corner
despite its relatively insignificant (though growing) presence in
concert venues or the media.32 Even the pirated CD stalls that I
visited in 20o6 had little Cuban reggaet6n, suggesting that most
locally produced music is distributed privately. Copied CDs, passed
from hand to hand, are impossible to control, and it is notable that
underground reggaet6n with hardcore lyrics is particularly popular
among the capital's youth, despite its exclusion from official channels
and spaces. Indeed, availability through the official media seems to
lessen the appeal of many Cuban songs to dedicated reggaet6n fans,
while limitation to informal distribution is apparently little hindrance to
popularity.33

Reggaeton has presented new challenges to the government: it is

not just provocative in its production and reception, but also
accessible to the general population to a degree that earlier musical
"invasions" such as rock and rap never really were. While these
earlier imports also circulated via unofficial channels, the conditions
and musical products were very different. Rockers and rappers, in the
early years of their respective "movements," had little possibility of
acquiring the equipment necessary for recording and distributing their
music, and the recordings that circulated were thus almost entirely of
foreign origin, whereas Havana's reguetoneros have profited from
recent technological advances and the resulting proliferation of
bedroom "studios." It is only over the last few years that more than a
handful of Cuban musicians have been able to produce, reproduce,
and distribute their music without recourse to professional studios
and other branches of the state-controlled music industry. Where
Beatles records circulated in the 196os and Public Enemy cassettes
in the 199os, today the CDs by Daddy Yankee and Don Omar appear
alongside recordings by young habaneros keen to establish a
foothold in the music industry. A young, aspiring reguetonero will
create his (and they do appear to be entirely male) CD and distribute
free copies to friends, acquaintances, DJs, and pirated CD sellers in
the hope of creating a "buzz" that will lead to paid live performances
and possibly an opening in the media. The nature and function of the
circulating products are thus quite distinct from earlier periods.

Social, political, and economic changes have also played their part
in reggaet6n's unprecedented accessibility. Informal bonches are a
phenomenon that emerged along with the rap scene in the early
199os, but they have flourished much more visibly with the rise of
reggaet6n, due in part to the decline in the number of official spaces
that resulted from the dollarization of many music venues during the
tourism boom from the early 199os onward. Above all, reggaet6n has
arisen at a time of comparative cultural freedom: while there has
been some official concern about reggaet6n, the general artistic
climate is much more open than that of the 196os and early 1970s,
when rock struggled in a "gray period" of authoritarianism and
restriction of expression that was probably the toughest phase of the
revolution for artists and intellectuals. Some musicians and fans who
showed open preferences for rock were jailed, sentenced to hard
labor, or sent to "rehabilitation camps" or "reeducation sessions";
Silvio Rodriguez lost his radio job simply for mentioning the Beatles
on air.34 While pirated records were available, most people heard
rock only at private gatherings and at low volume, and rock's early
days in revolutionary Cuba were characterized by "a pervasive
climate of apprehension and fear."35

Whereas rock and rap were at first acquired and circulated in a

predominantly clandestine manner, for example, by picking up radio
broadcasts from the United States on illicit aerials, reggaet6n is
distributed much more openly. Today, pirated reggaet6n recordings
are sold at stalls in public places, and it is by far the most commonly
heard music in the streets of the capital. Havana now provides
opportunities for small-scale yet visible and officially tolerated musical
entrepreneurship based on the demand for pirated CDs: one seller
even told me that he paid a monthly fee to the government for his
"patch." Finally, reggaet6n has achieved its unprecedented spread
not just due to the availability of recording technology, but also
because it has crossed linguistic and racial divides to a greater extent
than its predecessors. Reggaeton is the only one of these genres to
circulate entirely in Spanish, and it has achieved a popularity across
all sections of Cuban youth that has never been matched by rock or
rap, which took root predominantly among the white and black
sectors of the population respectively.36 Thus while informal
circulation certainly occurred with earlier imported genres, it did not
occur on the same scale, or with the same openness, as with
reggaeton today.

"GPROHIBIDO EL REGUETON?"

In the face of reggaeton's widespread and multilayered transgression-

linguistic, musical, corporeal-how has the state responded?
Reggaeton in Cuba has been described variously within official and
intellectual circles as a problem that needs solving, an infection that
needs curing, an invasion to be countered, a flood threatening to
drown the island, and an avalanche. Andi Aquino, president of the
Federation of University Students in Granma Province, memorably
compared reggaeton to pork: "It's not very nutritious, but it's tasty. If
you eat too much it can be bad for you, though you don't care about
that while you're consuming it." He described his proposed solutions
as "the best medicine" for this problem .17

It is notable that the CIDMUC report, an academic investigation,

makes much of the need to define the positive and negative aspects
of reggaeton in order to take remedial action, and it concludes with a
series of policy recom- mendations.3" These include

Selecting the best examples for diffusion in the media

Ensuring compliance with current regulations with regard to the

music offered in recreational, commercial, and dining centers
and in public events run by state organizations
 Increasing the number of spaces for live dance music,
emphasizing variety and quality in order to attract the public

Providing more state-sponsored dance venues as an alternative to

street parties, which tend to be uncontrolled and to generate
social conflicts.

While information about government measures is scarce, there is

nevertheless patchy evidence of strategies of observation and
control. A Cuban journalist, Alcides Garcia, has talked of a "national
crusade against reggaet6n,"39 and there is no doubt that the state-
run media have been extremely selective in their choice of groups
and songs to be aired on Tv and the radio, with former and current
ACR employees such as Cubanito 20.02 and Eddy-K and timba-
reggaeton fusions by groups such as La Charanga Habanera, Los
Van Van, and Haila appearing with greatest regularity. According to
the CIDMUC report, an analysis of TV programming in 2003-4
revealed that Cuban rap and reggaeton made up just 6.2 percent of
the content of music shows, with international artists in these genres
comprising a further 2.2 percent. Reggaeton thus had little presence
in the media, but the fact that young people aged sixteen to twenty-
six interviewed as part of the investigation claimed that they listened
to reggaeton primarily in informal spaces and via pirated CDs, rather
than on the radio or TV, suggests that such limitation on media
exposure was having little effect on listening habits.40 A D J told the
BB C that the state was also limiting the diffusion of Cuban reggaeton
in educational and cultural centers such as the community Casas de
la Cultura because of its bad language;41 however, in mid-20o6 the
Casa de la Cultura of Centro Habana had a weekly showcase for rap
and reggaeton groups, suggesting a policy of selectivity, education,
and surveillance rather than prohibition. Indeed, Cuban journalists
revealed to a Reuters correspondent that the progressive minister of
culture, Abel Prieto, had rejected the prohibition of reggaeton but had
requested the promotion of the best examples in the media and
recommended that the phenomenon be studied carefully.42
 The preferred solution, as proposed by the report, seems to be to
provide the Cuban public with more official spaces; a healthier, more
varied musical diet; and better music education, rather than the more
heavy-handed tactics that some feared in the wake of the article
"zProhibido el reguet6n?" in 2004. Given the impossibility of
controlling the diffusion of reggaet6n, thanks to modern technology,
the state has apparently decided to take a rather different approach
to the hard-line measures prompted by rock in the 196os. Indeed, the
CIDMUC report itself might be seen as part of this attempt by the
government to study and understand rather than simply crack down
on reggaet6n. Bonches, or street parties, scene of the most
"problematic" reggaet6n, are considered a consequence of the
decline in affordable live-music venues and thus a trend which could
potentially be reversed by the state. Another, closely linked
implication of the CIDMUC report is that good, live timba may be an
important ally in the fight against bad, recorded reggaet6n. Critics
have complained about the saturation of music events by reggaet6n,
and the report's authors argue that more variety of styles and greater
exposure to live dance music will lead to more catholic tastes among
Cuban youth. They also urge professional musicians to create new
fusions of reggaet6n with local genres, though the authors note that
"unfortunately this type of reggaet6n is not currently the most
widespread among the Cuban population."43 The solution to the
"problem" of reggaetbn is thus seen to lie in the hands of timberos
rather than the reguetoneros who currently enjoy greatest popularity.
Cubanization and transcendence of reggaetbn are still seen as
achievable, but through its adoption by professional musicians who
specialize in established Cuban styles-"diluting" reggaetbn-rather
than through the efforts of its own predominantly young, amateur
practitioners. The current prevailing attitude to foreign culture is not
that it should be banned but that it can and should be "nationalized,"
as Moore contends.44
1. "Reggaeton a to cubano" concert poster, Havana, Cuba. Photo by
Geoff Baker.

Solutions have also been sought by a few Cuban cultural observers

who have attempted to Cubanize reggaetbn discursively, despite the
difficulties discussed above. Alberto Faya Montano, for example,
makes much of the idea of a Caribbean musical melting pot, invoking
the godfather of cubania, Don Fer nando Ortiz. Emphasizing a history
of mutual influences across the region, he draws out parallels with
established Cuban genres in order to familiarize reggaet6n and
present it as neither as new as it seems nor as threatening.45 The
distinguished Cuban musicologist Danilo Orozco has claimed that the
dembow rhythm, like its Cuban cousins the tresillo and the habanera,
has its origins in the music of the Bantu and Dahomey cultures of
Africa.46 Even the scandals around reggaet6n have been used to
indigenize it, by drawing parallels with similar reactions to son in the
early twentieth century.47 Thus despite anxieties over reggaet6n as
unassimilated "foreign" music, it is perceived by some observers as
overlapping with Cuban traditions. However, while reggaet6n is not
seen by such figures as fundamentally alien, the dominant discourse
of Cubanization nevertheless requires a further, more active process
of adaptation rather than the simple acknowledgment of shared roots
in order for the genre to achieve more widespread acceptance as
compatible with national culture. This view is also shared by foreign
music producers, who have an interest in encouraging or creating a
distinctive Cuban reggaet6n for the international market. The group's
core members of Cubanito 20.02 were encouraged by their label
Lusafrica to work more with live musicians and Cuban musical
traditions for their second album, Tocame. There has also been an
attempt to nationalize reggaet6n in Cuba by giving it a new name,
"Cubat6n" (see figure 1), though this label-created by the president of
a Swedish production company-has never really caught on.48 Thus
while a number of strategies for filtering and assimilating reggaet6n
are in place, their effectiveness has so far been mixed.

"IHIP HOP, REVOLUCION!" TO "MUEVE LA CINTURA"

One of the most important features of the emergence of reggaet6n in

Havana since 2002 has been its fractious relationship with the rap
scene. The boom of reggaet6n in Havana is as much a story of a
crisis in the world of Cuban rap as of the localization of a
transnational genre. This relationship is worth examining in detail, for
it tells us much about both musical genres and also, more generally,
about the culture and society of which they are a feature.

Rap took root in Havana in the early 199os. The first Havana rap
festival was organized in 1995, and in 1997 the state began to
support the festival through the Asociaci6n Hermanos Saiz (AHS),
the cultural wing of the Union of Young Communists.49 By the turn of
the millennium rap was booming in Havana: there were reportedly
hundreds of groups in the city, the state provided performance
spaces and festival funds, and there was considerable international
interest in the rap movement. The leading groups started pushing the
government for greater promotion and commercial opportunities;
these negotiations led eventually to the creation of the Agencia
Cubana de Rap in 2002, which also happened to be the year that
reggaet6n started to take off in the capital. The initial roster of the
ACR included two reggaet6n groups: Cubanito 20.02 and Cubanos
en la Red, though the former, who signed to the French label
Lusafrica, did not remain for long. By 2004, the total number of
groups represented by the ACR had dropped from ten to eight, but
four of the original rap groups (Eddy-K, Alto Voltaje, Primera Base,
and Papo Record) were turning increasingly to reggaet6n, leaving
reguetoneros in the majority within the rap agency.

The creation of the A CR was already a controversial move: while it

had been sought by a number of leading rappers, it instantly divided
the scene into professional groups within the ACR and amateur
groups tied to the AHS, leading to inevitable and bitter disputes over
the legitimacy of the agency's selection procedures, the
appropriateness of professionalizing rap, and so on. But the adoption
of reggaet6n by the majority of ACR groups within two years of its
creation was the final straw for many observers, and the gap between
the two institutions that supported rap became a chasm. It was not
only among rappers and reguetoneros that the battle lines were
drawn, with the former accusing the latter of betraying the rap
movement and wasting an unparalleled opportunity to promote hip-
hop in Cuba. While spokespeople for the newer ACR were carefully
diplomatic, many employed by the AHS were as scornful of
reggaet6n as the rappers whom they represented: it was the
president of the Axs, Alpidio Alonso, who publicly criticized reggaet6n
at the Eighth Congress of the Union of Young Communists in 2005. It
is important to note also that the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, the
source of Alonso's comments as well as most of the critical articles
about reggaet6n, is the official mouthpiece of the Union of Young
Communists and therefore tied indirectly to the Axs; the debate about
reggaet6n in the pages of this paper appears to be part of a
campaign against the genre by various branches of the Union of
Young Communists.

Debates over the relationship between rap and reggaet6n have

thus been raging in Havana. Controversy has been stoked by the
perceived gulf between the ideologies behind the genres in question
and by the subsequent polarization of institutions and groups
connected to this process, which has its roots in the considerable
cultural and material investment in rap by the state since the late
199os. There is a sense in which certain key rap artists, by switching
styles, have undermined a unique and surprisingly productive pact
between state, musicians, and critics. For at least the five years up to
2002, Cuban rap had been constructed by artists, state cultural
officials, academics, journalists, and documentary makers as a
socially committed, critical, yet constructive movement that
exemplified the richness of Cuban culture in comparison with the
poverty of dominant manifestations of rap in the United States. These
various parties had found in committed rap a shared language and
set of concerns, encapsulated in the phrase ";Hip hop, Revoluci6n!"-
which was coined by the duo An6nimo Consejo but then widely
adopted-and local rappers had gained international recognition
(though little economic benefit) for their "conscious" stance.50 The
sudden boom of hedonistic reggaet6n, therefore, and above all its
adoption by a number of leading figures in the rap movement, was a
great letdown for the many observers who had championed Cuban
rappers as figureheads of social commitment. Underground legends
of the mid- to late 199os-such as Amenaza, Alto Voltaje, Papo
Record, and Primera Base-whose dedication to revolutionizing Cuban
society from within had been trumpeted not only by the artists
themselves but also by many admirers of socially conscious music,
underwent a remarkable conversion: the first three groups left the
island and ended up performing predominantly reggaet6n in Europe,
while the fourth split into Cubanito 20.02 and Primera Base Megat6n,
the latter fronted by the former godfather of Cuban underground rap,
Ruben Marin. Norlan of Alto Voltaje was reborn in Finland as "the
missionary of reggaet6n."

How might we interpret this seismic shift in the urban music scene
from "message rap" to reggaet6n? Is it a negative development, a
move away from idealism and commitment toward banality and
commercialism? Or can it be conceived more positively, as the
displacement of an overly American import by a Caribbean genre that
is closer to Cuban musical traditions and thus more easily assimilated
by Cuban audiences? Both viewpoints have their adherents. While
the ACR artists in question presented their change in direction as a
logical artistic progression, some of their admirers were shocked by
what they perceived as a U-turn and betrayal of ideals. On the one
hand, the fact that reggaet6n has achieved far greater popular
success than rap might suggest that from the point of view of the
general public, this shift simply consisted of the adoption of a more
appealing style, one more suited to Cuban tastes. On the other hand,
for all that it has seized the ears and bodies of young Cubans,
reggaet6n does not fit easily with dominant visions of national culture.
Rap cubano, though never a commercial or popular success, is now
well established among musical, critical, and institutional circles as a
"national" genre, and the shift to reggaet6n, with its obvious reliance
on Jamaican and Puerto Rican styles and the implication of a certain
denationalization of popular music, has been less welcomed by
cultural commentators.

Viewed from the perspective of cultural studies, there is little doubt

that the rise of reggaet6n has posed some difficult questions about
politicized music. Rap appeared to be a powerful social force when it
was fashionable, but almost as soon as reggaet6n appeared on the
scene, rap began to fade quickly from view. Groups such as Primera
Base and Alto Voltaje, which had been singing until recently about
Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, were now to be found urging their
audience to move their waists (mueve la cintura) and shake their
booty. This was a rather sudden conversion, considering that in
contrast to the evolution of rap in the United States, Cuban rap
became increasingly socially conscious during the 199os and that the
Havana hip-hop festival of 2002-with its defiantly controversial
performances by Alto Voltaje, Papa Humbertico, and others-is widely
considered to have marked a high point in the political commitment
and outspokenness of the movement. Where had the engagement
with black radicalism gone? There may be a lesson here about the
risks of rushing to embrace ideologically charged music and
overstating its social and political significance. For all that Cuban rap
is a cultural movement with fascinating social and political
resonances, it is also a reminder that politics embedded in popular
culture is, to a large degree, at the whim of fashion. The heady critical
celebration of Cuban hip-hop in the years around 2000 looks
somewhat more problematic from today's perspective. Yet, as I have
argued above, any attempt to dismiss reggaet6n as politically
insignificant because of its lack of ideological elaboration needs to be
treated with considerable caution.

It could be argued that the features that made Cuban rap so

attractive to intellectuals and foreign observers actually contributed to
its decline. The seriousness, commitment, and anticommercialism of
the rap scene made it a joy to behold for cultural critics, but its
underground fundamentalism led to a gulf between truly popular
culture and "conscious" culture, leaving the rap movement wide open
to the "invasion" of good-time reggaet6n from 2002 onward. A
number of people, including rappers who had "converted" to
reggaet6n, told me that rap carried the risk of overloading people with
information and "burning them out"; "conscious" rap has a strong
appeal to the politically minded, especially those who live in
consumerist societies, but in a highly politicized society such as
Cuba, it may simply be too didactic for many, too much like "more of
the same." The social commentary of reggaet6n, limited though it
may be, is more tongue-in-cheek and ambivalent, less lecturing or
hectoring; with its humorous, risque approach, reggaet6n contrasts
strongly with official rhetoric and speaks to more young people in
contemporary Havana than the serious, committed music traditionally
promoted by the state.

ACR VS. AHS: THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION

OF URBAN POPULAR MUSIC

The division between rap and reggaeton that has been perceived
(and constructed) over the last few years in Havana relates to a
series of other dichotomies: underground versus commercial and
amateur versus professional, but also Asociacion Hermanos Saiz
versus Agencia Cubana de Rap. The AHSthe main institutional
support for amateur rappers-is an old-fashioned socialist cultural
association linked to the Union of Young Communists, while many of
the professional reguetoneros are or have been linked to the ACR,
the new-style commercial agency created in 2002 with the aim of
promoting and commercializing its groups. Of course, these
categories are artificially neat: there are many amateur, underground
reggaeton producers, while three of the professional ACR groups are
focused on "conscious" rap. Nevertheless, debates in Havana revolve
around such polarizations, for they represent two distinct and
competing visions of Cuban culture and society in the new
millennium.

Once again, the emergence of Cubanito 20.02 from Primera Base

is instructive. The members of Cubanito 20.02 told me that concerts
by Primera Base were occasional events, sometimes poorly attended
and usually unpaid. In 2004, however, two years after their
"conversion" to reggaet6n, they had released a CD on the Lusafrica
label with a second in the pipeline, their songs and videos had
opened the doors for reggaet6n on national radio and Tv, and they
were often performing several concerts a week around the country.
They were soon to add lucrative foreign tours to this list of
achievements. Because of the virtual nonexistence of a domestic CD
market in Cuba, their 2003 release Soy Cubanito, while enormously
popular across the island, had yet to bring them significant financial
rewards-they told me that they would be millionaires if all the CDs
that they had sold were originals-but they made a very good living
from their live performances, and by undertaking foreign tours, they
opened up the possibility of significant hard currency earnings. In
2005 and 2006, other reggaet6n groups-such as the ACR artists
Eddy-K and Gente de Zona, and the EGREM-signed Triangulo
Oscuro-while yet to replicate the success of Cubanito 20.02, had
regular, well-paid gigs at the two Casas de la Musica in Havana as
well as other venues around the capital, whereas no rap groups had
this level of exposure.

The debates that have accompanied the high-profile emergence of

such groups have tapped into broad questions over the relationship
between art and commerce and the place of globalized,
commercialized culture in this rapidly changing socialist society. While
reguetoneros have seized their commercial opportunities,
underground rappers are, in a sense, refusing to accept the
commercialization of life in the capital since the economic crisis of the
Special Period. Not only do they criticize this growing materialism in
their lyrics, but they proclaim their amateur status as a badge of
honor: it is a sign of refusing to take a commercial path, of
maintaining their independent line.-' While professionalism may mean
high musical standards to many Cubans, it has quite different
connotations to some artists, especially within the sphere of influence
of the Union of Young Communists. It is significant that a number of
reguetoneros were formerly struggling, if admired, rappers: their
success led to the characterization of reggaet6n as a "temptation"
which had to be resisted or given in to. "Staying firm" with rap was a
sign of strength and morality, while adopting reggaet6n was portrayed
as weakness in the face of the seduction of commerce.-2 Within
artistic and intellectual circles, then, reggaet6n is not just a new form
of popular music: it is a symbol of the commercialization of Havana's
culture and society, and one's position on rap and reggaet6n is,
arguably, a position on this process and on the contradictory realities
of late socialism itself. A negative view of commercialization is a
prominent feature of artistic, academic, and journalistic responses to
reggaet6n in Havana, and the blame for reggaet6n's "corruption"-
primarily in other parts Latin America, though also, to a degree, in
Cuba itself-is laid firmly at the door of the media and the international
music industry, which are portrayed as guilty of ignoring socially
conscious reggaet6n and promoting only shallow, banal, vulgar mu-
sic.53 Cuban rap, on the other hand, is seen as ideologically
progressive and largely untainted by commerce. The polarization of
debates around urban popular music thus reflects conflicting
reactions to the uneasy marriage of socialism and capitalism in
contemporary Havana, for discussions of rap and reggaet6n are
entwined with judgments about this controversial political and
economic process.

A brief consideration of the Cuban Rap Agency is revealing with

respect to changes in the capital's cultural scene over the last
decade. There has been much muttering since the foundation of the
ACR that it was created in order to control Cuban rap. While such a
motivation may indeed have been present, the ACR works in many
ways just like a music agency in any other country. Precisely of
interest is that this kind of professional, commercial agency was
created in socialist Cuba, and that it was the culmination of the
burgeoning underground rap movement of the 199os, which had
been supported by the amateur, politicized AHS. In other words, the
ACR is significant because of its contrast with the Axs, an old-style
socialist institution which promotes amateur culture for culture's sake
and was the standard-bearer of Cuban rap from 1997 to 2002. The
disputes that emerged between the artists and functionaries of these
two organizations are indicative of recent shifts in cultural policies and
divisions between branches of the Cuban state, and betray the
tensions between socialist and capitalist ideologies and practices that
have grown in Havana since the mid-199os.
 There are useful parallels to be drawn here with Thomas
Cushman's study of rock music in the last years of the Soviet Union
and the early post-Soviet period, which puts forward the argument
that instead of seeing free-market economics as the major driving
force of cultural freedom, "the replacement of political control of
culture by the commodification of culture represents the substitution
of one form of constraint on human expression for another."54
Cultural perestroika there (the restructuring of key organizations, in
particular the state music company Melodiya) led to a new
commercial focus in cultural production, which contributed in turn to
"an emerging division in the rock community between those
musicians who saw in music a viable means for the voicing of protest
and opposition and those who considered music primarily as an
aesthetic experience and form of entertainment."` Cuba went through
its own "perestroika" in the 199os as a direct result of the collapse of
the Soviet Union; as the economy underwent wholesale
transformations, the music scene became considerably more
commercialized, with marketability and sales assuming an
unprecedented importance.56 This led eventually to the division of
the Cuban rap scene described above, as senior figures, by switching
to reggaet6n, embraced music "as an aesthetic cultural commodity
rather than an aesthetic means for the expression of dissent, as
many Soviet rockers had done.57 Despite its skirmishes with state
censorship and incomprehension in the 199os, rap's greatest
challenge turned out to be the boom of reggaet6n in the following
decade. State control became less significant as the attractions of
media exposure and commercial success entered the equation.
Leading artists such as Primera Base/Cubanito 20.02, by switching
from underground rap to reggaet6n, from protest music to
entertainment, were able to profit from this newly commercialized
cultural environment and to gain access to the media, to much larger
audiences, and to economic rewards. With such opportunities on the
horizon, the numbers of young aspiring artists who were prepared to
take the uncompromising (and) from an economic perspective,
unrewarding) line of underground rap diminished sharply. If one
interpretation sees the rise of reggaet6n in terms of the decline of
rap's idealism and political force, then, as with Soviet rock, it is not
the state so much as the incursion of the market into Cuba which has
been primarily responsible for the waning influence of this critical,
socially committed musical movement.

AFTER THE CRISIS: MUSIC, SOCIAL

CHANGE, AND THE "BATTLE OF IDEAS"

What broader lessons might we learn from the rise of reggaet6n in

Havana? What do the sounds, lyrics, and dances tell us about society
in the Cuban capital today? Cuban researchers have analyzed
reggaet6n in terms of a "pendulum swing" away from timba;
reggaet6n is thus regarded as a simple response to the excessive
complexity of timba music and dance, as freedom from the latter's
choreographic constraints.58 In the light of the discussion above, it
might also be instructive to consider reggaet6n as a swing away from
rap, one linked to broader changes in Cuban society since the 199os.

The relationship between the emergence of new body-centered

musics and social upheavals has long been recognized, going back
to Plato.59 Angela Im- pey's analysis of kwaito is of particular interest
in this respect, for she relates the rise of this genre, with its numerous
parallels with reggaet6n, to a major moment of political change in
South Africa.60 According to Impey, "kwaito's tendencies are towards
materialistic, hedonistic, and flighty preoccupations, and groups such
as Boom Shaka appeared to unleash amongst young black
consumers an explosive desire to disengage from the long years of
oppression and political protest of the apartheid era."61 She goes on:
"Kwaito represents the music, style and attitude of post-apartheid
black urban youth; it represents a sub-cultural practice which
liberates black urban youth from the culture of protest of the '805."62
David Coplan, also on the subject of kwaito, writes of urban youth's
demand for a society that "accepts their pleasure principle as a valid
replacement for the now painfully passe politicised ideology of social
sacrifice." To these writers, then, the body-centered hedonism of
kwaito is indicative of postpolitical music for a postideological
moment.

Other commercialized dance genres widely criticized for their

hedonism and overt sexuality ("slackness") have also been
recuperated by perceptive scholars for their resistance to certain
hegemonic trends and ideologies. If kwaito may be reclaimed from its
critics as an expression of liberation from the relentless political focus
of popular culture of the apartheid years, Brazilian funk, which
evolved from U.S. models into a distinctive local style in Rio de
Janeiro in the mid-198os, might also be considered a reaction against
the elaborately discursive, politicized music of the long years of
military rule (1964-85). George Yudice's analysis of funk in Rio
reveals many parallels with reggaeton, in particular a resistance to
engaging with established ideologies and identities (national, political,
social) and an emphasis on individual freedom expressed through the
pleasure of dance rather than adherence to notions of collective
identity and action.63 Carolyn Cooper, meanwhile, in her study of
female slackness in Jamaican dancehall, claims: "It can be seen to
represent in part a radical, underground confrontation with the
patriarchal gender ideology and the pious morality of fundamentalist
Jamaican society. In its invariant coupling with Culture, Slackness is
potentially a politics of subversion. For Slackness is not mere sexual
looseness-though it certainly is that. Slackness is a metaphorical
revolt against law and order; an undermining of consensual standards
of decency. It is the antithesis of Culture."64

It is worth considering these various body-centered genres in order

to illuminate reggaeton's contestatory power in Havana. While there
has been no political change in Cuba to match the end of apartheid or
of Brazilian military rule, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a
period of social and economic crisis in early-i99os Cuba, the Special
Period, which shook the country to its foundations. The 199os was a
decade of crisis and transition from a socialist to a "sociocapitalist"
economy based on tourism, joint ventures with foreign companies,
and limited private enterprise. By the turn of the millennium, the worst
of the Special Period was over, and the new social and economic
reality, however contradictory, had settled considerably. Both state
and individuals had had to learn new ways of getting by, and more
recently burgeoning alliances with the Venezuelan president, Hugo
Chavez, and with China have lent greater stability to the Cuban
economy and political establishment. If, as Perna claims, timba was
the "sound of the Cuban crisis"-and I would suggest that rap could be
characterized in the same way, given that it too flourished in the mid-
i99os during the trials of the Special Period-then reggaeton may be
considered the postcrisis sound." I would argue that the shift in Cuba
from protest music (rap) to postprotest music (reggaeton) relates to a
broader swing, since the start of the Special Period, away from a
politicized national culture of socialist ideology, collectivity, and self-
sacrifice toward one increasingly centered on pleasure, the
reassertion of individuality, and self-fulfillment.

Cubanito 20.02 explicitly linked their abandonment of Primera Base

and their switch to reggaeton with social and economic changes: they
told me that the circumstances which had spawned underground rap
in Cuba no longer pertained and that the moment for rap had passed
with the worst of the Special Period. In some ways, though, the boom
of reggaeton could also be seen as revealing a subsequent, hidden,
ideological crisis, more subtle yet just as pervasive as the earlier
economic one. Reggaeton seems to be linked to a new phase in
which state ideologies play a much reduced role in people's thinking,
above all among young people, though older generations may adhere
more to long-established ideas of national culture, ideological
struggle, and so on. Reggaeton's core audience is teenagers, who
are too young to remember Cuba before the Special Period; they
have grown up with the contradictory realities of post-1990 Cuba and
have never witnessed socialism properly in action. It is not surprising
that many are apolitical-they are the first late socialist generation,
which has known neither the "purer" socialism of their parents'
childhood nor the capitalism of their grandparents' formative years.
For this generation of Cuban youth, socialism is a concept as much
as a reality. Tourism and foreign investment have brought huge
changes to Havana: principles and ideas have given up much of their
hold to images and display. When the state has abandoned key
ideological tenets, in practice if not discursively, and capitalist wealth
is visible daily on the streets of the city, then it may be unsurprising
that many individual citizens, particularly the young, feel little
connection to politicized ideologies.

Yet for all the creeping materialism of contemporary Havana, the

state has not abandoned its ideological efforts. On the contrary, the
batalla de ideas (battle of ideas), launched in 1999 as the economic
turbulence of the Special Period started to abate, is a sweeping
campaign-considered by some to be Castro's last major political
initiative-to safeguard the revolution by revitalizing the ideological
commitment of Cubans, especially the young, "reflecting the new
impulse for participation and commitment and seeking to fortify
ideological resolve against the pressure from individualization and
social division, and against the corrosive effects of the dollar and
tourism "66 It is worth noting that the "commanders" of this battle are
a group of loyalists drawn from the Union of Young Communists, the
same organization behind much of the negative press directed at
reggaeton, implying that the Union of Young Communists may have
taken its stand against reggaeton because it is seen as antithetical to
the central aim of the batalla de ideas: to reengage Cubans with the
ideals of the revolution.

The enthusiastic adoption of rggaeton by Cuban youth may

therefore reveal much about late socialism and the progress of the
"battle of ideas" among young residents of the capital. Listening and
dancing habits may speak eloquently about realities and attitudes that
are still not officially admissible. Perhaps bodily expression is the best
way to speak truth to power in Cuba. Reggaeton seems to
encapsulate a rejection of ideas and ideology, of the disci pline,
blurring of individuality, and abnegation of self under socialism; its
focus on self-indulgence and pleasure (often sexual) is implicitly a
form of liberation from the official, politicized national culture. To draw
a parallel with Cooper's analysis of Jamaican dancehall, in Cuban
reggaeton it is arguably the moralizing, paternalistic discourses of
socialism that are being rejected through slackness. For all the state's
recent efforts, then, reggaeton's popularity suggests the existence of
a postpolitical generation which came of age during the Special
Period and which has remained largely immune to the
consciousness-raising campaigns of the batalla de ideas. Any
attempt to understand the significance of reggaeton in Havana must
take into account the fact that the "Special Period generation"-the
prime consumers of this defiantly apolitical musical genre-is also the
key target of the battle of ideas.

When in Havana in 20o6, I was interested to hear rap and

reggaeton researchers talking about the "marginal" barrios in which
these genres are supposedly rooted; the acknowledgment of
marginality came as something of a surprise in a context long ruled
by a principle of equality. Yet the appeal of rap to intellectuals and the
state in Havana was that its producers, although from marginal
neighborhoods, were actually producing a sophisticated critical
discourse which seemed to illustrate that social, economic, or
geographical marginality in Cuba did not carry implications of a
parallel ideological stance. Rappers from tough, distant barrios-
particularly those artists linked to the Union of Young Communists via
its cultural wing, the AHs-could be seen as participating on some
level in the batalla de ideas. Reggaeton, though, poses deeper
problems: its vulgar, "banal" language seems to reveal a more
fundamental marginality and to suggest that social commitment and
ideological resolve do not spread evenly across society after all.
Cuban critics are troubled by the question of why reggaeton lyrics are
so popular among Cuban youth, despite their much vaunted
educational advantages compared with those in other countries of the
region, and so far they do not seem to have found many reassuring
answers.67 Contrary to the earlier evidence of rap, it seems that the
battle of ideas is being lost on the urban margins after all-or perhaps
young habaneros are simply refusing to fight.
 The swing from rap to reggaeton is thus revealing. Rap was a
music of the transitional period of the 199os, expressing the pain and
bewilderment of the shift from socialism to "sociocapitalism," but
today, to many listeners, it sounds like the music of a former era, just
as "music with a message" in South Africa soon came to sound very
dated after the end of apartheid .61 Reggaet6n's insistence on
pleasure has made rap's politicized ideology, with its noticeable
overlap with the state's rhetoric of the batalla de ideas, look rather
shopworn in Havana. This depoliticization of culture is not limited to
rap and reggaet6n: timba, too, has seen a marked decline in the
controversy of its lyrical topics since the late 199os. Concern about
this depoliticization explains the moves against reggaet6n by various
high-profile individuals associated with the Union of Young
Communists. However, rap's combination of socially committed lyrics
and state support was out of step with the times once the worst of the
Special Period was over. Today, irreverence and independence are
the hot tickets, not seriousness and state subsidy, and the
conservatism of underground rap at a time of rapid changes made it
quickly redundant to large sections of the younger population. This
conservatism is manifested in resistance to the breakdown of values
since the Special Period; reggaet6n, however, celebrates this
breakdown with bluntness and insistent repetition.69 Reggaet6n's
consolidation of the "pleasure principle" and its eclipse of socially
committed rap suggest that, to echo Coplan on kwaito, politicized
ideologies such as the batalla de ideas are now dismissed as
"painfully passe" by the majority of the capital's youth.

CONCLUSIONS

So what can be learned from comparing perceptions of reggaet6n to

those of rap, and how do controversies surrounding rap and
reggaet6n mirror and participate in larger debates about the direction
of Cuban society in the twenty-first century? Preferences for rap over
reggaet6n in Cuba reveal both national and academic agendas:
Cuban rap may be viewed as both resistant to and at the same time
participating in national discourses, and can therefore be talked about
productively by artists, state officials, and Cuban and foreign critics;
whereas reggaet6n is generally viewed as too debased by
intellectuals and too problematic by the state to be the focus of much
more than dismissal or "solutions." Unlike rap, reggaet6n cannot be
recuperated by Cuban observers in terms of "constructive criticism"
and a "positive message," and the internationalism that it expresses
is the "wrong" kind, painting Cuba predominantly as the passive
recipient of secondhand commercialized culture from overseas,
rather than as a regional or global leader in a "serious" field of music
(as in the case of "conscious" rap). Both rap and timba, another
"problem" music of the 199os, ultimately showed enough continuities
with official conceptions of national culture to be redeemable, but
reggaet6n has yet to be embraced by cultural policymakers and
critics.

What might be regarded as a local spat between fans of two rival

styles of popular music thus links in with broader questions about
national ideology and identity, and hegemonic academic and political
discourses. The dismissal of reggaeton as trashy, trite, almost
beneath consideration, is prescriptive as well as descriptive.
"Conscious" rap has been harnessed to bolster state rhetoric about
the centrality of moralistic ideas to the Cuban Revolution; reggaetbn,
a problematic source of fun and pleasure, is disciplined as deviant, in
language that recalls so many moral panics over popular music down
the centuries.70 Debates about reggaeton have provided a vehicle
for discussing issues of fundamental importance in contemporary
Cuban society, and much censure of reggaetbn relates to attempts to
defend hegemonic notions of national culture and identity in the face
of the challenges posed by globalized, commercialized culture.

Robin Moore's enlightening book on music and the Cuban

Revolution ends with the observation that "now more than ever, the
arts represent a quasiindependent realm of commentary in dialogue
with the state. These creations, representing varied reactions to a
unique environment, help provide an insightful and nuanced view of
the revolutionary experience. "" While his comments provide an
illuminating summary of the forty-odd years of musical production that
he analyzes, they are strikingly out of kilter with the recent arrival of
reggaeton on the scene. Most reguetoneros seem uninterested in any
sort of dialogue with the state, and even their fans are unlikely to
argue that their views are either "insightful" or "nuanced." It would
seem that reggaeton offers an unprecedented challenge to Cuban
revolutionary culture.

NOTES

The research on which this essay is based was made possible by

financial support from the University of London Central Research
Fund and the Music Department, Royal Holloway, University of
London. I am very grateful to the director and staff of cl nM uc,
Havana, for allowing me to consult their unpublished Informe sobre el
regueton, which has been invaluable in the preparation of this essay.
Thanks to all the usual suspects in Havana's rap scene for making
my work possible. Translations of Spanish-language quotations are
my own.

i. Santiago is widely considered to be the "home" of reggaetbn in

Cuba. The city's location at the eastern end of the island places it
directly in the path of musical currents emanating from Jamaica,
including the dembow dancehall rhythm that became an essential
building-block of reggaeton. Residents of Santiago can pick up radio
signals from Jamaica, whereas some in Havana may, with
considerable effort, receive broadcasts from the United States,
explaining in part the greater identification of the former city with
reggaetbn and of the latter with rap.

2. Osviel Castro Medel, "zProhibido el regueton?," Juventud

Rebelde, February 13, 2005.

3. Alberto Faya Montano, "Algunas notas sobre el regueton,"

Cubarte: El portal de la cultura cubana, March 28, 2005,
http://www.cubarte.cu/global/loader.php?cat=actuali
dad&cont=showitem.php&tabla=entrevista_2005&id=2685 (accessed
May 26, 2005).

4. Castro Medel, "zProhibido el regueton?"

5. CIDMUC, Informe sobre el reguetbn (unpublished report, 2005),

79; Osviel Castro Medel, "Se cruzan balas For el regueton," Juventud
Rebelde, March 6, 2005.

6. Castro Medel, " zProhibido el regueton?"

7. Alan West-Duran, "Rap's Diasporic Dialogues: Cuba's

Redefinition of Blackness," Journal of Popular Music Studies 16, no. i
(2004): 4-39.

8. See also Coplan's comments about academic preferences for

rap over kwaito in South Africa. David Coplan, "God Rock Africa:
Thoughts on Politics in Popular Black Performance in South Africa,"
African Studies 64, no. i (2005) : 9-27, 25. In contexts such as Cuba,
South Africa, and Brazil, rap is generally perceived as logocentric and
as contrasting with the body-centrism of dominant dance genres
(reggeton, kwaito, and funk respectively). In Havana, this dichotomy,
though clearly far from absolute, is widely recognized and
perpetuated by artists, critics, and audiences.

9. CIDMUC, Informe. Jan Fairley has also made a significant

contribution to the debate in her article (published after this essay had
been written) "Dancing Back to Front: Regeton, Sexuality, Gender
and Transnationalism in Cuba," Popular Music 25, no. 3 (2006): 471-
88. A revised version of that essay is included in the present volume.

10. CIDMUC, Informe, 19, 34.

u. Susan McClary, "Same as It Ever Was: Youth Culture and

Music," in Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, ed.
Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose (London: Routledge, 1994), 34.
 12. Castro Medel, "zProhibido el regueton?"

13. Fernando Ravsberg, "Cuba: `Peligroso' regueton," BBC Mundo,

March 15, 2005,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/misc/newsid_4350000/4350595•stm
(accessed May 26, 2005).

14. CIDMUC, Informe, 16-17.

15. See Robin Moore, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in

Socialist Cuba (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 7-9.

16. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "The Fidel I Think I Know," Guardian,

August 12, 20o6.

17. Geoffrey Baker, "Hip hop, Revolucion! Nationalizing Rap in

Cuba," Ethnomusicology 49, no. 3 (2005): 368-402.

18. Indigenization may also be a matter of place: Alexandrine

Boudreault-Fournier's forthcoming work on reggaeton in Santiago
suggests that the music produced there shows more evidence of
"Cubanization" than that in the capital. "From Homemade Recording
Studios to Alternative Narratives: Positioning the Reggaeton Stars in
Cuba," The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
(forthcoming 2008).

19. Castro Medel, "Se cruzan balas por el regueton."

20. Vincenzo Perna, "Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis. Black
Dance Music in Havana during the Periodo Especial" (Ph.D. thesis,
sons, University of London, 2001). A revised version of Perna's
illuminating thesis has been published as Timba: The Sound of the
Cuban Crisis (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2005).

21. There may also be mixed feelings about musical indigenization,

as there are in the rap scene, though this would need to be confirmed
by further research. While a positive view of rap fusions can be found
among many cultural observers and some leading rappers, this issue
has long been controversial within the Havana rap movement. Many
"underground" groups are outspokenly antifusion, preferring to
measure authenticity by proximity to rap's U.S. roots rather than to
Cuban musical traditions.

22. Moore, Music and Revolution, 89.

23. One leading "underground" rapper, Randy Acosta, describes

himself in a song as "enemigo del meneo, del mikeo, del perreo"
(enemy of booty-shaking, trendiness and doggy-style dancing).

24. Moore, Music and Revolution, 15. Antipathy toward reggaeton

is found in many other Latin American contexts, and similar dance
genres provoke parallel reactions: see, for example, the dichotomy of
"music for remembering" (rap) and "music for forgetting" (Rio funk,
kwaito) constructed by Patrick Neate in his book Where You'reAt:
Notes from the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet (London: Bloomsbury,
2003). The perceived dichotomy of "political" music versus dance
music extends far beyond Cuba and current preoccupations; see
McClary, "Same as It Ever Was." Thus while the Cuban context
described here may be unique, the negative reactions to
commercialized dance music are not.

25. Perna, Timba, 53-55.

26. Robin Moore, "Revolution with Pachanga? Debates over the

Place of `Fun' in the Music of Socialist Cuba" (paper presented at
"Caribbean Soundscapes" conference, Tulane University, March 12,
2004).

27. Moore, Music and Revolution, in.

28. CIDMUC, Informe, 21.

29. For more on timba and the despelote, see Perna, Timba, 157-
61; on reggaeton dancing and gender, see Fairley, "Dancing Back to
Front." The issue of dominance and submission in reggaeton dance
is complex and beyond the scope of this essay: nevertheless, it
should be noted that the characteristic perreo dance style of
international reggaeton, which might be regarded as placing women
in a submissive role, has been largely superseded by other styles in
Havana and that young dancers-both male and female-interviewed as
part of the CIDMUC investigation perceived solo dancing in terms of
liberation. Furthermore, as Perna notes, the emergence of the
despelote in the 199os was intimately linked to the rising influence of
young women in the informal economy of the "Special Period," and
the evolution of the man's role from leader to supporting cast or
observer was a potent metaphor for the declining economic role of
young men. On the other hand, the development of the female role
could be regarded as one from an object of male "leading," to an
object of the male gaze and thus as a dubious form of emancipation.

30. See Celeste Fraser Delgado and Jose Esteban Mufioz,

"Rebellions of Everynight Life," in Everynight Life: Culture and Dance
in Latinlo America, ed. Celeste Fraser Delgado and Jose Esteban
Mufioz (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), i8.

31. CIDMUC, Informe, 20.

32. On the pervasiveness of reggaeton in Havana at the time of

writing, but also the unease that its music and, above all, lyrics trigger
outside its young core audience, even among culturally sensitive and
perspicacious observers, see Leonardo Padura's article "
zReggaeton: Signo de nuestra epoca?," Los que sonamos por la
oreja 23 (October 2006), http://oreja.trovacub.com/boletin.html
(accessed June 25, 2007).

33. CIDMUC, Informe, 21.

34. Moore, Music and Revolution, 149-51; Deborah Pacini

Hernandez and Reebee Garofalo, "Between Rock and a Hard place:
Negotiating Rock in Revolutionary Cuba, 1960-1980," in Rockin' Las
Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latinlo America, ed.
Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Hector Fernandez L'Hoeste, and Eric
Zolov (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2004), 43.

35. Pacini Hernandez and Garofalo, "Between Rock and a Hard

Place," 50, 48.

36. Ibid., 65-66.

37. Castro Medel, " zProhibido el regueton?" The author also

quotes another journalist, Pedro de la Hoz, who described reggeton
(again in the pages of Juventud Rebelde) as "threatening to drown
us" and who claimed that "no one can save us now."

38. CIDMUC, Informe, 39-40.

39. Ravsberg, "Cuba: `Peligroso' regueton."

40. CIDMUC, Informe, 26, 39.

41. Ravsberg, "Cuba: `Peligroso' regueton."

42. CIDMUC, Informe, 84.

43. My italics. Ibid., 34, 9.

44. Moore, Music and Revolution, 13.

45. Faya Montano, "Algunas notas sobre el regueton."

46. CIDMUC, Informe, 13.

47. See Castro Medel, "Se cruzan balas por el regueton."

48. Cubaton: Reggaeton a lo Cubano, CD (Topaz Records,

BoooCIXDZE, 2006); Cubaton II: Reggaeton a lo Cubano, CD (Topaz
Records, BoooV6I6DG, 2007); and Cubaton-El Medico, film
recording, directed by Daniel Fridell (Rode Orm Film, 2008).
 49• There is a growing literature on Cuban rap by scholars
including Deborah Pacini Hernandez and Reebee Garofalo, Alan
West-Duran, Sujatha Fernandes, and Marc Perry. For my analysis
and full bibliographies, see Baker, "iHip hop, Revolucion!" and Baker,
"La Habana que no conoces: Cuban Rap and the Social Construction
of Urban Space," Ethnomusicology Forum 15, no. 2 (2006): 215-46.

50. See Baker, "Hip hop, Revolucion!"

51. This discursive distinction, maintained by rappers themselves,

is in some cases rather blurred in practice: see Baker, "La Habana
que no conoces."

52. Moore notes a broader movement toward greater moralism and

criticism in nondance music in recent years, perhaps because many
musicians feel marginalized by the centrality of dance music in the
new urban economy. Moore, Music and Revolution, 243. The rap-
reggaeton debate is not, therefore, an isolated phenomenon.

53. E.g., CIDMUC, Informe, 12; Faya Montano, "Algunas notas

sobre el regueton."

54• Thomas Cushman, "Glasnost, Perestroika, and the

Management of Oppositional Popular Culture in the Soviet Union,
1985-1991," Current Perspectives in Social Theory 13 (1993): 25-67,
27.

55• Ibid., 52.

56. Moore, Music and Revolution, 241.

57. Cushman, "Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Management of

Oppositional Popular Culture in the Soviet Union," 58.

58. CIDMUC, Informe, 33, 36.

59. McClary, "Same as It Ever Was," 29.

 6o. Ibid., 29-30; Angela Impey, "Resurrecting the Flesh? Reflections
on Women in Kwaito," Agenda 49 (2001): 44-50.

61. Impey, "Resurrecting the Flesh?," 45•

62. Ibid., 49.

63. George Yudice, "The Funkification of Rio," in Microphone

Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, ed. Andrew Ross and Tricia
Rose (London: Routledge, 1994), 193217.

64. Carolyn Cooper, Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the
"Vulgar" Body of Jamaican Popular Culture (London: Macmillan,
1993), 141.

65. Perna, Timba.

66. Antoni Kapcia, Havana: The Making of Cuban Culture (Oxford:

Berg, 2005), 181-82.

67. CIDMUC, Informe, 5.

68. Impey, "Resurrecting the Flesh?"; Simon Stephens, "Kwaito," in

Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies, ed. Sarah Nuttall
and Cheryl-Ann Michael (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
263.

69. For example, the meaning of the reggaeton hit "A Ti Te Gustan
los Yumas" (You Like Foreigners) evolved from humorous critique to
affirmation through constant repetition (CIDMUC, Informe, 19); this is
in marked contrast to the serious, moralizing treatment of the same
theme in "underground" rap songs (Baker, "La Habana que no
conoces").

70. See McClary, "Same as It Ever Was," on historical precedents.

71. Moore, Music and Revolution, 263.

Forty years of steady Latin American immigration have transformed
the southern American town of Miami into a Latino city. Spanish is the
language that animates Miami; proficiency or at least some
knowledge of the idiom is a required skill for those who aspire to
thrive in this tropical American capital. Billboards advertise everything
from the latest telenovela to the next salsa music festival. Among
them is a colorful poster for the local Latin hip-hop artist known as
Platano. Promoting his single, "Helicoptero," the poster informs
passers-by that "It's Getting Heavy ... 305 Style" (figure 1).

To the majority of those living in Miami-Dade County, the numbers

305 represent the telephone area code. But to an urban musical
subculture, the numbers have come to serve as the de facto symbol
for a nascent musical movement known as El Crunkiao (or crunkiao).
Songs such as Pitbull's "305 Till' I Die" and Sito's "La Calle"
characterize the style, which is most marked by a lyrical blend of
Spanglish, Spanish, and English. Much in the same way that
reggaeton artists once created their own movement by freely
incorporating aspects from Jamaican dancehall and American hip-
hop, crunkiao musicians are mixing Latin elements with the sounds of
southern hip-hop (especially Atlanta-based "crunk"), Miami bass or
"booty music" (a local predecessor to crunk), and freestyle-an '8os
pop style that drew heavily on electro funk as well as Latin elements-
all of which mingle in the Miami soundscape. Aided by the enormous
popularity of reggaeton, Miami-based Latin rappers such as Pitbull,
Platano, and Sito are attempting to launch their careers from the city,
reaching out to national and international audiences while cultivating
a homegrown sound.
 Still in its infancy, the crunkiao movement found an unlikely ally in
reg gaeton. Crunkiao artists, who tend to rhyme over hip-hop beats
stylistically different from the reggae derived dembow rhythms of
reggaeton, regularly perform at national venues headlined by their
more successful reggaeton brethren. Some crunkiao rappers such as
Pitbull have gained national recognition in no small part by
collaborating on remixes with reggaeton artists such as Daddy
Yankee and Voltio. "Reggaeton has helped us massively," says
Platano. "If it weren't for the success of artists like Daddy Yankee and
Don Omar, we probably would not be getting that much attention at
all. I guess you can say that reggaeton has brought awareness of
Latinos and the different breeds of hiphop within our communities."
But not all Miami crunkiao artists would use the term crunkiao to
classify themselves. Among them is Pitbull, who has so far resisted
coining a name for his hybrid music, preferring instead to collaborate
with artists and producers from various genres, including crunk,
reggaeton, dancehall reggae, and hip-hop.

THE ROOTS AND ROUTES OF CRUNKIAO

A young man in his mid-twenties, Platano, born Ivan Rodriguez,

moved with his family to Miami when he was still in his teens. "I was
born in the Dominican Republic," Platano relates. "But when I was 12
my family moved to New York City. It was a different culture, and it
took me a while to get used to it." Like many other Caribbean-born
Latinos making that transition, Platano found his new life to be a
challenge: "I loved New York City, but coming from the Dominican
Republic I was surprised by the lack of space," says Platano. "But
New York was also exciting: in my old barrio of Washington Heights
there was something always going on. I remember that we used to
skip school and go to house parties. There was never a minute that I
wasn't doing something, and I loved it."

The excitement of life in New York was, however, tempered by

financial pressures in the form of gentrifying rents and a lack of
enthusiasm for education, common to the lives of immigrants in the
city. The deciding factor for the family was Platano's younger
brother's education. "My family decided that it would be better to take
us away from the City," says Platano. "I guess they felt that Miami
would be a new start, with better schools and with more of a Latino
flavor." He continues, "What surprised me about Miami was how
much space we had. I mean, my house was huge and the streets
were clean. Back in Washington Heights, New York City, I couldn't
walk anywhere without having someone offer me drugs. All of a
sudden we were in Miami, and my new school was so big it even had
a field where I could play sports. I never had anything like that in New
York. So being in Miami made me change my outlook about school."

i. Promotional image for Platano's single "Helicoptero." Image

courtesy of Heavy Management.

Miami's demographic environment confronted Platano with a new

ethnic perspective: unlike New York City, where the Latino population
stands at 27 percent, in Miami Latinos account for a whopping 65
percent.' His high school, located in the working-class suburban
neighborhood of Coral Park, in South Miami, was by all accounts a
pivotal catalyst for the nascent Miami movement. It was there that
Platano would meet future figureheads of the Miami Latin hip-hop
movement such as rapper Armando Perez, a.k.a. Pitbull, and
producer Isai Gonzalez, a.k.a. Jibba Jamz. For Gonzalez, a former
student of Cuban American parentage, the ethnic makeup of the
school represented a mirror image of Miami's demographic layout. "At
the time [1998], Latin students were mainly Cuban," asserts
Gonzalez. "But because of the bad economic situations throughout
Latin America, we started to see a lot of new kids from countries like
Venezuela, Colombia, and Argentina. It started to become more
international."

Platano grew impatient with the dearth of postschool activities

offered in his new neighborhood, but music offered an outlet.
"Compared to life in New York, life in Miami was very tame," he
comments.

Musically there was very little or no music coming from Miami.

Most of the music that people at school heard was New York hip-
hop, so that made me kind of popular because people were
impressed with the fact that I had lived in New York. My friends
and I were looking for something to do, and that's when my buddy
Tricks [Joel Prenza] and I decided to throw parties where we could
all get together and listen to our music. We wanted to have a place
were other classmates could come and dance and just have a
good time; we decided to call the parties Baja Panties [Panties
Down].

The Baja Panties parties started out as a loose collective of friends

who were trying to promote and find a way to listen to their music.
The risque name offered or implied a night of mischief and illicit fun.
Platano's fiestas would prove a success with teenagers too young to
be admitted at the clubs for those twenty-one and over in glamorous
Miami Beach. "Back then, the radio wasn't playing our music," asserts
Platano. "So we started selling lollypops and candy around our
school, and that's the way that we raised the money to rent banquet
halls and support the scene."

The parties' musical selections would serve as a template for

elements of the crunkiao music style. The fiestas offered a blend of
New York hip-hop and Miami bass, with some reggaeton, freestyle,
and Latin dance styles added to the mix. "We would mix it up with
salsa, merengue and Miami booty, like Luke Campbell and el hip-
hop," adds Platano. "But it was my boy Tricks who introduced me to
reggaeton. I had heard it before, but the music had evolved. It was
better produced, and the reggaeton guys could really rap in Spanish.
So it was really an eye opener." With Platano acting as the event's
host, the popularity of Baja Panties quickly spread by word of mouth,
and the party soon outgrew its humble banquet hall beginnings,
moving to the Millennium merengue club located near the Miami
airport in a working-class enclave of South Miami. For Isai Gonzalez,
who attended many Baja Panty nights, it was a chance to see
something new-and promising. "It was a great feeling-by the year
2001 a lot of the people that first attended those early parties were
starting to make the inroads in the music business," affirms Gonzalez.

Inspired by his friends, Platano decided to make the transition from

event host to rapper. The idea of making music evolved naturally in
the course of attending Coral High and spending time with his
classmates. "I used to rap all around the place with my friend at la
hora del lunch, you feel me," discloses Platano,

and that friend was Pitbull. Even back then he was known as
Pitbull, so I have never really called him by any other name. The
whole episodio of Baja Panty helped me as much as it helped
Pitbull, because back then no one wanted to put him on a stage.
Actually a lot of people didn't believe in him, so he calls me and
says, "Oye loco, zcomo me puedo montar en la tarima de Baja
Panty?" [Listen man, how can I get on the Baja Panty stage?]. And
I told him not to worry, and that was the first time that Pitbull was
 on a stage, and until this day he will tell you that we were the first
ones que le dimos la mano [that gave him a hand].

The irony of the situation should be evident: an up-and-coming

Platano gave Pitbull his first chance at rapping, but as time went on
Pitbull would be the one Miami Latin rapper to attain popularity at a
national level, scoring hits with Daddy Yankee and the Ying Yang
Twins, while Platano still toils to find national acceptance.

Motivated by the success of his parties and the early achievements

of his friend Pitbull, who at the time was signed to legendary Miami
bass label, Luke Records, Platano and his high school friend and
manager Tricks decided in 2001 to form the company Heavy
Management and work full time in the production and promotion of
their new music. "I wanted to do something original," says Platano.

Here in Miami we talk en espanol and in English. We talk in

Spanglish too, and that's how my music is: I add all the elements
that have inspired me and that make me who I am. But don't get it
twisted: I don't sit down and say, now I will write a Spanish lyric.
No, I let it happen naturally. My songs talk about my life, like when
the Latino parents of my ex-girlfriend didn't want her to date me
because of my [darker] skin color. So I rap about what I know, the
only way I know how.

At around the same time, other South Florida-based artists, such as

Sito Oner Rock, Don V.A., and the Sofla Kings, began to hone in on
what would soon be known as the Miami crunkiao sound. Miami born
and Cuban American, Sito Oner Rock (figure 2), a.k.a. Benhur
Barrero II, was a Latin hip-hop artist who started to garner local
attention for his ability to mix hip-hop with Latin styles. "I always loved
hip-hop and, like many of my school friends, thought that Latin music
was something for the older Cuban-born generation," confesses the
baby-faced Sito. He recalls from his home music studio in the south
Florida neighborhood of Hollywood:
 It wasn't until I was twelve years old and I was at a full moon
beach party in Miami Beach that I understood the impact of the
tambores. Back then, a lot of Cuban families would go to Miami
Beach to gather around, have a few beers, and play the tambores.
I remember my uncle was playing the congas, and everybody
knew the words to the songs-the music was real. And I felt left out
because I didn't know the lyrics but I knew it was some hometown
island shit that had good energy. I learned then that this music was
in my blood. From then on I knew that I needed to find a way to
connect my Latino side with my hip-hop.

Being part of a musical family helped Sito to recognize the many

AfroCaribbean influences existing within hip-hop music. "I would
listen to Africa Bambaataa and I could hear the use of clave and the
use of bongos," says Sito. "And I would notice that they were really
not playing it in [the] right key. I mean, my father would play the
congas a lot better than that. At first I thought it was just a Hispanic
thing, but as I got older I discovered that those sounds were part of
Africa too. So that's when I thought, oh shit, this is universal, and
there's no rules." Yet for all the Latin influences that permeated hip-
hop music, there was a lack of acceptance for Latino rappers. As Sito
was soon to find out, the local scene did not support or didn't know
what to do about Latinos and their Spanglish lyrics. "When I started
rapping in Spanglish I thought that people would readily accept my
rhymes;" admits Sito. "But the thing was, that for a lot people at that
time hip-hop was something that belonged only to African Americans
and should only be done in English. So yes, it was a struggle when I
started to rap in Spanish and creating my own thing but I had to be
true to myself. Who said that you only could rap in English?"
Surprisingly, a bulk of the resistance or aversion to the Spanish lyrics
in hip-hop was coming from Miami's very own Latino community. For
Shulika Alonzo, a twenty-sevenyear-old Miami-born Dominican
Puerto Rican who attended South West Miami Senior High and who
is now a registered nurse, "Spanish music" was something for an
older generation to listen to: "Around 1998 when I attended high
school, Spanish music was not heard a lot." According to Alonzo, the
music that most teenagers were listening to in Miami was hip-hop and
alternative rock. Mainstream favorites such as the Smashing
Pumpkins and Tupac Shakur were among the artists popular among
Latino kids.

At that point, reggaetbn had not made a significant impact in Miami.

In those days the music came to Miami as an import from Puerto Rico
or the Dominican Republic, as Alonzo recalls: "The first time that I
heard reggaetbn was back in 1998 when I was eighteen years old.
My cousin Tito brought it from Puerto Rico and it was the funniest
thing. I couldn't believe that people were rapping in Spanish. It
sounded funny to me. I guess because of the lack of exposure, it was
foreign to my ears; it was comical."

2. Sito Oner Rock. Photo by Time-Shift Studios.

 Interestingly, that would be a common reaction among U.S.-born
Latinos living in Miami. The main criticism aimed at all forms of Latin
hip-hop was that it was somehow inauthentic and inferior because
hip-hop should only be sung in the English language. Miami
teenagers such as Shulika, saw hip-hop as an African American
genre having little to do with Latino culture. "For me, hip-hop-and I
could be wrong about this-is African American music," declares
Shulika, a long time hip-hop fan. "The first Latinos that I remember
doing hip-hop were Cypress Hill, but they weren't cheesy like
reggaeton music."

REGGAETON HITS THE TOWN

Sito's promotions manager, David "Suppa" Duperon was one of the

kids who emigrated from Puerto Rico to Miami, bringing his taste for
reggaetbn along with him. His experience in adjusting to his new life
reveals some of the prejudices that are sometimes present within
Latino communities. "It was kind of crazy; it was like a culture shock
to me," explains Suppa about his new life in Miami's HML High
School. "When I got to my school in 2000,1 saw a lot of racism and
the funny thing was that it came from other Latino kids. The Miami-
born kids would call those who didn't speak English the reffs, as in
refugees. I had the advantage that I knew English but it surprised me
to learn that there would be divisions within people of the same
background." Not only did the students at HML High School in Miami
make fun of their non-Englishspeaking counterparts; they also shared
a certain distaste for Latin music. In turn students like Suppa were
responsible for bringing reggaet6n to the attention of the English-
dominant kids. "They didn't know what reggaet6n was, but I did," says
Suppa. "Being born in Puerto Rico I saw it all happen and when I
came to my school I had my mixtapes and I remember that some
people didn't like it, so yeah all that they would listen to was all hip-
hop all the time."

The number of mixtapes coming from Puerto Rico continued to

increase, and by 2002 reggaeton was gaining wider acceptance
among the Miami Latino youth. "Back then in 2000, I had to explain to
a lot people what reggaeton was all about," recalls Sandra Chalco, a
Miami Dade Community College student and a reggaeton music fan.
"Most people knew who Vico C was and they knew about El General,
but that was it. Reggaeton was really underground and you only
heard a little bit of it on the radio. Then Tego Calderon came out with
El Abayarde, and all of a sudden the dembow was everywhere." The
rising popularity of reggaeton acts such as Tego Calderon and Daddy
Yankee came at a time when the stylized Latin pop of artists such as
Alejandro Sanz and Enrique Iglesias was starting to wane.
"Reggaeton, for me, it was a breath of fresh air," continues Sandra. "I
was born and raised in Peru, so I didn't get a lot of the references that
the reggaeton artists rapped about, like when Tego says guasa guasa
(liar, liar) or Lito y Polaco talk about yenga yenga, I don't know what
that means. But I still liked it because it seemed real, unlike the
Spanish pop playing nonstop on the radio." Language may have
played a large role in reggaeton's impact and rapid rise to popularity
among the Miami public. Many listeners cite Spanish as a key factor
for their love of reggaeton. "What did it for me and for a lot of my
friends was the espanol," asserts Sandra. "It was something that we
could call our own. Guys like Tego made it clear that you could sound
cool rapping in Spanish. It didn't have to be `wack: Some of the
reggaeton artists can actually rap better than a lot the English-
speaking rappers out there. Then Pitbull came and started to rap in
Spanglish, and we could all relate to him because that's the way we
spoke."

Having noticed the rise of reggaet6n, Miami artists such as Platano

started to incorporate dembow beats into their sets. For Platano it
seemed like a natural transition. "By late 2001 I had made the move
from party host to rapper," Platano reveals. "I do some songs in the
style of reggaeton because I see it all as part of the same movement,
which is una cosa latina [a Latino thing]. But reggaeton is something
that comes from Puerto Rico. And I didn't want to just imitate what
guys like Tego and Yankee were doing. I wanted to come up with my
own stuff." In turn, the sound of Miami's crunkiao music would borrow
heavily from the Miami bass, or booty music, made popular over a
decade earlier by such artists as 2 Live Crew and Boys from the
Bottom. The booty sound never completely faded from the Miami
soundscape: local booty music followers such as Power 96 DJ Laz
and the Latin fusion revivalist DJ Le Spam kept the music alive in the
nightclubs, while the former 2 Live Crew producer and frontman, Luke
Campbell, continued to run his independent record label, Luke
Records, with some success.

Another Miami-based style that crunkiao artists borrow from, lifting

memorable melodies for crunked-up beats, is "freestyle music."
Sometimes known as Latin freestyle, the genre had strong roots in
Miami during its '8os heyday, when artists such as Stevie B recorded
keyboard-driven pop hits marked by nods to Latin music. Saul
Alvarez, a veteran music producer and music studio owner, worked
as a producer for freestyle pioneer Stevie B and ties the freestyle
movement to the mixing of pop and Latin styles: "In the beginning it
was called Latin Style," explains Saul from his Miami record studios.

It was really born in New York and it had the R&B, plus a lot of
tropical influences, like clave and tumbao. Freestyle would sample
records from Tito Puente and Perez Prado. When I came to Miami
[in 1987], I loved it because it was so open to new ideas. At the
time Miami freestyle had very marked Latin influences. I was
working on Stevie B's `Party Your Body' song and we added Latin
elements to the mix like the horn arrangements, with deep bass
sounds, which later became known as the Roland system 8o8s
and 9o9s. It was something that came natural, it was born in me.2

Miami's urban music had always been characterized in one way or

another by its Latin influences. For many crunkiao artists, Latin
elements seem to emerge naturally in their music, an expression of
their musical heritage. When asked about the tropical influences in
songs such as "Como Duele," Platano professes that the outcome
was unconscious. "I don't set out to write a song that will have a
certain style. It just happens that I grew up in the Dominican Republic
with bachata and merengue, so my songs will always have some of
that flavor. It's who I am." Other artists, Sito, for example, prefer to
add subtle hints of Latin rhythms to their music. "My base for most of
my music is hip hop," he says. "When I add Latin elements to a song,
like tumbao or clave, I make sure that they don't take over the hip-hop
beats." According to Alvarez, the hip-hop community eventually
absorbed the Latin influences that infused the freestyle movement.
Considering that Miami bass was a major influence for Atlanta hip-
hop/crunk, things had come full circle. "Crunk from Atlanta is basically
the new Miami bass: the rhythms and patterns are similar, only the
tempo has changed. Crunk is a lot slower;" says Alvarez. "What
happened with Pitbull was that he got an opportunity to sign with
something that was similar to the sound here in Miami," he explains,
referring to Pitbull's collaborations with Atlanta crunk luminary Lil'
John.3

Pitbull would similarly profit from his collaboration with reggaet6n

artists. Following the initial round of success of his hit song
"Gasolina," Daddy Yankee proceeded to do a remix of the song that
featured Pitbull rapping in Spanish. The remix would prove successful
in bringing attention to the Miami Latin hip-hop movement. The
publicist Paulina Blanco works for Nevarez PR, the Miami-based
agency responsible for Daddy Yankee's public relations in the United
States. Blanco considers Pitbull's collaboration on the "Gasolina"
remix as vital in bringing the Miami movement into the international
spotlight. "People liked what Pitbull did on that remix, and I believe
that a lot of people recognized that Pitbull's slang and beat were
unique to Miami," states Blanco. Moreover, Pitbull's strategy is not
unique; crunkiao artist Sito has also benefited from allying himself to
the reggaet6n movement's success. Recently Sito was invited to host
the segment Estrellas del Reggaeton on the Univision television show
Sabado Gigante. "They [the producers] needed someone who could
rap in English and Spanish," explains Sito. "I consider myself a hip-
hop artist, but reggaet6n has helped me to establish a name for
myself. I also did a show in California in front of 30,000 fans and that
was thanks to Don Omar, who was the headlining act."
CRUNKIAO AND REGGAETON IN THE LATIN MUSIC
PLAYGROUND

Yet for many in the Miami crunkiao/Latin hip-hop movement, the

overwhelming success of reggaeton has produced some conflicts.
Publicist Diana Lopez is the founder of Be Heard Media, a PR agency
that has helped many young Miami urban artists to participate in
exclusive invitation-only media events. According to Lopez, the
success of reggaeton has caused some polarization within the Latino
musical community. "The salsa and merengue bands are not getting
the top billing anymore," explains Lopez. "The reggaetoneros are
demanding and getting top dollar for their performances, so in the
end there's less money to go around. Now when you go to a Latino
festival, it's mostly reggaeton and that is hurting the other musicians.
The Miami urban acts have benefited because they have managed to
open shows for the reggaeton headliners, but at the end of the day
they are all competing for limited funds and money."

Living in a center for Latin culture in the United States also presents
unique problems for local acts, as Miami artists face unrelenting
international competition in a cutthroat media environment. "You have
to understand that all the established Latino artists from around the
world come to Miami to launch their records," adds Lopez. "So Miami
rappers like Platano have to compete directly against the entire Latin
music industry. And a lot of times the radio stations won't play their
records the way they should. Miami artists in general have a hard
time breaking into this city because the media is geared towards the
international market and what people want now is the reggaeton."
Dealing with indifferent local media has thus become a reality for
most of the artists in the crunkiao movement.

Melanie Byron, editor in chief for Source Latino magazine and the
former host of the Latin urban TV program The Roof, acknowledges
that Miami's independent urban acts face strong competition from
international artists. "Miami is the central place for all Latin media in
the U.S.," she explains.
 All the Latin record labels and TV stations have their headquarters
here, and the media tends to give special attention to the Latino
events that take place in the city. When Daddy Yankee performed
at the American Airlines Arena in downtown, he got all the media
in the city to cover that event. On the other hand, when the Black
Eyed Peas came down that same month, they hardly got any
press coverage at all. The entertainment press in this city is all
about Latino culture; that's why all the acts from Latin America and
Spain come to Miami first, before going anywhere else in the U.S.
and the local artists sometimes do get lost in the shuffle.

In the past, Byron has encouraged Miami's independent Latin hip-hop

artists to develop a professional promotions team and to dedicate
more attention to their publicity. "Miami artists like Sito are great,"
acknowledges Byron, "but they need to understand that in the same
way that there's only one Eminem, there can only be one Pitbull. The
problem is that as reggaeton, and to a lesser extent Latin hip-hop,
become more popular, the copycats and lesser acts jump on the
bandwagon and co-opt the movements. This means that good artists
like Sito have to find a way to promote themselves and get
themselves heard." In Miami's competitive atmosphere, successful
Latino rappers such as Pitbull are the exception; more often than not,
local rappers struggle to compete with the celebrities that stay in the
city. For Platano, the visiting celebrities become yet another obstacle
to overcome. "A lot of celebrities come to Miami to promote their
music and even to record their music," says Platano. "But most of
them work in a closed environment, where they bring their own
producers and collaborators. From my experience, they never invite
local artists to team up in their projects, and that's just the way it is.
Miami is like their playground."

Another source of friction for some in the Latin hip-hop community

is what they believe to be reggaet6n's dominance over the Latin
airwaves. As a DJ for New York's WCAA La Kalle 105.9 radio station,
DJ Kazzanova observes that radio's preference for reggaet6n is only
a natural reflection of the genre's strong sales. "The only music that's
selling right now is reggaet6n," says Kazzanova. "Latin hip-hop will
keep on growing and evolving, but right know the main focus will stay
on reggaet6n. What people like Daddy Yankee and Tego did is that
they gave Latino kids a role model to call their own. Before we
wanted to be like Jay-Z; now we want to be like Tego." Still, artists
such as Sito and Platano remain united in their love for the reggaet6n
movement, conscious of the fact that reggaet6n has opened doors for
their own music. While hip-hop heavyweights like Jay-Z would not
likely ask Sito to open a show for him, for instance, reggaet6n stars
like Tego will happily provide Sito and Platano with a slot at his
concerts.

Indeed, for most of the Latino artists that make up the crunkiao
movement the boundaries between reggaet6n and crunkiao are
mainly superficial in nature. Sito and Platano, for instance, feel a
sense of unity, and opportunity, that transcends the lines between
Latin urban movements. "The reggaet6n that we listen to in the radio
today comes from Puerto Rico, and it really belongs to the Boricuas
that are making it, asserts Platano. "We here in Miami are doing our
own thing, but at the end of the day we are all Latinos and there's
really no difference. The reggaetoneros' success is helping us, and in
turn our successes will help other Latinos. When I go to the clubs
they play both reggaet6n and Latin hip-hop. It really doesn't matter to
me; it's all coming from the same place."

"When I first came to Miami there was no music scene for Latino
hiphop;" Platano continues. "Now when you go out to any party the
DJ will play music by Miami Latin hip-hop artists, and everyone puts
their 305 signs up in the air."

NOTES

This essay draws from the following sources: Tego Calderon,

interview by author, Miami, September 12, 2006; Lisa M., interview by
author, August 7, 20o6; Platano, interview by author, Miami, May 6,
20o6; Isai Gonzalez (Jibba Jamz), interview by author, Miami, June
22, 20o6; Diana Lopez, interview by author, Miami, May 15, 2006;
Saul Alvarez, interview by author, Miami, May 14, 2006; May 14,
2006; Sito Oner Rock and David Duperon, interview by author, Miami,
May 6, 20o6; Melanie Byron, interview by author, Miami, June 5,
20o6; Shulika Alonzo, interview by author, Miami, June 15, 20o6;
Jean Rodriguez, interview by author, Miami, May 6, 2006; DJ
Kazzanova, interview by author, Miami, June 17, 2006. Translations
of Spanish-language quotations are my own.

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2000. See, e.g.,

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/12/ 12450oo.html, and
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/365'ooo.html (accessed
July 10, 2007).

2. The 808 and 909 to which Alvarez refers are drum machines that
became popular in the mid-198os among producers looking for
resonant kick drums. Both the Roland TR-8o8 and TR-9o9 became
closely identified with the Miami bass and Latin freestyle sound, and
their sonic footprint lives on in the booming drums of Atlanta crunk.

3. It is worth noting as well, especially in the context of Miami's pan-

Caribbean soundscape, that Pitbull's career received a significant
boost when his track "Culo" found its way into urban radio playlists
across the country. Produced by Lil' Jon, who added 808 drums to a
contemporary dancehall reggae riddim, the Coolie Dance (produced
by Cordel "Scatta" Burrell), the track featured Pitbull rapping in
Spanish and English, propelling his choruses with the melody from
Jamaican dancehall artist Mr. Vegas's "Pull Up" (also recorded on the
Coolie Dance and a minor hit in its own right at the time).
Reggaeton may be a musical style first and foremost, but it circulates
and resonates via various visual texts as well, from the mix of high
fashion and street wear in artists' and audiences' sartorial styles, to
the gestures, postures, and movements depicted in videos and
enacted from the club to the calle. Reading reggaeton visually offers
another set of lenses through which to view the genre's articulations
of race, nation, class, and gender. Featuring images that both depict
and critique reggaeton's visual dimensions, the following section
offers a number of interesting angles from which to view this vibrant,
complex cultural phenomenon.

First are three provocative images from Miguel Luciano. Two of

them, as well as the photograph gracing the cover of this book, come
from a series called Pure Plantain um. For the project, Luciano took
an actual green plantain and plated it with platinum, the precious
metal associated with massive record sales and the "bung-bung" (or
blin-blineo, as reggaeton translates hip-hop slang) of shiny jewelry.
Pure Plantainum suggests some poignant readings of reggaeton style
by juxtaposing charged cultural symbols, bringing the plantain's
evocation of field labor, racial and class stigmas, and national and/or
Caribbean pride together with the contemporary connotations of
platinum as a glorification of conspicuous consumption. Luciano both
estranges this object, making it a museum piece, and puts it into the
familiar and fitting setting of the display window at Harlem's King of
Platinum jewelry store on 125th Street. Critical and empathetic,
cartoonish and complex, the images seem to shine a funhouse mirror
back at reggaeton. Similarly, the third image shown here comes from
Luciano's Filiberto Ojeda Uptowns-Machetero Air Force Ones project,
which also combines, painfully and playfully, charged symbols of
colonialism and materialism in order to pose vexing questions about
cultural identity and resistance in the reggaeton era. Again, Luciano
juxtaposes two starkly different cultural symbols: on the one hand,
Filiberto Ojeda, an activist for independence sometimes referred to as
"the Puerto Rican Che Guevara"; and on the other, Nike sneakers-
particularly, the Air Force One model, a central, coveted consumer
item in the urban fashion aesthetics of reggaeton and hip-hop. About
the project Luciano reflects, "A pair of Nike sneakers become an
unlikely vehicle of veneration for the fallen leader that both complicate
and question how nationalism and resistance are embodied within
today's colonial consumerist society. Nevertheless, they engage
alternative strategies towards reconstructing symbols of resistance
from the objects of material desire, while questioning the
commodification of Revolution."'

Next we have a series of stills by Carolina Caycedo. Part of a larger

project called Gran Perreton, the images mix documentary and art,
taken during a perreo marathon held in RincOn, Puerto Rico, at Don
Raul's Bar. The images not only illustrate some typical perreo poses,
with all the attendant issues they raise about gender and power
relations; they also offer a perspective on the perreo that might be
consistent with, as Caycedo argues, "a new feminism, where women
take advantage of their sexual attraction, beauty and body language
to achieve their goals. 2 Given the more reactionary responses the
dance has elicited, particularly in Puerto Rico and across Latin
America, this is a reading worth taking into consideration. Caycedo's
images are additionally provocative in their "low-fi;" washed-out
quality, their monochrome graininess suggesting night-goggle
voyeurism and the discomfiting allure of amateur porn.

Our visual readings are rounded out by several photographs by

Kacho Lopez that document Tego Calderon's 2006 visit to Sierra
Leone during the filming of the VH1 documentary Bling'd: Blood,
Diamonds, and Hip-Hop-a chilling expose of the connections between
the diamond industry, war, poverty, human rights violations, and hip-
hop's diamond fetishism.' The selection of Tego Calderon along with
Raekwon and Paul Wall as the three artists featured in the
documentary exemplifies the ways in which reggaeton styles and
fashion are intricately connected to hip-hop's; it is also a nod to the
importance of Latinos and Latin Americans as consumers and
producers of hip-hop music and fashion. Upon his return to Puerto
Rico, Calderon described his experiences in Africa as pivotal in his
renewed commitment to combating social injustice; renouncing
reggaeton's bung aesthetics was part of that commitment. The first
photo of this series captures Calderon's interactions with local
children. The next one is a testament to the atrocious working
conditions of diamond miners, who are paid not in wages but with
food-unless they find one of those ever elusive and highly coveted
pieces of rock. The third photo was taken during one of the most
touching sequences in the documentary, when the artists visit a camp
for amputees. The man shown here with his prosthetic hands clasped
behind his back explains and embodies in the documentary the
widespread practice of torture and mutilations during Sierra Leone's
civil war, which was driven by the diamond trade. The last photo in
this series captures Calderon's out-of-focus profile, as the camera
focuses on the hip-hop artist and fellow traveler Paul Wall; seated
between the two artists is the author and Sierra Leonean former child
soldier, Ishmael Beah.4

NOTES

i. Artist's statement. Miguel Luciano, Filiberto Ojeda Uptowns-

Machetero Air Force Ones (2007).

2. Artist's statement. Carolina Caycedo, Gran Perretbn (2004).

3. Bling'd: Blood, Diamonds, and Hip Hop, film recording directed

by Raquel Cepeda (Article 19 Films and Djali Rancher Productions,
2007).

4. Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007).

Miguel Luciano
i. Pure Plantainum at King of Platinum, 125th Street, Miguel Luciano
(20o6).
2. Pure Plantainum, Miguel Luciano (2006).
3. Filiberto Ojeda Uptowns-Machetero Air Force Ones, Miguel
Luciano (2007).

Carolina Caycedo
1-4. Stills from Gran Perreton, Carolina Caycedo (2004).

Kacho Lopez
i. Tego Calderon and children, Sierra Leone. Photo by Kacho Lopez
(2006).
2. Diamond miners at work, Sierra Leone. Photo by Kacho Lopez
(2006).
3. Man with prosthetic hands, living testimony of a diamond trade
driven civil war, Sierra Leone. Photo by Kacho Lopez (2006).
4. From left to right: hip-hop artist Paul Wall, author Ishmael Beah,
and Tego Calderon. Photo by Kacho Lopez (2006).
The spoken word is a bodily act at the same time that it forms a
certain synecdoche of the body. The vocalizing larynx and mouth
become part of the body that stages the drama of the whole; what the
body gives and receives is not a touch, but the psychic contours of a
bodily exchange, a psychic contour that engages the body that it
represents.

-Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

ERASE YOURSELF: GLORY'S FEAT

For more than a decade, the reggaeton singer Glory has scripted
herself into the aural canon of popular music by relentlessly, sultrily
ohh-ing and ahh-ing reggaeton style as the kitten that would arouse
the cats. In a preternatural whispery tone, Glory's vocals would
become the go-to parts of superstars Daddy Yankee's and Don
Omar's lyrics before either of them launched his first U.S. tour or sold
a single disc in Japan. Ever the throaty object of desire, Glory was
and is recognizable as the voice that foiled the dons and the dads
record after hit record, yet retained her relative anonymity with a
prepackaged, utilitarian, studied role that served the star singers'
purposes-and the audiences' fantasies-as the woman the men loved
to hear purring.

But belting one-line choruses as the male lead singer's foil also
meant wrapping herself in that role, repeated and recasted to fulfill
the career demands of her more famous counterparts. Glory's
glorious tenure as reggaeton's reigning underground performance
queen had been predicated upon the auditory gendering of other
people's songs. To extricate herself from the airtight persona of her
twelve-year chorus career, Glory scripted a solo move with a 2005
album, Glou, that rearticulates gender and sexuality-her two chorus
mainstays-as selling points, and even had one of its songs-"La
Popola"- banned in the Dominican Republic on grounds of obscenity.
But why has the golden chorus girl failed to unleash the magic glow
and flow that have her recognized as the "Suelta como gabete" or
"Dame mas gasolina" sex-it-for-themale-star "envoicement" of a
woman? Why has she been outshined by Ivy Queen's shadow?

Those two particular choruses (for Don Omar's 2003 song "Dale,
Don, Dale" and Daddy Yankee's 2004 breakout hit "Gasolina")
catapulted Glory to the front of the cameras and the center of public
notoriety, if only for a brief time, as a musical curiosity in search of a
career. In the history of reggaeton in Puerto Rico, Glory stands as a
paradigmatic case that reflects and generates the slowly evolving
internal struggle of that musical genre, while at the same time
attempting to reposition the boundaries established for female
performers in the perceptual dynamics of Puerto Rican reggaeton.

The two well-placed lines (after many others without the same
international commercial penetration) define and propel a career that
had been developed in the pertinent obscurity of the call-and-
response dynamics of reggaeton. Glory's oral acquiescence-of
course-was the response to the call, in the strict biological "bow-coo"
mating behavior of mate-ready singing birds. Glory's lines in chorus
performances woven into the songs are the essential, yet
parenthetical, asides to the male singer's
"adjectivation"/objectification of women. On Don Omar's "Dale, Don,
Dale," Glory succinctly proclaims her total surrender to the sexual
shenanigans that the night may bring.
And on Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina", Glory simply asks for it:

So her lyrical career went-answering, and yielding, to men, within

the narrow parameters of patriarchal condescension.' Glory's featured
performances, and the standard abbreviated credits they garnered in
male performers' recordings ("featuring Glory;' or more commonly
"feat. Glory"), had the twofold consequence of securing for her a
place in reggaeton's tight family and, most of all, of keeping her in her
place.

For the observer, Glory still is a cluster of convenient fictions who

has not been able to live up to her name. Glorimar Montalvo Castro
might well be the woman who "single-voicedly" provided the glue to a
musical movement that at the outset was comprised of disparate
parts. Born to lower-middle-class parents in Santurce, Puerto Rico,
Glory is many things-a dancer, a singer, a college-educated health
technician who once served as Don Omar's professor of medical
technology at a technical college, a master's degree graduate from
the University of Puerto Rico, and an avid follower of the musical
scene. In the mid-199os, Glory-encouraged and marshaled by her
singer friendsundertook the formidable task of becoming the
communal It voice, the sound that would homogenize the feminine in
a hypermasculine world. Her voice, perfectly suited to the foxy and
groany repetitive beat of the songs, framed the contrapuntal gender
banters that defined the genre. As Glory the chorus girl, her persona
perfectly fit the structures and strictures of the nascent underground
reggaeton scene of the 199os, perpetuating the familiar choruses, the
customized-for-memory lines that translated songs into hits.

Sex, of course, was-and is-reggaeton's organizing register. And that

register that reached its international climax with "Gasolina" and
"Dale, Don, Dale" had in the mid-i99os the added bonus of a freedom
that has since been curtailed-the shock of the new, the beat that was
good, the curse words that flowed, the allure of the low, and the as-of-
then freshness of a musical genre with untapped commercial
possibilities. Glory's "central casting role" in the 199os reggaeton
revolution was to solidify the subservient female character, in
acknowledged complicity with the genre's coherent-if flawed-gender
front.

If, as Pierre Bourdieu states, "the denial of lower, coarse, vulgar,

venal, servile-in a word, natural-enjoyment, which constitutes the
sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of
those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested,
gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane," the
aesthetics of reggaeton at first value would squarely be inscribed in
the "lower, coarse, vulgar, venal" enjoyment rejected by many, an
acoustic recasting of the Benjamin-Adorno debates on the "high
versus low" dichotomy, on the banality of cultural creations.'
Reggaeton's repertoire of cultural excesses-the violence it reflected
or referred to, the real (and feigned) rivalries among performers, its
homosociality and its hypersexuality-rearranged the collective Puerto
Rican ear as well as the eye. If the natural comparative subjects for
reggaetoneros were the male salsa singers of the 196os and 19705
(Ismael Rivera, Hector Lavoe)-whose macho posturing and edgy
performances were inherited and expanded on-the main
performative, aural, and visual differences between these two groups
is the reggaetoneros' need for the constant representation of these
excesses. The recording studio is where gender relations are
established and regulated. For reggaeton performers, the structural
dynamics of their act is predicated upon a visible subject, object, or
both, in video and concert performances-in this case, a woman on the
side. Not the dancing belle or the posing kind, but a veritable yet
controllable counterpoint, a sonic intrusion of sorts that would engage
the male singers' iterations of gender. Thus the Recording Reggaeton
Woman was conceived, not as an afterthought, although clearly
thought after the fact.
 Moreover, the Recording Reggaeton Woman-as a creature of
industry and commerce and its attendant titillations-was engineered
in the sound studios as a flesh-made machine, a turn-of-the-century
automated "yes-girl," resembling (in her condition of muted threat and
axis of control and intimidation) the robotic woman of Fritz Lang's
Metropolis, which Andreas Huyssen describes as a projection of both
fear and desire.' The vamp and the machine in one-the gendered
Maschinenmensch-also provided an opportunity to view mass culture
as a woman gazed at and shaped constantly. As a technomusical
hybrid construct, reggaeton proposes no frontal assault to gender
conventions. Reggaetoneros, experts in repetition, created a generic
woman that, in essence, could always be invisible and that in most
reggaeton lyrics appears as a woman satisfied-as a verbal robot.

The robotics of "verbality" dissipates the perceived freedom of

reggaeton's verbally aggressive woman by subsuming her into a
constructed niche. If the existence of a let-it-all-out voice in the middle
of a male-centered world promises a theoretical female guerilla-in-
the-midst scenario, the male musical battlefield only yields lyrics that
portray the female Recording Reggaeton Woman as a complicit
comrade in arms in the male singers' struggle for market domination.

The generic reggaeton woman was paid to simulate her sensual

bliss through her chorus singing, even if enjoying that simulation.
Strategically, the built-in female response in reggaeton's choruses
operates against the mythic femme fatale's freedom of action, thus
assuring that the female intervention would not run counter to the
songs' implicit goal of male sexual pleasure. Rather, the "dame mas
gasolina" and "suelta como gabete" responses are installed as
anticastrating devices, as vocalizations of perennial arousal.

Glory's choruses spelled satisfaction, and the magic of her spell

was limited to guaranteeing that the reggaeton woman always could
get it-that she could not not get satisfaction. The monotonous,
monothematic iterations of a woman in lust served a threefold
purpose in the underground reggaeton of the 199os: to establish a
formula that would be both recognizable and memorable; to conjure
female availability; to bring listeners in. But the formula's spell brought
listeners in to the male singers who gained top billing, while
relegating the female choruses (sometimes only twelve or sixteen
words per minute) to the sexy and passively aggressive vamp mode,
with a perpetual willingness to accommodate to others. Career-wise,
Glory's role as "the featured woman" in reggaeton recordings may
have led to a financially lucrative dead-end street, without
progression, a willing hostage to her collaborations. And indeed, she
came close to that: as a result of her decade-long parenthetical
"featuring," chorus-girl wannabes still turn to Glory for advice on how
to succeed in the reggaeton business without really leaving the
"Featuring [insert your name here]" formula.

In lending her voice to convey the psychic contours of the female

reggaeton body, Glory was attributed the perceived characteristics of
that verbal robot, and the "coarse, vulgar, servile" imagined
disposition of reggaeton's hidden woman. When she responded with
sexy defiance to Ranking Stone's taunts in "Castigo" ("Asi que Lira
pa' lante / Que pa' luego es tarde" [So take action now/ Later, it may
be too late]) or with unabashed sexual comeuppances in Magnate
and Valentino's "Fiera Callada" (Silent Beast), it was Glory who was
"staging the drama," "engaging the body" that she represented by
providing the transactional crux between the genders in song. In
"Fiera Callada" Glory's feat is a confession of her silent desires-"la
fiera callada pero no domada"- silent but never tamed.'
 Negotiating the terrain of reggaeton's lyrics, awash with thugs and
guns and sex and discos, Glory's first solo song-"Duro, Duro,"
included in DJ Anqueira's release Innovando-yielded no expressive
truths, but rather a mirror image of the reggaeton men's wish list. In
essence, her first solo song was nothing more than an exact tracing
of the choruses she had sung and would later sing, complete with the
"hurt me badly pose" and the call for unbridled sexuality.5
 In short, it signaled Glory-the-gendered-Maschinenmensch's
graduation to another plane, the vocal robot's coming of age. It was,
however, a lateral move: she now was one of the boys and wanted
just what the boys wanted, individual fame included.

Since 2005, Glory's reconfiguration tactic has been relentless:

attempting to obscure the transparency of her journeywoman years
and her voluntary immersion in the rudimentary sexual politics of
reggaeton. The slowly evolving public relations machine surrounding
Glory in 2005 touted the recognizability of her voice and the relative
anonymity of her countenance as a selling point for a market
makeover. Her self-inflicted brand of fame-her robotic no name, no-
face, invisible success-was a stumbling block that could very well do
away with her career mobility plans, and her range of possibilities.
What's an invisible girl to do? Putting the body in motion, in ever-
present display, seemed to be the answer. Glory was giving face now
as a unity of body and voice, and recognizing the intricacies of a
market that moves as rapidly as ever, instead of impersonating the
sexually subservient role that her nickname La Gata Gangster so
aptly describes. After a dozen years in the shadows, a solo album
seemed to be the gateway to the recognition denied. But with the
album, a new Glory surfaced, with more body than voice in mind, in
an artistic breakout that would prove to be a fragile renaissance.

"My body is a tool of my trade" was Glory's new take on her solo
effort, ironically acknowledging how obscuring the female as a face
for so long can prove a hindrance when the time comes to attempt a
career move and aim for the spotlight.6 The problem is not how to
leave a voice behind, but how to prime the most recognizable female
voice in reggaeton for travel down the solo road. How to leave
yourself behind. The perceived problem with Glory has been the quiet
longevity of her particular brand of success. As an educated, strong
woman she has been able to maneuver and traverse the
maledominated world of reggaeton, and negotiate her appearances in
recordings by reggaeton's Who's Who-Eddie Dee, Yankee, Omar,
Hector and Tito, and Magnate and Valentino. But her sporadic press
coverage in Puerto Rico up to 2004 had more to do with the music
men who made her career possible than with the woman who had
made possible their careers as their nondescript foil.

When the chorus girl got the press to look her way, she was always
surrounded by her reggaeton men or catering to their needs. In a
2004 interview, she talked about her leg accident-her left knee that
was injured while visiting Don Omar, who was himself bedridden after
suffering a motorcycle accidentand commented on the vital
friendships and collaborations with the reggaeton men that nurtured
her "career" with an endless gratitude that pays back.? In other
instances, Glory described herself as "the woman in the middle," a
mediator trying to help her two main men-Daddy Yankee and Don
Omarresume their fractured relationship after their much-publicized
falling out.8 They were the company she kept: the public men in
Glory's life had been her colleagues. Never publicly attached to any
partner, Glory also lacked the private, sometimes messy intimate
imbroglios that adorn and spice up performers' media-based images,
the dalliances and disasters that pay dividends and make them
sellable. Thus, the sexy chorus voice was devoid of entourage,
bodyguards, rumors virtuous or vicious; it was recorded musically yet
without a verbal record of her private side, such as Ivy Queen's
media-grabbing head lines of her longstanding couplehood and, later,
split from fellow reggaeton singer/producer and collaborator Gran
Omar. Going it alone, Glory was coupled in the media with her chorus
providers, with her reggaeton "posse," without a trace of a personal
life, and without a personal stance, as if delaying every decision,
public and private, waiting.

Glory's protracted entrance to the big leagues, after years of waiting

for her breakthrough, would test if she could make it as a front-and-
center woman, or if a front man was needed to keep her behind. In
the process, she would rearticulate the verbal and visual cues
necessary to enact her wishes, and confront individual and nationalist
aesthetics in her attempts to leave behind her back-up years and
establish herself as a front woman in a musical world so attuned
(visually and lyrically) to the female backside. Ever a "throat for hire,"
her first solo offering, Glou, offered a newfound Glory, glowing out of
the dark-shyly and slyly-making a run for reggaeton's female reign.

DISPOSABLE MATCHES

-Jean Francois Lyotard, Soundproof Room: Malraux's Anti-Aesthetics

The magic of a voice's touch in reggaeton is not a requisite for
stardom or market appeal. Voices do not carry the weight of sales or
concert dates as do the rhythm and the lyrics of the songs that have
positioned reggaeton as the most marketable Latin musical genre in
the first decade of the century. The fact that the internationalization of
reggaeton was spearheaded by a white, lower-class, handsome
Puerto Rican male-Daddy Yankee-underscores the intricate
idiosyncrasies of a genre that has defied and conquered ominous
judgments, countless protests, morality campaigns, government-
sponsored hearings, and parental concerns.

Gender and sexuality ruled not only the content, but also the
production of the genre. Aural promiscuity stands out as the
benchmark of reggaeton, in which collaboration is the name of the
game. The coupling of solo performers' images and intentions serve
up collaborative market dishes (for example, duets featuring Voltio
and Calle 13; Eddie Dee and Daddy Yankee; Tego Calderon and
Voltio; Don Omar and Tego Calderon; Daddy Yankee, Wisin and
Yandel; Eddie Dee and Tego Calderon; R.K.M. Ken-Y and Daddy
Yankee) that have proven their indispensability by developing,
sustaining, and nurturing new acts.9 However narcissistic and overtly
ego driven, testosterone dissolves into artistic collaborations and
produces its own intimate "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"type musical
game. Thus, the reggaeton industry was able to serve as a breeding
ground for its own, providing talent scouts with scores of male
performers that were willing to record one song in a CD compilation,
then later perhaps acquiesce to more collaborations when-and if-their
careers took off. The quintessential "Woman in the Shadows" was
Glory. As the voice that repeats itself in many male singers' records,
Glory's chorus lyrics provided the subtext of desire, the aural ligament
of Puerto Rican reggaeton. Her career was a permanent collaboration
in which she would stand out as a self-contained circuit of availability
and lust, an enticement for male ears. She was rendered as a
concept and disguised as a package in songs that offered male
collective representations of gender.
 The unpacking of an invisible musical mirage such as Glory started
with the unexpected marriage of politics, comedy, and reggaeton in
2004. The "suelta como gabete" chorus of Don Omar's international
hit song launched and sustained Glory's public career for a brief
period. The singer's circuitous entrance into popular consciousness
was triggered not by a musical colleague but by, of all possible
unintended allies, a female comedian. Noris Joffre appropriated the
catchy phrase for her impersonation of Puerto Rican governor Sila
Calderon, who with two divorces and two romances in a three-year
span aroused and provoked public imagination. The politician's life,
the comedian's ingenuity, and the singer's three-word phrase merged
rather seamlessly. Joffre parlayed the catchy sexual innuendo of the
phrase to countless Tv, stage (and even cruise ship) appearances,
including a made-for-TV comedic soap opera. In her impersonation of
Calderon, the "suelta como gabete" chorus became the centerpiece.

Dressed as the governor, Joffre sang the chorus while dancing

perreo style, in what was deemed an irreverent and highly
controversial act for its overt criticism of Puerto Rico's first woman
governor. The line served as a reminder of the widespread but
unsubstantiated rumors regarding the governor's private life. As the
island's first female governor, Calderon refused to comment, but
many objected to the use-by a woman-of a line sung by a woman to
injure another woman publicly. Yet free publicity, even if centered on
controversy, has its rewards. Glory's countenance slowly began to be
recognized as the "loose as a shoestring" woman, as the singer
behind the comedian's skit, as an advertisement of her on-stage
persona, and she was able to benefit from the music-politics-comedy
triangulation. In an unusual co-opting of a potentially embarrassing
situation, the State Elections Commission chose Glory to sing its
official jingle to promote the youth vote in the 2004 elections. 10

But the obvious sexual charge of a song turned comic relief also
shortened the reach of Glory's verse. Glory's voiced chorus became
synonymous with a governor's perceived libidinous persona through a
comedian's opportunistic maneuvers. The triangulation of politics,
music, and sex provided for a public reconceptualization of the singer.
Glory no longer owned the phrase that she sang (she never did) but
she owned the voice that sang it, and the "fame" acquired through its
use. By January 2005, after the song's political life had been
exhausted, Glory was in the background again, having provided a
chorus for the comedian's performance and the politician's chagrin.
Her television appearances again waned, and again she was left to
conjure up a solo career on the basis of her chorus-member fame,
detaching herself from the vocal pairings that had served her so well.

If she wanted to make it big, the question was simple: Where were
the women of Puerto Rican reggaeton? When the hierarchical
structure of the genre is examined, it yields a multitude of would-be
genre kings (Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Tego Calderon, Hector "The
Father") and only one undisputed queen. And after twelve years of
birthing pains, the chorus singer seemed to be temper ready and
glory bound.

With a rendition of his hit song "Rompe," a pretaped romp through

Miamian waters as visual fodder, and a live grand entrance to the
Hard Rock Resort and Casino, Daddy Yankee tore into the core of
the television audience of the Fourth Annual Billboard Latino Awards,
a show that measures sales and airplay frequency in a no-nonsense
statistical awards presentation in February 2005." No juries, voters, or
peer panels-you sell well, you win big. After three hours of hip-
shaking Shakira, crooning Luis Fonsi, rocking La Secta and
salsablasting Gilberto Santa Rosa, the show went off with a grand
finale of sorts, the reggaeton triad of Tito El Bambino and Angel y
Kris. Another awards show, another coup for reggaeton performers,
and another "Viva Puerto Rico" grand finale.

"Viva Puerto Rico" sells, and it lives both as a mantra and as a

market ploy that repeats itself incessantly. Reggaeton, thus, conjures
up images of a visible Puerto Rican nation that can be paraded-and
its new acoustic scaffolding. In that parade, a narcissistic misstep or
ill-suited career shift may end a performer's chances, but no shift or
self-serving comment has derailed the course of Ivy Queen, who
early on in her career unsaddled herself from the Recording
Reggaeton Woman template to which Glory adhered. In the Puerto
Rican national acoustic scaffolding, only one reggaeton woman
stands.

"It is up to Ivy Queen and me to be the spokeswomen for females in

reggaeton," Glory declared when announcing the release of her solo
album in May 2005.« The empowerment and ambition that her
declaration carries are self-evident, but for the undercurrent of
hostility or bitterness one must read between the lines. Two women
with potentially the same fan base, the same musical friends, and the
same years in the business, but different styles and physical
presentations, had been placed in opposite sides of the tracks by
their own colleagues: Glory as the dancer-turned-accompanist, Ivy as
the songwriter-turned-singer; Glory viewed as the ever-present,
trusted companion, Ivy Queen as a maverick, bold spirit possessing
the lure of the unreachable. The Queen is the absolute standard of
reference. It is clear that the overriding ambition of reggaeton's
female performers is to be in "Ivy's League."

How long can Ivy Queen exist without another woman on the
block? Long considered the strongest and best-selling voice in the
genre, Ivy Queen could well be needing competition, but for the
record there is no other female star so defined. Even Time magazine
gave a nod to Ivy Queen in the article naming Daddy Yankee as one
of the "ioo Most Influential People" of 2006. "Other stars in the genre,
such as Tego Calderon and Ivy Queen, have also attracted the
attention of the major labels. Expect a lot more registers to be
ringing." 13

Ivy Queen made her imprint and started registering as the real
female deal in reggaeton-La Diva, La Potra, La Caballota (the Diva,
the Mare, the She- Horse)-and embracing her status as royalty since
the release of her 1997 regally titled debut En Mi Imperio (In My
Empire) and her 1999 follow-up The Original Rude Girl. Martha
Ivelisse Pesante is the strongest of all female singers, a commercial
success, and, in the face of reggaeton's male performers' cultivated
ambiguities, perhaps the only performer to structure her career with a
gender difference in mind. The force and fire of Ivy Queen's persona
always has been public, publicized and subject to consumption,
sporting her overthe-top manicured long nails as an emblem of
danger that was not entirely sexual-as a possible weapon. Self-
conscious to the core, she has never conceded a beat to her fellow
singers and collaborators, which have included Wyclef Jean, Eddie
Dee, Don Omar, Daddy Yankee-her peers in the gender equalized Ivy
World. When she speaks about her representation of women,
however, she acknowledges how women are tested against the fixity
of the expected, and how she breaks the mold with her strength,
which is the word, from which she derives her authority.

I have to represent the females. Whether you're Latina or not. The

main thing they think when you come into music and you are a
woman is that you came here to shake your booty. Everything is
about your body. For me, I break that barrier. It's all about the
lyrics. It's all about fire. 14

But in 2005, just as Glory was preparing her Glou, Ivy Queen was
shifting gears, reinventing a more nuanced Ivy for corporate
consumption. The cover for her Flashback album, in which she
appears dressed in a low-cut, cleavageshowing little black dress, was
a visual confirmation of what would follow. In a break with the
carefree, untraditional image she had carefully constructed, Ivy
Queen entered the realm of uber-feminine trials and tribulations,
feeding off the fashion-conscious press and the judgment of red-
carpet fashion criticism. It was not all about the lyrics-there was some
shaking her booty to be done publicly, too. Ivy Queen's appropriation
of the accoutrements of "real" fashion came shortly after she was
criticized for her dress choice at the 2005 Lo Nuestro Awards. To
make up for her dubious fashion sense, she gladly surrendered
herself to a dress-me-in-femininity makeover in Univision's El Gordo y
la Flaca for the red-carpet of the 2006 Lo Nuestro Awards edition.
Sans grittiness and with obvious glee, Ivy Queen shed the legendary
physical prowess and freedom of the Caballota of her nickname and
turned into a mamisota-for-hire in a dayto-day televised chronicle of
her transition to femme. With the diva structure taking hold, complete
with a revamping of her physical appearance, Ivy Queen confessed
that the makeover stemmed from a "crisis" and "female vanity." From
her resolutely tomboyish beginnings ("I was the flat girl, laflaca esa"),
to the Colombia plastic surgeon who helped recontour her figure, to
the divorce from her longtime husband and fellow singer Gran Omar,
Ivy Queen's expansion of her physical reign found another cosmetic
province. "When I started eleven years ago, I didn't look like this. I
looked a little like a tomboy. People heard my tone of voice, and guys
were like, `Whoa: Then they see me later and can't believe I'm the
same girl."'-'

She had defined her career as predicated on the strength and

directness of her words and her lyrics. As if sensing a backlash for
her beautification, Ivy reiterated that her newfound attention to
developing a fashion-conscious image did not imply a rejection of the
songwriting skills that had paved the way for her construction as a
reggaeton icon. "I have something to say, and it's always been that
way," the redone, refashioned Diva reiterated. 16 To prove it, her
songs in 2005's Flashback and 2004's Diva Platinum," as exemplified
by "Yo quiero bailar" (I want to dance), remained resolutely woman
centered, retaining the power to reject all men, even if her body has
been reengineered and clothed to entice even more.
 That power of the word that separates Glory and Ivy Queen
surfaced as the reason for the disparity in their relative successes
and degrees of recognition. Ivy Queen's public preemptive dismissal
of Glory's bid for her throne, instead of focusing on the bodily battle
with Glory (now more or less voluptuous equals) confronted Glory's
possibility of articulation and her reliance on the patriarchal sexual
comeuppance scheme of her solo album's lyrics. "Everyone is a slave
of his words ... If [Glory] wants to project herself with those lyrics,
that's her problem.""' Glory-Ivy Queen suggests-perhaps has nothing
to say. As Judith Butler reminds us, "Spoken words are, strangely,
bodily offerings: tentative or forceful, seductive or withholding, or both
at once."19 Ivy Queen's statements imply that Glory's bodily offerings
are "tentative" and "seductive," while hers are "forceful" and
"withholding." Words are the site of that lack for Glory, either because
she is too much of a woman or not woman enough.
 Ivy Queen's public statements regarding Glory's sexually charged
lyrics were coupled with the Diva's self-definition as "a lady to the full
extent of the word." "I am a woman from the barrio and very cultural
... Now I'm both pretty and recatada, proper," the Queen decreed in a
television interview, reclaiming her right to self-fashion herself both
inside and outside what pre viously was her comfort zone, and
redefining her gender performance.21 The pretty, proper, and cultural
Ivy Queen establishes a false distance from the tomboyish, ready-for-
drag, no-curves starting point of her lower-class, Puerto Rican female
body. Ivy Queen resurfaces as a palimpsest that acknowledges her
"masculine" coded persona, a woman watermarked with her previous
unglamorous self. She has left the traces of the old Ivy in her-her
masculine strength is still legible. As Judith Halberstam states,
"masculinity ... becomes legible as masculinity when it leaves the
white middle class body."21

Ironically, Ivy Queen's physical retooling is a remake in search of a

rival, a partial shedding of her masculine disguise. As the only stand-
alone female in Puerto Rican reggaeton, her body's refeminization
stands in contrast to her perceived toughness. Only another woman
perhaps could now challenge her, for she had beaten the men at their
game: she had been declared an "equal" by her male peers, and
even served as the unofficial spokesperson for the twelve singers
who collaborated in Eddie Dee's Los Doce Discipulos (Twelve
Disciples) disc. As the unruly woman redux, and the only female in
that all-star group, Ivy Queen seemed to be enacting her need for
career friction, for a rivalry that may be contested body to body, lyric
to lyric, notwithstanding her charges that Glory has nothing to say,
showing that the Queen is not impervious to what her competition (or
noncompetition) is doing.

Ivy Queen criticized Glory's utterances, her presumed lack-Glory

has had nothing to say, nothing that is really hers, buried as she was
under the weight and whims of her collaborators/bosses. In the
process, Ivy reinforced her own self-made woman persona, stressed
her "genuine" and "original" qualities, and the fact that she has stood
uncontested and resisted the normative, seemingly unyielding to any
male, unwilling to make concessions: Glory's opposite.

The narcissistic reflection goes beyond a face-off between the

writing/ performing Ivy Queen and Glory the Recording Machine. It
unites them as opposites. The two singers' careers are truly
inseparable and feed off each other in codependent musical heaven.
They grew artistically at the same time: Ivy before the public's eyes,
Glory through the public's ears. Thus, Glory never was a specular
option, but an aural seduction. Ivy stood alone as the go-to image;
her drag persona, her "dragged-on" self, is a perennial favorite in
Puerto Rico's drag scene, easy to imitate, with her dose of female
masculinity, and a gruff voice to boot, always in key. In looking for
gender authentication at the start of her career in 1994, Ivy Queen
initially turned to her less-than-feminine image, something that Glory
achieved through her imageless voice. You could have owned Glory's
voice without buying her records, for her records always were
someone else's records; you could have avoided her bodily
existence.
i. Detail of CD cover art, Glou/Glory, 2006. (First released in 2005.)

But when Glory and Glou decided to speak, her words contained
the same gender-strict mechanics of her male counterparts. Glou
erupted into the reggaeton world on June 28, 2005, as an appealing
next step, a consolidation move. Solo, Glory was still her old self,
although Glou's cover and lyrics propose a double dose of Glory for
image enhancement purposes. To remedy her image void and
perceived lack of instant public recognition, the cover photographs
split Glory into two distinct but complementary personas, severed
doppelgangers. The cover is a body-double montage-the image on
the left, Glory voluptuous, ready for the road; the image on the right,
Glory a contrived, elegant, made-for-the-night vision (figure 1). The
double fantasy-the known heavily made-up, wild-haired, wild-tongued
Glory alongside the unknown, faux sophisticated, more self-assured
woman-plays on the possibility of a rupture with a fixed image that, in
a supreme irony, had not yet been totally formed in the public's eye.
In a daring move, one of the CD's Internet ads boldly proclaimed in
capital letters, "IVY QUEEN LOOK OUT, HERE COMES
TROUBLE."22

But the disc did not stir up trouble for others, offering nothing more
than standard-issue reggaeton lyrics in the singer's comfort zone. The
publicity that preceded the record's reception established the erotic
energy that Glory would stand for-a danceable spinoff of her
choruses, with a higher sexual octane. Was it advisable for her to
divest of all of her previous sexy chorus tricks, and turn that into a
solo reggaeton act when the musical genre was at its commercial
peak and moving to attract other publics? The melancholic remains of
her willful chorus provocations (the "gimme" and "yes" and the "dale,
papi") avoided risks, rendering the album an assembly-line
concoction that ultimately suspends and erases any career rebirth
that the solo debut may have signaled, an approximation that never
reaches the exact boiling point, in spite of her sexed-up lyrics. The
album stresses the singer's tried-and-true template as reggaeton's
erotic interface, supersized and multiplied perhaps, but not retooled.

The uncalibrated banality of songs such as "Acelera" and "Perreo

ioi" did not resonate outside of her fan base as widely as the singer
desired. The strategic positioning that her first solo disc followed
backfired, proving that Glory is not a raconteuse on her own, but a
fragment of reggaeton's male totality. And while assuming a more
public role that again garnered her more press attention (attending
education fairs, advising students to finish their college careers), La
Gata Gangster only meekly undertook a slippery selffashioning that
toed the line, an act of self-fashioning that recast her sexuality as a
declaration of interdependence.
 Going solo did not bring a change in texture, for her lyrical line kept
in line with her previous chorus performances in an unwarranted self-
mimicry. "Perreo ioi" ("Dale bien duro, papi / Papi, azotame / No
pares, dale, papi / besame, azotame") sounds and feels, in texture
and lyric-by-lyric resemblance, like her song "Duro, Duro."23

For Glory, the essential tangible requirement for her songs seems
to be the man's physical opposition and reaction to her body-the male
body as organizing factor-whereas in Ivy Queen's case her lyrics and
performance are not directly connected to her body (or the male
body) as prize or punishment: flirting does not mean that in your bed
I'll be. The singers' performative and verbal events, their public
executions of sexuality, have them in opposite sides of reggaeton's
diction of desire-Glory unraveling and surrendering to desire; Ivy
Queen dissecting and directing it. Ivy Queen appropriating the male
rhetoric; Glory making herself the example of that rhetoric.

One song stands as the litmus test of Glory's past-as-present

existence and of the overtly commercial nature of her quest to
queendom. "La Popola"- banned in the Dominican Republic on
grounds of obscenity for its use of the title word, which in that country
is a euphemism for the female sexual organ. Whether the use of that
word for the song's title was an innocent mistake (as the singer
contends) or a planned splash that would at least assure her a better
platform for that Glory "brand" that had proven so elusive to
manufacture, the first cut of her solo CD-a remix of an underground
performance hit-was even more explicit than those of her male
colleagues. Defending her song in the face of mounting criticism, the
singer tried to explain in the press how well it was received in the
United States, how it had become a "Tex-Mex Latino hymn" in the
West and celebrated in music festivals in the East, how relative to
taste the song was. "It all depends on what's inside each person's
head. After it was done it became a hymn among Latinos, because
even in Los Angeles there's a Tex-Mex version [of the song.] "24 But
while the reaction to the lyrics may have differed geographically, the
lyrics themselves are not subject to "relativity of taste" or "what's
inside each person's head" subjective tests, for they are the most
sexually charged words of the singer's career, an unabashed tale of
the use and abuse, pleasure and pain of female genitalia during the
sexual act.25
 Glory's public relations machine compounded the situation by
comparing her single to Donna Summer's music, specifically her
moans-included rendition of Love to Love You Baby-with a twist.26
Yet, what transpires in her performance, recording, and defense of
the song is the gap between performer and recording artist, the song
and the singer, and her ambiguities toward the material. In her public
statements regarding her solo career, it is possible to detect, in
Lyotard's terms,27 the conversation between her two inner voices
sifting through, "arguing for and against itself: voice against voice, in
narcissistic reflection," as if she has to deny the reality of her words
and justify her "seductive" bodily offerings:

I am even more meticulous now in my lyrics and in the way I

dress, because little girls like to imitate me. I'm not pretending to
forget myself, Glorimar, because I am flirtatious by nature, but I
 take great care in not making any mistakes. Sometimes I feel like
Titi Chagua [a children's TV program presenter].28

The reference to her overcautious self stands in contrast to the

lyrics, and situates Glory in the realm of the simultaneous personas
that unsettle and that are the norm in the music industry. In previous
interviews, she had stated that the responsibility for children's
reception of her songs fell squarely on the shoulders of others
(parents, guardians, teachers), but not on the performers'. Ironically,
as the heated debate on her lyrics grew, she forgot she had made
claims that she had "softened" her image, but it already was evident
that her actions and words did not match. As Stuart Thompson
observes, "popular music history became a wardrobe of provisional
identities, song-personae that a performer could put on and then take
off."29

While Ivy Queen was perfecting her domination through a more

coherent, impermeable set of provisional identities not punctured by
blatant ambiguities, Glory was prepping for submission again, in the
totally different (and complementary) careers that define the parallel
courses of women in reggaeton. Glory had allowed herself the
injudicious luxury of maximizing and individualizing her sexocentric
pitch in Glou. Although the solo album (recordings) did not imply that
she was divorcing the all-star gang of reggaetoneros that had kept
her in the background while bringing themselves to the fore, the fans
constantly kept wanting her back in the background, whereironically-
her notoriety had meaning. The Recording Reggaeton Woman had
unwrapped her whole package, and still remained wrapped in her
past. Would it be fair to contend that entering the realm of profits, not
as a contract player but as the main feature, would amount to taxing
her "meaning" and "credibility?"

The strategy proved to be ambiguous. "La Popola" garnered scant

airplay in Puerto Rico, none in the Dominican Republic and was not
an add-on in her usual heavy-rotation reggaeton markets, for it was a
song that could be performed but would not be broadcast by many
station programmers. In choosing her material, Glory was left with
tunes that mostly left her in the realm of live performance-ostensibly
performable live, but not playable on radio or TV. Thus, Glou's
"Popola," the CD's piece de publicite, had the dubious distinction of
excluding Glory from what had been her bread-and-butter
mediumradio-and blocking the solo ambitions of the original
Recording Reggaeton Woman.

In the quest for unattainable queendom, and after starring

alongside friend Daddy Yankee in his vehicle feature film Talento de
Barrio, Glory turned her attention to a possible acting career, to
further advancement by diversifying her perceived talents. Again, she
recurred to the "body as a tool" philosophy, and her ability to enter a
medium that would showcase her individual talents, this time through
the combination of words and image. In a made-for-Tv movie, La
ultima noche, Glory lent her talent and her body to a tragic romantic
story set in the reggaeton-centered culture of a Puerto Rican housing
project, violence and death included.

"Glory is in her dying stage, only to be reborn again," confessed

Glory herself, in one of those third-person self-references that
celebrities assume when celebritydom is thought to be within
reach.30 Taking pride in her future resurrection, the post-Glou Glory
finally acknowledges that it is her ultimate goal to leave no trace of
the past (perhaps an impossibility), and point to the direction of a
future reality, with crossover dreams and the lure of the
Englishspeaking market on her mind.

GLORY, WHOLED

The abbreviating logic of reggaeton renders as simple the most

complex choreographies of gender. Glory was a male-directed, male-
created fantasy, a creature of male subjectivity, and her overexposure
as the female companion voice in the late 199os and early 20005
later verified the nature of that male-bound synecdoche. Her early
verbal robotics yielded all subsequent efforts tentative, lacking. In her
commitment to find the right direction for her career, summed up by
Glou, she miscalculated the import of her collaboration in her own
lyrical subjugation, and the weight of that insurmountable chorus girl
aura.

Then again, following convictions is a confusing, consuming

enterprise. Stanley Fish examines the everlasting paradoxes that rule
human conviction, probing the predicament faced by those utterly
convinced of a direction. Conviction, by Fish's definition, is not
ultimately unidirectional. Fish states that "embracing your convictions
... pushes you in no particular direction, but tells you that being in a
particular direction is both the limitation (no transcendence available)
and the glory (a field of opportunity is always opening up before you)
of your situation"31

Glory embraced her convictions, convinced of a direction, and

found that the direction was both limitation and (limited) glory. She
patently materialized that conviction with the execution of sexuality in
her Glou, but that risk would not fulfill her center-stage ambitions. In
fact, it would bring her closer to a twin periphery-outside of the male-
centered core in which she was a voice before, and outside of the
circle of success she imagined was easily reachable through the
invention of a new image. Glory was not left in the netherworld of the
wannabes, nor would be left picking up the pieces, but her reality
check after a dozen years at the center of reggaeton's recording
world did not end with Glory's Hallelujah. Rather than pursuing the
individuality denied by her lyrics, she now is confronted by the
recognition accorded to her body-the admired ornament of flesh that
now clings to her voice.

On July 13, 20o6, Glory saw how her efforts to become visible
landed her a modest triumph of sorts. In the Puerto Rican press, a
Miss Universe 2006 contestant, Miss Northern Mariana, was hailed
for her beautiful face and her eerie resemblance to Glory. Side-by-
side, black-and-white photos of the beauty and the singer
accompanied by the laudatory text "The 86 contestants could dance
to the rhythm of reggaeton ... if Northern Mariana's beauty queen,
Shequita Deleon Guerrero Bennett, would only strut her stuff like
Puerto Rican reggaeton singer Glory."32 Glory finally had her face
launching the thousand "psychic contours of the voice she
represents"-but still compared to another queen. That same day, July
13, 2006, the Queen's synergy was brewing in Miami: Ivy Queen was
surprised by her peers as she received a Career Achievement Award
in Univision's Premios Juventud awards show, and was given the
honor of performing the televised program's grand finale. Ivy Queen,
glorious in her full-bloom splendor-the rude-to-glam route she had
embarked on for the past two years now completed-performed as the
glam femme in front of a certified television audience of 5 million
Latinos in the United States. Truly glamorous-compared to none.

Two days later, Ivy Queen held court at her first concert, The Diva
Chronicles, at the prestigious Fine Arts Center in Santurce, Puerto
Rico, where she recounted her "sojourn from little Aflasco, Puerto
Rico to the Fine Arts Center stage" ;13 kissed her new boyfriend
onstage; sang with Glory's friend Don Omar, basking in her own glow;
and announced she would soon be marketing her new Ivy Queen
shoe collection, Ivy Queen clothing line, and Ivy Queen perfume.34
For her effort, the critics hailed her as "the only female name that is
always present in a genre dominated by men."35 Her peers hailed
her, too. "A historical marker in reggaeton's history," was Don Omar's
take on the Queen's concert. 36

As a voice that in her reggaeton beginnings was only a voice, Glory

was boxed in. In imagining herself outside of her preassigned role as
taunter/ seducer for hire-perhaps imagining herself as an
independent taunter/ seducer-and not attempting to replicate Ivy
Queen's strong woman persona, Glory La Gata Gangster undertook a
slippery self-fashioning that toed the line. The cosmetic change did
not bring a change in texture, for her lyrical line kept in line with her
previous work, thus announcing devolution instead of evolution. The
unwillingness or inability to transform seals her initial failure to step
away from the untransferable, exclusive space she carved out in
canonical subjugation to reggaeton's men. Her failure to repossess
herself, or articulate a personal musical aesthetic, kept at a distance
the career that eludes her, still a fabrication wrapped in her own past,
foiled by the precariousness of a reinvention.

NOTES

Translations of Spanish-language quotations are my own.

1. Reggaeton's male performers have compiled a repertoire of

terms designed to portray in their lyrics the sexual tension and
subjugation of women. Girlas, perras, yales, gatas are part of the
nominative cavalcade of terms that would substitute for the word
woman, which rarely is used in reggaeton songs. Very early on in her
career, Glory was tagged with the dangerous-sounding, sexually
charged moniker of La Gata Gangster, "the Gangster Kitten."

2. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of

Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1984), 7.

3. Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass

Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1986), 68.

4. Sin Limite, CD (V.I. Music, BooooDGo3B, 2004).

5. DJ Anqueira, Innovando, CD (Universal Latino, 1999).

6. Alfredo Nieves Moreno, "El flow de Glou," La Revista, El Nuevo

Dia, June 4, 2006, 16.

7. Rita Portela, "Glory," El Vocero, June 6, 2005.

8. Daddy Yankee's and Don Omar's private tug-of-war surfaced as

a public disagreement in 2005, after both had established
international careers, and spent less time in Puerto Rico, finally
moving their musical headquarters to Miami. Their geographical
displacement brought some distancing from but not a rift with Glory;
both have collaborated with her since.

9. These collaborations also are common in U.S. rap, but not with
such fervor and regularity. Also, from the outset, early reggaeton
compilations had a communal flavor, as cassettes sold in the 199os
frequently featured the work of several performers.

io. Glory had become more politically active, although she has been
careful not to identify herself with any political party in the island's
politically charged environment. However, she had publicly stated that
she was not supporting Calderon's party rival, former governor Pedro
Rossello, who was in his bid for a third gubernatorial term in 2004.
Her government-related work continued after the "Calderon-Suelta
como gabete" period, and in 2005 and 2006 she kept busy visiting
schools to convince wouldbe dropouts to stay in school, attending
education fairs, and advising students to finish their college careers.

11. In fact, Billboard's press release for the event announced the
grandiose plans for Daddy Yankee's splash: "Telemundo executives
promise that Daddy Yankee's per formance-which will involve water-
will be even more spectacular than those on previous awards shows,
in which he has entered on a flying car, a caged tiger and through a
wall."

12. Interview, May 2005.

13. Carolina Miranda, "Daddy Yankee, Reigning Champ of

Reggaeton," Time, May 8, 20o6,157-

14. Nerissa Pacio, "Queen of Reggaeton," Columbia Daily Tribune,

September 4, 2005, http://www.showmenews.com/
2oo5/Sep/2oo5o9o4ovato11.asp (accessed June 5, 2007).

15. Ivy Queen, interview by Carmen Jovet, Ahora podemos hablar,

Telemundo Puerto Rico, May 20o6.
 16. Ibid.

17. Flashback, CD (Univision Music Group, BoooAA7HWY, 2005);

Diva Platinum, CD (Universal Latino, Booo184845, 2004).

18. Ivy Queen, Ahora podemos hablar.

19. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004),

172-73.

20. Ivy Queen, Ahora podemos hablar.

21. Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke

University Press, 1998), 2.

22. Danza y Movimiento, product information for Glou/Glory Co.

http://www danzaymovimiento.com/shop/product-info.php?products-
id=67771474702 (accessed June 5, 2007).

23. Glou/Glory, CD (Machete Music, Boo9JE5UI, 2005); DJ

Anqueira, Innovando.

24. Frances Tirade, "Glory confia en el buen gusto de la popola,"

Mundoreggae- ton.com,
http://www.mundoreggaeton.com/noticias/359.htm (accessed
November 27, 2005).

25. Glou/Glory, Co.

26. ArriveNet, "And Glory Was Her Name," June 6, 2005,

http://press.arrivenet.com/ entertainment/article.php/648483.html
(accessed June 5, 2007).

27. Jean Francois Lyotard, Soundproof Room: Malraux's Anti-

Aesthetics, trans. Robert Harvey (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 2001), 88.

28. Frances Tirado, Primera Hora.

 29. Quoted in Simon Reynolds, "Breaking the Wave," Modern
Painters (July and August 2006): 75.

30. Nieves Moreno, "El flow de Glou," 18.

31. Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1999), 150.

32. "Lo curioso," Primera Hora, July 13, 20o6, 41.

33. Ivy Queen, Anda p'al cara, Univision Puerto Rico, July 13,
2006.

34. Ivy Queen, El gordo y laflaca, Univision Puerto Rico, July 17,
2006.

35. Jose R. Pagan Sanchez, "La Reina hace vibrar a Bellas Artes,"
El Nuevo Dia, July i6, 20o6.

36. Don Omar, Las Noticias, Univision Puerto Rico, July 16, 20o6.
Gender cannot be understood as a role which either expresses or
disguises an interior "self," whether that "self" is conceived as sexed
or not. As performance which is performative, gender is an "act,"
broadly construed, which constructs the social fiction of its own
psychological interiority.

-Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender

Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist
Theory," 279

In the early nineties, commercial Puerto Rican rap, as performed by

such acts as Vico C, Brewley Mc, Lisa M and Ruben DJ, among
others, attained great popularity thanks in part to its socially minded,
"clean" lyrics. By the midnineties, the genre declined as new sounds
appeared.' A new musical genre emerged, eventually called
reggaeton. This new kind of urban music-initially labeled
underground-mixes Spanish reggae, dancehall, and hip-hop in a
sound whose cadence, sexually charged lyrics, violence, and
symbolic excess have granted access to widespread
internationalization. Just like rap, reggaeton began circulating in the
underground economy, recorded on tapes sold in a clandestine
fashion. Producers such as Playero and DJ Negro were pioneers in
this field, working with a number of young vocalists to produce what
are considered the first recordings of the genre: Playero 37 (ca. 1992)
and The Noise Uno: Asi Comenzo el Ruido (ca. 1994).2
 Underground songs narrated the realities of the inhabitants of many
neighborhoods and housing projects of Puerto Rico, drugs and their
trade, the rivalries between street gangs, and the sexual parameters
that energized young bodies, particularly in the place that would
become the quintessential stage for reggaeton's narrative: the disco.
Songs such as "Bien Guillao de Gangster" by Don Chezina and "La
Rubia" by Memo y Vale, which debuted in The Noise Uno, are clear
examples of the formative attributes of reggaeton.

The success of underground music spurred production, and little by

little new singers joined this emerging sphere of cultural, musical, and
commercial production. Before long, underground mixtapes became
available in regular stores. Nevertheless, their strong content soon
sparked resistance from Puerto Rican authorities. According to Nieve
Vazquez: "In February 1995, the vice squad of the [Puerto Rican]
police launched an operation in establishments like La Gran
Discoteca, Discomania, Farmacias Gonzalez, and Woolworths to
confiscate all CDs and tapes with so-called underground music"' This
operation was based on the premise that this music "promoted
pornography and the use of drugs," according to Pedro Toledo, the
Police commissioner, and Milton Pic6n, the leader of Morality in
Media, a conservative Puerto Rican organization. The case against
the stores for the distribution of "obscene" music did not advance,
however, and they were simply required to use labels with the
warnings "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" on the covers of the
tapes.

The coauthors of "Mas ally del perreo" contend that "the

transcendence of the operation of the police department's vice squad
went beyond the confiscation of recordings. It brought attention to a
music listened to by a minority of the population."4 This argument
explains why at a general level, after this operation, underground-
later called reggaeton on account of its new commercial character-
gained an increased following. A new audience eagerly began to
consume a music that, until then, was exclusively limited to marginal
sectors. The increase in popularity of reggaeton and its signature
dance, perreo (doggy style), soon encountered new objections. In
2002-with the support of Velda Gonzalez, then a senator belonging to
the Popular Democratic Partythe government of Puerto Rico
approved legislation to censor perreo, judging it obscene and
pornographic.' Reggaeton was attacked from many sides in Puerto
Rico. This sparked growing interest from the audience, initially
composed of people belonging to social groups that did not share the
criteria for decorum that the state sought to impose.

Felix Jimenez describes the reasons for the 2002 controversy when
he points out that primordially it emerged from the hypermasculine
content and the dancing evident in music videos, directed for the
most part by Hector "El Flaco" Figueroa. Nonetheless, the stars of
reggaeton contributed to the "solution" of the controversy, not only
through a "softening" of the imagery in music videos, but also through
a shift in the nature of lyrics. This latter aspect could be considered
an act of self-regulation that did not necessarily respond to official
demands and which hushed their cultural expression.6

In his defense of the imagery of hypermasculine rap, Figueroa has

expressed his discomfort with the most intense political
controversy in which rap, as a cultural force in the island, has been
involved, when, after the summer of 2002, a foster-home minor
starred in a video that he directed for rappers Wisin and Yandel.
The key point of this controversy was female representation,
specifically speaking, a scene in which Yandel took a shower with
the minor, and the lack of "measures" in the use of underage youth
in the video. In this way, following the discovery of these "flaws,"
government attention, which began to focus on this previously
ignored underground, centered on superficial aspects of the
industry of rap imagery, with a strictly visual spirit, paying little
initial attention to the lyrics, the circulation of which surpasses the
broadcast of videos in the TV screens.'

Later on, Jimenez adds:

 As the granddaddy of rap in video, Figueroa publicly accepted the
"blame" of all creators of rap videos in the island for the
hypermasculinity of the imagery, and claimed that "the controversy
had in some way contributed to the rap industry," thanks to the
"self-regulation measures" accepted by the industry to avoid future
attacks. Yet, ironically, Figueroa's admission that rap had "lost its
way" centered on lyrics; he forgot or misunderstood the reasons
behind the initial debate, which were the surfacing of bare flesh
and gender representation in videos, not the lyrics, which,
apparently, the Puerto Rican legislative sector had not considered
as objectionable as to go against them."

Of course, lyrics, attire, and other forms of expression have served to

articulate reggaeton singers' masculinities. But, following Jimenez's
analysis, when it comes to gender, music videos endured as spaces
of resistance throughout the period of the controversy. They
reaffirmed themselves as expressions that, despite a decrease in
their "hypermasculine intensity;" continue to legitimate and naturalize
the masculinities of reggaeton.

Even though Puerto Rico and Panama both claim to have originated
reggaeton, Puerto Rican singers have garnered greater commercial
recognition. Through their work, Daddy Yankee, Wisin and Yandel,
and Don Omar, among many others, lay the foundation for a
multifaceted market that today gener ates millions of dollars
throughout the world. Many reggaeton performers trace their origins
to poor neighborhoods or public housing projects in Puerto Rico,
which underlines the music's link with subaltern classes. There are
also others, however-such as Tego Calderbn, Julio "Voltio" Ramos,
and Hector "El Father"-to name a few, who were raised in private
urbanizaciones [subdivisions] and middle-class homes, and who
incorporate into their projected images this "marginal" imaginary. On
the one hand, this "incorporation" could be interpreted as a form of
masquerade, which founds the lie in the "origins" of a genre that, at
the same time, creates new forms of identification and appropriation
for audiences. On the other hand, such strategies also serve to orient
the public that consumes reggaeton toward registers that are not
limited to "poor neighborhoods" or "housing projects."

When we compare the contents of earlier Puerto Rican commercial

rap to those of reggaeton, we notice that the latter shies away from
criticism of the system and social commentary to glorify the
superiority of the "barriocentric macho. "9 In the case of reggaeton,
this superiority is articulated from the very perreo, in which a woman
swings her hips to the rhythm of the music while the male partner,
standing right behind her, rocks slowly. In terms of discourse,
reggaeton also reproduces a male domination,10 one that enhances
the figure of the man and situates him in a position of constant
symbolic authority''

This male domination maybe noted in the gangster's logic, the

violence, the tiraera (the clashes between groups of singers through
song lyrics that, at times, include homophobic expressions), and the
forms of seduction narrated in the songs. It is important to note that in
most cases, these forms of seduction are practiced at the discos and
occasionally involve third parties who, in some way, threaten the
consummation of the sex act or the coming together of couples. The
following verses of the song "Dale Don Dale" by Don Omar are a
clear example of this practice.12
Moreover, in many reggaeton songs, the participation of women is
circumscribed to dancing and fulfilling male sexual desire. Women's
objectification within reggaeton eliminates almost all possibility of
action and translates their presence into a prize or trophy that men
exhibit, dominate, and manipulate. This is evident even in the songs
of some female singers such as Ivy Queen, who, for example, in her
song "Chika Ideal," presents herself as a lover willing "to bring along
a friend" to the dance floor to satisfy her man's "fantasies" and
answer (with her body) each time he wants to "call" her.

The representations of masculinity established by the songs,

dances, and pretenses of reggaeton contribute to the genre's
naturalization of a particular kind of man. Images of men in reggaeton
are dominated by the use of sportswear, major-league baseball caps,
designer jackets, and shiny jewelry, also called "bling bling"-an
aesthetic drawn in part from contemporary, commercial U.S. rap/hip-
hop. As such, the reggaeton man or barriocentric macho emerges
from an exaggerated heterosexual masculinity that, in an immediate
way, suggests fissures. And it's precisely these fissures that create
space for such groups as Calle 13, whose hypermasculinity-mainly,
as expressed by lead vocalist, Residente-denaturalizes the
representations of the "barriocentric macho" routinely affirmed by
reggaeton.
 Created by a pair of foster brothers-Rene Perez, a.k.a. Residente,
and Eduardo Cabra, a.k.a. Visitante-Calle 13 revolutionized Puerto
Rico's popular music scene rather rapidly, distributing the song
"Querido FBI" (Dear FBI) via the Internet, releasing their debut album
Calle 13 (2005), serving as speakers for a government campaign to
prevent stray bullets during the New Year's Eve in 2005, and
celebrating their first massive concert within a year of the group's
inception. Before discussing the relevance of each of these events,
it's important to note that Calle 13 is a project loaded with humor,
cynicism, social commentary, musical innovations, and new
representations of masculinity. The group's concept is implicit in its
name. Both Residente, who writes all lyrics, and Visitante, the
musical director or producer, grew up in middle-class neighborhoods.
Since they had different parents, Eduardo visited Rene's home
frequently, located on Thirteenth Street of the urbanizacion El
Conquistador in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico. According to the duo, each
time Eduardo wanted to enter the subdivision, he told the guard at the
gate that he was "Visitante" (a visitor), and when Rene wanted to
enter he said he was "Residente" (a resident). Perfectly compatible
with the spirit of show business, the idea for the name of the group
came from the street in which its main members spent most of their
childhood, which today becomes a reference for many of their actions
onstage. Some of the stories narrated in songs by Residente also
come from the small urban universe of Thirteenth Street.

Calle 13 refreshened the repetitive character of reggaeton by

incorporating the sounds of techno, cumbia, batucada (a Brazilian
rhythm), reggae, and hiphop, among others, with lyrics that address a
mass audience through the promotion of reflection and political action
in an innovative form. Constant references to Puerto Rico's popular
culture, the use of metaphor, and an original approach to language
are some of the characteristics that have caught the public's
attention. The duo is often accompanied by a band of musicians
called Los de Atras Vienen Conmigo (The Ones in the Back Come
with Me), a phrase used frequently when residents arrive home with
friends and request the authorization of a guard to let them in. Using
live instruments, most of which are percussive, the band brings a
strong musical presence to the concerts of Calle 13. Residente and
Visitante also include Ileana Cabra, PG 13, an adolescent who is one
of their six other siblings. PG 13 sings backup vocals in some of the
songs and usually plays Residente's counterpart on the stage.

Unlike most reggaeton acts, the main members of Calle 13 are

college graduates. Residente holds a bachelor's degree in art, image,
and design from the School of Fine Arts of Puerto Rico and a
master's degree in computer animation from the Savannah (Georgia)
College of Art and Design (scan). Visitante studied piano at the Music
Conservatory in Puerto Rico and finished the bachelor's program in
information systems at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. For several
years, he belonged to Kampo Viejo, a reggae and ska band, and
Bayanga, a batucada collective.

Both artists are considered white. Yet this has not been the reason
for the distrust felt by other reggaeton artists-many of them also
considered white. Rather, the problem is that Residente and Visitante
grew up in neighborhoods linked to a different social class. In other
words, they are blanquitos de clase media (middle-class white
boys).13 In response to this claim, Residente has tried to establish a
bond with other acts by indicating that, in Puerto Rico, the middle
class suffers as much or more than the lower class. He has been
quoted in the press saying that the only thing differentiating him from
other reggaeton performers is that he managed to study. In an
interview with Rusell Rua, Residente delineates this common
condition:14

The middle class is really fu ... (cked), more than the lower class.
We don't even have the financial aid and we are too rich to be
poor, but too poor to be rich, and we are in the very ham of the
sandwich. My mom sold clothing at school so that I could get an
education's
The public statements by Calle 13, mainly from Residente, are set
apart by their endorsement of populist politics and social equality. In
the interview with Rua, Residente adds that "education is free (in the
sense that), you educate yourself buying books and reading them
anywhere. You can educate yourself without money, and in the street
you can also do it." The fact of having successfully graduated from
college is another element that sets Calle 13 apart from the imaginary
of reggaeton acts, since it reiterates their "difference," as many of the
latter are school dropouts. However, Residente denaturalizes the
masculine representations of reggaeton by stating that poverty is no
justification to stop studying and that the educational process is not
limited to the academic environment. Residente does not position
himself as a victim of the system, since to him education is a
phenomenon that may take place in an independent fashion and in
any place.

The artist has also addressed gender. In his response to another

inquiry by Rua, '6 which questioned the gender roles proposed by his
music-including the emphasis on an exaggerated masculinity-
Residente stated that

People shouldn't be conscious of the role they take on in terms of

gender. They must do things 'cause they feel them and as they
flow. Women can do things meant for men and men can do things
meant for women. Here in Puerto Rico and (in the rest of) Latin
America, in particular, it's hard to deal with gender.

These words evince that Residente is very conscious of the

masculine constructions legitimized by reggaeton. Accordingly, one of
his premises in terms of lyrics is, without a doubt, to denaturalize
prevailing constructions of gender as well as sexuality. With regard to
the latter, it's important to note that on June 4, 20o6, Calle 13
performed during the Gay Pride Festival in Puerto Rico. There,
Residente expressed his satisfaction in sharing the moment with the
country's homosexual population. He described antigay prejudice as
based upon "insecurities." In an interview with Mariela Fullana,
Residente claimed:

I feel happy to participate in an activity like this one. Sexuality is

something relative . . . . It's a right for people to choose, people
have to be free .... [I] believe it has to do with the insecurity of
many, you see, I am very sure of my sexuality and preferences,
but it's tough for anyone insecure."

"Sin Coro" is one of the songs by Calle 13 that shows the

willingness to deconstruct the masculinities of reggaeton (by means
of jokes, hyperbole, and implicit mockery). The song centers on
Residente's rhyming capability and Visitante's musical skills. It
includes a choir, the Tuna de Bardos (the Bards Ensemble) of the
Universidad de Puerto Rico.`' In "Sin Coro," Residente criticizes the
self-representation of the reggaeton singer as barriocentric macho,
threatening others by enacting gangster logic. While describing these
vocalists' abilities to compose songs as mediocre and childish, he
comments on how such images hide the "insecurities" of these
subjects.19
 In his essay "Humor" (1927), Sigmund Freud contends that there
are two ways to practice humor:

It may take place in regard to a single person, who himself adopts

the humorous attitude, while a second person plays the part of the
spectator who derives enjoyment from it; or it may take place
between two persons, of whom one takes no part at all in the
humorous process, but is made the object of the humorous
contemplation by the other.20

Based on this Freudian reflection, it is possible to argue that

Residente incorporates the latter form of humor in his approach to
reggaeton artists. In "Sin Coro," the object of Residente's humor is
linked directly to the listening public's reception, contemplation, and
enjoyment of the mockery. In this case, humor contributes to the
denaturalization of reggaeton's masculine representations, which
Residente identifies precisely.

Such prevailing representations are also questioned in the image

projected by the main members of Calle 13. The journalist Marcos
Perez Ramirez describes the artists' appearance thusly:
 The duo in Calle 13 is not configured by two traditional rappers.
Residente wears baggy pants and his arms sport more than five
tattoos; he uses a white tank top and wears a "puca"-style beach
necklace. There are no traces of a designer's jacket, with matching
clothes and hat, nor of the emblematic bling bling-jewelry-favored
by most of his colleagues. His hair is buzzed, with lines and marks
that suggest designs, plus a nose ring. More than a rapper, he
looks like a punk rocker from the eighties.

On the other hand, Visitante is as inscrutable in person as the

sound he produces. His curly hair is covered by a Rasta hat or a
bus driver's hat, he wears thick, tortoise-shell glasses and has
grown a thick beard, like a bass player from a funk band of the
sixties.21

Perez Ramirez's description thus illustrates how Calle 13's image

differs markedly from the one usually attributed to reggaeton acts,
which could be interpreted as a challenge to the aesthetic politics of
other performers. This aesthetic "difference" is a form of
representation similar to one popularized by singer Tego Calderon
during the release of El Abayarde, his debut album in 2002.
Calder6n's peculiar image rearticulated the conventional attire of men
in reggaeton by underlining his African roots with an "Afro" hairstyle
and wearing clothing alluding to Santeria, such as baggy, light-
colored shirts and pants made out of cotton, and accessories like
beaded necklaces and bracelets. Although it sparked some reactions,
however, Tego's aesthetic difference was accepted by his fellow
reggaeton singers and was not perceived as defiance. This was so
because it came packaged with a political discourse closer to other
performers' "social origins" and with cultural references-like Santeria-
to "barrio" populations, features that did not necessarily denaturalize
reggaeton's barriocentric macho. In turn, the "aesthetic difference" of
the members of Calle 13 counters the "barrio" image and upholds
itself through a discourse that transcends middle-class imaginaries to
suggest the possibility of social "equality."
ICE CREAM/I SCREAM

-Reggaeton News, November 29, 2005

-Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 22

It was like a scream. On Friday September 23, 2005,22 Puerto Rico

woke up to the news that members of the United States' Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had launched an operation in the town
of Hormigueros to arrest Filiberto Ojeda Rios, leader of Los
Macheteros, the Boricua Popular Army.23 Throughout the day the
country's media offered fragmentary information, with press coverage
limited by federal agents. By night, the outcome of the operation was
evident to many: lacking any medical attention, Filiberto had bled to
death from a wound resulting from an exchange of fire with FBI
agents. On Saturday September 24, the news was confirmed.

Two days after the death of Ojeda Rios, a song that sparked the
nationalist spirit of some and criticism by others began to circulate via
e-mail. The song was titled "Querido FBI."24 As a visceral response
to the death of Filiberto Ojeda Rios, it was composed and sung by
Residente, and it incited violence against the U.S. government. At the
same time, the walls of many Puerto Rican cities were covered by
graffiti repudiating the actions of the FBI. "FBI asesino" (Killer FBI)
and "Filiberto vive" (Filiberto Is Alive), among many other messages,
covered the empty spaces of the city with new writing, colors, and
shapes to underline the historic moment for the island. This was the
setting in which Calle 13 broke into the music world, defying decorum
to broadcast a strident cry for rebellion, a call for uprising, and a claim
to independence for the country under the title of "Querido FBI."

Using a hip-hop backing, Calle 13 produced a song that

summarized their fleeting and immediate reaction to the event. The
lyrics of "Querido FBI" begin by calling for the mobilization of various
groups representing Puerto Rican society. Teachers, lawyers,
firemen, mayors, drug traffickers, and politicians alike, raps
Residente, are to be informed of the acts committed by federal
agents against Filiberto Ojeda Rios. From this initial account,
Residente goes on to request the "activation" or setting into motion of
the marginalized and subaltern groups of Puerto Rico.

In this call to action, it is significant that Residente includes groups

who have not traditionally belonged-in the past or present-to the
struggle for Puerto Rican independence. The followers of the
independence struggle in Puerto Rico belong mostly to the middle
and upper middle class; they are made up of salaried professionals,
businessmen, academics, and students, as well as people who
attended college in the sixties and seventies and experienced the
excitement of multiple independence movements from those
decades. Subaltern groups usually do not participate in these types of
debates. Nevertheless, in "Querido FBI," these groups are urged to
join the collective uprising.
At the same time, this joining of forces implies the massification of
Calle 13's message and its modes of representation from a place of
difference-from a discourse that goes beyond a relationship with
more "traditional" Puerto Rican rap and reggaeton, problematizing the
masculinities established by this type of music.26

Though Calle 13 was gaining popularity among the Boricua

reggaeton crowd thanks to the video of "Se Vale To-To" (Anything
Goes), one of their first hits, the group wasn't yet established as a
staple of the artistic scene at the time of the release of "Querido FBI."
Given Calle 13's musical style, aesthetics, and language, reggaeton
lovers were still skeptical about the duo's proposal. Only when
"Querido FBI" began to circulate through the radio, Internet, and
among Puerto Ricans did Calle 13 begin to enjoy a growing
reputation. But this reputation didn't mean that Calle 13, and
particularly Residente, were completely accepted by the world of
reggaeton. This only happened when the singer became widely
recognized as a voice defiant of authority and expressed the
indignation of most Puerto Ricans regarding the events that led to
Ojeda Rios's death, a defiance and indignation projected through the
social and antiestablishment character of hip-hop and which created
a new space for the discourse of associated musical styles (like
reggaeton). This happened despite the fact that, in Puerto Rico, there
was and still is a significant hip-hop culturerepresented by groups
such as Conciencia Poetica (later known as Intifada), SieteNueve,
and Trafico Pesado, among others-which had put forward convincing
social proposals but which lacked public visibility. This visibility
allowed Residente to become a "political leader" even before he was
accepted as a reggaeton or hip-hop artist.

In November 2005, two months after the death of Ojeda Rios and
motivated by the success of "Querido FBI," Calle 13 released their
eponymous debut album, Calle 13. On the cover is the profile of a
woman licking a colorfully sprinkled ice cream cone (figure 1), clearly
alluding to oral sex. The image shows a pierced nose and tongue, but
not the woman's eyes. Generally speaking, women on the covers of
recordings, in videos, or on stage at reggaeton concerts are
voluptuous, provocative, and scantily clad.

When you open the cover of Calle 13, the same signs are there.
However, the content demands new ways of understanding. It
includes a picture of Residente and Visitante with a dwarf (Karla
Sanchez) in a bathing suit and an ice cream cone in her right hand,
suggesting that she's the woman from the cover (figure 2). From this
point of view, the cover of Calle 13's debut album seduces and sparks
the interest of the fan/consumer through the use of an image that
evolves into a perceived erotic fallacy, a trick among friends. There's
a certain perversity in this gesture, which is reinforced by the set of
signifiers that activate the rest of the images in the cover (condoms,
candies, toy soldiers, and colorful ice cream), demanding an
interpretation from the public. This "lack of totality," this deliberate
provocation into constant resignification, leads to the feeling that
Calle 13 is a project in which identities are in flux, in which masking,
acting, and fun decenter the message and increasingly distance it
from the criteria that have articulated the idealized imagery of
reggaeton. On this game of signifiers, Jacques Derrida suggests:

If totalization no longer has any meaning, it is not because the

infiniteness of a field cannot be covered by a finite glance or a
finite discourse, but because the nature of the field ... excludes
totalization. This field is in effect that of play, that is to say, a field
of infinite substitutions only because it is finite, that is to say,
because of being an inexhaustible field ... instead of being too
 large, there is something missing from it: a center which arrests
and grounds the play of substitutions. One could say ... that this
movement of play, permitted by the lack or absence of a center or
origin, is the movement of supplementarity.2'

Other images that denaturalize masculine representation in

reggaeton through a game of signifiers are evident in the back cover
and inside the album. One includes Residente's grandmother, Flor
Amelia, in common attire but carrying firearms; in the first one, a
machine gun, and in the second, a pistol. Violence and sex,
reggaeton's primary topics, are expressed in this context from a
deliberately playful viewpoint.

From another perspective, in Puerto Rico the term mamar (to suck)
alludes to oral sex or to when a person must acknowledge the
superiority of someone or something with respect to a practice or
skill. This game of signifiers and infinite possibilities and
interpretations facilitates an understanding of the rest of the cover
design of Calle 13's album, which in turn opens into the lyrics of
songs such as "Cabe-C-O" (Head Nodding). This song's title is based
on a game of words, another bout of signifiers and "lack of totality"
that results in a particular rhythmic cacophony compatible with the
beat of hip-hop. This song, the first one on the album, also
establishes the form in which the audience must listen to music by
Calle 13. It involves the body in a movement that, on one hand,
alludes to head nodding in hip-hop, and on the other, to the fact that
other singers and Mcs will have to "suck" the flowof Residente.
"Cabe- C-O" introduces a set of signifiers that, if not listened to
properly, if taken out of context, will only lead to a literal interpretation,
solely pointing to a metaphor for oral sex.
1. CD cover art, Calle 13, 2005.

2. CD inside art, Calle 13, 2005.

In December 2005, the political visibility generated by "Querido FBI"

led the group to collaborate with Puerto Rico's governor, Anibal
Acevedo Vila, in a campaign to prevent shots from being fired into the
sky during the New Year's Eve celebration. On this occasion, Calle 13
recorded the single "Ley de Gravedad" (Law of Gravity). In one of its
stanzas, the song claims:28
The fact that Acevedo Vila accepted Calle 13's assistance during the
campaign ignited controversies, for many people could not
understand how a singer that had incited violence against the FBI
and the United States a few months earlier had the "moral weight" to
now demand that people not shoot into the air during the New Year's
Eve celebration. Calle 13's initiative was joined by other reggaeton
artists-Tito "El Bambino," Magnate & Valentino, and Zion & Lennox,
among others31-and various sectors of Puerto Rican society in a
preventive campaign that produced important results.32 In "Ley de
Gravedad," Residente deals again with the denaturalization of
reggaeton (and Puerto Rican) masculinities through humor,
references to popular culture, and cynicism. The song claims that as
a result of the shots into the sky, Residente will have to wear a
"football helmet even to go shopping to the mall." On this instance,
Residente also questions the Puerto Rican who feels more "macho"
by shooting into the sky without considering the danger he causes to
others. He even defies the popular saying "Real men don't cry." Once
again, he does everything with a playful style that spreads to the
song's music and incorporates sounds of the circus, techno, voice
sampling, and hip-hop. In sum, it's another musical statement through
which Calle 13 rearticulates and represents its performativities.
THE FALL(S) OF RESIDENTE

In Boricua rap, exaggerated manhood is brought close to its

destruction.

-Felix Jimenez, Las prdcticas de la came, 122

Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect

someday to suffer vertigo.

What is vertigo? Fear of falling?

No, vertigo is something other than fear of falling.

It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and

lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we
defend ourselves.

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 59

For many years, the music videos of reggaeton imitated the style of
U.S. hiphop. Producers such as Hector "El Flaco" Figueroa
established an aesthetic in which images loaded with sex, violence,
partying, and women in bikinis were common .33 According to Wayne
Marshall, "reggaeton tends toward partying and sex as primary
subjects. Descriptions of sexual acts and female bodies alternate
between explicit language and innuendo, and women rarely appear
as anything other than objects of the male gaze."34 The narratives of
these videos reproduce the lyrics of the songs, as well as the singers'
codes of masculinity. After the controversy sparked by senator Velda
Gonzalez in 2002, reggaeton videos softened their sexual content,
though not their symbolic excess, which, as mentioned earlier,
reproduces images of gangsters (many of them taken from U.S. rap),
sexist and prejudiced against aesthetic, gender, and sexual
difference. Nonetheless, Calle 13-Residente, in particular-again
denaturalizes the representation of masculinity in reggaeton by
performing in music videos in an austere and humorous manner, like
a jester laughing at himself. Take, for example, the videos for the
songs "Atrevete Te, Te" and "Chulin Culin Chunflay"-the latter
recorded for the album Voltio (2005), with reggaeton star Julio "Voltio"
Ramos. Residente falls down (physically) in both videos, showing
how he attacks reggaeton's barriocentric macho from another
perspective.

The interlocutor of "Atrevete Te, Te" is a supposedly intellectual girl

who enjoys music by American rock band Green Day and English
rock band Coldplay, and who Residente dares to dance reggaeton
with him. The gist of the song is evident in the chorus.35

Residente's implicit message is that the girl should take off her
middle-class disguise to dance reggaeton, which, to a large extent,
revives the metaphors of equality and freedom suggested in the
previously quoted songs. A great number of the metaphors in the
song present Residente in such a way that he is practically begging
the woman to dance with him. This trope of seduction stresses the
fact that the woman desired by Residente is not the same one
"desired" in the songs by other singers of reggaeton, an aspect that is
reiterated in the musical video of Atrevete Te, Te" given the way that
the women in the video articulate their approach to seduction from a
place of indifference. Contrary to most reggaeton videos, in "Atrevete
Te, Te" women are not begging for sexual action, but are provoking
and inducing it through their games of seduction.

Nevertheless, another reading is possible. The fact that Residente

insists that the woman dance with him might imply that she will not
develop as an object of desire unless she accepts the invitation to
dance (doggy style), which reveals a situation similar to that
suggested in music videos by other reggaeton singers. More than
questioning the masculine constructions that serve as a framework
for the audiovisual productions of other acts of reggaeton, then, the
music video of "Atrevete Te, Te" suggests a change in the form, an
aesthetic -not a circumstantial-change. Hence, there is relevance in
the falls suffered by Residente; these are falls that, in final instance,
involve a way of problematizing these masculine constructions.

The video for Atrevete Te, Te" opens with one of Calle 13's
musicians playing a clarinet, which produces a noise similar to an
alarm. The song combines the rhythm of reggaeton with the sounds
of cumbia, which adds a festive character. The musician is sitting on
the roof of a house and, when the camera pans out, it shows a Puerto
Rican suburban urbanizaci6n. Following this introduction, we see the
arms of a man (Residente) unloading newspapers from a truck. On
the cover of the newspapers, we can see a photo of Residente and
Visitante, as well as a headline that reads: "Salte del closet" (Come
out of the Closet). In Puerto Rico, as in other countries, the phrase
"Salte del closet" alludes to when a man or woman accepts or
assumes his/her homosexuality publicly. But, in this case, Calle 13
enhance the popular meaning of the phrase to tell the women in the
video to be "authentic," to enjoy reggaeton without any need of
makeup or cosmetics, and that music is something that goes "into
your guts and brings out the Taino native in you." In other words, they
have the innate desire to dance, which is also a part of Puerto Rican
cultural heritage, and which in turn alludes to the relative nudity of
Indians. In this way, Residente asks them to denaturalize their social
condition, belonging to the middle class, and to assume by means of
a game (just as he has done) their "true" cultural nature, so they may
enjoy reggaeton while temporarily taking on a new identity.

Further on, we see Residente on a bike-an image that alludes to

the music video of "En Peligro de Extincion" (On the Endangered
List) by Tego Calderon and Eddie Dee-distributing newspapers in the
urbanizacion, with interspersed shots of women with blond wigs and
white dresses putting on their makeup. A moment later, these same
young women come out of the houses dancing to the beat of music,
while Residente stares at them in amazement. The video continues
with the women watering plants and cleaning the windows of houses,
when, all of sudden, Residente gets distracted watching one of them
and falls off his bicycle. The woman does not pay attention to him and
continues dancing indifferently. Residente keeps singing on the
ground, while the women line up and dance together next to the rails
of a bridge surrounding a road.

Residente's fall may be interpreted as a flash of vertigo, which

describes the feeling of instability spurred by strong emotions-fear or
desire, for example. Though the girl is dressed like the others-with a
white dress and a blond wigthere's something that grabs Residente's
attention, though the nature of the distraction is not clarified in the
video. What is established clearly is that Residente likes the girl,
which makes her the object of his gaze/desire and the protagonist of
this audiovisual piece. The fall reformulates the position of men in the
videos of rap and reggaeton. It clarifies that women, not men, lead
the game of seduction. The fall is what allows Residente to get close
to the desired woman the first time around, though at the end of the
video she shares meatquite literally-with him. Or as Kundera would
put it, she forces him to face "the depth that opens beneath," that
"seduces" him, and into which he jumps. This is what happens when,
in the final scene-in which Residente is eating and drinking with some
friends at a traditional Puerto Rican food kiosk-the women from the
video come in dancing. The one that Residente likes stops in front of
him, removes a piece of meat from his hand, and eats it.

Also exemplifying the denaturalization of reggaeton masculinities is

the video of the song "Chulin Culin Chunflay," directed by Gabriel
Coss and Israel Lugo. In this case, though, Residente is
accompanied by Voltio. The video starts with images of Residente
dressed like a priest, sitting next to Voltio and some other men, in
what appears to be a Chinese restaurant or cabaret. A blond woman
flirts with them while she dances onstage and then leaves. Residente
stands up and races after her, only to be stopped by another woman,
who seduces him. Meanwhile, Voltio sings to a female bartender at
the bar, who throws a drink at his face.

The action then continues outside, where the singers become cops,
as evinced by the blue light on the car they ride in. A new scene
takes the plot back to the place from the beginning, but this time
around the singers appear in stereotypical Chinese attire. Voltio
wears dark shades and a lengthy moustache, and Residente wears a
black wig and a tank top. They both talk at the table. An Asian woman
walks toward them. She carries a knife hidden under the dish in her
hands. Voltio throws a chopstick dipped in red sauce at an Asian man
who is dining there, and the woman attacks Residente with the knife.
The singer grabs the woman by the hand, and she kicks him. The
camera focuses on the legs of Residente, who falls to the floor after
the impact. Yet another take shows the woman loosening her hair and
jumping on Voltio. He defends himself and uses a lock to spank her
repeatedly. Three Asian men show up on-screen and Residente
takes off his shirt like Hulk Hogan, willing to face them. In the back of
the frame, we can see the blond from the beginning standing next to
a door. Residente then goes into the restaurant's kitchen and faces a
huge cook, whom he hits without causing any damage. The cook
grabs Residente, throws him on a table and, once Residente falls on
the floor, Voltio hits the man with two cooking pot lids.

The fight between the singers and the people at the restaurant, and
Residente's first fall force the blond girl who has seduced him to
acknowledge their presence. This fleeting appearance of the woman
makes it clear that there is a certain gratification in all the absurd
dynamics that take place around her and which, in some way,
establishes a seductive dialogue between both parts. Residente's first
fall is the result of a kick by the Asian woman, who, like a thump of
desire, sends him to the ground, from where he rises beaten and
bruised.

Just like the first one, Residente's second fall in the video leads him
to a new scenic space. Following the clash, there is a new sequence
of black-and-white images, in which Residente appears fighting the
men he faced inside the restaurant. The camera angles highlight the
fact that the men are fighting in a high place (a building's rooftop),
which likewise might be a source of vertigo. But Calle 13's most
distinctive fall is the last one, in which Voltio also goes along.

After the outdoor B & W sequence, we see the singers riding in a

car and dressed like characters from Miami Vice. They stop at an
alley, presumably to arrest a man who is there. Nevertheless, the
man runs away and the singers urinate against a wall, which clarifies
that their intention was not to arrest the man. While they sing, a group
of youngsters armed with pipes and sticks surround them and beat
them up. At this point, the song's hook goes: "Aqui esta todo bajo
control, under control" [Everything's under control over here, under
control]. After a few seconds, while beaten, the singers stand up and
try to flee, since the group of youngsters is still there. They get into
the car's trunk, and the vehicle leaves at full speed while the blond-
once again dressed in her nightclub attire-closes the video dancing in
the street, outside, in a different setting from the one in which we saw
her at the beginning.
 "Chulin Culin Chunflay" makes direct allusions to the sex organs of
men and women. Along the same lines, it describes-in the style that
is common in reggaeton-the singer's attempt to conquer a woman
and have sex with her. Nonetheless, Residente's falls, the ensuing
beating he receives with Voltio, and the lack of success of his
flirtations undermine these possibilities and, as a consequence, the
masculine-dominance discourse presumably advocated by the song.
In this last scene, the singers are apparently beaten because they are
cops, predominantly male authority figures who, within the narrative
space of this music video, appear consistently diminished.

CONFETTI

Sometimes masculinity has nothing to do with it. Nothing, that

is, to do with men.

-Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Gosh, Boy George, You Must Be Really

Secure in Your Masculinity," ii

The theatricality with which Residente and Calle 13 present

themselves in their music videos is reflected in their live
performances. Up to this moment, the greatest example is their first
massive concert, celebrated at Puerto Rico's Jose Miguel Agrelot
Arena on May 6, 20o6. The concert's stage featured decoration
alluding to theater and circus productions, a concept similar to the
one popularized on the island by CIRCO, a Puerto Rican rock band
.16

An electric sign with the word "Circo" (Circus) as well as red-and-

white canvases, made the stage look like a giant tent. The show
included clowns, dancers, the participation of the Universidad de
Puerto Rico's Tuna de Bardos during the singing of "Sin Coro" and
"La Madre de los Enanos," actors, a magician, and a number of
theatrical elements that maximized the contents of songs and made
reference to Calle 13's music videos. For example, during the playing
of Atrevete Te, Te," Residente shared the stage with eleven dancers
dressed like the women from the video. The same thing happened
during "Chulin Culin Chunflay," which Residente sang with Voltio and
in which they were both dressed in clothing similar to the one from
the last scene of the video. Tego Calderon and La Sista, a female
vocalist who is breaking ground in the circuit and whose musical
formula mixes reggaeton and bomba, also appeared as guest artists
during the event. And even though Vico C was not at the concert, a
message by that artist, in which he acknowledged and endorsed
Calle 13's talent among rap and reggaeton acts, was played on two
giant screens.

A key moment of the concert was when a group of actors with FBI
T-shirts appeared onstage and handcuffed Residente. The lights of
the arena turned on, as if the show had finished. The audience was
confused, since it did not know whether what was happening onstage
was part of the show or not. Residente was removed from the stage,
but minutes later he returned to sing "Querido FBI." PG 13 sang the
song as a duo with Residente and, quite interestingly, she performed
the parts with the strongest language.

PG 13's protagonism during the singing of "Querido FBI" is another

form in which Calle 13 appears inclusive and causes ruptures within
the customary masculinity put forward by reggaeton. Here, she is the
female lead, the one who plays an active role and invites the
audience to form part of the message conveyed by the song. Usually,
Puerto Rican kids of PG 13's age are not involved (or are not
interested) in the political discussions about the nation. They are not
key players in this context. Along the same lines, PG 13's assuming
an active role grants her some authority among her peers; she invites
them to sing "Querido FBI" and join-as members of society-in the
scream mediated by the song.

Calle 13's concert at the arena ended with Atrevete Te, Te," which
was followed by a rain of multicolored confetti. This fact, as well as
the staging of their first big performance, reiterate the denaturalization
of the masculinities of reggaeton. Unlike the concerts by Daddy
Yankee, Rakim & Ken Y, and Don Omar, for instance, where the
staging highlighted the male "supremacy" of the singers, Calle 13's
presentation distinguished itself by opening the stage space to a
large number of performers and artists in other disciplines. The group
shared this space of representation with a great number of cultural
expressions that nourish or intervene in "its" art. In turn, the
presentation reaffirms Calle 13's disposition to articulate new
identities in its formula and to allocate any resources available to the
process. After all, sharing performative space with others is a way of
playing with your "neighbors." It is akin to relocating Thirteenth Street
of the El Conquistador urbanizacion in Trujillo Alto, where, just as in
the rest of Puerto Rico, "Se Vale To-To" (Anything Goes).

OUT OF THE CLOSET?

The forms employed by Residente to model gender constantly

denaturalize the representations favored in the legitimization and
articulation of reggaeton's masculinities, hoping to build a "new man"
for this musical genre from the stage. This is a man who
problematizes the barriocentric macho to show his imperfections and
fissures. This is accomplished through drama, masquer ades, a game
of signifiers, and humor, resources that Residente handles to his
advantage in a clever fashion and which refer us to the role of the
jester, who through his jokes expressed "truths" before royalty.

This process of denaturalization, however, also hides Residente's

anxiety about acceptance. It is an anxiety reflected in his persistent
alignment with subaltern sectors to which he does not "necessarily"
belong and which demand certain social, educational, and cultural
qualities that he lacks. This anxiety for acknowledgment-like that of a
spoiled brat-causes his self-denaturalization. When he seeks to
position himself as the voice of subaltern sectors through a cynical
message-more political, more learned perhaps-he attains a position
of superiority that gives him an advantage, not only among the other
members of reggaeton but also among the populations he tries to
address. He gives new meaning to his masculinity and, on top of that,
changes it into a form of authority. It is a conduct similar to that of a
political leader, who supposedly leaves behind his/her original
conditions of life to turn into someone else; to become or "return to
be" part of the "people;" as Residente has stated frequently.

This rearticulation of the masculinities of reggaeton leads

Residente-as a "political leader;" a leader of the new politics of
masculinities in reggaeton, and a leader of Calle 13-to uphold his
proposal through a new mix of performative techniques. These are
represented through the lyrics of his songs, his music videos, his
answers to the press, his way of dressing, and the staging of
concerts, among many elements that mold him as a "public" figure.
As I mentioned earlier, up to this moment reggaeton does not contain
substantial political or social proposals. Its representations are limited
to describing the nature of the sexual desires, prejudices, symbolic
articulations, and material aspirations of its singers, which-given their
social condition-emerge from an emphasis on a streetwise, violent,
and sexist orientation.

But Residente does not come from this context, so to him it's a
game, one that, viewed in depth, he condemns from the inside,
through difference, defying the imaginaries of the subaltern sectors
as well as those of the upper and middle class. Yet, as the figure of
the jester reminds us, this game is also a space to raise
consciousness, a linguistic expression that allows Calle 13 to
problema- tize the discourses that configure the sexual desires,
prejudices, symbolic articulations, material aspirations, and
representations of masculinities naturalized by reggaeton. It is the
hypermasculinity of Calle 13, mainly of Residente, that deconstructs
the reggaeton man to propose an ambiguous, fragmented,
incomplete, contemporary man. A man so "manly" that he isn't a
"Man." A man who pokes fun persistently at his own condition.

Full source for the essay's opening epigraph is Judith Butler,

"Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," in Performing Feminisms:
Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case, 279
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 'University Press, 1990). Full sources for
the two epigraphs at the beginning of the section "Ice Cream/I
Scream" are Reggaeton News, "Calle 13 sorprende a todos," Barrio
305, http://www.barri03o5.com/reggaeton_news_calle_13.htm
(accessed June 13, 2006); and Guy Debord, The Society of the
Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 22. Full source for the
epigraph at the beginning of the section "The Fall(s) of Residente" is
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York:
Harper Collins, 2004), 59• The full citation for the section "Confetti" is
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Gosh, Boy George, You Must Be Really
Secure in Your Masculinity," in Constructing Masculinity, ed. Maurice
Berger, Brian Wallis, and Simon Watson, 11 (New York: Routledge,
1995).

1. See Wayne Marshall, "The Rise of Reggaeton: From Daddy

Yankee to Tego Calderon, and Beyond," the Phoenix,
http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid'595.aspx, January 19, 20o6. In
this article, Marshall states that "dancehall reggae had already
established a strong following in Puerto Rico in its own right by the
early '9os, as popular songs by Jamaican deejays such as Shabba
Ranks, Cutty Ranks, and Chaka Demus & Pliers helped to redefine
the sound of contemporary club music. It was, in fact, a Shabba
Ranks song, `Dem Bow,' produced by Bobby Digital, which would lay
the foundation for what became known as reggaeton."

2. In the early nineties, DJ Negro-one of the forerunners of rap in

Puerto Ricoorganized a contest at a disco called the Noise to identify
new talents among rappers. The winners of this contest were Baby
Rasta and Gringo, who, together with Don Chezina, Las Guanabanas
Podrias, Maicol & Manuel, and Memo & Vale, among other singers,
recorded the album The Noise Uno: Asi ComenzO el Ruido (ca.
1994). At this point in time, DJ Playero had also produced several
underground recordings; Playero 37 was among the better known of
the collection.
 3. Nieve Vazquez, "La `mano dura' ayudo a impulsar el reggaeton,"
Primera Hora, September 1, 2003, final edition.

4. Mary Ann Calo Delgado et al., "Mas ally del perreo" (M.A. thesis,
Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2003).

5. Law no. 140 establishes the "Citizen's Bill of Rights Regarding

Obscenity and Child Pornography" (Carta de Derechos del
Ciudadano ante la Obscenidad y la Pornografia Infantil). This law
makes reference to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to
ratify that "obscene material and child pornography are not protected
by said amendment and that representations and/or descriptions of
indecent material within the mediums of radio and television
accessible to children can be regulated." It also establishes a
mechanism through which citizens can exercise their right that "radio
and television" "not include that type of material and that the State
provide the community with greater guidance regarding the legal
norms that apply to the diffusion or transmission of that material." Law
no. 141, or the "Law of the Motion Picture Rating System," creates
jurisprudence so that every establishment selling or renting movies
places a visible announcement regarding its classification, according
to the parameters adopted by the United States' film industry. Last,
Law no. 142 creates the legal mechanisms for the establishment of
an Office of Citizen Orientation against Obscenity and Child
Pornography in Radio and Television, as part of the Department of
Consumer Affairs in Puerto Rico (Departamento de Asuntos del
Consumidor de Puerto Rico).

6. After the initial debate in the midnineties surrounding the musical

genre, several of the main reggaeton recordings of the time followed
a clean lyrics format. Two clear examples are The Noise3 (1998) and
The Noise 4 (1998).

7. Felix Jimenez, Las practicas de la carne: Construcci6n y

representaci6n de las mas- culinidades puertorriquenas (San Juan:
Ediciones Vertigo, 2004), 133.
 8. Ibid., 133-34.

9. The phrase "barriocentric macho" synthesizes the codes of

masculine domination and representation that construct the male
reggaeton subject in terms of image, gender, and discourse. In
general terms, this synthesis results from a subject's identity
organized through a constant reference to gangster logic, the
objectification of women, and the almost total omission of messages
that acknowledge the value of education. In addition, it includes its
aesthetics, influenced by U.S. rappers.

1o. To Pierre Bourdieu, masculine domination represents a crucial

example for the understanding of symbolic violence. This domination
is rooted in all cultural, social, and political practices. The French
theorist establishes that this rooting naturalizes domination in such a
way that it often goes unnoticed and gains hold of our subconscious.
In order to fight it, Bourdieu proposes the denaturalization of
domination in the symbolic circuit, through the exercise of
representation. See Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001).

11. To Jacques Lacan, the symbolic order is made up of everything

that may be represented through language. It is through language
that the subject can interact with others and understand the social
laws that organize its processes of communication and desires, which
Lacan calls the "Name of the Father." Lacan states, "It is in the name
of the father that we must recognize the support of the symbolic
function which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person
with the figure of the law." See Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 67.

12. "Dale Don Dale" from the album The Last Don (V. I. Music,
2003).

13. In Puerto Rico, the term blanquito is not necessarily conditioned

by a person's racial origin. The term describes someone who belongs
to a social class above marginal status or who lives in an
urbanizacion, instead of a barrio. Calle 13's social "difference"
becomes greater given the fact that Residente's father is a lawyer of
moderate renown in Puerto Rico and his mother is an actress.
Therefore, for the purposes of public perception, Calle 13 seems to
be above the traditional middle-class population. The members of
Calle 13 have been called "blanquitos" because they emerge from
this context, sup posedly different from that of other singers. But, as
I've pointed out earlier, other reggaeton singers share with Calle 13
the experience of growing up in urbanizaciones and also belong to a
"different" social class. Still, the aesthetics of these other reggaeton
singers-which Raquel Z. Rivera calls "barriocentric"-have saved them
from criticism, since these are more related to performers that come
from marginal sectors. This adds an aesthetic dimension to the
application of the term blanquito to Calle 13, thoroughly supported by
the eclectic image of these artists, which is explained at length further
on in this essay.

14. Rusell Rua, "Residente se canta igual a los reguetoneros, Pero

con estudios," Primera Hora, April 21, 2006, final edition.

15. Since it's within U.S. jurisdiction, Puerto Rico is eligible for
federal financial aid in the form of welfare for its working classes.
These forms of aid are called los cupones.

16. Rua, "Residente se canta igual a los reguetoneros, Pero con

estudios."

17. Mariela Fullana Acosta, "Calle 13 sazonara su nuevo disco de

temas fuertes," Primera Hora, June 12, 2006, final edition.

18. Translator's Note: A tuna is the musical equivalent of a college

fraternity, coming from an old Spanish academic tradition. Social
activity centers around music and performances by guitar and
tambourine ensembles. Tunas are common in the college scene
throughout Latin America and Spain.

19. Calle 13, CD (Sony International, BoooBTITU8, 2005).

 20. Sigmund Freud, "Humor," in Art d' Literature, ed. Albert Dickson
(Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1990), 427.

21. Marcos Perez Ramirez, "Se la juega Calle 13," El Nuevo Dia,
April 30, 2006, final edition.

22. September 23 is a crucial date for supporters of Puerto Rican

independence. It commemorates the Grito de Lares (the Lares
Uprising), a revolt against the Spanish government-which then ruled
the island. It started on September 23, 1868, in the town of Lares and
lasted for a few days. Every year, hundreds of independence
supporters meet at the town square in Lares to remember the event
and reiterate their wish of independence for Puerto Rico. Filiberto
Ojeda Rios, leader of Los Macheteros, the Boricua Popular Army,
sent a recorded message everyyear, which was played during the
celebrations in commemoration of the Grito de Lares. During the late
eighties, Ojeda Rios was charged with the robbery of 7 million dollars
from the Wells Fargo Bank. In 1989, he was declared innocent by a
Puerto Rican jury but was required to wear an electronic leg bracelet,
which he removed in 1990. After that, he remained at large for more
than a decade. On September 23, 2005, he was killed by F B I agents
when they tried to arrest him. The death of Ojeda Rios generated
indignation in many sectors of Puerto Rican society, who consider
him a Puerto Rican hero and martyr.

23. Los Macheteros is a clandestine organization founded in the

late seventies by the independence supporters Filiberto Ojeda Rios,
Juan Segarra Palmer, and Orlando Gonzalez Claudio. It's dedicated
to the promotion of the liberation of Puerto Rico from U.S. colonial
rule through the use of force. See Latino Studies Resources, "Puerto
Rican Separatists," http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/epb-
macheteros.htm (accessed June 19, 2008).

24. "Querido FBI" may be downloaded for free at

http://pr.indymedia.org/news/ 2005/o9/1o155.php (accessed June 27,
2008).
 25. The song makes reference to neighborhoods, projects, and
towns of Puerto Rico inhabited by working-class populations.

26. Prior to the advent of reggaeton, the social content of Puerto

Rican commercial rap did not necessarily deal with the island's
political or colonial situation. Its content was limited to criticizing the
conditions of poverty and the dynamics of oppressed sectors of the
country. For the most part, reggaeton has dealt with politics only
when its rhythm and singers have been recruited to create songs for
political campaigns.

27. Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of

the Human Sciences," in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass
(London: Routledge, 2004), 289.

28. Shooting toward the sky during New Year's Eve is,
unfortunately, a relatively common practice in Puerto Rico. It has
caused injuries and deaths to adults and children. For this reason, in
recent years government entities and civil society groups have
organized campaigns to prevent these acts. The 2005 campaign was
called "Las balas no van al cielo, los nifios si" (Bullets don't end up in
heaven, children do). The single "Ley de Gravedad" was released as
part of a public service campaign. I was unable to obtain any record
label information

29. In 1993, Governor Pedro Rossello appointed Luis Fortufio as

head of the Puerto Rican Tourism Company. Fortufio developed a
campaign to promote the island as a tourist destination with the
slogan "Puerto Rico lo hace mejor" (Puerto Rico does it better), which
had various Puerto Rican public figures as speakers, including the
singers Ricky Martin and Chayanne.

30. In Puerto Rico, a bruto is a person with little intelligence or with

rough manners. By using "brutosaurio" or "dumb-saurus," Residente
animalizes these men and suggests that persons who shoot into the
sky are brutos the size of a dinosaur.
 31. See Miguel Lopez Ortiz and Javier Santiago, "Valiosa
aportacion del reggaeton en ofensiva boricua contra las balas,"
Fundacion Nacional Para la Cultura Popular, http://
www.prpop.org/noticias/eneo6/reggaeton_eneO4.shtml (accessed
June 19, 2008).

32. According to data by the Policia de Puerto Rico, during the

2006 New Year's Eve there were no deaths resulting from shots into
the air, and only two persons were injured by this sort of action. This
number contrasts with data from the previous year, when ten injuries
of this kind were reported during the New Year's Eve celebration.

33. Throughout 2001, Hector "El Flaco" Figueroa was the producer
of most of the reggaeton music videos filmed in Puerto Rico. Their
strong visual content, evident in the music videos of Wisin and
Yandel, Daddy Yankee, and Dicky Jam, among others, generated the
2002 legislative inquiry led by Senator Velda Gonzalez to censor
perreo.

34• Marshall, "The Rise of Reggaeton."

35. Calle 13, CD (Sony International, BoooBTITU8, 2005).

36. CIRCO is one of the most popular rock bands in Puerto Rico. Its
live perfor mances are well known for their conceptual incorporation
of elements of performance, theater, contemporary dance, and the
circus scene. The lyrics of its songs are poetic, and its music
combines electroacoustic sounds, distinguishing them from other
Puerto Rican and Latin American bands. One of CIRCO's main
attractions is their front man, lose Luis "Foie" Abreu, who displays a
particular use of language, metaphors, and a liberating discourse that
proposes coming out of the closet and freeing passions. Fofe
evinces, both at the artistic level and in terms of gender, a certain
ambiguity. CIRCO's songs, which include the well-known hits "Un
Accidente," "Cascaron," "Circosis," and "Historia de un Amor," among
others, always carry sexuality to a fantastic environment. Jose Luis
Colon, their manager, also handles Calle 13.
REGETON LYRICS: THE YUMA FACTOR.
THE BODY AS "CONVERTIBLE CURRENCY"

Havana 2005 and I am living in Vedado-that is, uptown-in an area

that before the 1959 Revolution was mostly white and middle class,
and which is now mixed socially and racially.' Between May and July
almost every night, through my bedroom window, I hear one song
played frequently by the people officially squatting in the half-finished
building alongside. Each time the song comes on, they pump up the
volume. I become aware of this song everywhere: in taxis, fast food
restaurants, and bars, at house parties and on the radio. It's the song
of the moment, and for a foreigner like me it has a lot of ironic
resonance. It's called "A Ti, Te Gustan los Yumas" (Oh You, You Like
Foreigners), and on the home-burned compilation I buy from a Cuban
on the street one day, I learn from the minimal information on the
paper sleeve (names of songs and artist only) that it is by Reana (an
artist I have so far not managed to find out anything about). Its
catchiness makes it stick in my memory immediately, particularly what
I hear as the "diffidence" or irony of the female chorus as they sing
the title line, "A ti, to gustan los yumas."

In Cuba yuma is the street slang used to refer to a "foreigner."

Originally it meant a "Yankee," someone from the United States, but
now it is used, often pejoratively, to refer to any foreigner.2 Unequal
access to the dual currency on the island (the Cuban peso and
Cuban convertible peso, the latter having replaced the American
dollar, which functioned as dual currency from 1993 until 2001) has
led to a certain disdain verging on dislike of foreigners among
Cubans. This implicit resentment is due to the fact that access or
selling services to foreigners of any nature, officially or unofficially, is
one good way of getting the convertible pesos, which Cubans need to
get hold of. The text of the song discusses the impact of yumas while
professing mutual love between a Cuban couple, "yo soy to mangote
... to locote" (I'm your big mango, your crazy one). The "mutual love"
of the text was reinforced by the regeton dance itself being danced
between Cubans rather than between Cubans and yumas (seen on
occasion, although few yumas dance regeton effectively since
regeton moves are quite difficult for non-Latinos, as they require a lot
of learning of body movements that for many Cubans begin within the
first year of life). I see this regeton song as voicing similar sentiments
to those expressed in the timba lament "La Bruja" written by Jose
Luis Cortes of NG La Banda, which caused controversy and was
effectively marginalized from the Cuban media in 1999, after protests
from the Cuban Women's Federation. As a song, while it undoubtedly
expressed what could be interpreted as misogynistic elements, it was
simultaneously a male lament at the sadness brought about by
Cuban women preferring foreign men to Cuban men as a result of the
implied dollar factor.

What struck me every time I heard "A ti, to gustan los yumas" in
2005 in houses, Cuban peso taxis, blaring from bars and the
occasional fast food outlets, is the way the verse is sung by male hip-
hop style rappers with clever rhyming verses over a prerecorded
"background," while the chorus, sung by a group of female singers,
sounds diffident-like a "shrugging shoulder"-as if liking a yuma or
foreigner is a necessary evil, that is, voicing an attitude inherent to
Cuban everyday life.

I found the yuma text really interesting because, confirming my own

ethnomusicological research on timba dance music in the late 199os
in Cuba, song lyrics for dance music seemed to be functioning as
newspaper articles and columns did in other cultures, acting as a
barometer of Cuban everyday life, an essential way of finding out
what ordinary Cubans think about what is going on politically,
economically, and socially, particularly in the absence of an
independent press. In the 199os in a climate of jinetera service
culture, the music scene was one of the most promising for Cubans
to meet tourists and gain access to much-needed hard currency.

As a dancer I noticed the development of "new" dance moves

involving the "solo" female body: the despelote (all-over-the-place)
and tembleque (shakeshudder), and the subasta de la cintura (waist
auction). These moves define a solo female dance style which
involves fast undulating and turning or swirling of the area from below
the shoulders and chest to the pelvis (as if one were Hula-hooping or
belly dancing). Often accompanied by hand and body gestures
mimicking self-pleasuring, in the 199os it constituted a noticeable
change in dance style, of women dancing to be "looked at" both by
their partners, by other prospective partners, and by other spectators,
using their body as a (their) major asset. This was in striking contrast
to the more normative couple dancing.

In my opinion, the female body could be read symbolically as the

"convertible currency" of the 199os "Special Period," "exchanged"
between Cuban male musicians and foreign men. I link these
developments to attitudes toward, about, and among women at the
time, arising from the responsibilities women assumed during the
Special Period which gave them new authority. As I have written
elsewhere, "lyrics were danced out in the music's shifting polyrhythms
and structures which themselves form and mirror coital narratives ...
the dancing maps the complexities and contradictions of the new
`tourist' dollar economy."'

Timba is a driving dance music with a vital black Cuban dancing

public.' Regeton, while danced by "white" Cubans, is similarly
associated with a young, black Cuban population. As an
ethnomusicologist, journalist, and someone who responds to the
present scene in Cuba when I am there, my interest in regeton in
2005-6 stems from several important questions about music and
dance: Why is regeton so popular and why now? What do regeton
lyrics and dance moves suggest about gender and sexuality in Cuba;
and about Cuban identityand local/global relations? And what kind of
reading could be given to the way in which in regeton Cuban women
were standing in front of their men with their backs to them, rather
than facing them as in other dances?'

REGETON AND INFORMAL DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

The music of "A ti, to gustan los yumas" is a regeton, that is, voices
singing and rapping against a computer or machinemade
"background" recording that Marshall calls "inherently hybrid ... an
industrial music . . . a high-tech product . . . based around recycled
rhythms and riffs."6 It was featured on various home-burned unofficial
regeton compilations circulating in Cuba in 2005 that offered a mix of
homegrown songs and Pan-Caribbean hits. Regeton production and
distribution (like hip-hop and rap before, yet more so) is the result of
new underground initiatives fostered by the arrival in recent years of
computer hard- and software into the hands of individuals who for the
first time in Cuban history have the opportunity to create and
distribute their music independently of state networks, albeit
unofficially and illegally.'

The regeton compilations I purchased on the street had an overlap

of songs. One compilation with twenty tracks-identified by title only-
had a cover sporting a white, blond topless model up to her thighs in
the sea baring her bottom naked save for a thong. The other-called
2005: La Cocinita, Volumen 12, La Popola (a reference to a song
where a woman complains about her sore vagina)-sports a soft-porn
image of a blond white female model kneeling by an Ahamay
motorbike with the titles of eight of its twenty-two tracks scattered
alongside. Asking dancers about its imagery, the response I received
is captured by the remark of one male dancer: "Women love guys
with motorbikes." Of the tracks offered inside, some nineteen include
an artist's name. Most tracks are not Cuban in origin. The
atmosphere of the disc is fast, upbeat and fun, with some witty
introductions to songs, yet it has to be said that close scrutiny of the
lyrics of many of the songs, be they non-Cuban or Cuban, leave little
to the imagination. As a result, in Cuba the lyrics were often spoken
of as "vulgar," while simultaneously the same song as an entity would
be appreciated for having an irresistibly "good" dance beat which
largely outweighed the impact of lyrics.

On this CD, numerous songs with titles like " Cogeme el Tubo"
(Hold my tube) serenade sexual parts, various sore orifices, oral,
doggy-style and, implicitly, anal sex. For example, Di Emilio
celebrates female body parts: "Mami dame chocha/quiero chocha
chocha chocha" (Sweetie, give me pussy, I want pussy, pussy,
pussy). The female chorus' response is "Estare mi corazbn" (I'll be
there, my heart). A Los Gatos song implies a woman's insatiability for
sex and includes lines such as "me gusta ... chocha ... este palo es
para ti perra ... to gusta que to pega y que to pasa brocha (I like ...
pussy ... this stick is for you bitch ... you like it to hit you and to brush
you [the latter word "brush" has explicit sexual meaning concerning
moving "the stick/penis" between orifices]). The point here is that
while double-entendre is a strong feature of all Cuban music
throughout the twentieth century from classic trova to son to changui,
most of it was and is, though, often witty innuendo with nothing
explicit. In contrast, taken lightly, humorously or not, regeton lyrics are
more often than not explicitly pornographic and challenging. A good
example of this came one day in a regeton sung by a six-year-old into
my microphone in response to the invitation to "sing me a song"
(when regeton was far from the discussion). Her musician mother
was visibly shocked when her daughter sang shyly, "Que me gusta
suave suave" (I enjoy it slowly, gently). While there is no doubt that
most Cubans enjoy regeton just to dance to and may ignore the
words, when they do listen to the words of some songs they agree
that lyrics and their subliminal meanings can be questionable when
younger listeners are concerned. In 2005, as regeton became the
music par excellence for school parties, home fiestas, and the all-
important, coming-of-age fifteen-year-old quince birthday parties for
girls, the genre came under scrutiny because of its lyrics and dance
moves.

MARGINALIZATION OF REGETON
By March-April 20o6 regeton was being officially marginalized.
Articles in the press following a debate on regeton at a significant
Young Communist movement meeting were particularly prominent
and persuasive, stimulating private and public discussion. Both lyrics
and dance movements came under fire, and cultural institutions
reacted against regeton'8 In response, regeton was defended by
musicians, with the female singer Oneilys Hevora of the group Los
Gatos, reportedly saying "mi musica es para bailar, para disfrutar,
para que muchos se diviertan" (my music is for dancing, for pleasure,
for many people's enjoyment). Despite this, regeton's fate was
sealed: " Esta siendo sutilmente limitado en los medios de prensa; se
aconseja que no se utilice en fiestas de centros de ensenanza y se
filtra en las discotecas" (It is being subtly limited in the media and
press; we advise that it not be used in parties at teaching institutions,
and it is being filtered in discotheques).9

DANCING BACK TO FRONT (CHEEK-TO-CROTCH)

Regeton dancing is, as far as I know, the first publicly popular "back
to front" dance in Cuba. It is a dance which sensualizes the bottom
and pelvis in fetishistic fashion. Hitherto most couple dancing has
been face to face, save for processional congas in Cuban carnival,
which uses quite different dance movements. Talking to
choreographers and dancers in Cuba, I found that Cuban regeton
moves were seen to have precedent in Cuban dance history, rather
than coming into Cuba from elsewhere, like some of the music itself."'
Let me describe three moments of regeton dance.

IN SITU 1

Carnival in Santiago de Cuba in July 2005: a line of five girls are

dancing regeton with their men, the men using the wall of a dark side
street to lean back on to support them, while their women stand in
front, with their backs to them. Wearing tight, figure-hugging clothing,
they are making fast swirling undulations from chest to their pelvic
area, bottoms stuck slightly outward, while their partners stand close
behind them, their own pelvic area thrust forward, so that their
partners are stimulating their presented crotches. The girls look
straight out at a group of Cubans and non-Cubans dancing salsa in
the beer bar in front of them. A lot of the time they look us straight in
the eye, with occasionally smiling faces that imply, "I don't mind if you
look at me; look at what I can do for my man." The eyes of their men,
meanwhile, rove slightly diverted, inward looking, concentrating on
what is happening, or exchanging glances as if slightly diffident to the
whole process. While this may appear pure conjectural observation,
asked what the experience was like, a Santiago Cuban male dancer
told me, "Slowly, you often get to where you are about to `come' when
it is happening, it is amazing." As the dance appears to be "female"
led, its performative attributes and conventions certainly set up vivid
notions of gendered power relations."

IN SITU 2

July 2005 and Santiago's premier folk-dance ensemble Cutumba are

invited to the Tropicana, Santiago's top cabaret nightspot, along with
their guests, a group of British tourists who are taking dance classes
with them. The Tropicana in Santiago, as in Havana, has continued
prerevolutionary traditions (reappraised in the i96os-7os) of a
nightclub with a big dance and music spectacle. Today this involves
top university-trained dancers and musicians. On this specific night
the public also includes a 60-70 person mixed-gender squad of
Venezuelan sailors spending time visiting Cuba. Both male and
female sailors are in their late teens and early twenties and are
dressed in pristine white uniforms. After the live show, whose vividly
exuberant finale of a panCaribbean celebration of dance symbolically
affirms the significance of PetroCaribe economic relations and
government agreements between Venezuela, Cuba and other parts
of the Caribbean and South America, the disco takes over. Within
minutes, Venezuelan sailors are inviting Cutumba's British male and
female guests to dance, but mostly the female guests.
 On the dance floor while some couples dance salsa, several pairs
of Venezuelan men begin to dance with women "sandwich" style
between them, the women's colorful dresses between the white
uniforms bringing home the sandwich metaphor. They are dancing
close in, with a man back and front, bodies touching, one man
swiveling his pelvic area and pushing against the woman's bottom,
the other her front. In practically all cases the eye contact is
homosocial between two men over the woman's head,
acknowledging each other as they move. Occasional movements
take the trio or one or the other of the men swiveling (corkscrewing)
down the woman's body to a crouched semisquat, their head level
either with the woman's midbottom or her crotch, to then move back
up again. The music is regeton; the atmosphere is playful. One
woman in such a sandwich is seen pushing both men front and back
away from her trying to achieve a more "normal" dancing distance.
Another tries to dance-squirm her way into freer space in vain.

Asked afterward how they felt, one of these woman said, "It started
out fun and flirty then it got rather heavy and I felt cramped and
heavily pressed into and `used: I used my arms to try to make them
keep their distance, but that just seemed to add to their idea of 'fun."'
Given that dance floor etiquette prevails-that is, being courteously
asked to dance and then thanked afterward, and more often than not
being accompanied back to their seat-the actual sexual and
emotional impact of the experience is "forgotten" in the moment, or at
least not mentioned. The only "negative" message given by these
women to the men to show that they did not exactly enjoy the
experience is by declining to dance again.

The sandwich dance is reportedly part of various Caribbean TV

programs in which a woman is covered with water so that when she
dances in a sandwich between two men, wet patches on the men's
clothes afterward reveal where their bodies have touched. Indeed
such "wet" patches offer a simulation of the excretions associated
with sexual activity, notably sweat and semen.
READING THE DANCE: DANCE AND PORNOGRAPHY,
DANCE AND GENDER RELATIONS

Let us say dance example "In situ i" is a publicly performed,

symbolically masturbatory dance. "In situ 2," the sandwich dance,
apes troilism and pornographic "split roasting," that is, a woman
serving one man sexually while another man is having sex with her.
In my view, both these dances have sexually explicit if not
pornographic references. How then are these dances to be "read;" if
we take into account the opinion of dance scholar Judith Lynne
Hanna, who writes, "Feelings and ideas about sexuality and sex roles
(also referred to as gender) take shape in dance. These visual
models of which dancer (male or female) performs what, when,
where, how, why, either along, or with another dancer, reflect and
also challenge, society's expectations for each sex's specific
activities, whether dominance patterns or mating strategies."2

In nearby Puerto Rico, the reggaeton dance is called el perreo

("doggy-style" in Puerto Rican slang). Put perreo into an Internet
search mechanism, and you are presented with a lot of "veiled" porn
sites. To me, the relationship between doggy dancing and porn is
direct and unequivocal. At the risk of entering muddy moral waters,
there are issues to explore. How are we to read regeton, perreo, and
"sandwich dancing" if we approach gender as performed identity?
How are we to read them if we consider that in many societies the
rules that discipline the use of the body in dance "constitutes not only
a means of selfdisplay for the individual but also and especially the
traditional occasion for public relationships between men and women
(as well as between persons of the same gender)"?" How do we
interpret regeton if, as Hannah notes, dance rules symbolize the
synthesis of ideas on the feminine, the masculine, and the "proper"
interaction between genders (or within a single gender) that
distinguish a given community at a given point in time?"

Without wishing to offer too deterministic an explanation, where

does the back-to-front dance position come from? Can it be explained
as anything other than simply another novel way of dancing? Other
than folkloric explanations, no Cuban I spoke to could offer me a
reason as to why this dance with these moves has emerged. Is it too
mechanistic to suggest that the symbolic impact of the dance is a
response to the fact that in the 199os women came to the fore in
managing the difficult economic and domestic situation of the Special
Period, keeping families fed and together under severe economic
duress, that the woman does indeed stand forward with her man
behind her?

In 2006, Cuban professional dancers I talked to were keen to dispel

any overreading of regeton: "Es un movimiento del cintur6n, menea,
circulando caderas y cintura sin mala intenci6n. El hombre disfruta
del movimiento sin mala intencion ... es una provocaci6n al hombre
pero sin pretension del sexo; se puede `conquistar el hombre'
tambien" (It's a move of the waist, a swirl, circling the hips and waist
without any bad intention. The man enjoys the movement without any
bad intention [either] ... it provokes the man but without any intention
of sex; you can "conquer a man" in this way as well). While the "lack
of any bad intention" may mean these dancers were hedging their
response given the 20o6 media outcry against regeton, their remarks
fall within the etiquette of much Cuban public discourse expressed
verbally, which tends to "qualify," to never slander anything and to
avoid critique. When asked about "sandwich" dancing the response
was, "No es costumbre en Cuba pero si en el Caribe ... se baila pero
tiene que ser con alguien que se conoce, en una fiesta cuando se
conoce entre companeros, seria dos hombres y una mujer o dos
mujeres y un hombre, pero no es comun." (It's not a custom in Cuba,
but it is in the Caribbean ... it is danced but only with someone you
know, at a party when you know the friends, whether two men and a
woman or two women and one man, but it isn't common.)

IN SITU 3

In March 2006 all-night filming is going on at the open-air ballroom of

the holiday camp at Playa Blanco, down the coast from Santiago, for
a DVD for the song "La Farandula" (The Night Life) by Salsa Chula, a
Santiago-based orchestra trying to get official recognition at the time.
The song and video celebrate the vibrant dance nightlife of Santiago
and the dancers are a mix of professionally trained, state-salaried
dancers and "street" (i.e., unsalaried) groups. The choreographic
moves of male and female are encoded with regeton moves, and the
song features vocals from male singer El Medico del Regeton (the
"Doctor of Regeton," who is indeed a doctor in his daytime job).
Talking with these dancers about regeton-including posing the
question, "What's in it for women?"-I got these answers: that (a) it is
fun, (b) it can be erotic for both parties as the man caresses his
partner's body including neck, shoulders, hips, and buttocks. Women
dancers stressed you would only dance it with your boyfriend or
someone you knew well. It was mentioned that it was all about sex,
and that occasionally when people danced regeton in the right place
and time, sex might occur. The explanation given was that there are
few places for young people to meet in private as most live with their
families, often sharing a bedroom with another family member. In
discussing privacy issues among young people, I was told there are
rooms that can be rented for an hour for liaisons, but with money
short, many young people prefer to congregate in parks with little or
no lighting. That people do have sex in parks may not be desired
behavior, but everyone knows it happens. "Where else?" one person
remarked. Then a male dancer told me, "In regeton it is possible for
the man to come in from the behind: as the woman lifts her skirt and
bends over more, the guy drops to his knees, drops his zipper and
he's in."

ANTECEDENT CUBAN DANCE MOVES

While the Cubans I interviewed claimed not to know where regeton's

dance moves originated, it is clear that there are, in fact, antecedents
in Cuba. I first saw a precursor to the body movements used by
women for regeton in 1989 during the Havana Jazz Festival in the
main seated concert area of Cuba's National Theater. In an aisle
between sections of seats while others sat and listened, a girl with a
red Lycra dress clinging to her frame, legs slightly apart, moved fast,
swirling her bottom outward behind her while a steady stream of men
took their turn to stand behind her. At a certain point, the man
immediately behind her benefiting from her gyrations was "moved on"
by a man standing at her side (friend, boyfriend, brother, lover,
pimp?). This was a masturbatory service dance done proudly as if the
woman's body was a glorious choice, a public expression of male and
female libido.

In the early i98os and through the '9os Pedro Calvo, then lead
singer and dancer with Cuba's top group Los Van Van, would dance
sandunguera style with women he pulled up onto the stage out of the
audience, the whole thing encapsulated in the Los Van Van song
"Sandunguera." Depending on the context, he would invite women,
from preteen to middle age. While they swiveled their bodies facing
him, often he undulated downward, going "down" on them so that his
head and mouth at one point would be level with their crotch, a
stylized direct reference to oral sex. In Cuba such public dancing
behavior is not considered to transgress taboos; nor in my experience
is it considered taboo when a young (female) child in her first twelve
to eighteen months (not years) apes swirly pelvic and bottom
movements. Rather, such precocity is applauded and celebrated:
"aqui nos celebramos, es una gracia ... cuando vemos un nino o una
nifia es novedoso Para nosotros y pensamos que lo trae en la sangre
de cuando pequeno" (here we celebrate that, as a gift, when we see
a young girl or boy do it, it is a novelty for us, and we think they carry
it in their blood). Thus, the sexual movements prominent in Cuban
dance are part of normative learned behavior.

According to a Cuban choreographer I interviewed, some of the

moves involved in regeton, despelote, and tembleque reference
rumba, notably the baile de yambu, "donde la mujer tiene la fuerza,
una oportunidad [de] mostrar su belleza, la coqueteria con el hombre
desplazado, se desplaza atras de la mujer" (Where the woman has
the power and opportunity to show her beauty and coquetry while the
man relocates himself behind the woman). Other dances mentioned
as possible sources for choreographic gestures are rituals of the Afro-
Cuban Palo religion, baile de makuta and deyuka, "que es un baile en
que el hombre y la mujer empiezan en frente Pero despues el
hombre baila atras de la mujer como algo picaresco amandola y
haciendo gestos de un agradecimiento pero de atras como un gallo"
(which is a dance where the man and woman begin in front but then
the man goes behind the woman in a picaresque way, loving her and
making gestures of appreciation from behind like a cock).

REGETON IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSGRESSIVE

DANCE IN LATIN AMERICA

Dances in Latin America since colonial times have included the

stylized flirtatious "cock and hen" couple dances known as the
zamacueca and cueca, which exist under other names and in
different forms in various countries. This dance usually leaves the
women in a decisive position as to whether to be symbolically
"possessed" or not, in similar ways to the vacunao, the "possession"
move in rumba. In the Colombian cumbia callejera the woman
controls by carrying a handful of lit candles, which she holds in front
of her lower waist in order to be able to see and fend off the man
trying to conquer her. However, while these dances involve moves
denoting symbolic attempts at sexual possession, none of them is a
back-to-front dance.

In Cuba, until the ongoing Young Communist-prompted discussion

which began openly in December 2005, dance moves have rarely
been spoken of as transgressive. Yet, as Charles Chasteen shows in
his history of dance-which focuses on the emergence of tango in
Buenos Aires, Argentina; danzon in Havana, Cuba; and samba in Rio
de Janeiro-Brazil, transgressive dance is the key to dance history in
Latin America." He shows how social and gender inequalities and
imbalances created the climate in which tango, danzon, and samba
(which have all become "national" dances) emerged. Each was
regarded as deeply transgressive at the time, and each shocked
Western sensibilities with their explicitness. In Cuba, danzon-which
appeared in the 188os-was felt to have too much African influence as
it brought the pelvic requebro, the breaking of natural vertical line
body by a fast-hitting move frontally of the pelvis from male to female,
as a mark of possession. Chasteen quotes a "Cuban social reformer"
as writing "the dancers were pushing their thighs and hips together
separated only by the women's wrinkled skirt." 16

Unlike regeton, danzon (like tango and samba) was initially popular
in bordellos, that is, with the "other" side of society, gradually making
its way into the salon via upper-class men who frequented lower-
class haunts and then brought the dance to private salons, where it
became stylized and normative. While tembleque, despelote, and
regeton moves did not develop in bordellos, they all developed in the
climate of modern sexual flirtation and potential sexual liaisons
between Cubans and Cubans, and (more significantly) Cubans and
non-Cubans, in the heady atmosphere of Havana clubs in the 199os
when jinetera service culture and sexuality as "convertible currency"
were prime." As such, in comparable ways to tango and danzon,
changing social relations are acted out on the dance floor. The
difference with regeton per se post 2000 is that it is notably danced
out between Cubans, especially in what are often referred to in Cuba
as "barrios malos" (bad neighborhoods) which implies poor, marginal,
and often, black. Thus, although regeton may not have emerged in
bordellos, it is definitely identified in Cuba by Cubans with the "lower
strata" of Cuban society.

Given the "official" message from the Cuban media that regeton is
a questionable form, it is notable how regeton moves and music have
been absorbed into hip-hop and other salsa hybrids. Officially regeton
may be suspect but unofficially it will not disappear, protected by
other hybrid forms and the performers who create it.

Indeed the cultural politics of the official Hermanos Saiz cultural

associations, who encourage cutting-edge or youth music in Cuba,
have it that there is "good" and "bad" regeton. While it is not within
the purview of this essay to analyze racial issues, they are deeply
relevant in Cuba; "banning" dance popular with black Cubans as a
form of social control has been an integral part of Cuba's cultural
history since before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.18 While
racial equality has been state ideology since the 1959 Revolution,
racial difference is articulated in everyday conversation by the
description of subtle gradations of skin color when referring to family
and friends, often in a deprecating and self-deprecating manner.

CONCLUSIONS

I would like to conclude with a series of questions: In the twenty-first

century, given its "back to front" positioning and intrinsic sexuality,
does regeton pose a serious set of postfeminist questions? And,
historically, did other dancesincluding danzon, son, rumba, tango,
and samba-also pose such issues before they were "cleaned up"? Is
the bottom line that the values embraced by both sexes are "male"
values? Does analyzing new dance moves that have been
incorporated into regeton in Cuba reveal that they signify different
sexual values embraced by a new generation of women? Do dances
that accentuate sexual movements give women a "sense of power"
from the idea that they are in control, turning their man on, capable of
being what men want? Sexual attractiveness, "showing of your
assets" at all times, seems to have become more of a norm,
confusingly tied up with confidence and self-esteem.

Is regeton as a dance empowering for women? Can it be

empowering to one generation and not another? To me its message
is, "I am a woman and I am here to serve men's needs, when I
choose!" However, as both song lyrics and the dance are familiar to
and copied by preteen and prepubescent teenagers as well as
teenagers, is the subliminal message of this dance, a foreplay dance
acted out in public, the sexual "domestication" of women into
traditional "service" roles, in other words, that a woman's role is to
serve her man? Is it a dance in which Cuban women are telling their
men they still serve them even if they have to face and at times
interact with foreigners and other men?
 I would argue that reggaet6n in general, as both a Cuban and Pan-
Latin phenomenon, has serious issues attached to it. In the global
context of the increased availability of pornography mostly consumed
by men; increased media use of soft porn images in advertising to the
extent that soft porn is considered as normative; increased sexual
trafficking of young women throughout the world; information that
anal sex and doggy-style sex are part of an increasing AIDS climate
with anal sex with women (or men) as the "ultimate male fantasy";
information that sex workers get paid most for unprotected anal sex,
leading to higher incidence of HIv-given all this, is it possible that
behind regeton/reggaet6n fun is a less positive reality? Or am I being
an old prude? Reggaet6n, we are reliably told by a leading British
Sunday newspaper, will soon be the subject of a Hollywood film.
Perhaps in the same way Hollywood bastardized and cleaned up
tango with its Rudolph Valentino films in the 1920s and '3os,
reggaet6n dance and lyrics will be "cleaned" up, made palatable for
the mainstream media perhaps with the swirling butt of Jennifer
Lopez! But, I would argue, the deeper issues for women, feminist or
not, remain.

NOTES

The title "How to Make Love with Your Clothes On" (Como hacer el
amor con ropa) is taken from a report on articles about reggaet6n
published in the Cuban Juventud Rebelde newspaper early in 2006.
See http://www.terra.com/ocio/articulo/html/ oci6io67.htm (accessed
July 7, 2007). An earlier version of this essay appears as Jan Fairley,
"Dancing Back to Front: Regeton, Sexuality, Gender and
Transnationalism in Cuba," Middle Eight, Dance Issue, Popular Music
25, no. 3 (2006): 471-88. In Cuba, regeton is known on the street as
regetonl reget6n, occasionally reguet6n. Officially in and outside
Cuba, it is now also known as reggaet6n. In deference to the orality
of Cuban culture, I use regeton when talking only of Cuba as this was
the first spelling I saw on a homemade poster, and reggaet6n for
outside Cuba. Translations of Spanish-language quotations are my
own.
 1. I write this essay from the point of view of being a white British
female interdisciplinary trained researcher with a Ph.D. in
ethnomusicology working as a writer and broadcaster, who has been
observing the Cuban music and dance scene since 1978. The
interviews cited in this essay were conducted in Cuba between 2005
and 2006. As an "outsider," or "yuma," in Cuba, my perspectives are
my own, as are any unwitting prejudices.

2. While Cuba receives limited tourists from the United States, there
are a small number each year. More significantly, Cuba receives U.S.
cultural production through the comings and goings of the Cuban
diaspora from the United States, and via Tv programs from the United
States and Americas via legal and illegal satellite dishes. The term
yuma in Cuba originally defined North Americans or those who
symbolize a "North American" lifestyle, i.e., exhibiting material wealth
through indicators such as clothes and possessions and the ability to
travel in and out of Cuba by means of their own capital. In Cuba
today, yuma is used to refer to all foreigners. Nevertheless, it remains
for many Cubans an embarrassing term if used face to face; i.e., it
has a pejorative inflection, bound up with the service culture of
"jineterism." For more on "jineterism," see Jan Fairley, "'Ay Dios,
Amparame' (0 God, Protect Me): Music in Cuba during the 199os, the
`Special Period," in Island Musics, ed. Kevin Dawe (Oxford: Berg
Publishers, 2004), 91.

3. Fairley, "'Ay Dios, Amparame," 92.

4. See Vicenzo Perna, Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis

(Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2005).

5. I do not use the Puerto Rican / U.S. term perreo to describe

regeton in Cuba as this term was not used at all when I carried out
this research, and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, it is not
commonly used in Cuba. As a frame for this study, I refer to Helmi
Jarviluoma, Pirkko Moisala, and Anni Vilkko, Gender and Qualitative
Methods (London: Sage Publications, 2003). My conclusions move
beyond their work.
 6. Wayne Marshall, "The Rise of Reggaeton: From Daddy Yankee
to Tego Calderon, and Beyond," Phoenix, January 19, 2006.

7. While regeton is by no means the first non-Cuban music to

circulate in Cuba, I would argue that it has circulated in much wider
form than rock, rap, or even hip-hop largely because of the means of
circulation-i.e., burned CDs sold illegally on streets rather than
circulating among musicians and aficionados-and due to it being
primarily perceived as party dance music.

8. "Censuran al reggaeton en Cuba, dicen que es `peligroso,"

Terra, http://www.terra .com/ocio/articulo/html/oci6lo67.htm (accessed
July 7, 2007). "Cuerpos muy pegados ... como hacer el amor con
ropa" (Bodies stuck together ... like making love with clothes on) was
the description of reggaeton dance moves in a Juventud Rebelde
newspaper article.

9. Terra, http://www.terra.com/ocio/articulo/html/oci6lo67.htm
(accessed July 7, 2007).

io. Similar movements can be found elsewhere in the Americas

(e.g., in sound system carnival blocos in Brazil, "wining" in Trinidad,
Jamaican dancehall moves, and "freak dancing" in the 199os in the
United States).

ii. Jarviluoma, Moisala, and Vilkko, Gender and Qualitative

Methods.

12. Judith Lynne Hannah, as quoted in Tulia Magrini, ed., Music

and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean (Chicago:
'University of Chicago Press, 2003), 6.

13. "Dancing provides a faithful expression of the most diverse and

nuanced meanings, since its rules specify who can take part in the
dance and how the body is used ... allowing or denying specific forms
of bodily contact, and regulating other aspects in such a way as to
highlight shared ideas on what constitutes an acceptable physical
relationships in the public sphere." Ibid., 6.

14. Ibid.

15. John Charles Chasteen, National Rhythms, African Roots: The

Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2004).

16. Ibid., 20.

17. Fairley, "'Ay Dios, Amparame'."

18. Robin Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: AfroCubanismo and

Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940 (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1994).
Editors' Note: This poem served as the introduction to Daddy
Yankee's 2000 debut album El Cartel de Yankee.
For the occasion of Panama's centennial, the honorary queen of the
festival in San Miguelito hoped to cool down and, in her words,
baptize the audience with a bottle of water. Before dousing the crowd,
however, preparations needed to be made. Martha Ivelisse Pesante,
better known as the singer Ivy Queen, pointed her long ornate
fingernail toward a woman in the audience and said, "T6 no quieres
que se to joda el blower negra, zverdad? Yo tampoco. Yo tengo el
pelo malo. Te lo juro, yo soy blanca pero tengo pelo malo" (You don't
want me to fuck up your blow-out, negra, am I right? I wouldn't want
that either. I have bad hair. I swear to you, I'm white but I have bad
hair).' Far from the wet T-shirt shenanigans common to outdoor
concerts, this aside offers a provocative entry point into reading
reggaeton, especially as it comes from the genre's heralded queen. I
hesitate to address her by this royal moniker and not because of the
validity of the title. To subject her to this honorific is to also in some
ways subject her to a perpetual takedown. The miring of these
superlatives on musicians too easily makes them instruments for
genres' cockfights, too readily sets them up as the standards by
which everything else must be kept real. Given that these royal titles
can only be held one at a time, the music's makers are understood as
temporary, interchangeable, replaceable. And of course, in the case
of women musicians, these titles position them as the singular
exceptions to the male rule.

I begin this essay with Ivy Queen's aside for its unique ability to
swerve reggaet6n's charted course, both musical and critical. Its
uniqueness lies in its confrontational bent, but also in its potential to
go unnoticed. It is not part of a song, but a moment of quick
improvised banter that takes place off the set list and outside the
studio space. As such, it is one of those wonderful outlaw moments
that can be taken up when constrained by the laws of genre.2 The
aside pulls the rug out from under what is thought to govern
reggaet6n: the audiences, locations, and practices it is said to
encompass. Beyond corrupting any assumed sense of market, the
aside is a compelling example of what broadening the terms of the
musical can make possible. It enables us to read and hear music as
that which goes beyond songs and/or praxis. It is a thread of
performance-if and when it is picked up-that allows for movement into
critical and creative places often lost from reggaet6n's range of sight
and sound.

This essay takes up a few such moments, or to borrow a term from

Barbara Johnson, surprises. Johnson argues, "The impossible but
necessary task of the reader is to set herself up to be surprised. No
methodology can be relied on to generate surprise. On the contrary, it
is usually surprise that engenders meth- odology."3 Here I extend
Johnson's "necessary task" not only to the realm of performance, but
to a way of being in the world. To set oneself up for surprise would
mean abandoning that quantitative thrust behind having to know
everything, what she calls the "comforts of mastery." Uncomfortable,
unpredictable, but always-present surprises put any methodology into
productive crisis. But the surprise is not waiting to be discovered by
you, the critic, so that it can be made visible and valuable to
scholarship. To remain open to surprise is not about an excavation,
but an inclination. You must be prepared (if you aren't already) to
assume an already heard, danced, and lived agent on the move.

To simply call Ivy Queen out for reproducing shame over her
African roots by the use of pelo malo is too easy. A few things must
nevertheless be stated from the outset. The phrase "pelo malo"-the
discursive dread(s) of Africa in the Americas-does indeed signal the
violence of value that has long been assigned to phenotypic racial
marks. This gesture of presumed affiliation might too readily rely on
shorthand to approximate the lived realities of dark-skinned Latinas,
those for whom racial passing is not a choice. Her qualifier "soy
blanca" could be read as a distancing, a recognition of her option to
pass, or both at once. Perhaps it collapses the specific processes of
racial formation experienced by a New York-born but island-raised
Boricua, and the woman in the audience, presumably Panamanian
from San Miguelito.4

What's more, this aside evokes a phenomenon in reggaet6n that

acknowledges racial signifiers-both physical and musical-only through
their refusal. As one example: in the video accompaniment to
N.O.R.E.'s "Oye Mi Canto," that most audible global hit, you'll come to
find that "it doesn't matter your race 'cause today you're Latino" is a
straight-up falsehood-and only convenient for that feel-good, last-line-
of-the-verse chiming in so common to anthems. This refusal of race
as a rallying cry outs a particular strain of pan-latinidad that will affirm
African ancestry so that it can also subjugate it. This kind of
recognition or refusal has long put certain women's bodies at the
service of a global pan-Latino ethos. In the case of "Oye Mi Canto,"
the women are light skinned, wear bikinis inspired by the flags of their
respective nations, and grind on a beach. This is but one dangerous
enactment that has gone down in the vexed interstice that Raquel Z.
Rivera has theorized as "between blackness and latinidad."5

You might have gathered that there are all kinds of precedents
already in place for reading reggaeton.

I would like to take what Ivy Queen does in this aside elsewhere. To
skew it from the above course might first mean noting the vital
countertradition of having to occupy descriptives such as "pelo malo"
from the inside: to make them sound, and yes, actually mean, terms
of endearment and recognition. It is also to acknowledge "pelo malo"
as a banal descriptive: for getting a blowout does not necessarily
mean that you are eliminating the ancestors with every downward pull
of the round brush. Without relaxing the precedents of her remark, its
delivery comes with a tenderness that does not subjugate Africa in
the Americas, but instead involves it as a vital and assumed part of
her performance. There might not be that assumed and flattened
experience of race in the aside, but (and not unrelated) a sharing of
what feels like lifetimes spent in hair salons. That it is a comment that
shares those private processes between women in a very public way
strongly corrupts the idea of maledominated spaces of reggaeton, a
mythos that upholds men as the drivers of the music, its reception,
which is to also say, its perreo.6 And anyway, one look at the black
studded leather belt strapped around Ivy Queen's pelvis is enough to
disrupt those secure assumptions of penetration.

The aside puts the audience of mostly women and girls who flank
the stage and sing along with Ivy Queen aboveground, especially
when they all laugh hard in response. This is not a mosh pit, a site
from which to launch your panties at a male Mc, or a gutter for a
potential crowd surge. There is no hooliganism here. The youngest
girls look up, their eyes wide, beautiful, and visible even as they fall
way below bodies that tower over them. Young boys recite the songs
from memory. Mothers have their toddlers gathered to their waists as
they dance. It is their inspiration for this calling out that I am able to
read, by which I mean hear, some different spaces within reggaeton.
There is the actual fact of the location of San Miguelito, a place that
borders the fractured isthmus. In this performance, underrecognized
legacies of West Indian migration are made a central and
fundamental part of reggaeton's aesthetics. This location bears the
traces of those who have historically brought their own cadences to
Panama. They might have arrived to work an actual cut into the
landscape, but they also bore deep musical cuts that have
augmented the performance repertory of the Americas. These
modulations contribute their own particular signals to what Daphne
Brooks has poetically named "the middle passage wall of sound."7

Ivy Queen gives us a few locations here that engender and amplify
different receptive worlds. Thus far, we have the import of Puerto Rico
and New York to the site of San Miguelito with all of the implications
that migratory path carries. But then we are given the referent of the
salon. The salon has been historically and inaccurately imagined and
dismissed as a bourgeois, chenilledraped space of frivolity. However,
salons have long existed as vital noninstitutional gathering spaces for
women, or more broadly, as noninstitutional spaces of learning. The
salon might mean the crowded tumble around a family's bathroom
mirror, one that relies on intense mathematical coordination when one
blower is on hand (to say nothing of what the circuitry can actually
handle). The salon can also mean an actual peluqueria, the translocal
repository of salon culture, with all the implications that space
carries." However understood, through surfacing the specter of the
salon in the duration of the performance, Ivy Queen resurrects many
ghosted locations behind reggaetbn, and of Latina/o music generally.

The implicit mention of the salon recognizes the work it takes

before women go public. This getting-ready time is not without its
pain nor is it without its pleasures. While it is absolutely important,
what is made visible here, goes beyond simply looking good. In San
Miguelito and elsewhere, women are not solely spectators of
reggaeton's commercial spectacular enterprise. The outing of the
salon is a reminder that women get ready and prepare to enter
spaces of live performance, especially as spectators, whether we're
talking about getting a blow-out, outfit coordination, brushing up on
history, shoe selection, selecting points of argument, and overall
psychic preparation. They are not simply found bent over with their
backsides in the air. The women that flank this or any stage are not
passive spectators present in order to get discovered at the scene of
"liveness." Roxanne Shante puts it best on the current single by
Basement Jaxx: "Your hair's done, just bust a move."

On a more literal level, Ivy Queen makes visible the salon as a

formative and specific site of women's musical publics. The salon can
be a crucial, alternative venue that has as much a part of musical
circulation as bars, cabarets, and bodegas. Ivy Queen signals that
time and work that goes down in the beauty salon, where all kinds of
things are done and said under the sonic blasts of blow-dryers. She
makes audible the listening and the talking that gets done even in the
midst of chemical processes and acetone, the grind of a manicurist's
drill, and the music that blasts from a small radio hung up in a corner.'
Even if there is no radio, music is still being made and publics are still
being developed. No, of course she does not want to ruin those hours
and money spent; she does not want to fuck up the blow-out.

I am now brought to Ivy Queen's thundering voice as it emerges in

both her speaking and singing. Her voice signals other genealogies of
women vocalists from Latin/a America. Its grumble reminds us of
others who have so bravely and unapologetically resided in or dipped
into the lower reaches of the vocal range. Myrta Silva, Tona la Negra,
Freddy, La Lupe, Lisette Melendez, and Judy Torres are all part of the
vocal lineage that leads to Ivy Queen. 10 Her voice has a deep sound
and withholding, a quality that comes from keeping things locked up
in your chest, a place where you've temporarily stuffed a few things
so you don't explode. It has the kind of hoarseness that sounds like
having to constantly speak above things. This "above" might be the
noises of the salon, your friends embroiled in serious chisme
(gossip), the undermiked area in the background, the frequencies of
male producers.

Ivy Queen's husky intervention cannot be lost here, because it cuts

a critical seam into those ubiquitous and wheedling choral refrains
replete in much of reggaetbn. To say nothing of its rampant misogyny,
it cannot be denied that reggaetbn allots little to no space for
women's voices. When heard in recordings, women performers
usually lay down a "dame/dale" response to a phallocentric call.
These responses are made manifest via choral begging that
modulates between a request of "dame" (give me) and a demand
"dale" (go ahead) of the male vocalist. In certain instances, "dale" can
also be heard as an indirect request (give her) as when the singer
refers to herself, removed, in the third person. The omnipresence of
the dame/dale responsive is such that it could provide quantitative fun
for a parlor game. How many can you think of? Two exemplary
moments of this can be found in Wisin and Yandel's "Rakata" as
"Papi dame lo que quiero" (Papi give me what I want); and in Hector
El Bambino's "Dale Castigo" as "Dale perro, dame castigo" (go ahead
perro/punish me)."
 These responses cannot be utilized as a litmus test to gage
whether the women are really "in control" or not. Nor can we make
any kind of assumptions about the modes of reception that might take
place during their iteration, recorded or otherwise. The commands
that surface via these choruses become reoccupied in all kinds of
creative and expansive ways, whether enacted on a dance floor, a
bedroom, or both. To engage either/or questions that revolve around
some facile sense of women's "agency" turns any critique of genre's
conventions into a problem (and not accidentally, a women's problem)
that can be figured out and solved with a quick corrective. There are,
to my mind, more pressing dilemmas. The vocal uniformity of these
choral retorts across an impressive number of tracks, the fact that
they exist only in the responsive address, and their lack of poetic play
are but a few of the conventions that demand further analysis. Most
pressing of all: I would like to be able to address the women vocalists
who perform in the songs above by name, but they are not credited in
the liner notes.

I don't want my calling out the recurrence of the dame/dale

responsive to prohibit the flow of surprise. Instead, I'll use it to trouble
those stable notions of how descent and dissent can function in
feminist musical genealogies. While noting credit where credit is due
is an essential (and essentially difficult) part of the effort, feminist
genealogies should not only be about epistemologically outing the
work of women musicians. How women are actually represented and
made vocally present in recording is only part of the process. A
genealogical project must also hear women's publics and other
unseen, though nevertheless felt, traces imported into the music
itself. By import, I not only mean through the actual recordings but
also those receptive worlds that have long lived alongside them.

I was once visiting Los Angeles and stuck in traffic on Sepulveda.

To my left I saw two gothed-out Salvadorean teenage boys who were
singing along and bumping to the melancholic chorus of R.K.M. and
Ken-Y's "Down," a song that can waver even the most seasoned
broken heart. This scene might not be anything out of the ordinary,
especially considering reggaeton's vast spatial and cultural reach.
These two Salvadorenos offered a dynamic surprise, even in the
smog-choke of four o'clock traffic. They sang along to the rounded
out ao's of the song's lyrical lines. For example, Ken-Y sings
despertado (woke up) as depertao, desorientado becomes
desorientao, and so on. The tidal texture of Caribbean Spanish, with
its strain of winsome pronunciation, facilitates a rounding out of
words. It is a linguistic habit, comfort, and affective beeline. To sing
along with this specificity of accent, with a certain tone and rhythm to
the hurt of teenage love, did much more than offer easy proof of pan-
latinidad. This recourse to the ballad (a vast, impassioned, and
underanalyzed realm in reggaetbn) picks up a set of musical
conventions, and not only those that get performed in the recording.
They sang along with knitted brows and their faces upturned. I've
enacted that knitted brow and upturned face before, and I've usually
done it when singing along to Lisa Lisa and Nayobe. In other words, it
is time to starting thinking about the tethered relationship of freestyle
to reggaet6n.'2 It is time to start putting Latino/a musical genres that
too easily get discarded (analytically and otherwise) into
conversation.

Were I lecturing the foregoing, this would be the moment a student

might pop their hand up and ask, "Isn't this too much?" Or I might
start to hear those "what the--?" giggles. As educators, we're never
quite sure if they're talking about the performance in question or our
affective relationship to it. Either way, this question and these giggles
are necessary interventions: Is it too much to ask of an aside in
performance to carry the weight of such heavy history? To bear the
demands of genocide, slavery, and misogyny? To use an aside to
move through multiple geographical locations, and the ways of being
and loving enacted there? Freestyle again? Or is it too much to
employ Ivy Queen, or any performer for that matter, as the hatchet-
woman against genre? While her oeuvre is not safe from critique and
deserves further analysis, this is not the work I do here.13
 Instead, I would argue that it is through the route of the salon that
we can hear Ivy Queen's aside as a pedagogical moment. Her import
of the salon to the stage reminds us (as I mentioned above) that it is
also a noninstitutional site where other, unsanctioned modes of
learning and preparation take place. By tossing off an aside in this
forum, she puts it to public contestation and analysis. We can liken it
to part of the trajectory of teaching and learning that happens when
huddled around that bathroom mirror, peluqueria, or what have you;
and to the advice, insults, and jokes that take place there. A few
lessons are required: you learn to take your turn, find ways to tweak
the hierarchy, and call each other out with humor. You learn to
recognize yourself in the other, however resistant you or the other
might be. The critical unfurling made possible by Ivy Queen's aside
reminds us that we must and can make do with what we have at
hand, especially when we are trying to think deeply about
performance. And ultimately, it reveals some of the difficult and
challenging work that surprise actually demands of us. No, it isn't too
much; it is not enough.

This work can be downright hard when we take on performance

that too many people (or ourselves) so readily dislike. The challenges
are acute when working with music that gets pulled over for its
repetitive, "same old, same old" aesthetic. These noise complaints
accuse reggaeton of reproducing at too fast a rate; it is another
musical instance that has ignited brown panic over the sound waves.
For now, the work can require a necessarily combative stance to
address the grievances of the recently urbanized professional classes
for whom reggaet6n too often rattles their floor-to-ceiling windows.
The work also comes with visceral disappointment when you see and
feel men land-grab musical space. It is also a challenge to engage
reggaet6n as it is already understood as a passe failure, an already
dead genre. This ethos was noted in Latina magazine's May 2007
issue by the byline "Can [Calle 13's new CD] save reggaet6n?" But,
then again, reggaet6n can also give you hope for a broader dream of
longevity. Perhaps it will exceed the locations it is allowed to operate
in. It is doing so already, especially when we are given a peek at Ivy
Queen's long term vision: "If it's up to me, I'd like to be like Celia
Cruz.... She was singing at her own tribute concert! "i4

The stakes of making do with surprise means finding the potential

in moments when the thing you're studying and all that it stands for
have no value in the eyes of scholarship. This judgment of value
might stem from a generational prejudice, hostility to pop culture, and
the continued refusal of historical sites of Afro-latinidad. By making
do, I superficially mean what a critic must do when little formal
literature exists on a subject, when there are few women practitioners
around; when you don't want to become part of a properly funded
project; when you want to place something into a trajectory that would
otherwise be lauded as yet another decontextual and dehistoricized
"boom" or "explosion." But most crucially, I'd like to think more about
making do with the surprise of that palpable energy (made through
murmuring and squirming in seats) once you've made even slight
mention to reggaet6n in the classroom. Playing an aside such as this
in the official place of the classroom models the necessary import of
the noninstitutional stuff of salons into the ways we teach and learn.

Students have brought reggaet6n to us. For many of them it is their

musical here and now. As such, they insert a collective aside to a
syllabus packed with Latina/o content. When they alert me to some of
the genre's locations, they also at the same time alert me to where
they are currently occupied (or preoccupied). Their citations of
reggaet6n allow us to listen to how they spend some of their time.
They reveal themselves in reggaet6n in moments in which they are
trying to meet formalized demands, say, when they decide to write
final papers in urgent tones on their attendance at Don Omar's
messianic performances or La Bruja's tricky navigation of sex-positive
themes in "Mi Gatita Negra." More often than not, they tend to
mention reggaet6n's suggestive reception outside the realm of proper
requirements. They work through their relationship to reggaet6n in
the form of asides not only during class time, but mostly in office
hours, those temporal margins of official school.
 One student worked packing boxes in a factory where (among other
things) he had to navigate his privilege in higher education, while also
being one of the sole students of color in his program who had to
work for a living. As he did so, he packed to the beat with mostly
second-generation Latinos who learned to speak Spanish from
reggaeton's repetitive choruses. Other students share the pearls of all
that intimate time spent in the virtual outer reaches looking for
company or a way out. This was how I was introduced to Prosas, one
of the many lesbian groups working in reggaeton. The Dominicana
Sargenta G founded this group after she was honorably discharged
from military training for a tour in Iraq. This important, queer seed-
another bold, creative trace laid down by what Karen Tongson has
termed the "dykeaspora"-continues to alter reggaeton.15 That
reggaeton can provide refuge after a body is withdrawn from the front
lines of war is something that demands our attention. By dropping in
these surprises from their intimate worlds, students demand that we
tune in to reggaeton's dynamic receptive worlds. These asides from
our students are opportunities to do away with our own "comforts of
mastery" and breathe much needed life into the course of their, by
which I also mean our, fields of study.

I hesitate to perform that conclusory recourse to the pragmatic, so

often found in pedagogical declarations (though not in Ivy Queen's). A
question remains: What can you do to set yourself and the classroom
up for surprise? Johnson offers the following advice, "Obviously, in a
sense, one cannot. Yet one can begin by transgressing one's own
usual practices, by indulging in some judicious time-wasting with what
one does not know how to use, or what has fallen into disrepute."6 I
read Johnson's "judicious time-wasting" as affording yourself and
your classroom the time to think hard about what is around and is not
going away. Allow the time in seminar for more replays. Resist fading
the track out before it is over. Submit something to an anthology-
writing about a most cherished, though necessarily neglected, side
project-when you should be writing a book in order to secure
employment. Replay Ivy Queen's performance to the point where you
feel like you could identify many of the audience members by name
and what they were wearing that night. Take pause to recognize how
hard your student has to work and still not be allowed to register for
classes. Steal a minute to hold up traffic and notice how the
Caribbean announces itself in California. Remember when looking up
to others getting their eyebrows and mustaches waxed meant that
one day you would be able to take on the world in a new way. Go out
and listen to reggaeton in ways that you are not supposed to, as
music that can engender asides.

NOTES

I'd like to acknowledge my students, especially Sandy Isabel Placido,

Pricilla Leiva, Tanya Martinez, Evania Vasquez, and Gonzalo
Venegas for their righteous critical voices. I'm grateful for that late
night of much-needed inspiration from Paola Fernandez and Rita.
Thanks to Irene Cara for singing me through the final stages. I'm
especially indebted to Christine Bacareza Balance, Vincenzo Amato,
Licia Fiol-Matta, Jose Esteban Munoz, Jim Stoeri, and Shane Vogel
for their enthusiasm and feedback. And finally, I dedicate this essay in
loving memory to Camilla McGrath and her most formative salon,
where so many have learned to take their turn, find ways to tweak the
hierarchy, and call each other out with humor. Translations of
Spanish-language quotations are my own.

1. "Blow-out" is the phrase used to describe hair that has been

blow-dried straight. The aside is taken from Ivy Queen: the Original
RUDE Girl .... D V D (Real Music Inc., Universal Music Latino, 2004).

2. I refer here to Derrida's essay on the legislative function of genre.

He writes, "As soon as the word `genre' is sounded, as soon as it is
heard, as soon as one attempts to conceive it, a limit is drawn. And
when a limit is established, norms and interdictions are not far
behind: `Do,' `Do not' says `genre,' the word `genre,' the figure, the
voice, or the law of genre." Jacques Derrida, "The Law of Genre,"
trans. Avital Ronell, Critical Inquiry7, no. 1 (autumn 1980): 55-81.
 3. Barbara Johnson, "Nothing Fails like Success," in A World of
Difference (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 15.

4. There is a vast and rich critical literature keen to the relationship

between racial formation, phenotypic signifiers, and popular culture,
especially around Puerto Rico and its diaspora. See Frances Negron-
Muntaner, "Barbie's Hair: Selling out Puerto Rican Identity on the
Global Market" and "Jennifer's Butt: Valorizing the Puerto Rican
Racialized Female Body," in Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the
Latinization ofAmerican Culture (New York: New York 'University
Press, 2004); Raquel Z. Rivera, "Butta Pecan Mamis," in New York
Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003); and Frances R. Aparicio, Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin
Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures (Middletown, Conn.:
Wesleyan University Press, 1998).

5. In her book, Rivera provides the useful hermeneutic "between

blackness and latinidad" to rethink the terms of blackness as primarily
Afro-American. She puts these seemingly stringent systems of
signification into productive flux. Rivera, New York Ricans from the
Hip Hop Zone.

6. In reggaeton's parlance, perreo means doggy-style dancing. It

has been a term widely debated in terms of its origin and actual
definition. In Puerto Rico in 2001 and 2002, e.g., it became a
contested object of definition in the legislative realm. These debates
reached a crux via the failed campaign launched by the senator Velda
Gonzalez to ban its public performance. I'm grateful to Lena Burgos-
Lafuente for this insight.

7. Daphne Brooks, "Time Out of Mind: Tv on the Radio's Diasporic

Data Tapes & the ReMixed Code(s) of Cookie Mountain" (paper
presented at the annual meeting of the Experience Music Project,
Seattle, April 2007).

8. There is an equally vast and rich critical literature on Latina

beauty salon culture. Ginetta Candelario offers some of the most
definitive scholarly work on the subject, specifically on Dominican
beauty salons in New York City. See Ginetta Candelario, "Hair Race-
ing: Dominican Beauty Culture and Identity Production," in Meridians
1, no. i (2000): 128-56. Also see Candelario, Black behind the Ears:
Blackness in Dominican Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops
(Durham, N.C.: Duke 'University Press, 2007). For a perspective on
salon cultures in Puerto Rico, see Maria Isabel Quinones Arocho,
"Beauty Salons: Consumption and Production of the Self," in None of
the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era, ed. Frances Iyegron-
Muntaner (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 109-28.

9. Here I am thinking of Deborah Pacini's work on the spaces of

colmados (grocery stores) as important sites of reception for bachata.
Her work recovers much of the demanding material to be found in
those locations that might get kicked off of ethnography's dependable
maps. See Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Bachata: A Social History of
A Dominican Popular Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1996), 28-29.

io. There has been a wonderful upsurge of feminist genealogical

work in Latina/o musical criticism. I am particularly grateful for
Frances R. Aparicio's now foundational essay "La Lupe, La India, and
Celia: Toward a Feminist Genealogy of Salsa Music," in Situating
Salsa: Global Markets and Local Meaning in Latin Popular Music, ed.
Lise Waxer (New York: Routledge, 2002), 135-6o. Also formative is
Licia Fiol-Matta's work on transnational circuits of Latina musicians,
"The Black Diva and Other Female Figurations in `Latin Music"'
(public lecture, New York 'University, March 9, 2005). For a closer
reading of Aparicio's essay, see my work on Graciela in "'Una
Escuela Rara': Havana Meets Harlem in Montmartre," in women and
performance: a journal of feminist theory 16, no. i (March 2006): 27-
49.

11. Both songs are featured on Luny Tunes 2006 collection Mas
Flow 2.5 (produced by Luny Tunes, Mas Flow Studios). Luny Tunes is
Francisco Saldafia and Victor Cabrera, one of the most successful
production teams in reggaeton. It might seem unfair to place the
burden of this critique squarely on Luny Tunes in this essay,
particularly as their oeuvre is much more imaginative and diverse
than many give them credit for. However, as two of the most visible
producers and artists in reggaeton, they are representative of these
practices that run the gamut of reggaeton's practitioners.

12. For more information, see the chapter "Latin Freestyle: with her
black liquid eyeliner in her hand," in my doctoral dissertation.
Alexandra T. Vazquez, "Instrumental Migrations: The Transnational
Movements of Cuban Music" (Ph.D. diss., New York University,
2006), 175-227.

13. For a comprehensive and excellent scholarly review of Ivy

Queen, see the perceptive work of Jillian M. Baez, "En Mi Imperio:
Competing Discourses of Agency in Ivy Queen's Reggaeton" in
Centro Journal 18, no. 2 (fall 2006) 63-81. Baez is especially
engaged with the gendered performance and reception of Ivy Queen.
Her project of "writing iQ [Ivy Queen] into history as a female music
producer," in particular, is part of the vital initiative needed to imagine
what she provocatively terms "reggaeton feminism."

14. This quote is taken from the cover of Latina magazine, May
2007.

15. For more on Karen Tongson's "admittedly cheeky" neologism,

see her article "11 Chinois's Oriental Express, Or, How a Suburban
Heartthrob Seduced Red America," Social Text 23, nos. 3-4, 84-85
(fall-winter 2005): 207.

16. Johnson, "Nothing Fails like Success," i6.

This question is constantly on my mind, and sometimes the answer
seems to me a simple "yes." But when I try to do reggaeton, thoughts
of this sort come to my mind: "Welmo, don't be ridiculous. Why would
you do that to yourself?" or "Remember you'll have to rhyme like they
do." It's because of those internal mental battles that I write this
reflection. I want to know if, for me, the decision to get into reggaeton
is only a simple step. Is it as easy as asking the D J to change the
beat?

If I had to change up my rhyme scheme so I can "azotarle el culo

contra el muro" [slam her ass against the wall] or "pedirle acci6n
mientras sudo pasi6n entre sabanas blancas eh oh, eh oh" [ask her
for action as I sweat passion among white sheets, eh oh, eh oh], then
I don't think I can do it. A step that maybe has been easier to take for
rappers such as Tego Calder6n, Eddie Dee, or Vico C has become
for me an internal battle where I have to struggle with my prejudices
against reggaeton and my belief that hip-hop is the last bastion of
verbal skill and blow-your-mind rhymes. Perhaps that's my problem:
my love for hip-hop and for the crafting of stimulating rhymes is not
compatible with music industry formulas and its quest for clones that
facilitate the exploitation of urban music.
 In order to write this reflection, I have to tell the story of my
relationship to hip-hop and reggaeton, two genres that I call distant
cousins. I remember that around 1993, I started to record without
even thinking about selling my musical product or getting a contract
with a record label. I started recording out of artistic need, ten years
after first falling in love with that music genre called rap where you
could rhyme over anything. My first rhymes were recorded over
dancehall beats with hip-hop hooks (for example, Cutty Rank's "A
Who Seh Me Dun (Wake De Man)" and Super Cat's "Ghetto Red Hot"
with a hook based on A Tribe Called Quest's "Scenario" and 01' Dirty
Bastard's "Shimmy Shimmy Ya"). I was able to make these first
recordings thanks to my man K.I.D. in a small room in Barrio Obrero,
where we would turn off the light to create a serious and rugged
atmosphere. My method of selecting beats has always been very
visceral, so I just felt that these melcochas worked well.'

Little by little I started distancing myself from dancehall reggae, and

I let myself be completely seduced by hip-hop, more because of its
beats than its lyrics. I have never been able to understand ioo percent
of the lyrics by African American rappers. I know who they are and
their styles, but I only manage to catch loose phrases, unless I
actually read the lyrics. For me, what they were saying was not as
important as how they were flowing over the beat. That bass in your
chest, that furious loop in your face accompanied by the current code
of the barrio:
1. We Imo E. Romero Jose ph. Photo byAbeyCharrbn (2005).
 Before speaking about my first encounters in the early nineties with
what we call today reggaeton, I have to say that, for me, Puerto Rico
is a type of musical vacuum cleaner. It sucks up everything, but it
doesn't hold in what it sucks up. It spits it out in its very unique way.
The same thing probably happens in other places but, frankly, "Puerto
Rico lo hace mejor."2 That's how it happened with reggaeton.

History took a turn in the early nineties, after Jamaican dancehall

achieved Top 20 status in radio stations like X-ioo, 1-96, and KQ 105
and thanks to the marquesina party STS (those responsible for
spreading the music in an underground fashion).3 I remember that on
Saturdays I would go to the caserio Las Casas so Macho would cut
my hair.4 It didn't matter if I was going to fix my "flat top" or get a
shape-up, what made the experience intense was listening to the new
songs of the artists Cutty Ranks, Shabba Ranks, Chaka Demus,
Super Cat, and Capleton, among others, on tapes that cost a few
dollars. And if I said earlier that I didn't understand African Americans'
lyrics, never mind Jamaicans'. Still that music begged for jean-to-jean
friction.

This all quickly changed when Panamanian dancehall came onto

the scene, mostly using Jamaican artists' instrumental tracks and
even adopting the same melodies for the lyrics. Music by El General,
Nando Boom, and Pocho Pan got into my hands behind my mother's
back. As the parties kept happening, the Panamanian voices started
being substituted with Boricua voices: Oh Shit! Underground arrived!

Wiso G and Ranking Stone, Chezina, Rey Pirin, Falo, Frankie Boy,
Daddy Yankee, Maicol & Manuel, Baby Rasta & Gringo were some of
the voices back then. In the beginning, most underground artists used
the same vocal melodies and beats as the Jamaicans. Even though
the lyrics were not faithful translations of dancehall, at least they
carried the tune. Initially I thought: "Well, they're probably doing that
now because they're just starting out" But time kept ticking by, and I
started thinking that the issue was that the artists lacked originality.

About the topics ... what can I say? A bit of lead over here, a bit of
ganja over there, and a lot of sex. They were topics that back then
were being exploited in the mass media like any other merchandise,
underneath the um brella of artistry and the slogan "we give
audiences what they want" These lyrics did not represent danger for
me because the quasi-dictatorial upbringing of my Haitian mother,
Andrea, kept me and my brother, Raul, in the margins of the
marginality of living in Barrio Obrero, Santurce, Puerto Rico (and
don't you dare look at me wrong!).

And what was I doing musically during those years of underground?

I was writing just for myself, excited because I had found a musical
canvas to experiment with my "dropping science" or "dripping
science" (in the vein of Pollock)-hours and hours of writing, delivering
and memorizing, accompanied by my mighty beatboxing or rhyming
over other rappers' songs. Having been exposed to dancehall reggae,
Haitian kanpa, merengue, salsa, rap from Vico C's era, and
underground, gave me the melodic approach that I like so much for
the hooks and the verses of songs. It was 1995 and I had started
studying at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras. I would work
on my lyrics between classes, or sometimes in class when it was as
slow and boring as an intravenous drip made of asphalt. Anything
could inspire lyrics. I remember a hook that said:
 This text came up after observing during my first semester at the
university the small number of black students on campus. Where did
they go once they graduated high school? "Please Welmo, drop the
drama. Here in the island we are all Boricuas." "Sure man. Now tell
me one about cowboys."

The new information that I got through the books I devoured at the
School of Social Sciences served as the foundation for creating lyrics
where I tried to explain to myself the things happening around me
with respect to the barrio, my negritude, my relationship to women,
and so on. It was a way to take academic information to the street.
Back then I saw the street and academia as two spaces in opposition,
spaces constantly fighting over the definition of what was "real."
Today I see them as a beast with two heads-the same body but two
different brains. Before my eyes, a world of information opened that
served as the scaffolding to develop my lyrics. Texts by Martin Barb,
short stories by Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges, among others,
provided necessary references for my ideas:
 As all these preoccupations circled in my head and my rhyme
notebooks, reggaeton kept marching from marginality to the public
eye, despite censorship attempts by the state. Each news item about
the confiscation of music in record shops or about the explicitness of
the lyrics or video images served as free public relations for the
genre. I thought maybe all that was happening would push rappers to
create texts and visual proposals that were more complex, less
stereotypical. But that was not the case since one thing that has been
clear for the rappers of underground, reggaeton, dembow, and perreo
is that "you have to give audiences what they like"-the phrase typical
of the world of entertainment. Maybe that would have been the best
moment for me to launch my career. I don't know, maybe I should
have gone to Playero, DJ Eric, or Nico Canada and offer a bit of
"melaza para la Yale. "7 I know I could have done it, but I wasn't
interested. Who knows if today I would have been MC Rabadan, like I
was called by my friends Beibito and Cholo from Cantera.

As underground got stronger, I kept getting deeper and deeper into

hip-hop. In my comings and goings in events related to hip-hop was
where I met groups that, like myself, carried their thoughts on the tip
of their tongues: Gunzmoke, No Mel Syndicate, Conciencia Poetica,
Mad Steelo, 65 de Infanteria and Mito, among others. Each one
flowed with their particular stylistic proposal in an environment of
respect and where artistic ego did not exist, or at least did not
manifest itself like it does today. The guiding thread of conversations
in those spaces was hip-hop; many times we talked about
underground as the greatest trash of the musical scenes in Puerto
Rico.

In these events the few women who attended were going out with
the protagonists; perhaps there might be a B-girl or a female graffiti
artist, and one or two groups of inseparable girlfriends who enjoyed
the music that the DJ played. I don't know if this happened because
of the lack of interest of women in participating as protagonists in one
of the hip-hop elements, or if it was the great presence of
testosterone that didn't permit the opposite sex to get on the mic and
in front of the audience. However, I've noticed that the whole
reggaeton movement, since its beginnings under a different name,
clearly established that its lyrics were directed toward women. While
the call to pleasure was direct in underground, in hip-hop we would
fight each other over who had the better flow or pointing out the
cabrones responsible for the majority of social ills.

After the last attempt at censorship in 2002 by the State and its
Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, Senator Velda Gonzalez, the perreo
" saco su colita al aire" [started holding its tail high up in the air]." The
beat of underground slowed down its tempo, and rappers started
changing up their lyrics. The strident notes coming from the barrios
and caserios that scared the state so much when they first came out
started softening themselves to take advantage of the promotional
opportunities offered by those same people who initiated the hunting
spree. Perreo let go of its transgressions so that it could join in the
dance convoked by the musical market that years earlier described
the genre as one by cacos and for cacos.9 The classist dimension of
the term was eventually sucked out like grease in a liposuction so
that, from then on, being a caco was cool.

The foregrounding of asses on the TV screen was not precisely

what bothered me most about the genre. For me, the problem was
that the only bodies being sexualized were those of females; male
bodies didn't see the light, as usual. At least the explicit verbal
images gave you a path to walk down on if you wanted to discuss the
whys of the lyrics; they were like a guide to get to know how young
people spoke about sex and street violence produced by drug traffic.

Little by little, thick female bodies with a high concentration of

melanin (videos of Nico Canada or DJ Eric's La Industria series) were
substituted for runway models that seemed to come straight from a
modeling agency (video "La Gata" from Playero 42). The new
aesthetic was skinny bodies, an aesthetic where "lo blanquito
fashion"10 was mixed with "lo stripper dominatrix." Little by little the
barrio disappeared from the videos, giving way to the disco or the
photography studio as a neutral space where the social classes could
mingle and perrear, at least until each one had to return to their
particular reality. As perreo kept transforming itself, I clung even
tighter to hip-hop as my life jacket. I was unhappy with the formulas,
the lack of lyrical elaboration. Verbal skill no longer mattered, and
almost all the artists sounded the same.

Even though the new popularity of perreo dominated the media, I

had great opportunities to do what fulfilled me. The same year when
the debates surrounding perreo and Senator Velda Gonzalez began, I
was asked to be part of the yearly Christmas documentary sponsored
by Banco Popular. Raices was the title of the special that year
dedicated to narrating the history of bomba and plena from the mouth
of singers, dancers, musicians, visual artists, and ethnomusicologists.
I came in as the narrator for the special, to the sounds of hiphop that
also integrated plena's and bomba's acoustic drums, cuas, and
maracas. That caused a huge scandal! People criticized my
participation or, more specifically, the inclusion of hip-hop in a
documentary that presented two of the musical manifestations of our
Puerto Rican identity-an identity which, for me, is as well defined and
absolute as a chameleon's skin.

This helped in getting my name to circulate in advertising agencies,

nonprofit institutions, schools, and university circles which understood
rap to be another form of expression and a link between the
generations. That's how I started to rap for commercials of everyday
consumer items. Every time they called, I would say: "I'll go but I warn
you that I do hip-hop and not reggaeton." I would utter that phrase
right after introducing myself. Then I would be asked, from the other
side: "And what's the difference?" When that moment came, I would
flaunt my indestructible beatbox skills and, when I was done, the
person would have a blank look on their face or would say: "Now I
understand. So what I want you to do is do that thing you do to
advertise this product."

One time they called me to be part of a public service campaign for

the Alianza Para un Puerto Rico sin Drogas [Alliance for a Drug-Free
Puerto Rico]. This nonprofit organization wanted to present a music
video that addressed the use of firearms among young people. I
wrote the lyrics in collaboration with a young rapper who had lived the
experiences of violence and incarceration at a young age. The music
part of the project was put in the hands of Eliel (Don Omar's
producer). After recording our parts, we left the studio with the
agreement that the beat would be 50 percent reggaeton and 50
percent hip-hop, like it used to be during the times of underground.

The day we were going to film, as I usually do in these types of

projects, I ask for the playback so I can practice the lyrics. When the
song comes out I realize that the 5o and 5o has turned into ioo
percent reggaeton. Damn it! For a few seconds I had the silly idea of
complaining, but I knew I wouldn't be able to solve anything. I simply
decided that the lyrics were more important than the beat at that
point, and I just did it. To this day, even thought I still see the
commercial and feel weird listening to myself over a reggaeton beat, I
think the message was well received. That's what I get from young
cats who sing the lyrics when they see me. If at the end of the day
what I want is to be heard, why is it so difficult for me to accept
reggaeton in my creative process?

Sometimes I think it's because of the monotonous rhythm. Many

may say that hip-hop is monotonous too, but at least there are many
drum patterns that give me a feeling of variation. I think that as long
as the approach to beat making is similar to salsa, where there are a
lot of musical layers in conversation, then I will like the results. I think
that as long as I don't feel that visceral sensation that stimulates me
when I hear a hip-hop beat I like, I won't do a reggaeton song.

It's not that I dismiss reggaeton: I even jumped up from the sofa
when I saw the presentation of " Quitate Td pa' Ponerme Yo" from
Los Doce Discipulos at the 2005 Latin Grammys. That was a special
moment because I felt a connection with the rappers and the images
of the salsa musicians they wore on their shirts. Aside from that song
and about five rappers more, the rest is fluff. What happens is that I
just don't feel it and, when I do feel it, I enjoy listening to it more than I
do creating it. When a reggaeton song steals my attention, it is
because the rapper did a play on words different from the usual and
in combination with a beat with samples-even if it uses the same
percussive pattern as always-that are closer to the production of a
hip-hop beat, such as Tego Calderon's "Guasa Guasa" or Nejo's "No
Quiere Novio."

Reggaeton has covered a space that in the most underground of

hip-hop is reserved only for B-boys and B-girls: the dance space. I
understand that we have to aim our work toward the feet. I don't
always identify with the vibe of hip-hop in English, and I can't deny
that the dembow hypnotizes. And, in most cases, it hypnotizes until
they start rapping and that's when I change the radio station. If
making reggaeton suggests that laziness I perceive in composing
rhymes, then I will stay on this side, on the side of hip-hop myway,
among Mcs who wrongly understand music as a language that often
can get to places where words can't, Mcs that understand music as a
"pure" essence not contaminated by the same industry that boxes it
in. In the world of music they are talking about the fall of reggaeton.
Nowadays the genre is saturated. Nowadays people think anyone
can rap.
NOTES

Welmo is a hip-hop artist born, raised, and living in Puerto Rico. This
essay's endnotes are the translator's.

1. A melcocha is a mixture of ingredients where the result is sticky

and sweet.

2. "Puerto Rico does it better" was the slogan of a campaign

launched by the Puerto Rican government's Tourism Company in the
199os. Welmo is here referencing his own song "Puerto Rico Lo
Hace Mejor," a sarcastic take on the government's selfcongratulatory
slogan.

3. In Puerto Rico, marquesinas or carports of private homes have

been important venues where youth have gathered to party.
 4. A caserio is a housing project.

5. "lupi" or "U.P." is a common nickname for the University of Puerto

Rico.

6. "Funes el memorioso" ("Funes the Memorious") is a short story

by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

7. "Molasses for the girls" was an ever-present phrase in the

underground music of the time.

8. This is a play on the canine reference of the term perreo (doggy

style).

9. Caco, a term that literally means "thief," started being used in the
199os in Puerto Rico to refer to fans of underground or reggaeton.

10. Blanquito, literally meaning "little and white," is a racial/ class

term applied to the elite. "Lo blanquito fashion" refers to the trends
dominant among blanquitos.
From its emergence in the i98os, the musical genre known today as
reggaeton has been generally regarded as cultural trash by the state,
the majority of intellectuals, and most of the so-called general public.
This is the case because (in no particular order), reggaeton speaks to
what good taste considers garbage -that is, the genre's main subject
is sexuality in its most carnal dimensions; and, also, because until
now it has been mainly associated and consumed by a "trashy" group
with little social prestige, the Puerto Rican lower classes.

But since there is no real contradiction between trash and culture,

this dichotomy is of little use when it comes to appreciating the
significant impact of reggaeton. Although critics have repeatedly
characterized the genre as being pure noise without any aesthetic
value-"filth and degeneration posing as art,"' to be exact-reggaeton's
cultural record is nothing short of impressive. Not only has reggaeton
produced a new sound by fusing black Atlantic genres such as
dancehall reggae and hip-hop; it also constitutes the most important
verbal event that has taken place in (and from) Puerto Rico in the last
two decades.

"RAISE THE VOLUME OF THE SATANIC MUSIC"

While it might surprise a few, this claim about the importance of

reggaeton's verb has, as Spanish rap pioneer Vico C would say, a
"base and a foundation."2 Similar to other Afro-diasporic forms such
as rap, reggaeton is constituted by an extravagant poeticness; a faith
in the spoken word as a means to create imaginative and affective
worlds through rhyme, repetition, and alliteration. Moreover, the
verbal events of reggaeton performers-more commonly known as
concerts, compact discs, or radio play-have a broader audience than
any other type of artistic practice based completely or partly on the
word, including literature. The way that some reggaeton stars even
find themselves in the position of adding cultural capital to the island's
traditional literati is evident in that well-known writers such as Mayra
Santos and Mayra Montero are currently collaborating with artists on
various projects, including reggaeton versions of classics like
Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Franz Kafka's The
Metamorphosis.'

It is not, however, until the emergence of the alternative music duo

known as Calle 13 (13th Street) that reggaeton articulates a poetic
rupture within and beyond the genre's boundaries. Hailed as the first
"intellectual" group of reggaeton by no less than the New York Times,
Calle 13 is made up of two half brothers, Residente (Resident) and
Visitante (Visitor). With his ten tattoos, vanilla biceps and naughty-boy
face, Residente, a.k.a. Rene Perez Joglar, is the group's singer-
songwriter and frontman. A man of few words and a beard, Visitante,
otherwise known as Eduardo Jose Cabra Martinez, is the pair's
producer, composer, and key music man.4

According to various newspaper stories, Calle 13 adopted these

stage names because since the brothers did not grow up together,
when Eduardo would visit Rene, he would identify himself to the
gated community's guard as a "visitor" on the way to see a "resident."
The significance of these aliases, however, goes well beyond their
particular biographies. By adopting them, Calle 13 calls attention to
global forms of community founded on physical mobility and affinity,
as well as critiques the middle classes' fear of the urban poor, a
theme that will serve as subtext to one of the group's first hits,
"Atrevete Te, Te."

Despite Calle 13's strong identification with the "street," the duo is
known not for conventionally popular or populist lyrics, but for making
language itself their artistic battlefield. In contrast to the other great
poet of reggaeton, Tego Calderon, Residente's rap typically produces
such perplexity among listeners that some journalists have turned to
providing more familiar analogies and thick descriptions of their style
as a way to make it more accessible to reggaeton fans. While Jordan
Levin, a Miami Herald music critic, for instance, has described
Residente's lyrics as "a whirlwind of rhythms and rhymes ... along
with the rat-a-tat-tat of exhortations and puns, words and ideas
ricocheting off each other,75 Juan Carlos Perez-Duthie, an
independent journalist, calls Calle 13's verbal artistry a "crude,
fascinating, violent and delirious collage ... as if Quentin Tarantino
had taken Kill Bill to an alternative reggaeton world."' Although these
descriptions cannot fully account for a typical Calle 13 intervention,
the references to "puns" and "collage" do provide important leads
toward understanding why the group differs from most, if not all,
contemporary reggaeton acts: their unmistakable surrealist
tendencies.

"WATCH HOW IT FLOATS, MY HEAD"

One of the most influential movements of the twentieth century,

surrealism today is mostly associated with the painting of artists such
as Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, and Rene Magritte. Since the
movement's origins in the 192os, however, surrealists defined
themselves not simply as constituting an "an aesthetic doctrine," in
historian Robin D. G. Kelley's words, "but an international
revolutionary movement concerned with the emancipation of
thought." Surrealism's political orientation had much to do with its
immediate historical context: World War I, a conflict that produced
over 40 million deaths and "shell shock," or the loss of sight and
memory that afflicted numerous combat soldiers. A response to the
devastation of World War I, the surrealist movement was bent on
addressing the reasons why neither science, nor the humanities, nor
logic protected Europeans from this brutality. Influenced by the
psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, who insisted that the truth of
human behavior was evident in those activities that revealed the
unconscious such as dreams, the surrealists devoted themselves to
liberating people from their destructive impulses through the
imagination and the fulfillment of the childhood desires critic Henri
Peyre called "joy, for risk and play.",'

From the point of view of form, Calle 13's lyrics are explicitly
surrealist, and are characterized by the juxtaposition of incongruent
images, the use of non sequiturs, black humor, and automatic writing
or "out loud monologue."9 From the mouth of Residente, who defines
himself as "the spider that spoils language," words follow one another
as if we were listening to a recording of the rapper's most intimate
thoughts, intertwined with television ads and any verbal accident of
the immediate environment.10 An example of these elements at work
is "La Hormiga Brava" (The Feisty Ant), in which Residente aims the
following blanks at a woman he is trying to seduce:"

The effect of "novelty" or "freshness" often attributed to Calle 13's

lyrics is also produced by the surrealist technique of "overloading the
system."2 With the purpose of avoiding the cliches of everyday
speech, music, history, and literature, Calle 13 breaks down linguistic
structures and substitutes words by their extended definitions or
associations in order to liberate them from their mimetic, social, and
moral charge. In this way, if the average reggaeton singer refers to a
desired woman's buttocks as an "ass," Residente attempts to impress
her by saying that she possesses "esos dos cachetes llenos de
musculatura" (two cheeks full of muscles) 13 or a "zona nalgable
acojinable" (cushiony buttocky zone).14 And if the typical rapper
says, "Hoy es noche de sexo, voy a devorarte nena linda" (Tonight is
for sex, I'll eat you up, pretty babe),'-, Residente counterattacks with
"Yo quiero beber agua de ese pozo/chocolatoso/ embriagarme con to
caldo de oso" (I want to drink water from your well/all chocolaty/get
drunk on your bear broth).16

In addition, Calle 13 bets on what founding surrealist writer, Andre

Breton, called the "image," or "the fortuitous juxtaposition of two
terms" which produce sparks when they come into contact like saying
"arroz pegao, dominicanos en balsa" (crispy rice, Dominicans on
rafts") to evoke Puerto Rico." Even if most of the duo's songs
ultimately tell a brief tale, centered on Residente's unfulfilled desire
for a woman, what listeners tend to remember is a succession of
unexpected, and often humorous images that incite linguistic disorder
and "verbal rebellion" to anyone who listens.'' Serving as a classic
example are the lyrics from "Atrevete Te, Te" (Dare To-To), where
Residente describes the midsection of a certain "senorita intelectual,
or "miss intellectual," in the following terms: "Ya se que tiene el area
abdominal/que va a explotar/como fiesta patronal/que va a explotar,
como Palestino" (I already know that your abdominal area is/ready to
explode/like a Patron Saint feast/ ready to explode/like a
Palestinian").19 As other surrealists, Calle 13's use of humor is not
an afterthought but an essential resource that makes Rene-
Residente/Joglar-Juglar (jester) a "satirical poet" (comical and satyr-
like), whose comic license allows him to attack the so-called common
sense that sustains the dominant social order.

Furthermore, Calle 13 shares the surrealist impulse to offend

"bourgeois" morality and expose their hypocrisy. This convergence is
particularly useful in understanding the role of sexuality in the group's
poetic discourse. Even though the media has harshly criticized
reggaeton for its vulgarity in sexual matters, Residente's invitation to
"mount" his "sail (boat)" and "insult the entire world,"20 is no more
explicit than the writings of canonized surrealists, as suggested by
the title of Louis Aragon's novella El cono de Irene (Irene's Cunt)
(1927). In both cases, the emphasis on sexuality has less to do with a
lax morality or lack of "education" as reggaeton critics contend than
with a rejection of social hierarchy and the established order, a stance
that is clearly articulated in "Cabe-C-O,"21 a self-reflective ode to
their own music:

The classic surrealists and Calle 13 then share as much an

aesthetic as a political project. In the broadest terms, if surrealism
had the goal to liberate the imagination from social and artistic
conventions, reggaeton, in the words of cultural critic Raquel Z.
Rivera, was originally "identified by its participants with a street-
oriented, vernacular, spontaneous and uncensored mode of ex-
pression."22 Literarily, both practices are founded on the premise that
words have the capacity to create utopias, imaginary places "in which
all the objects that language can create may naturally exist" yet "no
particular known object should be allowed consistency."23 The
common desire to destabilize conventional meanings and to imagine
alternative social orders makes the wordplay of the surrealists and
Calle 13 not only a new form of expression but something
significantly more ambitious and radical: "a form of mental
liberation."24

"AND IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME, YOUR MOMMA'S THE

FAT ONE"

At the same time, Calle 13's surrealism differs from the European
kind. If Breton and his close collaborators had to "create" surrealist
conditions and situations in postwar Europe, Calle 13 (as those other
surrealists of the AmericasFrida Kahlo, Wifredo Lam, Richard Wright,
and Aime Cesaire) is the product of a historical moment and a
geopolitical context in which the surreal-that is, the juxtaposition of
arguably incongruous elements-is not an exception but everyday
reality.25 In this sense, what Calle 13 offers his "modelno" (modern)
listeners, as Residente would say, is not a new version of the
surrealist project. Rather, the group recycles and incorporates world
surrealist discoveries onto a popular poetics that given its themes,
politics, and style could be called poesia de porqueria, or "poetry of
filth."

In part, Calle 13's poetry of filth is a call to rethink what so-called

urban music can be, underscoring the capacity of language and the
fusion of musical genres to make up alternative worlds. Yet, even
further, it is a political proposition that redefines the postreggaeton
poet as a new intellectual figure whose main function is to
humorously manage, renew, and radicalize corporeal, cultural,
political, and media garbage.26 This accounts for why in Calle 13's
world, the only truly enjoyable things in life are "puerco, sucio, como
de inodoro" (filthy, dirty, as from a toilet).27 And, also, why the
enemies of enjoyment and desire are not identified with any particular
nationality (say, American visitors) or a social class (say, upper-class
residents) but with the more universal "puercos," or "pigs," those
despicable beings (not always cops) that sell themselves to the
highest bidder and/or abuse the weakest. "Como robarle el desayuno
a un tecato," Residente raps, "eso es de puerco" (Like stealing
breakfast from an addict/that is pig-like).28

Aesthetically, the trash that grounds Calle 13's poetry is reggaeton

itself. As Residente once told a Latina magazine reporter, Calle 13
will mostly be remembered for having transformed reggaeton at a
time when it was "doing the same garbage (porqueria)."29 By
porqueria, Residente specifically refers to the fact that in order to
supply the market, most of the music produced, especially after
Daddy Yankee's global hit "Gasolina," used the same rhythm and the
same lyrical repertoire of "I-want-you-mami" cliches. In order to renew
reggaeton, or in Residente's terms, run over "tu mierda con mi Super
Trooper" ("your shit with my Super Trooper")30 Calle 13 broke the
rules of the commercial game by transforming the verbal and musical
expectations of the public and turning reggaeton's mainstream
porqueria into a different poetics.

To the trash that is reggaeton, Calle 13 adds a long list of discarded

cultural references that, having been forgotten or hurled into the
dumpsite of memory, have become the equivalent of symbolic
garbage. While Residente's rap often articulates a strong
anticonsumerist ideology (or what one could call leftist theoretical
waste), he also concedes that under certain circumstances, media
excess can be used as a fertilizer for new expressive uses and the
invention of other cultural worlds. To this end, Calle 13 stores and
deploys a wide range of references produced by mass culture,
including, in no particular order, Conan the Barbarian and Jean-
Claude Van Damme; a Roberto Roena music jam, and Chayanne; P.
Diddy, Freddy Kenton, and Ricky Martin; Cheech and Chong, King
Kong, and James Bond; El Invader, Darth Vader, and the Pink
Panther.

Thematically, the poetics of Calle 13 center on the filth of the body

and the trash of desire. Although media industry fans still wonder why
the group indulges in "so much porqueria; the attention to the body
and its biological functions is not fortuitous." As other surrealists,
Calle 13 identifies rebellion with articulating the wildest of desires and
realizing the most intimate of fantasies. In addition, this emphasis is
part of a long tradition of symbolic insurrection-from the Renaissance
writer Francois Rabelais in his novel Gargantua and Pantagruel to the
pis of Jamaican dancehall-that through word, image and/or music
exalt the body as a living organism to celebrate "the victory" of the
people over static social hierarchies and death.32 This is why Calle
13's body is always eating "without cutlery, like Vikings,"33 spitting
"phlegm, "34 "pissing territory," and "getting it on."35 Similarly, the
body serves to underline the core "primitiveness" of human beings
("come on, you animal"36); the fact that no matter the abundance and
material "progress" that each of us may suffer or enjoy, humanity in
general is subject to the same basic needs of hunger, sexuality,
defecation, and urination.

The body's filth is not, however, only thematic; it is also an

epistemology, a distinct way of knowing and acting in the world. Not
surprisingly, bodies nourished with bad intentions produce excrement
that reveals their core filthiness as human beings. In the song "Pi-Di-
Di-Di,"37 for instance, Calle 13 dem onstrates this very principle
when Residente stages an encounter between himself and hip-hop
entrepreneur P. Diddy, when the latter presumably visited Puerto Rico
in search of local talent to exploit:
In opposition to the spoiled milk of corporate interests, Residente
celebrates and feasts on the popular body, the "iron fortified cream"
that "combines egg, with yolk puree of oatmeal.""'

To bodily filth, Calle 13 adds the garbage of desire, the "library of

sexy and fresh things" that "smell." This is evident in songs such as
"Mala Suerte," a duo with Spanish rapper La Mala Rodriguez, where
Residente declares that "este sudaca quiere tener sexo con
caca/kinky, peludo como Chubaca" (this sudaca wants to have sex
with shit/kinky, hairy like Chewbacca).39 Although the sexual
explicitness of much of Residente's rap has led some listeners to
collapse Calle 13's surreal poetry with the misogynist lyrics of early
underground songs- "Malditas Putas," by Guanabanas Podrias, for
example-the duo's erotic imagination greatly differs from the classic
reggaeton corpus. Residente certainly indulges in some sexist
garbage of his own by locating masculinity in "los cojones" (the balls),
and condoning an ambivalent homophobia in which he wants the
whole world to "suck" his creative juices while the "cocksucker" is
portrayed as a particularly despicable character. Yet, it is no less true
that Calle 13's lyrics make fun of the pretense that sexuality is a
heterosexual male arena and that men can be completely successful
in fulfilling women's desires. If most reggaeton songs, exemplified by
Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina," include a chorus of female voices
begging "papi, give it to me, papi," Residente self-represents as a
poor desiring man at the mercy of women who insist that 'Vi no sabe,
no sabe na"' (you have no idea what a woman wants).40 In this
regard, Residente, despite all his glibness and licentiousness, is more
of a daydreamer whose creative possibilities are precisely founded in
the insufficiency of language to verbalize and satisfy his desires.

"GOOD MORNING, PUERTO RICO/IT'S LIKE 12-SOMETHING"

Even though sexual desire is the main subject of Calle 13,

Residente's rap is also symptomatic of the trash of politics, the
garbage of the press, and TV filth-an emphasis that underscores the
intimate relationship between the physical body and the body politic.
Even in "La Ley de Gravedad" (Law of Gravity), a song
commissioned by the island's government, Calle 13 uses a by-now
mythical publicity slogan "iPuerto Rico lo hace mejor!" (Puerto Rico
does it better!) to criticize the practice of firing bullets into the air-the
"stray bullets" that claim a dozen lives during the New Year's
festivities. Violating the consensus that Puerto Ricans are "hospitable
and peaceful" (like the Tainos, pre-Conquest inhabitants of the
island), Calle 13 ironically links the slogan to the problems that
concern most citizens: "Drugs, violence and much alcohol/Puerto
Rico does it better! `41

Through turning publicity trash into trashy commentary, Calle 13

calls attention to the surreal porqueria of living in twenty-first-century
Puerto Rico. And what, exactly, does this crappiness consist of? For
Calle 13, it is about racist practices and class hierarchies that despite
social movements aimed at overthrowing them are camouflaged and
reorganized, but not eradicated. It's about the political corruption
invading every pore of the body politic-"Soy pana de los cocorocos/de
Toledo, de Acevedo/Tengo comprao to' los jueces" (I'm tight with all
the big shots/From Toledo to Acevedo/I've bought all the judges)that
results in everyday life "shit" like an incompetent government, a
biased press, and bad public services.42 It's also about a political
subordination of the Puerto Rican elites to Washington, D.C., that
produces the excremental excess of the FBI's killing fugitive Filiberto
Ojeda Rios, leader of Los Macheteros (Ejercito Popular Boricua) on
September 23, 2005, as addressed in Calle 13's first song "Querido
FBI" (Dear FBI).43

In this song, which succeeds like no other in incorporating the

surrealist practice of a spontaneous monologue-having been written,
produced, and disseminated via Internet only thirty hours after the
assassination of Ojeda Rios-Residente seems to literally spit his
words, as if he was possessed by the most unbearable political
poison:

Here, as in other Calle 13 tracks-such as the more recent "Pa'l

Norte,"44 an ode to Latin American immigrants-physical and
figurative spitting appears as a vital political act. Although many have
understood "Querido FBI" as the group's most political intervention for
its mention of a proindependence leader, and criticism of the U.S.
federal government, the song's greatest political contribution may well
be the centrality given to disgust and verbal insurrection as critical
forms of social protest.
 In other words, "Querido FBI" is not a traditional leftist "call to
arms." Despite lines such as "I swear on my mother I'll dress up like
macheteroland tonight I'll strangle ten sailors;" Residente's main
"explosion" is not of bombs but "of style in the name of Filiberto Ojeda
Rios" (my italics). Residente also raps that he will "dress up" as a
machetero, not that he intends to actually be one. In this sense,
songs such as "Querido FBI" and "Tributo a la Policia," a devastating
critique of police brutality in Puerto Rico, are not manifestos offering
specific policy directions. Instead, they are uncontainable bursts of
expression struggling to bring forth a new political body.

"DARE TO, TO"

With Residente, the reggaeton poet acts as a surreal part of the body
politic's digestive system. Calle 13 thus takes on what cultural critic
Juan Duchesne Winter has called "sewer-mouth" discourse and
redirects it to other ends.45 If Duchesne Winter defines the sewer-
mouth process as the tendency of the state and media to devour
every ideology as a strategy to stay in power without changing
anything, Calle 13 envelops itself in social waste, and stirs the
"personal like vaginal fungus" to destabilize reigning discourses .46
Like Aime Cesaire's marvelous cannibals, the members of Calle 13
eat public discourse, swallow it, and above all spit it back in the face
of those who detest them.

Furthermore, the verbal art of Calle 13 recognizes that the best

thing to do with porqueria-be it filth, trash, garbage, or shit-is to push
it out like a gargajo (a ball of phlegm) in order to show how power
operates not only through the state apparatus but also, and even
more effectively, "through all of our being," as literary critic Suzanne
Roussy once put it.47 By reconceptualizing politics in this way, Calle
13 implies that the biggest challenge facing all of us is not colonialism
or the global order as such. Rather, it is something simultaneously
simpler and more complex: how to creatively and humorously handle
the crap of which we are irremediably made, and the enormous
amount of physical and symbolic waste that falls upon us each day.
 From the utopian "no place" of music that Residente calls "real,"
Calle 13 then imagines a different political space, one that
differentiates between those who "pee themselves laughing" from
those who "shit themselves from fear." It is in this context that their hit
"Atrevete Te, Te"48 can be understood as a call for liberation directed
to anyone who listens, but above all to the Puerto Rican middle class,
the so-called miss intellectual whose heady "show" of racial and class
superiority does not allow her to enjoy her body and "bailar por to'a la
jalda" (dance down the hill) with the rest of the reggaeton nation. As
Residente eloquently puts it:

At the end of the day, Calle 13 seems to say with complete surrealist
conviction, the only true insanity is not to lose control but to give up
on what we want. For life maybe crappy, yet it's a poetic crap, a very
good crap, like spitting diarrhea on the FBI.
NOTES

Translator's Note: In Spanish, the title reads as "poesia de porqueria."

Because the word porqueria does not have an exact equivalent in
English, throughout the essay, I have used the words garbage, waste,
crap, filth, and even porqueria itself to convey the many meanings of
this term. The word implies contempt, worthlessness, and dirtiness.

Sources and translations for section-heading quotations:

"Raise the Volume of the Satanic Music" is from Calle 13, "El Tango
del Pecado," Residente o Visitante, CD (2007). In Spanish,
"Subele el volumen a la musica satanica."

"Watch how it floats, my head" is from Calle 13, "La Hormiga Brava,"
Calle 13, 2005. In Spanish, "Mira como flota, mi cabeza."

"And if you don't understand me, your momma's the fat one" is from
Calle 13, "La Madre de los Enanos," Calle 13, CD, 2005. In
Spanish, "Si ustedes no me entienden, to mai es la gorda."

"Good morning, Puerto Rico/It's like 12-something" is from Calle 13,

"La Madre de los Enanos." In Spanish, "Buenos dias, Puerto
Rico/Son como las 12 y Pico."

"Dare-to-to" is from Calle 13, Atrevete Te, Te."

1. See Raquel Z. Rivera's essay in this anthology, "Policing

Morality, Mano Dura Stylee: The Case of Underground Rap and
Reggae in Puerto Rico in the Mid-199os."

2. Quoted in Raquel Z. Rivera, "Will the `Real' Puerto Rican Culture

Please Stand Up? Thoughts on Cultural Nationalism," in None of
theAbove: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era, ed. Frances Negron-
Muntaner (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 217-31.

3. Please see Juan Carlos Perez-Duthie, "Junte de literatura y

rggaeton," Primera Hora, February 17, 2006,
http://www.mundoreggaeton.com/foros/noticias/116- calle-13-reforma-
regeaton.html (accessed July 25, 2007).

4. New York Times, Monday, October 29, 2006.

5. See Jordan Levin, "Calle 13: A Reggaeton Revolution," Daily

Collegian, February 21, 2006,
http://media.www.dailycollegian.com/media/storage/paper874/news/2
o 06/02/21/Entertainment/Calle.13.A.Reggaeton.Revolution
-162o747.shtml?norewrite20
o603302237&sourcedomain=www.dailycollegian.com%253Cbr%253
E/ (accessed July 25, 2007).

6. Perez-Duthie, "Junte de literatura y reggaeton." In Spanish: "Un

`collage' crudo y fascinante, violento y delirante ... un `comic book' de
clasificacion X convertido en cancionero urbano, como si Quentin
Tarantino hubiera llevado su Kill Bill a un mundo de reggaeton
alternativo."

7. Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical

Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 5•

8. Henri Peyre, "The Significance of Surrealism," Yale French

Studies 1, no. 2 (fallwinter 1948): 41.

9. Andre Breton, Manifiesto del surrealismo,

http://www.ideasapiens.com/textos/
Arte/manifiesto%2osurrealismo.htm (accessed July 25, 2007).

10. Calle 13, "El Tango del Pecado."

11. Calle 13, "La Hormiga Brava."

12. Joseph Halpern, "Describing the Surreal," Yale French Studies

61 (1981): 94.

13. Calle 13, "El Tango del Pecado."

 14. Calle 13, "Se vale to-to," in Calle 13, CD (Sony International,
2005).

15. Wisin and Yandel, featuring Aventura, "Noche de Sexo," Pa'l

Mundo, 2005.

16. Calle 13, "Suave," in Calle 13, CD (Sony International, 2005).

17. Breton, Manifiesto.

18. Armand Hoog, "The Surrealist Novel," Yale French Studies, no.
8 (1951): 17-25,19.

19. Calle 13, Atrevete Te, Te," in Calle 13, CD (Sony International,
2005).

20. Calle 13, "El Tango del Pecado."

21. Calle 13, "Cabe-c-o," in Calle 13, CD (Sony International,

2005).

22. Rivera, "Policing Morality, Mano Dura Stylee."

23. Halpern, "Describing the Surreal," 96.

24. Breton, Manifiesto.

25. For a discussion on this subject, see Frances Negron-Muntaner,

ed., None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era (New York:
Palgrave, 2007).

26. Calle 13, of course, is not alone in this role. For a parallel
analysis of writer Don DeLillo as "waste manager," see Jesse
Kavadlo, "Recycling Authority: Don De Lillo's Waste Management,"
Critique 42, no. 4 (summer 2001): 384-401.

27. Calle 13, featuring La Mala Rodriguez, "Mala Suerte con el 13,"
in Residente o Visitante, CD (Sony International, 2007).
 28. Calle 13, "Ley de Gravedad," single, 2005.

29. Damarys Ocana, "You Say You Want a Revolution?," Latina

(May 2007): 120-23. Spanish in the original.

30. Calle 13, "Cabe-c-o."

31. Writer and producer Anjanette Delgado, interview by author,

Miami, May 12, 2007.

32. Quoted in Wikipedia, "The Grotesque Body,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wild/ Grotesque-body (accessed July 25,
2007). Also see Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). I thank Celeste Fraser
Delgado for pointing out the link between the grotesque body and
dancehall.

33• Calle 13, "Electrico," in Calle 13, CD (Sony International, 2005).

34• Calle 13, "La Madre de los Enanos." In Spanish, "un gargajo
con flema/color limber de crema." A "limber" is frozen syrup water or
juice in a plastic cup.

35• Translator's Note: "Metiendo mano" is a widely used expression

that could mean having sex, joining the action, or getting things done.

36. Calle 13, "Vamo' Animal," in Calle 13, CD (Sony International,

2005).

37. Calle 13, "Pi-Di-Di-Di," in Calle 13, CD (Sony International,

2007).

38. Calle 13, "La Crema," in Residente o Visitante, CD (Sony

International, 2007).

39• Calle 13, "Mala Suerte," in Residente o Visitante, CD (Sony

International, 2007).
 40. Calle 13, "La Hormiga Brava."

41. Calle 13, "La Ley de Gravedad."

42. Calle 13 with Tego Calderon, "Sin Exagerar," in Residente o

Visitante, CD (Sony International, 2007). In Spanish, "Soy pana de
los cocorocos/de Toledo, de Acevedo/ Tengo comprao to' los jueces."

43• Calle 13, "Querido FBI," single (2005).

44• Calle 13, "Pa'l Norte," in Residente o Visitante, CD (Sony

International, 2007).

45. Juan Duchesne, "Vieques: Protest as a Consensual Spectacle,"

in None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era, ed. Frances
Negron-Muntaner (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 87-97.

46. Calle 13, "La Madre de los Enanos." In Spanish, "Mas personal
que el hongo vaginal."

47. Cited in, Robin D. G. Kelley, "A Poetics of Anticolonialism,"

Monthly Review 51, no. 3 (November 1999):1-18, 3,
www.monthlyreview.org/1199kell.htm (accessed June 18, 2008).

48. Calle 13, Atrevete Te, Te."

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G E O F F BAKER received his Ph.D. in colonial Latin American
music from Royal Holloway, University of London. He was appointed
Leverhulme Research Fellow in the same university in 2003 and
lecturer in music in 2005. He is working on a book on Cuban hiphop
and reggaeton for Duke University Press.

TEGO CALDERON is a hip-hop and reggaeton artist born in Puerto

Rico in 1972. He has been hailed as "reggaeton's leading innovator"
by the New York Times and "reggaeton's Bob Marley" by Rolling
Stone.

CA R O L I N A C AYC E D O was born in 1978 in London, and lives

and works in Puerto Rico. She responds to the effects of global
capitalism with an artistic practice rooted in processes of
communication, movement, and exchange. She has exhibited
worldwide, including at the Whitney Biennial 20o6 (New York); J'en
Reve, Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art (Paris); and the
Venice Biennial 2003 (Italy).

JOSE D AV I LA currently works as a content editor for Fania

Records and writes for the Village Voice, Vibe, Houston Press, Dallas
Observer, Miami New Times, and the Broward New Times. Davila is
the former host of the reggaeton broadband show Barrio 305 and
lives in Miami Beach.

JAN FAIRLEY is an independent scholar who works as a music

writer, journalist, broadcaster, and lecturer. An Honorary Fellow of the
Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, she has been
researching in Cuba since 1978 and in various parts of South
America (Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru) since 1971. A member
of the editorial board of Popular Music (cup) since 1988, she is at
present book reviews editor. Her most recent scholarly publication is
"'Ay Dios, Amparame' (0 God, Protect Me): Music in Cuba during the
199os" in the book Island Musics (Berg Publishers, 2004) edited by
Kevin Dawe. She has worked extensively for B B c radio and writes
on music for Songlines, fRoots, the Scotsman, and the Guardian
newspapers.

JUAN F LO R E S is professor at the Department of Social and

Cultural Analysis at New York University. His books include The
Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribbean Latino Tales of Learning and
Turning (Routledge, 20o8); From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican
Culture and Latino Identity (Columbia University Press, 2000); and
Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Arte Publico
Press, 1993).

GALLEGO (JOSE RAOL GONZALEZ) is one of the most prominent

poets of Puerto Rico's literary generaci6n del noventa ('9os
generation). Author of two critically acclaimed books, Barrunto
(Editorial Isla Negra, 2000) and Residente del lupus (Editorial Isla
Negra, 20o6), his poetry has been featured in numerous reggaeton
recordings, among these, Daddy Yankee's debut album El Cartel de
Yankee (2000) and in Eddie Dee: 12 Discipulos (2005). His debut
album was released in 2007 by vi Music and is titled Teatro del Barrio
(2007).

F E L I X JIM E N E Z, a visiting scholar at Columbia University is

professor of communications and cultural studies at Universidad del
Sagrado Corazon, Puerto Rico. He has written for the Nation, the
Village Voice, and the Washington Post, among other publications.
He is the author of Vieques y la prensa (2001; PEN Club of Puerto
Rico's Book of the Year) and Las practicas de la carne (2004).

KACHO L6PEZ has directed videos for Daddy Yankee, Tego

Calderon, Don Omar, Voltio, Ednita Nazario, and many others. He
has twice won the Latin People's Choice Award, once for Daddy
Yankee's "Gasolina" and once for Ricky Martin's "Tal Vez." His
videographic work has also been nominated for several other
prestigious awards, including Best MTV2 Video 2005 for Daddy
Yankee's "Gasolina."
M I G U E L LU C I A N O received his M.F.A. from the University of
Florida. His work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum; El
Museo del Barrio, New York; the Bronx Museum of Art; the Chelsea
Art Museum, New York; the Newark Museum, New Jersey; and the
Jersey City Museum; as well as internationally at the Ljubljana
Biennial in Slovenia, San Juan Poligraphic Triennial in Puerto Rico,
and Zverev Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow. His work has
been reviewed in the New York Times, the Village Voice, Newsday,
and the Utne Reader.

WAYNE MARSHALL has taught courses on popular music and

technology, world music, hip-hop and reggae, and ethnomusicological
theory and method at Brandeis University, the University of Chicago,
Brown University, and the Harvard Extension School. He has
published scholarly articles and reviews in Popular Music, Latin
American Music Review, Interventions, Callaloo, and the World of
Music while writing for a broader audience via such outlets as xLR8R
magazine, the Fader, and the Boston Phoenix as well as on his blog
(wayneandwax.com), from which a post on reggaeton was selected
for the Da Capo Best Music Writing 20o6 anthology.

FRANCES NEGR6N-MUNTANERisafilmmaker, writer, and scholar.

She is the author of Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization
of American Culture (2004 Choice Outstanding Book), and editor of
several books, including None of the Above and Sovereign Acts.
Among her films are Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican
and For the Record: Guam and World War II. She currently teaches
Latino and Caribbean literatures and cultures at Columbia University.

ALFREDO N IEVES MORENO is associate dean of the School of

Communications at the Metropolitan 'University and a former
professor of theoretic foundations in communications at Universidad
del Sagrado Corazon, Puerto Rico. He has published articles on
contemporary culture in El Nuevo Dia and Claridad. He is a regular
collaborator for the music column at Didlogo, newspaper of the
University of Puerto Rico, and worked as coeditor of the architecture
magazine ENTORNO. Currently editing his first book, Las mecdnicas
del pdjaro: Para ver y audiover el cine de Hitchcock, he was also a
contributor for the book La cultura material del deseo: Objetos,
desplazamientos, subver- siones (2007).

IFEOMA C. K. N WA N K W O is associate professor of English at

Vanderbilt 'University. She is the author of Black Cosmopolitanism:
Racial Consciousness, National Identity and Transnational Identity in
the Nineteenth-Century Americas (University of Pennsylvania Press,
2005), "The Art of Memory in Panamanian West Indian Discourse"
(PALARA, 2002), and a number of other comparative studies of U.S.
African American, Caribbean, and Latin American literature that have
appeared in journals such as American Literary History, Cuban
Studies, Radical History Review and the Langston Hughes Review.
Her current projects employ ethnographic as well as literary-criticism
and cultural-studies methodologies to explore Inter-American
encounters in the realms of identity, cultural memory, and language.
Among these projects are a multi-faceted public Humanities initiative
focused on Panamanian West Indians at home and abroad, a special
journal issue on Afro-Latin Americans of West Indian descent, and an
edited collection (with Mamadou Diouf) on Afro-Atlantic expressive
cultures.

DEBORAH PACINI HERNANDEZ is an associate professor of

anthropology at Tufts University, where she teaches Latino studies
courses and directs the American and Latino Studies Programs. She
is coeditor of Rockin' Las Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in
Latinlo America (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004) and the author
of Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music (Temple
University Press, 1995) and numerous articles on Spanish Caribbean
and U.S. Latino popular music.

RAQUEL Z. RIVERA, Ph.D., is a researcher at the Center for Puerto

Rican Studies at Hunter College, New York. She is the author of New
York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and
various scholarly articles. A freelance journalist, her articles have
been published in numerous magazines and newspapers, among
these Vibe, One World, Urban Latino, El Diario / La Prensa, El Nuevo
Dia, Claridad, and the San Juan Star. She blogs about reggaeton in
reggaetonica.blogspot.com.

WELMO E. ROMERO JOSEPH was born in Puerto Rico in the 1970S

to a Dominican father and a Haitian mother. He embarked on a rap
career in 1994. His first CD was titled negroporvenir (2000), and it
landed him the opportunity to narrate through rap rhymes Raices
(2001), a yearly musical special filmed by Banco Popular. His EP
Adelanto (2005) fused samples and live instrumentation; and his third
musical production, Abre los Ojos (2005), was released for free
download on the Internet.

C H R I S TO P H T W I C K E L lives and works in Hamburg,

Germany, as a freelance journalist. Author of Hugo Chavez: Eine
Biographic (Hamburg: Edition Nautilus, 2006), he has also been
writing about Latin America and Afro-Latin music since the early
199os for various newspapers and magazines. Under the alias Basso
Profundo, he is a club and radio nl. His radio show airs on
www.byte.fin every Saturday at 1o am EsT/18 CET.

ALEXANDRA T. VAZQU EZ is an assistant professor in the Center for

African American studies and the Department of English at Princeton
University. Vazquez is the author of Instrumental Migrations: The
Critical Turns of Cuban Music (under contract with Duke University
Press), and with Fla Troyano, a coeditor of a forthcoming anthology
on La Lupe. She has written on Graciela, "the First Lady of Afro-
Cuban Jazz," in women and performance: a journal of feminist theory.
Vazquez is also part of the triumvirate that is ohindustry.com.
Italic numbers represent pages with illustrations