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samepersonalitytypeasbjork-blog · 7 years ago

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“Reggaetón: an underground scene, or authentic música boricua?”

Everybody has heard a reggaetón song before. Even if they couldn’t name a specific artist, they’d be more than likely to know the hook to Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina. My father is Puerto Rican, so regardless of this fact that everybody hears it on the radio, I grew up listening to Reggaetón. I chose to study San Juan’s music scene, because my family is from a small suburb called Villa Nevarez, just 15 minutes outside of the heart of the city. My abuelos weren’t wealthy, but the suburb was fairly safe, calm, and well-kept. Based on its three large sources of income (tourism, manufacturing, and services) and its fun hip-hop played on the radio, like Gasolina, one might begin to believe that San Juan’s citizens, as a whole, are well-off. So when I listened to reggaetón with violent, crime-filled lyrical content (as opposed to the songs they played at white parties in New York) while driving down the streets of San Juan as a child, I always wondered if it was problematic that there was a portion of Puerto Rican people that were basically being excluded from the popularized idea of “Puerto-Rican-ness”; that is to say, I couldn’t understand why I felt such tension between the conceptualized Puerto Rican identity and the identity presented and seemingly glorified in this music. This “conceptualized” identity is a dangerous somewhat of a dangerous idea, as it excludes the majority of both the capital’s and the country’s citizens: the working class. Listening to the artists of caserios of San Juan actually helped me realize the reason for this tension; the working class, a majority of which are not white people, has been condemned as “underground” because of an idea called “blanquismo” caused by both Spanish and American colonialism. Since Puerto Rican history has never escaped colonialism (it was a Spanish territory until 1763, when the Treaty of Paris granted it to the United States as a territory), the concept of “Puerto Rican identity” is highly debated, especially in terms of racial background. A surprising majority of people would may view the “original” Puerto Ricans as Spaniards, as they used Puerto Rico for its “rich port.” As a matter of fact, some streets in the city of Old San Juan are comprised entirely of blue cobblestones that were discarded from Spanish ships and no longer had any use. The relevance of Puerto Rico’s relationship with colonialism, then, colors the territory as historically white (until the arrival of Black Americans)1. The result of this historical inconsistency is referred to in San Juan as what I mentioned before; “blanquismo,” a systematic racial exclusion of non-whites from the Puerto Rican identity because of the American, colonial context1. There is, then, a number of communities within San Juan replete of working class, non-white citizens that are essentially estranged from the country’s conception of identity. Best known as “barrios” (“slums”) and “caseríos” (housing projects), they have developed an urban culture that is viewed as “underground,” and some of the best reggaetón hits originated right within and as a result of the “underground.” The paradox here is that the idea of “underground” roots from a completely invasive and conceived white identity that ignores Puerto Rico’s non-wihte native history. My interest in this only grew as I became interested in the band “Calle 13.” Since reggaetón’s spread to the United States, (on which I will elaborate further) this “underground” music has evolved into one that is slightly more politically-astute; it critiques gender and race inequality without the employment of “violent” references. A current group that exemplifies this evolution is Calle 13, named after a road that is actually within the outskirts of Villa Nevarez. The duo’s first album, “Calle 13” was released in 2015 and did provide heavy social commentaries, however its lyrical content was highly sexual and aggressive. Its hit song “Atrévete Te, Te!” alludes to the middle class’ fear of the urban poor using the narrative of seducing a middle-class woman through mockery:

Yo se que a ti te gusta el pop-rock latino (I know that you like latino pop-rock) Pero este reggaetón se te mete por los intestinos (But this reggaetón will blow up your intestines) Por debajo de la falda como un submarino (From under the skirt, like a submarine) Y te saca lo de indio taino (And take away from you that of the taino) Ya tu sabes, en tapa-rabo, mama (You already know, on the cover, mama) En el nombre de Agüeybana (In the name of Agüeybana) No hay mas na', para na' que yo te vo'a mentir (There is no more, no reason for me to lie) Yo se que yo también quiero consumir de tu perejil (I know that I also want to consume your parsley) Y tú viniste amazónica como Brasil (And that you came Amazonically like Brazil) Tú viniste a matarla como "Kill Bill" (You came to it kill like “Kill Bill”) Tú viniste a beber cerveza de barril (You came to drink draft beer) Tú sabes que conmigo tú tienes refill (You know that with you, you have a refill)

The message being conveyed here, informally, is that the woman is a “bougie” middle-class citizen who just wants to eat her parsley and doesn’t understand the the “underground,” working class community/scene; however, the vehicle of portrayal is somewhat reminiscent of sexual harassment. Most of their first album, though socially and politically astute, fell within the same category of vulgarity that was rejected by the San Juan middle class. As the years have gone by, their lyrics departed from such content. They recently collaborated with Panamanian salsa artist, Rubén Bládes, on a salsa-inspired reggaetón hit called “La Perla” (on the album Los De Atrás Vienen Conmigo, 2008). It alludes to a slum on the coastline of San Juan. This slum is famous for its disengagement with the government and clashes with the police; crime and murder rates are extremely high, and the slum is quite literally physically removed from the rest of the city. The central-most city (formally known as Old San Juan) is elevated from the shore by a tall, protective wall; however, La Perla exists directly beneath and on the other side of this wall. Their hit song, then, refers to its citizens and their lovely way of life, portraying a slum commonly recognized as not only “underground,” but dangerous, as a beautiful community of San Juan. Their direct employment of salsa (through Blades) into the genre shows the divergence of classical conceptions of Puerto Rican culture and “underground” culture without alluding to violence, sex, guns, etc. Identity-driven anxieties within Puerto Rico created a resistance and ignorance of the scene for years, and frustration from such communities persisted within their art. Today you can’t walk down the streets of Old San Juan at night without hearing reggaetón bumping from pubs, bars, dance clubs, apartment buildings, etc. As a person raised in New York, those anxieties tension never felt personally tangible; I only felt them through the musicians’ incorporation of cyclical entrapment in their “underground” music. This is where my interest in identity politics, especially in regard to American colonialism, collides deeply with my interest in Puerto Rican music; as far as musical identity is concerned, some people think that the affects colonialism only goes as far as fusion of two cultures. My point here is that the “white” nationalism got so deeply rooted into this natively non-white island that a very important and present class of people- the working class- became somewhat socially degraded to a culture that was “underground.” Most of what I’ve talked about alluded to the more present reggaetón, and while currently boasting international commercial recognition, earlier, pre-Daddy Yankee reggaetón took a very long time to break the ice in terms of acceptance within its own place of origin. The scene began in the late 80s and early 90s with the distribution of “mixtapes” within the caseríos; teens would sample excerpts from hip-hop, rap, and Jamaican dancehall music popular within the U.S. (tourism in San Juan lends itself to American pop-cultural familiarity), and would rap about themes such as sex and parties. American-sounding music coming out of an underground scene, then, did not sit well with the capital’s middle class, especially considering the “vulgar” subject-matter and tendency to address controversial content such as racism and classism1. Reggaetón was, at first, swept aside as “inauthentic,” and when it began to rise in popularity around 2002, senator Velda González set out on an “anti-pornography” campaign with intentions to strip all media of content that could corrupt the middle-class youth; her target, of course, was the distribution of reggaetón. This wouldn’t be the first time reggaetón was targeted, for in 1995 the Drugs and Vice Control Bureau of the Police Department of Puerto Rico raided six record stores, confiscating all CDs that were seemingly “underground” or “reggae” for their “incitement to violence and drug use”2, such as sex, pot, and guns. Its rise to international success, in sum, can be indebted to Daddy Yankee and New York’s Puerto Rican communities. Formally known as Ramón Ayala Rodriguez, Daddy Yankee is a hip-hop artist from the caserío “Villa Kennedy” in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was deeply involved with the trend of sampling jamaican dancehall, reggae and hip hop tunes, and rapping over them, as well as the mixtape-distribution scene prevalent in caseríos5. Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina became so popular within Puerto Rican neighborhoods of New York City that it could be heard all over the city by the end of 2004, and New Yorkers, who were already listening to the music that inspired its creation, loved it. In 2004, 25 stations in Houston, Miami, Atlanta, and other huge urban landscapes switched from themes such as classical rock to 24-hour reggaetón. Authenticity is tricky in terms of Puerto Rican music, because there has been so much outside involvement infringing on its artistic exposure and inspirations. Technically, authenticity may be an an inapplicable term to Puerto Rican identity, because of all of its involvement with colonialists taking over certain infrastructure. There can be countless discussions about what authenticity entails, but the recent situation in Puerto Rico has involved the systematic idea that the working class is “underground,” which is classist and racist in its theory and exclusionary of the working class in its assumption of “authentic.”

#writing assignment 1

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