Reggaeton school
The cover of Reggaeton (Duke University Press)
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You know reggaeton, even if you don’t know that you know it. Originated in Panama and evolved later in locales all over, reggaeton has ascended to become the lingua franca of Latino youth in New York. The genre's instantly recognizable signature—the boom-ch-boom-chik drum pattern that sounds like an 808 taking a salsa class—can be heard thudding from sound systems of all sizes throughout the city. And while the genre’s ubiquity has been confirmed by the pop presence of Daddy Yankee, other top-selling reggaeton artists such as Don Omar and Wisin & Yandel remain comparatively unknown.
One academic in New York set out to try and change that, at least a little: Raquel Z. Rivera, professor of Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College and one of the editors of Reggaeton, a new anthology of essays about the genre, its history, and its culture. With a series of essays on topics ranging from early-'90s cassette trading in New York to the issue of “blackness” in reggaeton, Rivera and her co-editors—Tufts University professor Deborah Pacini Hernandez and Brandeis University ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall (also a DJ under the name Wayne & Wax)—have put together an exhaustive discussion of a musical and cultural phenomenon. Decider spoke to Rivera about the slow academic embrace of reggaeton, New York’s place in its history, and a couple of intense dances.
Raquel Z. Rivera
Decider: Reggaeton originated from a class you were teaching in 2005. What kind of reaction did you get at first, among students and peers?
Raquel Z. Rivera: There's been lots of interest, both from students and from professors, too, who know that they have to get educated about the music that their students are fluent in. Of course, some professors and teachers really resent it: "Why are you writing about this crap?" or "It's going downhill anyway, so why even bother?" But isn't it better to do it now that everybody remembers pretty well what happened 15 years ago, instead of waiting 75 years from now and having a fuzzy memory?
D: When did you first start listening to reggaeton?
RZR: I started writing about it when I was 20, before it was called reggaeton. Then it was called "underground." But I started listening to Vico C's street tapes when I was in high school, when I was 15. I was in Puerto Rico and going to high school there. Vico C was the only one that really caught my attention because everything was so dirty, so of course, at 15 years old, we loved it and we memorized the lyrics. But, back then, rap or reggae, even though people heard it from the U.S. and Jamaica, and people like Vico C were producing it locally in Spanish, it wasn't really big. It wasn't the main music for young people.
D: How did you get into reggaeton academically?
RZR: So I leave for college. I come to the U.S. I start hanging out with New York Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. The music of my generation is hip-hop, so that's what I got into. And then when I went back to Puerto Rico, rap and reggae were really big, so it was like that beginning of the underground era where it was as much hip-hop beats as much as it was reggae beats. It still wasn't this current reggae-based sound. It really caught my attention that most of my generation was listening to what was almost like the music I got to love in the States. And it surprised me that there was this virtual silence in the media about covering the local scene. In terms of academia, most of my professors were like, "You cannot do a paper on this ridiculous subject." Except for one professor, Angel Quintero Rivera, who is a wonderful sociologist of music and very open-minded and forward-thinking. I did my master's thesis about rap music in Puerto Rico, and I realized how important New York Puerto Ricans had been to the development of hip-hop to begin with, so I was like, "Okay that's going to be my follow-up."
D: Your paper in the book dealt with power relations and reggaeton, namely how women get along in a club setting. Is that a particular area of expertise for you?
RZR: That's the subject I obsess about. Actually, I just wrote a short paper called "Perreo and Power," trying to bring together what few works there are about dance and sexuality in reggaeton. My very simple proposal is that—hello!—there's all this body of work here about dance and sexuality and dancehall and hip hop in the states, so why are we trying to reinvent the wheel as if reggaeton is disconnected from dancehall and hip hop and the scholarship associated to those genres.
D: What, exactly, is perreo?
RZR: It's the dance associated with reggaeton. The very vulgar dance, at least in the greater consciousness. But I guess people forget how they danced when they were 14 or 15. One of Wayne's followers on his blog is this woman Nina, who is a dance fan and a great writer, too. She was saying that her mother used to do the same dance and called it "The Detroit Dog." So, you know, back to front and grinding. And Nina is my age, so how old is her mother?
