Reggaeton And The Right To Rap En Español
Jun 17th, 2009 - blogs.wnyc.org
Reggaeton might just be the most successful cultural export from Puerto Rico since Ricky Martin. But if Puerto Rican authorities had had their way back in the late 90s, this hard-driving style, with its often hardcore lyrics, would never have made it to 2004, when Daddy Yankee’s out-of-nowhere hit “Gasolina” made reggaeton matter in the US. For years, reggaeton was seen by the authorities as a low-class, no-morals blight on society. It actually reminds me of another style of music… wait, which one was it again… Hip-hop? Jazz? Tango? Ragtime? The Waltz? Oh wait - I remember. It was ALL OF THEM!I mean, how many times do we have to do this stupid little dance? Read early 19th century accounts of the rise of the waltz and you would think that civilization was doomed to end with an all-out orgy of lust and drunken depravity. Just about every major musical style - especially if it has a dance associated with it, and let’s face it, they almost all do - has initially been seen as a moral threat. Censorship, and persecution of the musicians involved, have served one purpose in each case, and that has been to effectively spread the word about the thing under attack. It’s been exactly the opposite purpose that was intended, and yet people who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Who would’ve known or cared about 2 Live Crew if the Broward County officials in Florida hadn’t tried to make it a crime to sell their record in the local stores? But the resulting court case created a media sensation and their very ordinary album sold an extraordinary 2 million copies.
Everytime some group finds a movie offensive or sacrilegious, they picket and organize email campaigns and in the process, boost the profile and thus the profits of the very movie they’re trying to kill. Puerto Rican authorities heard reggaeton as the sound of a crime-ridden, largely black community - the island’s poorest and most underrepresented inhabitants. But their campaign against it had the effect of alerting middle-class kids to what was coming up from the barrios and soon the genie was out of the bottle.
Of course, with all of these music/dance forms, social acceptance has a way of dulling the sharpest edges, but in general, the mix of poor, disaffected, horny youth with older, uptight, threatened authorities has turned out to be a winning combination - eventually, the music wins every time.