EXPLORING REGGAETON: Part 1, Rise of a New Urban Power...
Jun 16 '06 (Updated Jul 31 '06)
The Bottom Line First in a 10-part series exploring the roots, influences, and major artists of the burgeoning young reggaeton sound.
Young urban latinos may have grown up hearing their mama's and papa's flavors of latin salsa, merengue, norteno, boleros, or cumbias, but their tastes ran trendier and grittier, and what they really wanted to hear was a style like hip-hop. They wanted music that captured the essence of now and the reality of a new urban experience. What they want is reggaeton, and the pent-up demand isn't being expressed through vague notions of some mythical "silent majority", it's being expressed by the cha-ching of cash registers racking up huge and growing sales of music by artists that were unknown just a few short years ago. It's being expressed through sold-out arena shows in major cities throughout the United States and latin countries.
It's no secret that the music industry is hurting. In the United States, music sales are down across almost all genres and styles. The notable exception is latin music, which saw sales increase almost 15 percent last year, bucking the industry trends, where overall sales across all genres were down about 7 percent from the year before. Why is latin hot and everything else is not?
Various reasons have been tossed around for the anomaly. Latinos use fewer computers, don't always have iPods, and don't download over the internet. That's what you hear most often, anyway. Maybe that has something to do with it, but I think a bigger reason is that reggaeton is fueling growth.
I think that artists and independent labels are simply giving the people what they want, and I think the big reggaeton hits are raising the tide for other latin genres as well. What the music buying public wants is reggaeton. Lots of it. Enough so that reggaeton albums dominate mainstream sales charts (the June 24, 2006 Billboard "Top Latin Albums" chart shows that 3 out of the top 5 selling albums are reggaeton). I also think that reggaeton is going to become more widespread before its popularity fades, and that at some point, you're going to see it going mainstream, and with mass market acceptance, you'll see it become less edgey, less relevant, and eventually, "daddy's and mommy's music" --- ripe for replacement by the next big thing.
Until that happens though, latin music is riding the tsunami of reggaeton popularity.
I've been listening to reggaeton off and on over the last couple years, but it's never been my real forte. It's high time I took the style more seriously. As an exercise in learning more about the style and figuring out what makes it tick, where it comes from, and who does it best, I plan to listen to nothing but reggaeton for the next few weeks. Along the way, I'll chronicle my observations and try to identify themes and pressure points. Stick with me on the ride, and we might all have a better understanding of the style's roots and its attraction to a huge and growing global audience.
And now, for Part 1 of the series --- a gentle introduction to the style in which I summarize the generalities about the sound itself and its recent history (since that's the only kind of history it has).
What Exactly IS Reggaeton?
As it's name implies, the reggaeton style traces its heritage to the relentlessly droning sound of Jamaica's reggae beat. At least that's part of the DNA. The other major part is the hip-hop sound of urban America. Combine reggae with hip-hop, change up the lyrics to spanish (or at least spanglish), and spice it all up with influences of traditional latin styles, and you have reggaeton. Or at least you have the early basis of reggaeton.
Today, reggaeton is most often associated with Puerto Rico (or the Dominican Republic), though the first artists to start putting the pieces together were Panamanians. Their sound was less well defined than today's tighter, more honed and standardized reggaeton, and they didn't really have a name for their distinctive style. Yet reggaeton is where they were headed, whether they had a map or knew where they were going or not.
The Panamanian reggae-influenced artists had the basics, but they didn't have the beat sharpened quite to perfection, and they didn't have the hip-hop side quite figured out. There were other latin artists working on that though...
I don't know very much about hip-hop and its genesis, but I recall it emerging as a power in the mid to late 1980s, so it was probably early 80s when it was really budding and defining its own borders and its own sense of self. It didn't take too long after that for some latino artists to start picking up on the same themes and the same kind of rhyming patterns with the same tendency to recite rather than sing lyrics. Latin hip-hop, as a style in itself, is basically just hip-hop, but with spanish rhymes rather than english rhymes. But the song remained the same.
Not so with reggaeton. While elements of hip-hop show up in their pure form in reggaeton, you also have the complications of latin stylistic influences, plus you know have a different set of sub-cultural elements, and you have a common sound that re-emerges throughout the reggaeton world: this common sound is a beat that's referred to as dembow.
As 2006 continues to unfold as "The Year of Reggaeton", you see the circle coming to a close with pop, and even hip-hop, borrowing from the reggaeton sound that they partially spawned. In fact, one of the biggest pop hits of early summer 2006 is Shakira's Hips Don't Lie --- a song that's more popular in some cities in its reggaeton remix version than its original, and in the hip-hop world, Snoop Dogg has even done a reggaeton remix of Drop It Like Its Hot. If Shakira and Snoop Dogg are ready to ride the reggaeton wave, can the rest of mainstream music U.S.A. be far behind??
So reggaeton is a beat. It's a sub-culture. It's a lot of hip-hop influence, but it's not true hip-hop. It's techno influenced, but it's also not techno. It's got the flexibility to adapt to latin fusions. It's got a strong reggae heritage. It's Afro-Caribbean based. It's rhyming. It's very urban and contemporary. It's hispanic oriented (in fact, you're starting to see the word "hurban" being used to reflect a "hispanic urban" orientation rather than the black urban orientation that American audiences are more accustomed to).
Like hip-hop, reggaeton is often very adult oriented. Explicit lyrics labels or no, the songs often center on gang violence, drug cultures, sexuality, and a general spirit of lawlessness that most parents would find offensive if they knew there kids were listening to it and/or the media told them they should be offended by it. "Christian" music this ain't....(gracias a Dios).
Get the Picture?
Reggaeton is one of those things that you really have to experience to fully understand. It's also not going to be a style that everyone wants to understand. I understand. But if this short overview of the style piques your interest a little bit, stay tuned over the next couple weeks as I turn you on to some of the biggest sounds in today's reggaeton world, and explore a few of the backwaters and niches of the style as we go.
Until next time, see you in the music store. As always, I'm in the latin music aisle (which they haven't renamed "reggaeton aisle" ---- yet).
EXPLORING REGGAETON: The Series...
This has been Part 1 of a 10-part series exploring the roots, heart, soul, and future of the reggaeton style. Stay tuned as we delve deeper into the works and influences of the artists who are forging the new flavor of urban latino music, and seeing it spread to unexpected corners of foreign genres. Here's what's coming up next...
Part 1: Rise of a New Urban Power
Part 2: Movers, Shakers, Players, and Names to Know in Reggaeton
Part 3: Conceiving a New Style, El General and the Panamanian Nexus
Part 4: Defining the Boundaries, Tego Calderon and the Puerto Rican Claim
Part 5: A Star Is Born, Daddy Yankee Fought the Pop Machine --- Yankee Wins
Part 6: Machisimo versus the Feminine Ideal, Ivy Queen in a Male-Dominated Genre
Part 7: Heard in the Streets, Wisin and Yandel Give the People What they Want
Part 8: Scrappy Young Punks, Alexis and Fido and the Good Fight
Part 9: A Prophet Pointing the Path, Don Omar Today and Tomorrow
Part 10: Little Kids, Big Kids, and Explicit Content: an Ongoing Controversy
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