Reggaeton (review)

In 2004, reggaeton from Puerto Rico broke into the mainstream music industry with hits like N.O.R.E.'s "Oye mi canto" and Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina." The unmistakable electronically produced "boom-ck- boom-chick" beat could be heard blasting out of car speakers and nightclubs for years. Radio stations were re-defined as "Hurban" ("Hispanic Urban"), hip-hop labels created subsidiaries that pumped out reggaeton records, and pop artists jumped on the bandwagon churning out hits with the popular synthesized beat.

Despite reggaeton's fundamental effect on both the music industry and the cultural identity of Latino youth throughout the Americas, academics seemed wary of publishing about the topic, perhaps afraid that the trend would be a "flash in the pan" and would soon lose any shred of academic validity or cultural relevance. Luckily, Raquel Rivera, Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini Hernandez stepped up to the plate. With their edited anthology Reggaeton, these scholars drew on their diverse backgrounds in sociology and Puerto Rican studies, ethnomusicology, and anthropology, respectively, producing the first serious and timely study of this musical genre. A collection of academic essays, interviews, and artistic statements, this anthology offers a significant and groundbreaking examination of reggaeton's musical and cultural roots, routes, meanings, and impacts.

In the introduction, "Reggaeton's Socio-Sonic Circuitry," the editors clearly state their intentions and goals, which serve to inform and direct this compilation. For instance, reggaeton is all too often vaguely defined as "hip-hop 1 dancehall 1 Latin flavor." The editors note that "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" (5). Indeed, one of the strongest contributions of this work is that it addresses the "overlapping and multidirectional circuits" (11) of reggaeton's transnational musical roots and sociocultural routes, from Jamaica to Panama, from Puerto Rico to Cuba, from the Dominican Republic to the United States, and within local contexts in each. The authors trace the ways in which reggae, hip-hop, dancehall, and rap influenced reggaeton, and they explain how reggaeton differs from its precursor genres such as reggae en español, underground, and dembow.

Because of reggaeton's musical roots, the editors prioritize and underline the genre's association with hip-hop and Black identity politics, consequently problematizing many scholars' tendency to highlight reggaeton's pan-Latin musical and/or cultural character: "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" (8). The editors' focus on reggaeton as música negra lends to their seeming condemnation of reggaeton's transformation into a pan-ethnic "reggaeton Latino." This is particularly evident in Wayne Marshall's opening essay in which he realizes his own cynicism about reggaeton's shift away from an explicit Black consciousness towards a commercially motivated pan-latinidad. The editors' politics regarding this debate are important to note, for their intention inevitably shapes the types of perspectives included in this compilation which lean towards reggaeton's "defiant embrace of blackness and its insistent connections to hip-hop's and reggae's race-based cultural politics" (9). At the same time, even though their discomfort and disapproval is evident, they deserve credit for grappling with reggaeton's shift towards an explicit pan-Latino identity and addressing its economic and commercial motives, cultural consequences, and stereotypical projections and discourse. Because the tension between reggaeton as either música negra or pan-Latin is highlighted throughout the essays, this anthology could provide the basis for...