REGGAETON 909’S GASOLINE
March 7, 2005

“Yo quiero bailar
tú quieres sudar
y pegarte a mí
el cuerpo rozar
yo te digo si tu me puedes provocar
eso no quiere decir que pa’ la cama voy”

“I want to dance
you want to sweat
and cling to me
rub your body against mine
I say  just ‘cuz you turn me on
that doesn’t mean I’ll go to bed”

(From the song, “Yo Quiero Bailar” [“I Want To Dance”] by Ivy Queen)

Miami. If you’ve never danced “doggy style,” never heard the song “Gasolina” [“Gasoline”], and you missed the fact that Don Omar was a Christian minister before he became a singer, then you’re missing out on “reggaeton,” one of this decade’s most significant musical phenomena.  And you may even have  lost sight of today’s youth (and of your own kids).

Reggaeton has taken the United States by storm, after catching on in Puerto Rico, with its mixture of salsa, “plena” (“all-out”) and “bomba” (“gas station”) (Puerto Rican folkloric music and dance genres.)  It burst onto the scene in the ‘90s in Panama when several artists, influenced by Jamaican reggae, began singing rap in Spanish.  Today, reggaeton is the fusion of the most rebellious—and danceable—music in recent years, thus its popularity.

“Volvió el negrolo cocolo, que los jode como quiera, acompañao o solo...desde la cuna, agradecido de esta negrura...” [”The big black boogeyman is back, he messes them up any way he can, accompanied or alone…grateful from the cradle for his blackness…”].  (From the song, “El Abayarde”  [“The Fire Ant”] by Tego Calderón.)

          Reggaeton lyrics blast racism and mistreatment of women, they deal with drug abuse, hate, violence and sex, a lot of sex.  The ubiquitous sexual references and the “doggy style” dancing – which simulates dogs mating—have rendered reggaeton incomprehensible and offensive for many adults.  But this has done nothing to slow its momentum..  Far from it, the controversy has stirred up even greater interest.  

“Cuéntale que te conocí bailando, cuéntale que soy mejor que él, cuéntale que te traigo loca.” “Tell him that I met you out dancing, tell him I’m better than him, tell him I’m driving you crazy.” (From the song, “Díle” [“Tell Him”] by Don Omar.)

            No, I’m not trying to act cool. The reggaeton phenomenon has taken me by surprise too. But when I discovered the music of  Don Omar and Ivy Queen and Daddy Yankee and Tego Calderón, their their infectious rhythm tore into my ears and their irreverent lyrics throttled me by the neck.  And now I can’t get them out of my head. 

            It’s not that I’m a fan of reggaeton music—I’m from a another generation, more at home  with Sting, Serrat, the Beatles and Maná—and I confess  I have yet to dance “doggy style” in some underground club, but its hip-hop moves get me moving, and  I recognize it as a novel and creative  mode of expression for our Latin youth.  It’s shocking!   And I want—I have to—understand them:  My daughter is already in her teens and my son will be a teenager in just a few years from now.

            At a concert in Miami the other day I saw Daddy Yankee in action for the first time.  This 28-year-old artist, also known as the “King of Improvisation” for his talent for rap and live improvisation, had over 10 thousand concert-goers jumping up from their seats in the packed auditorium.  I think he could get a marble statue to dance.  And he  did so in a song with lyrics that are short on subtlety and not what you’d call poetic:

             “A ella le gusta la gasolina, watcha’ say, dáme más gasolina, hey…asesina me domina, janguea en carro, motora y limosina, llena su tanque de adrenalina, cuando escucha reggaeton en la cocina…A ella le encanta la gasolina.”[She likes gasoline, whatcha’ say, gimme more gasoline, hey... she kills me, enslaves me, she hangs  out by car,  motorcyle and limousine, she fills her tank with adrenaline, when she listens to  reggaeton in the kitchen...She really loves gasoline.”].

            Daddy Yankee has sold almost a million copies of his “Gasoline” at a time when “downloading” (illegally recording songs from the Internet) has record companies in freefall and has forced them to rethink the way they do business.  The most important thing about reggaeton is that it is  like hits of oxygen for the record industry.  That’s reggaeton’s gasoline.  In cities like Miami and New York there are already radio stations that  play this new  sound exclusively, 24/7.  Others won’t be far behind. And in Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic and the Caribbean, Reggaeton  has practically become an anthem of sorts.

            More than likely Reggaeton took off as a result of the inevitable decline of pop music in Spanish, and the paucity of an edgy rebelliousness in merengue and salsa. So young Hispanics and Spanish-speakers who didn’t identify with the rock group music genre or the  kind of music filling the air waves on the traditional radio stations were able to find in a unique form of expression.

            “Reguetón,”  in its “Spanglish avatar” is the urban beat that  they can express themselves in better than any other.  It’s not the hip-hop or rap of the African-American, or the mainstream rock of the WASP, or their grandparents’ tropical swing, or the Julio Iglesias or Raphael of their parents, or even the the Paulina, Sanz and Luis Miguel of their older siblings.  It is something that is new and different and that jumps back and forth without permission (or apology) between English and Spanish and vice versa.

            It would be a colossal mistake  to dismiss reggaeton based solely on the agressiveness and vulgarity of its content.  These are, after all, the means of rebellion  for“YUHI’s” (young, urban Hispanics), and their way of telling us: This is my life—rough, blunt, uncouth—not yours.  It is music that reflects their post-9/11 world.

In short, reggaeton fills an urban musical niche for the Latino and the Spanish-speaker.  And, like any musical genre, it will pave the way for other ones as well,  sooner than later morphing into something no one else has ever heard before.  But for now, reggaeton  is furiously dogging  the soul of Latino youth.

            “¡Dáme más  gasolina!” [“Gimme more gasoline!”]