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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!”] |
