[Many thanks to peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Ellen Rebecca Bishell (The Dialog) on the controversy surrounding Rosalía, reggaetón, and its black roots:
Spanish singer Rosalía’s new album, Motomami, has obtained plenty of media consideration for its melding of “each sound at her disposal”. Grounded in her flamenco background, the album sways from pop to jazz, is inflected with hip-hop and reggaetón beats and even options components of bachata and salsa.
Rosalía rose to mainstream visibility in 2018 when her studio album El mal querer (The Unhealthy Loving) landed in Rolling Stone’s 500 Biggest Albums of All Time. However the latest comparability by lecturers of Rosalía’s rise to fame with the “evolution of reggaetón from its Afro-Caribbean roots to a style with international cachet” speaks to the silencing of the music’s wealthy socio-cultural historical past.
Rosalía will not be alone, nonetheless. All through the 2010s and into the 2020s, there’s been a slew of well-liked songs by white and European Spanish artists that borrow closely from aLatin and Caribbean music whereas erasing its Black roots.
Reggaetón and the ‘Despacito impact’
Reggaetón is an Afro-Caribbean music style with a posh historical past of musical encounters between Panama, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and New York. Influenced by and constructed upon types as various as dancehall, hip-hop, merengue, reggae and rap, reggaetón’s roots are within the African rhythms that had been carried over in the course of the colonisation of the Americas.
Within the Nineteen Nineties in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, reggaetón grew to become a car for Black resistance in opposition to strict racial hierarchies, oppressive social constructions and police brutality. However as the worldwide recognition of the music has risen, reggaetón has turn out to be more and more “white-washed.
An apparent instance of this was when Canadian artist Justin Bieber featured in a remix of Puerto Rican artists’ Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s reggaetón hit Despacito in 2017. Regardless of the unique model’s huge recognition, Bieber has usually been credited with its mainstream success.
This so-called ”Despacito impact“ echoes broader patterns of appropriation and consumption of Caribbean music genres by Euro-American markets – and the ensuing exclusion and marginalisation of their founding figures.
One of the well-known examples of this in Latin music is Enrique Iglesias’s collaboration with Cuban duo Gente de Zona and singer/producer Descemer Bueno within the 2014 remix of Bailando. The monitor is the Billboard’s Sizzling Latin Songs chart’s longest-running primary. As American Research scholar Petra Rivera-Rideau has argued, Bailando allowed Enrique Iglesias to reinvent himself as a hip Latin city singer by counting on Afro-Latino cultural markers – on this case, reggaetón – whereas concurrently embodying Latino whiteness”.
El mal querer: robbing reggaetón’s roots
The artistic and business development of a white Latino picture by European artists who produce reggaetón is greater than merely whitewashing. The shared language would possibly impart a way of authority and authenticity to those Spaniards. However we should do not forget that this language is shared exactly due to Spanish colonisation.
Rosalía’s success within the “Latin” music market as a Spaniard has been met with accusations of cultural appropriation – a time period used to explain the inconsiderate adoption of components of a tradition or cultural identification by somebody who doesn’t belong to it. Such accusations had been notably loud after the discharge of the distinctively reggaetón monitor Con Altura in 2019. The music was additionally made in collaboration with Colombian singer J Balvin –- a white artist who just lately unabashedly accepted an award for “finest Afro-Latino artist of the 12 months”. The problem deepened after her subsequent look on the duvet of Vogue Mexico as a “Latina artist” (Latino/a refers to somebody of Latin American heritage residing within the US). The criticism gave rise to essential debates about race, class and privilege in Latin and Spanish music.
Speaking about Rosalía’s hit Malamente, the Spanish rapper C. Tangana stated: “[Reggaetón is] very helpful to city tradition and Spanish tradition. It’s helped folks suppose completely different, search for a special sound”. Because of Rosalía’s whiteness and Europeanness she has obtained credit score for bestowing Latin tradition with an “originality” and “worth”. Nevertheless, that comes from harnessing and mixing music rooted in cultural and ethnic backgrounds to which she doesn’t belong.
These colonial legacies of inequality and white privilege will be seen very clearly in Rosalía’s collaboration with Dominican rapper Tokischa on the hit music Linda. Right here, specific references to Rosalía’s Spanish heritage are made in an Afro-Dominican house upon which she will be able to capitalise and over which, because the lyrics go, she is “ruling”.
Rosalía’s 2020 Grammys win within the “finest Latin rock, city, or various album” class provides extra gas to the fireplace.
Rosalía will not be Latina. Additionally, the since-renamed “city” award is a racially marked class into which Black artists – be it of reggaetón or different genres – have been pigeonholed. Competitors within the Latin Grammys’ “Large 4” (album, document and music of the 12 months and finest new artist), then again, has been dominated by white artists, who’ve additionally been capable of win in “city” classes. Practices of exploitation and discrimination embedded within the music business are irrefutable. White artists have crushed Black artists on an extremely uneven enjoying area.
Once we recognise reggaetón’s wealthy and sophisticated cultural historical past, it turns into apparent that Rosalía will not be elevating its “international cachet”. And as reggaetón continues to realize visibility on the worldwide stage with out its historical past, we can not overlook the injustices which were imposed upon its creators all through its worldwide increase.
Reggaetón historian Katelina Eccleston (aka La Gata) is one essential determine who deserves our consideration. As Eccleston makes clear in her latest article on J Balvin’s participation within the reggaetón scene, “this social duty doesn’t fall on one particular person”. It’s all the way down to musicians and industries, students and audiences alike to raise, have a good time, and protect its roots. So, once we’re performing, analysing, or dancing alongside to the subsequent hottest reggaetón hit, allow us to keep in mind the place it got here from and be important of who’s performing it.
For extra data and associated movies, see https://theconversation.com/rosalia-raising-reggaetons-global-cachet-or-robbing-it-of-its-roots-172577