{"id":4287,"date":"2022-04-07T13:29:10","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T18:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=4287"},"modified":"2022-04-07T13:29:10","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T18:29:10","slug":"rosalia-raising-reggaetons-global-cachet-or-robbing-it-of-its-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=4287","title":{"rendered":"Rosal\u00eda: Raising Reggaet\u00f3n\u2019s \u2018Global Cachet\u2019 Or Robbing It Of Its Roots?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spanish singer Rosal\u00eda\u2019s new album, Motomami<\/a>, has received a lot of media attention for its melding of \u201cevery sound at her disposal<\/a>\u201d. Grounded in her flamenco background, the album sways from pop to jazz, is inflected with hip-hop and reggaet\u00f3n beats and even features elements of bachata and salsa.<\/p>\n

Rosal\u00eda rose to mainstream visibility in 2018 when her studio album El mal querer (The Bad Loving) landed in Rolling Stone\u2019s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time<\/a>. But the recent comparison by academics of Rosal\u00eda\u2019s rise to fame with the \u201cevolution of reggaet\u00f3n from its Afro-Caribbean roots to a genre with global cachet<\/a>\u201d speaks to the silencing of the music\u2019s rich socio-cultural history.<\/p>\n

Rosal\u00eda is not alone, however. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, there\u2019s been a slew of popular songs by white and European Spanish artists that borrow heavily from aLatin and Caribbean music while erasing its Black roots.<\/p>\n

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Reggaet\u00f3n and the \u2018Despacito effect\u2019<\/h2>\n

Reggaet\u00f3n is an Afro-Caribbean music genre with a complex history of musical encounters between Panama, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and New York. Influenced by and built upon styles as diverse as dancehall, hip-hop, merengue, reggae and rap, reggaet\u00f3n\u2019s roots are in the African rhythms that were carried over during the colonisation of the Americas.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, reggaet\u00f3n became a vehicle for Black resistance against strict racial hierarchies, oppressive social structures and police brutality<\/a>. But as the global popularity of the music has risen, reggaet\u00f3n has become increasingly \u201cwhite-washed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An obvious example of this was when Canadian artist Justin Bieber featured in a remix of Puerto Rican artists\u2019 Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee\u2019s reggaet\u00f3n hit Despacito<\/a> in 2017. Despite the original version\u2019s enormous popularity, Bieber has often been credited with its mainstream success<\/a>.<\/p>\n