Bra artikel om Reggaeton

Bra artikel om Reggaeton

För alla er anglofiler därute som borde ha lite bättre koll och för er andra, här har ni en väldigt bra artikel om reggaetons historia. Sidan har dessutom bra beskrivningar av en mängd andra karibiska/latinamerikanska/afrikanska musikstilar...check it out!

http://www.afropop.org/

Some people think that reggaetón, that ubiquitous club sound of the new millennium, is just hip-hop rapped in Spanish. While the genre’s multi-platinum superstars have donned the ghetto-fabulous trappings of urban America and its beatsmiths have adopted the techniques of hip-hop production, reggaetón is a distinct style that represents an unprecedented phenomenon in Latin music. It has risen from underground movements in Panama and Puerto Rico to become a pan-Latin music that speaks to urban youth across the Americas, borrowing more from rap and reggae than from salsa and merengue. Indeed, reggaetón has attracted many non-Hispanic listeners - In the US, it has left the insular world of Latin radio and made it to hip-hop and pop stations, broadcasting to an audience that largely can’t understand the Nuyorican Spanglish but can still get down to hits such as Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” It signals that America’s largest minority is proclaiming its place in mainstream youth culture, that New World transnational currents run deeper than ever before.

Reggaetón uses the synths and samples of American-style hip-hop but replaces the steady backbeat with the unmistakable Dem Bow rhythm that defines the genre, named after the 1991 Shabba Ranks song that first featured the drumbeat. Though the song was Jamaican, its syncopated snare drums spoke to Latin aesthetics and became a favorite instrumental for free-style sessions in Puerto Rico and eventually the standard rhythm on Reggaetón tracks. Throw it down on anything from bachata to Brahms and the result is inevitably reggaetón. Lyrics deal mainly with sex and the difficulties of poor urban life, while the associated dance style, perreo is so raunchy that the Puerto Rican government tried to outlaw it.

The story of Reggaetón begins in Panama, where an Afro-Panamanian community descended from Jamaican canal workers brought reggae in the 70s. It became common for Panamanians to record Spanish-language versions of latest hits from for local consumption, a practice that continued into the 80s and 90s as dancehall and ragga replaced older Jamaican styles. Eventually, Panamanian artists were producing original songs, and the little-known genre of Spanish reggae was born. Panamanian tracks spread to  nearby Puerto Rico, just an island hop from , where the dancehall tracks lost the melodic lilt of Jamaican vocal style and were given a hard-edged sound influenced by hip-hop brought via the New York-San Juan cultural superhighway. A decidedly anti-establishment scene of reggae free-style sessions sprouted, known as under, short for underground, always tuned in to the latest Jamaican releases to Hispanicize. The appropriation of the Dem Bow beat was the final step; early Puerto Rican producers such as DJ Playero were suddenly making something disticntly their own: reggaetón.

Within a decade, between 1995-2005, reggaetón miraculously went from a fringe Caribbean sub-culture to a global dance club trend. Despite disapproval from older folks, reggaetón became the music of Puerto Rican youth by the late 90s and soon spread to  the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Central America , overtaking Latin pop and salsa as dominant urban club music wherever it landed. Overseas Latino circuits brought the music to prominence in US cities with strong Hispanic populations. R