Reggaeton needed a racial reckoning, and Afro-Latinos are leading it
WHEN artists across the music industry began speaking out against racial injustice following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, “King of Reggaeton” Daddy Yankee and Calle 13 rapper Residente were among them. But many of reggaeton’s biggest stars stayed conspicuously silent.
There was nothing from Bad Bunny, the charismatic Puerto Rican rapper and outspoken LGBTQ ally who was a visible ( and audible) figure in the protests that led to the resignation of Puerto Rico’s governor.
Fans called out others for tonedeaf posts: Colombian breakout Karol G tweeted a photo of a dog with black and white spots, tweeting in Spanish that it was “the perfect example” of how beautiful white and black looks together. J Balvin included the Black Lives Matter hashtag alongside a video of himself dancing with a Black woman.
Those messages highlighted the growing dissonance between reggaeton’s origins in poor, marginalized communities in Puerto Rico and Panama and the genre’s contemporary and increasingly global image. Reggaeton and its offshoots - including Latin trap - grew out of Black music genres including reggae, dancehall and rap. Reggaeton is inherently Black and inherently political: poverty, racism, police violence and the genre’s own criminalization were persistent themes in the genre’s early days, anchored by AfroLatino pioneers including Tego
Calderón, Ivy Queen and reggae en Español legend El General.
The clumsy platitudes from some of reggaeton’s charttopping stars failed to honour that legacy and overlooked the systemic racism experienced by Afro-Latinos. And it wasn’t just fans who took note of the erasure: Gloria ‘ Goyo’ Martinez, lead singer of the Afro-Colombian hip-hop trio ChocQuibTown, shared an emotional open letter via Billboard, lamenting some of the uninformed statements she had seen on social media.
“(Saying) that we are all equal negates racism and discrimination,” Goyo wrote in Spanish. “I read superficial messages that allow people to keep saying something that is not true.” Her letter also referenced Anderson Arboleda, a 24-year-old Afro-Colombian man who died in May after a Colombian police officer allegedly struck him on the head with a baton.
The discourse reflected issues that extend beyond the music industry: namely racial politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the notion of a national, multiracial identity – mestizaje – has long been emphasized over individual race.
Fans and critics have for years urged reggaeton, now overwhelmingly dominated by White or light-skinned Latinos, to acknowledge and honour its Black roots. The backlash to the reggaeton community’s uneven response amid a heightened movement around racial justice brought that desire into renewed focus. It marks a pivotal moment for the once-underground genre, which has become a force in contemporary pop music.
Amid the scrutiny in early June, J Balvin and Karol G apologised for their posts and pledged to educate themselves. Bad Bunny emerged from a social media hiatus to share a “lyrical statement” with Time Magazine and later commissioned “Black Lives Matter” to be painted on murals across Puerto Rico. Reflecting on the criticism in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, the rapper admitted he had only recently begun to grasp the disparities that Afro-Latinos – including icons like Calderón – have faced in the music industry.
That’s largely because the industry is structured in a way that allows White artists to thrive, says Katelina Eccleston, a reggaeton scholar who explores the genre’s history on her website, Reggaeton con la Gata. — The Washington Post