Unless you have recently travelled through Central or South America, or ventured out of the tourist enclaves on a Spanish holiday, it’s more than likely that you’ll only have come into contact with reggaeton through Daddy Yankee’s track Gasolina, a top ten hit in the UK this summer. And even then you probably didn’t understand quite why some guy appeared to be singing about how his girl liked petrol (‘A ella le gusta la gasolina….’).
Here, in typical reggaeton style, he is in fact talking about the party spirit, good times, looking smooth and getting jiggy with the laydeez. Reggaeton is probably most accurately described as a Spanish language mixture of dancehall and hip-hop.
The rapidly-growing international scene began in the barrios of Puerto Rico in the early 1990s, and gradually spread throughout the Caribbean and South America before exploding in the USA, where at last the more than 20 million Hispanic youngsters • half of the Hispanic population of America is aged under twenty seven • living in the States now have a sound with which they can identify.
Reggaeton speaks to them in their own language about urban crime, partying, and sex and is certainly far more representative of youth culture than salsa or merengue. Reggaeton and American hip-hop have come to mutually influence each other, with many hip-hop producers choosing to sample reggaeton beats and turning out ‘Spanglish’ versions of their songs. The dancehall connection remains strong too, with Daddy Yankee collaborating on Sean Paul’s latest album The Trinity.
The links are linguistic as well as musical: hispanicised versions of hip-hop terms, such as blin blin (the English ‘g’ sound being notoriously difficult for native Spanish speakers) and frontear abound. So many new expressions have been coined by those heavily involved in the Puerto Rican scene that the first reggaeton compilation released in Spain featured a diccionario de reggaeton explaining terms such as yales (women) and estar suelto como gabete (to be up for anything).
Although the popularity of reggaeton is spreading throughout Europe via the music of artists such as Daddy Yankee, Héctor ‘El Bambino’ and Don Omar, it remains to be seen whether a foreign language music genre can ever really take root in Britain.
However, the times are definitely changing in America as Spanish language music gains fans: this summer Shakira and Alejandro Sanz’s massive hit La tortura was the first ever Spanish song to be performed at the MTV VMAs, and it is no longer unusual to hear reggaeton tracks at R ‘n’ B or dancehall nights in the UK.
But whether or not you will soon find yourself perreando (dancing reggaeton • a style which doesn’t take its name from the Spanish for ‘dog’ for nothing) to a Nicky Jam track with your corillo (posse) on a Friday night, reggaeton is going to have one hell of a meaning for the millions of Hispanic youngtsers worldwide for years to come.
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