Wednesday, December 14, 2011

On 'Sonic Affinities and Reggaeton Nationalism'

Marisol LeBrón's essay "'Con un Flow Natural': Sonic Affinities and Reggaeton Nationalism" was just published in the latest issue of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. I saw her present an earlier version at EMP and she is definitely expanding Reggaeton Studies into exciting and critical directions!

Here's the article's abstract:

Reggaeton's success in the international music scene has incited heated debates about the genre's genealogy. The dominant framework for discussing reggaeton's origin often relies on and reifies nation-based claims to the genre, overlooking how reggaeton resists being fixed to any single locale. In this paper I discuss the emergence of the reggaeton subgenre bhangraton (a mix of bhangra pop and reggaeton) and point to some of the ways that it challenged nationalist claims to reggaeton. Reggaetonera and Hindi-vocalist Deevani [pictured below], in particular, complicates claims about racial, ethnic, and sonic purity that circulate within reggaeton by highlighting how race, gender, and affinity are performed and felt and by calling attention to the genre's multiple circuits outside the nation.

7 comments:

seguidorleal said...

how come you havent written anything in your blog lately :(
the intellectual front has been awfully quite on reggaeton,
the same goes for wayne :(

Raquel Z. Rivera said...

Thank you, seguidorleal! Your comment warms my heart. I have been focused on other projects and, I suspect, so has Wayne.

Do you write about reggaeton? I might not be writing about it, but I'm always eager to read!

Raquel Z. Rivera said...

Oh, one more thing, seguidorleal: thanks for reminding me to post about my archival collection being available at the Center for PR Studies in NYC. Check my latest blog post. Please spread the word.

seguidorleal said...

thank you so much for responding,
i would love to right about it, but unfortunately i have no academic credentials. what should i do?

Raquel Z. Rivera said...

Academic credentials are much less importamt than just doing insightful writing from whatever perspective. You might just want to start a blog. There is not a lot of insightful stuff being written on the topic, so it won't be difficult at all to get people interested. Let me know if you do get something going.

Seguidorleal said...

Thank you so much for being inspiring, i did write a piece and i would love to read your input on it! thank you!

heres what ive wrote
http://www.scribd.com/doc/104654585/Que-es-el-Reggaeton

its also heres on my blog

http://reggaetonmireligion.tumblr.com/

Raquel Z. Rivera said...

Thanks for letting me know! I'll check your blog.