My Reggaeton and Hip Hop Archival Collection

Good news: I have donated all the materials I have used for my hip hop and reggaeton research to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in New York City.

I am eager for folks to use all those documents, CDs, DVDs, etc. for their own research. Click here to access the PDF guide to the collection.

For information about hours and location of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies Archives, click here.

Enjoy!

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.

Os circuitos sócio-sônicos do reggaeton

The introductory chapter to our anthology Reggaeton is now available in Portuguese (as well as Spanish). Titled "Os circuitos sócio-sônicos do reggaeton," it is part of the book Nas bordas e fora do mainstream musical: Novas tendências da música independente no início do século XXI edited by Micael Herschmann and just published in Brazil.

It's fascinating to watch our Reggaeton Intro develop a socio-sonic circuitry of its own!

Perreo & Power: Explicit Sexuality in Reggaeton Dance

I've been meaning to keep working on this paper titled "Perreo & Power: Explicit Sexuality in Reggaeton Dance". But I still haven't. And, given all my other commitments, it doesn't look like I'll get back to it any time soon. So I've decided to make it available as a working paper. Hopefully, it will serve as a resource for other folk's work. I'm extremely interested in the topic, so if you or anyone else is tackling the subject, please leave a comment or email me.

Click here to view or download the PDF.


* Image above is a still from the DVD Gran Perretón by Carolina Caycedo.

Is Reggaeton Dead? / ¿Muere el reguetón?

As I mentioned in a 2009 post, folks have been pronouncing reggaeton dead, since before it was even called reggaeton. Here they go again, in today's Nuevo Día newspaper from Puerto Rico.

I've pasted the text below, since these articles tend to get locked away after a few days. What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

* * *

02 Octubre 2011

¿Muere el reguetón?
Expertos de la industria musical analizan la perdurabilidad, el impacto y la transformación del género

Por Marcos Billy Guzmán / Especial El Nuevo Día

Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Tito “El Bambino”, Wisin y Yandel. Sus nombres son sinónimo de reguetón, un género que nació exponiendo la realidad de la calle con letras explícitas para luego entrar a la radio con lenguaje modificado y de ahí internacionalizarse ante las críticas de quienes dudaban de su potencial para trascender generaciones.

Tras poco más de dos décadas de su aparición, la interrogante de su perdurabilidad sigue en el tintero para algunos expertos de la industria musical. Empero, sus intérpretes lo tienen claro: “Somos los líderes. Este género sigue creciendo y estamos número uno”, repite dondequiera que va el dúo Wisin y Yandel, conocido como “Los Vaqueros”.

Aún así, el género que llegó a encumbrarse desplazando al pop en ventas de discos ya no parece tan omnipresente como cinco o seis años atrás. Para Hermán Dávila, vicepresidente de programación de la radioemisora La X, la contestación es simple: “El reguetón no está en la cima ahora mismo”. ¿Su sustituto? “El pop, con los Camila y Ricky Martin de la vida”.

Xavier Acevedo, director de programación de Toca de To’, coincide en que el cambio viene notándose hace año y medio. “Ahora”, comenta, “está bien marcada la música americana y el reguetón clásico no está entrando a las emisoras... Tiene 4 de 10 en términos de popularidad radial”.

Ese desplazamiento no solo es percibido en la radio. Aunque acentuando la crisis que amenaza con extinguir la industria discográfica, Ian Fraticelli, gerente de compra de la Distribuidora Nacional de Discos, informa que “hubo un momento, como hace 8 a 10 años, en que los reguetoneros vendían más que el pop... Pero ya no”.

Como reflejo de lo que se escucha en la radio, Fraticelli dice que las nuevas producciones de Ricky Martin, Shakira, Chayanne y Marc Anthony figuraron por mucho tiempo como las más vendidas.

Ese golpe que ha recibido el reguetón, según él, responde a que “es el género más afectado por la piratería, sobre todo en los pulgueros”.

Más allá de la piratería, Acevedo cree que este declive se debe a que “el reguetón llegó a estar en la cúspide, obtuvo demasiada exposición y se quemó”.

En esa línea, Herman Dávila compara esto al “gran apagón” del merengue, “que estuvo bien fuerte, todo el mundo se puso a trabajarlo y surgieron muchas bandas”. Por eso “el mercado se saturó, empezaron a surgir discos no tan cuidados y la gente se cansó, porque todo se parecía”.

Nace “otro” género

Por dichos factores, Xavier Acevedo observa que los reguetoneros “tuvieron que cambiar su imagen”, una que Hermán Dávila entiende que utilizaron para “buscar alternativas de crecimiento fusionando otros géneros como la bachata y el hip-hop”. De ahí, coinciden, el género se abrió a una evolución que lo transformó en otra cosa.

Uka Green, directora de medios de Universal Music en Puerto Rico, abunda en ese sentido que “ya los artistas no se encajonan en un género ante un mercado tan globalizado”. A juicio suyo, esta fórmula “ha traído mayor calidad y triunfo” al género urbano.

El éxito que tuvieron Don Omar y el portugués Lucenzo con ‘Danza Kuduro’, que por meses se mantuvo en los primeros lugares del “Latin Chart” de Billboard, sustentaría ese punto.

Otro que admite haberse acogido a esta fórmula es el intérprete Tito “El Bambino”, quien advierte que “los artistas que se queden en el reguetón clásico no alcanzarán lo que logramos los que hemos experimentado con otros ritmos”.

El planteamiento de Tito “ El Bambino” abre paso a una nueva interrogante: ¿desaparecerá esa llamada versión “clásica” entre tantas fusiones?

Aún convoca

A pesar de los señalamientos sobre la caída del llamado reguetón clásico, Hermán Dávila aclara que los intérpretes del género “siguen teniendo muy buen poder de convocatoria”. Advierte que no hay fiesta de Justas Interuniversitarias sin ellos.

En eso hace eco Fernan Colón, productor del Festival Playero Los Tubos de Manatí, quien destaca que 25 mil de los 60 mil espectadores que asistieron hace dos años al evento fueron a ver presentaciones de reguetón.

Si lo anterior contrasta con el panorama visto en la radio y las tiendas de discos, la disyuntiva es más evidente a nivel de “la calle”.

“En la calle todavía se escucha un montón”, expresa el cantante Divino. “Y no sólo en los caseríos. Ese ‘dembow’ suena mucho en discotecas, en los carros, en quinceañeros y fiestas patronales... En Suramérica y Centroamérica ni hay que hacer promoción de radio”.

No hay vuelta atrás

Mientras algunos plantean que el reguetón se sostendrá, otros plantean que su futuro está en evolución.

“No morirá porque sigue en la calle y siempre tendrá sus exponentes”, indica Xavier Acevedo que, sin embargo, aclara que como género “no vuelve a pegarse, pues esa etapa ya pasó y hay otras cosas que se están haciendo. Si vuelven al mismo sonido, suena viejo”.

A juicio de los entendidos, la transformación constante del género es clave para que se mantenga vigente.

“Perdurará si sigue evolucionando musicalmente y mezclándose, porque su futuro es hacer discos de distintas bases de reguetón con otros sonidos”, asegura Tito “El Bambino”.

“Al género urbano le falta muchísimo (por lograr) y seguirá evolucionando sin vuelta atrás”, sostiene Tuti Bou, vicepresidenta de Sony Music en Puerto Rico, quien le anticipa muchos años más de existencia al reguetón, sobre todo por el éxito de “artistas en desarrollo”.

La publicista Uka Green coincide: “siempre hay espacio para nuevas figuras”, pero “esas figuras tienen que llegar con propuestas diferentes”.

Dembow Quisqueyano

* Una serie de articulos recientes sobre la fiebre del dembow en Quisqueya publicada en el periodico El Caribe por Jose Nova y Rossy Diaz. [Nota adicional, 6-22-11: El primer enlace, desafortunadamente, ya no funciona. Pero uno de los artículos está disponible en el blog de una de las escritoras, Rossy Díaz.]

* And my dear compi & co-editor Wayne Marshall blogs on the subject in his recent post "Dembow Criollo."

Los circuitos socio-sónicos del reggaetón

¡Por fin! TRANS: Revista Transcultural de Música acaba de publicar el artículo "Los circuitos socio-sónicos del reggaetón" que co-escribí con Wayne Marshall y Deborah Pacini Hernandez. Es la traducción de nuestra introducción a la antología Reggaeton que editamos juntos.

Estamos felices que por fin este artículo está disponible para lectores de habla hispana.

Clips from Rap Sessions

I found a few clips from our Rap Sessions tour of years past!

How does reggaeton fit into a larger discussion of race and hip hop?



On masculinity and hip-hop:



On discussing sexism and patriarchy in the classroom:

My CD release party: 9-10 NYC

My CD is not reggaeton or hip-hop, but it's urban in a roots kind of way. Check it.



My Las 7 salves de La Magdalena / 7 Songs of Praise for The Magdalene CD release party will be September 10, 7pm, at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery (2nd Avenue and 10th St.).

There is no cover charge.

We'll have live music by Raquel Z. Rivera & Ojos de Sofia, feat. Bryan Vargas, Catarina Dos Santos, Desmar Guevara, Juan Gutierrez, Obanilu Ire Allende, Manuela Arciniegas...

It will also feature an art exhibit by Tanya Torres. Our joint CD release and art exhibit is titled Song of The Magdalene. It will be a playful and heartfelt celebration of the myth Tanya & I have named "Our Lady of Lexington".

The music is streaming here: www.ojosdesofia.com

Reggaeton Review in Dancecult Journal

Check the review of Reggaeton (2009), the book I co-edited, in Dancecult: Journal of Eletronic Dance Music. Thanks to Alejandro Madrid for the thorough and glowing review!

Lamentan que reguetón sustituyera a la bomba y la plena en la apertura de los Juegos

Aquí el texto del artículo publicado ayer en www.meta.pr.


Inter News Service
Martes, 20 Julio 2010

El fundador del grupo Tepeu, Enrique Ríos Cortés, lamentó hoy que se sustituyeran los ritmos de bomba y plena por el reguetón en la apertura de los XXI Juegos Centroamericanos y del Caribe Mayagüez 2010.

“¿Dónde quedaron los hermosos y típicos ritmos de bomba y plena -con sus respectivos instrumentos y vestuarios- que tanto representan al pueblo puertorriqueño?”, cuestionó Ríos Cortés, en declaraciones escritas.

Agregó que “la desacertada decisión de poner al reguetón como música representativa creo que fue un acto de falta de respeto a los verdaderos músicos que mantienen la música autóctona con vida en la Isla”.

El fundador de la agrupación Tepeu expresó su tristeza porque Centroamérica y el Caribe no disfrutaran de nuestros bailes típicos, con impresionantes vestuarios y llamativos vejigantes.

Destacó, además, que no culpa a los exponentes del reguetón, sino a los organizadores del evento.

Por otro lado, el artista hizo una observación al Comité Organizador de Mayagüez 2010 por una aparente confusión en los arreglos musicales.

“No sé quién hizo los arreglos de la música cuando desfilaban los países, pero fue una falta de respeto a varios países. En lugar de tocar algo de la música de su país, tocaban repetidamente dos melodías: una de Perú y una de Argentina, que por cierto, esos países no participan de los XXI Juegos Centroamericanos y del Caribe”, criticó Enrique Ríos Cortés.

San Juditas Reggaetónico

My co-editor and compi Wayne, just told me about the mini-documentary titled San Juditas... Power!.



I'm fascinated by this connection between religion, social class and pop/urban culture in Mexico City. Some find the connection disturbing: "He visto a muchos jóvenes en las calles cargando su 'santito' y presumiendo que son muy devotos a este... pero en realidad... ¿Lo serán? He platicado con algunos de este grupo, y lo único que me dicen es que el santito es muy milagroso y que los ayuda. Yo soy ateo, pero en verdad me da coraje es que la gente lucre con este tipo de personas de muy poco criterio, que lo único que hacen con su vida es perrear, drogarse con lo mas corriente, insultar a las mujeres, robar y otras cosas que demuestran que no tienen cultura, su mala educación y sus nulos valores sociales."

The blog I Know Huh? takes a more nuanced approach and is quite perceptive in its observations : "The anti-reggaeton sentiment, I think, is more classist than anything. The reggaetoneros are viewed as thugs and neardowells, when in fact, most are just young kids among the desperate and needy whom San Judas is supposed to protect. Albeit with airbrushed and rhinestone caps."

In the last few years I've developed a taste and curiosity for religious visual imagery. So I can't resist ending on this note:

San Judas Tadeo.


San Yandel Tadeo?

My interview on hiphopmacedonia.com

Check my interview on www.hiphopmacedonia.com in English or Macedonian. I got a kick out of so many things about this interview. Here's a few: 1. The fact that they reached out to me in the first place. 2. The questions they asked and what those questions reveal about the way that African Americans and Latinos are perceived on the other side of the globe. 3. The quote that they picked as the subtitle: "Hip hop is not dead until the last person calling him or herself a hip-hopper is dead" or "Хип Хопот е жив се додека не умре последниот хипхопер".

Reguetón en Ñ

Pulse aquí para leer el artículo sobre reguetón que publicó el pasado viernes 2 de abril la Revista Ñ del periódico argentino Clarín. El artículo cita nuestra antología Reggaeton y se vale de la familiaridad con la "cumbia villera" que tiene el público argentino para explicar los origenes de clase del reguetón.

Liberation Mythologies: Art, Spirit & Justice

What follows is the paper I presented on 3-19 at Duke University's symposium Dislocated Performances: Reimagining Latino Hip-Hop in the 21st Century.

Liberation Mythologies:
Art, Spirit and Justice

Abstract: “Liberation Mythologies” is my working term to explore the intersections between Latino hip-hop (and reggaeton) artistic practice, spiritual belief and grassroots activism. Taking my cue from Robin D.G. Kelley, I focus on the “dreams of freedom” at the root of myth-making. And taking another cue from Joseph Campbell and Robert Segal, I look at myths not as stories or beliefs that are (necessarily) untrue but as tropes that poetically attempt to explain or get us closer to the unexplainable, and most importantly, as tropes that give individuals and communities the strength to keep crafting and pursuing their dreams of freedom. I will focus on one example: the integration into hip-hop and reggaeton of Afro-Caribbean roots music and spiritual practices.


The moment I received the invitation to this symposium and read the description, I was happy for many reasons. The most obvious, of course, is the amazing folks that I get to share the mic with. Another of those reasons is that the invitation presented a great opportunity to talk about my most recent work on what I am tentatively calling “liberation mythologies”.

Until recently, my work on hip-hop and reggaeton had been primarily concerned with exploring the porous boundaries between blackness and latinidad, as well as connecting those porous border zones with social justice activism. Those topics are still of great interest to me, but I have become increasingly engaged in looking at the spiritual dimension of political action—and most specifically in looking at the use of spirit-based myth-making as a component of political action. I focus on Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices like espiritismo, santería, voudoun and palo; but keep in mind that with this idea of “liberation mythologies” I’m trying to develop a way to understand any other spiritual or religious practice that is invested in social justice activism.

I will begin by explaining how I started developing my thoughts around “liberation mythologies” as I was writing not about hip-hop or reggaeton but about Caribbean roots music like Puerto Rican bomba, Dominican palos and Haitian-Dominican rara or gagá. Supposedly, I was taking a breather from focusing on heavily commercialized genres like hip-hop and reggaeton. But, ironically, writing about spirituality, myth-making and activism in Caribbean roots music, I wound up having to talk about hip-hop and reggaeton anyway. Why? Because the dominant sounds in the contemporary social justice movement soundtrack tend to be at opposite ends of the traditional/contemporary music spectrum, particularly for the younger generations of activists. So at rallies, fundraisers, workshops and cultural events organized by folks in this social justice network there tends to be a lot of roots music on the one hand, and hip-hop on the other. Another reason why I couldn’t escape writing about hip-hop and reggaeton, even in this newer work focused on roots music, is all the collaborations and fusions happening, as this next example shows.



It’s a collaboration of the reggaeton/hip-hop group Del Patio with roots music group Ilú Ayé. I don’t know that Del Patio is involved in the social justice movement, but Ilú Ayé definitely is. The song has many references to Dominican religious practices such as the palos music that precedes the recognizably reggaeton-ey part of the song, and also it mentions specific loas or deities of the Afro-Dominican santería pantheon.

About a year ago, as I was writing a paper on Puerto Rican bomba and Dominican palos musicians in New York City, I kept noticing at least three powerful characters or references that kept popping up in the music: maroons or cimarrones who escaped slavery, the so-called kongos of Central Africa who have a reputation for rebelliousness in Afro-Caribbean lore, and references to Haiti and Haitians. All of these are tropes that point to a centuries long history of resistance and liberation struggles in the Caribbean. I was writing about bomba and palos, but some of these same tropes show up in hip-hop and reggaeton as well. One example is Sietenueve’s song “Cimarrón”, which is another good example of the incorporation of roots music into hip-hop since it starts with batá drums:



Here is an excerpt and translation of the lyrics:

Me hice libre por la fuerza / sin el miedo del cañon / como un salvaje en el monte siguiendo a mi corazón / por mi raza por mi sangre por la fe de mi tambor / con una marca en la espalda reflejo de mi color / yo me llamo Libertad, mi apellido es Cimarrón / y es que tengo a mis ancestors dándome direcciones, limpiándome los caminos, aguantando los azotes

I became free by force / without fearing the cannon / wild in the woods, following my heart […] my name is Freedom, my last name is Maroon / my ancestors are giving me directions, clearing the roads for me, putting up with the lash of the whip

This is a great example of how the maroon is invoked as a heroic figure from the past that is connected by ancestry to artists of the present.* Something very similar happens with the tropes of the kongos and Haitians. They symbolize struggle and freedom and are the “ancestors” clearing the path for those fighting for justice in the present.

Sietenueve’s “Cimarrón” track is part of the recent Puerto Rican Freedom Album, a 2 CD compilation that aims to raise funds for the Puerto Rican political prisoners presently in US jails. A great number of the tracks on the Freedom Album are either hip-hop or roots music (bomba, guaguancó, palo, batá) and they provide great examples of these symbols or tropes of liberation that I have referred to. There are three songs in that album that just by looking at the titles one can tell that they are heavily invested in the kongo theme: Alma Moyó’s “Antonio Kongo”, Angel Rodríguez’s “Kongo Bendito” and Ilú Ayé’s “Meta pa Siete Rayos – Tiñosa”.

So as I was looking into the presence of these tropes of the maroon, the kongo and Haiti in roots music and also in hip-hop and reggaeton, I kept thinking about how these tropes are intricately connected, and how they share many basic assumptions and impulses. There was a larger picture that I was trying to understand.

Putting a slight spin on “liberation theology,” I started thinking about “liberation mythology” as a potential guiding concept.** Taking my cue from the work on mythologies of Joseph Campbell (1991) and Robert Segal (2004), I look at myths not as stories or beliefs that are (necessarily) untrue but as tropes that poetically attempt to explain or get us closer to the unexplainable. The myth may or may not be true; my aim is not to determine if it is or if it isn’t true, but to explore the “dreams of freedom” at the root of myth-making. I am interested in these myths as strategic tools deployed by musicians & activists to give individuals and communities the strength to keep crafting and pursuing their dreams of freedom. According to the way I’m developing the concept, what makes “liberation myths” different from just plain “myths” is that their purpose is to describe and understand the world but more importantly to change it—change, in turn, is defined in terms of personal and collective liberation from oppression, injustice, sadness and/or fear. In other words, the goal of this myth-making is redemption—individual and collective. This concept of “liberation myths” is quite similar to Robin D.G. Kelley’s (2002) notion of “freedom dreams” and the black radical imagination but one key distinction is that I focus on spirituality and religiosity in the process of freedom dreaming or myth-making so that the “mythology” part in “liberation mythology” serves a similar purpose as “theology” in “liberation theology.”***

Now, if we were to take literally these claims of collective kongo, maroon or Haitian heritage, we would have to take them to task for being distortions of history. Obviously not all of us have kongo, maroon or Haitian heritage. Furthermore, as Kristina Wirtz (2007) has pointed out, the reconstruction of "roots" in Afro-diasporic music is often closer to a "divination of the past"—more a poetic than a historical interpretation.

Lets take as an example the way a young New York-based Dominican bomba drummer, activist and educator argues that the Haitian “roots” of bomba serve as a bridge between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.

"My spirit called me to bomba, early. I had access to [Dominican] palos and I loved it, but then something happened with bomba where it was a new beginning. I always felt like it was mine and it’s strange cause I’m Dominican. But its like my spirit is like “no, this is a big part of who you are.” So when I started hearing about the Haitian roots [of bomba] I got really excited. I’m like “oh, the point of connection was like three generations ago with my Haitian ancestors and your Haitian ancestors and they’re on both islands!” Lets celebrate that. It’s important to get rooted in those spaces where the cultures overlap, the times overlap, descendancies overlap."

Notice the reference to “ancestors” and “roots”. Notice also the invocation of ancestry as a way to bridge the gap between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans through “our” common Haitian roots—a “myth” with the liberatory political purpose of building a sense of unity among Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Haitians.

Here is where Kelley’s ideas in Freedom Dreams are crucial. Kelley’s recollections of being a “junior Afrocentrist” as an undergraduate, provide much insight into the issues at stake in weaving “liberation mythologies” or, in his words, “freedom dreams” that are invested in looking backward into history to claim something necessary in order to go forward.

"We looked back in search of a better future. We wanted to find a refuge where ‘black people’ exercised power, possessed essential knowledge, educated the West, built monuments, slept under the stars on the banks of the Nile, and never had to worry about the police or poverty or arrogant white people questioning our intelligence. Of course, this meant conveniently ignoring slave labor, class hierarchies, and women’s oppression, and it meant projecting backwards in time a twentieth-century conception of race, but to simply criticize us for myth making or essentialism misses the point of our reading. We dreamed the ancient world as a place of freedom, a picture to imagine what we desired and what was possible." (29)

Kelley’s work shed a lot of light on my own mixed feelings regarding these liberation mythologies. On the one hand, I was (and I am) inspired by their beauty and power. On the other hand, I can’t help but be turned off by the idealization of the past and the essentialized assumptions about who our ancestors are. But through Kelley’s work I have been better able to understand the beauty and potential of liberation mythologies.

I am still wary of their reductiveness and essentialisms, though. But is it possible to celebrate the sacredness and power of these liberation mythologies, without necessarily taking them literally? Can we spread, for example, the myth of the shared Haitian roots of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans without literally believing that we all share Haitian ancestry? I think so.

Ivor Miller's work on "spiritual ethnicity" (2004) explores the poetic/mythical dimension of what is often also an obsessive and literalist "summoning of the past" (Verges 2003). Miller writes:

"Although creolization is often used to describe the creation of something new, implying the loss of ties to an original homeland, in fact African-derived ritual traditions have maintained a centeredness in mythical Africa. That is, in spite of enrichment through cultural contact, many African-derived practices have maintained their conceptual rootedness in African spirituality.[…] African-derived identities in the Americas flourish because of—not in spite of—their origins in mythic history.” (202)

The pull of those beliefs is not just due to the strength of inherited cultural traditions. Oftentimes it is political beliefs and activism that leads people to “reclaim” African-derived spiritual traditions they may not have grown up with or paid much attention to when they were growing up—the case for many of the young musicians I focus on. According to Miller:

"In a context in which African histories and philosophies rarely form part of educational curricula, participating in African-derived religions is a method of maintaining historical counternarratives in which the present generation has direct links to an African past.[…] Since epics of the descendants of Africans have not been included in official histories, many historical narratives are maintained within families and ritual lineages. Conserving cultural inheritance is a form of historical survival.” (Miller 2004, 215)

It is of great importance to acknowledge the spiritual or, to quote Robin D.G. Kelley (2002), the “surreal” elements in these liberation mythologies. Past and present are not altogether separate realms: such a presupposition makes no sense in a context of Afrodiasporic beliefs and practices where the living have just as much impact on our present lives as the dead. The heroes and heroines of the Haitian revolution and the maroons who escaped plantation economies to establish manieles and palenques are not just protagonists of myths. They are believed to be powerful ancestors whose help is indispensable to heal, subvert modern-day injustices and escape modern-day captivity.

So, considering the lofty and powerful impulses holding up these "liberation mythologies", I'm more inclined to explore the "freedom dreams" that feed these mythologies and the liberatory practices inspired by these mythologies rather than stay stuck on arguments regarding literalist vs. poetic interpretations of mythical truth.



* Two more examples of the cimarrón trope: (1) hip-hop/ reggaeton artist La Sista’s song “Anacaona” who rhymes "Aquí está tu cimarrona / versión africana, yo soy tu Anacaona" (2) bomba group Bataklán’s “El cimarrón”: "Ahora sí, trabaja no / A fuerza yo no trabaja / Yo me va de cimarrón." Bataklán has a strong hip-hop/reggaeton connection, most notably through their collaborations with Tego Calderón and the fact that one of Bataklán’s lead singers is reggaeton artist Abrante.

** Though both “liberation theology” and “liberation mythology” are concerned with the connections between spirituality and social justice, the history of “liberation theology” as a concept is so firmly grounded in Christian traditions that (though in theory what I’m talking about is a type of liberation theology) in practice for me to use “liberation theology” would create more confusion.

*** Kelley has one chapter called “Keeping It Surreal” that deals with the surreal or mythological aspects of freedom dreaming, but his book doesn’t just focus on the surreal.

Reimagining Latino Hip-Hop in the 21st Century

Tomorrow I'll be speaking at the Dislocated Performances: Reimagining Latino Hip-Hop in the 21st Century symposium at Duke University organized by the Program for Latino/a Studies in the Global South. I'm looking forward to listening and dialoging with my amazing co-presenters!

Dislocated Performances:
Reimagining Latino Hip-Hop in the 21st Century
March 19, 2010
East Campus Union, Upper East Side
Duke University
9:30 am-5:00 pm

Free and open to the public.

How does Hip Hop speak to the day-to-day existence of Latinos in the present age of multiculturalism, globalization, and Obama? How might we read Hip Hop in different ways now, examining how it also dislocates and recalibrates Latinidad? As older and newer generations of U.S. Latinos together redefine the stakes of political action, they elucidate the margins, borders, and crossroads that U.S. Latinos inhabit. These "interstitial spaces" leave room for broader notions of Latino identities, incorporating those “others” who are also always dislocated and "out of place." This one-day workshop will engage the work of activists and prominent scholars in performance and cultural studies, examining the performances of race, gender, sexuality and Latinidad within Hip Hop and the political possibilities of "dislocation."

Featuring:

Rosa Clemente, 2008 Green Party VP Candidate, Hip Hop activist, journalist and radio host (WBAI 99.5 Fm, NYC)
Pancho McFarland, author of Chicano Rap: gender and violence in the postindustrial barrio (2008)
Jose Munoz, author of Disidentifications (1999) and Cruising Utopia: the then and there of queer futurity (2009)
Mark Anthony Neal, co-editor of That’s the joint! The Hip Hop Studies Reader (2004) and author of New Black Man (2005)
Raquel Z. Rivera, author of New York Ricans from the Hip hop zone (2003) and co-editor of Reggaeton (2009)
Alexandra T. Vazquez, author of the forthcoming Instrumental Migrations: The Critical Turns of Cuban Music, and co-editor of a forthcoming anthology on La Lupe (Duke University Press).

Program:

9:30 am Continental breakfast

10:15-12:00 pm
Panel I: Over Turn-ing Tables: Sex, Gender,and Trespassing in Latino Hip-Hop
Pancho McFarland: “Quien es Mas Macho? Quien es Mas Mexicano?:Chicano Identities in Rap”
Jose Munoz: “Browness, Aesthetics and Contagion”
Alexandra T. Vazquez: “We Don’t Live for Latino Studies, (Latino Studies) It Lives For Us”

12:00-1:15 pm Music and Lunch

1:15-3:00 pm
Panel II: Los suenos de los fantasmas que marchan: The Liberation Dreams of an Un-seen Army
Rosa Clemente: “when a black puerto rican woman ran for vice president and nobody knew her name"
Mark Anthony Neal: “History of Hip-Hop Before Hip-Hop”
Raquel Z. Rivera: “Liberation Mythologies: Art, Spirit and Justice”

3:00 pm-5:00 pm Music and Reception featuring DJ Miraculous

Location: Duke University, East Campus Union, Upper East Side. (See map: http://maps.oit.duke.edu/building/136. Building is labeled in Red as “Marketplace.”)

Parking reserved on East Campus quad for conference attendees. Turn onto Campus Drive from Main Street and follow traffic to move straight forward, past the bus stop, to the long, oval grassy area in between buildings. Look for signs and a parking attendant.

Presented by the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South, Duke University

Reggaeton & Its "Radical Feminist Queer Sex Positive Potential"

How did I miss this provocative post from 9/09 at the Post Pomo Nuyorican Homo blog?!

Marisol LeBrón offers a short and insightful take on La Performera's video "Tortillera". The back and forth comments at the end between Marisol and "n" are equally insightful.

Here's La Performera's video, but make sure you check Marisol's blog post on it.

New Muslim Cool: NYU Screening/Discussion

Yet another angle on Puerto Rican / Latino experiences in hip hop! I was only able to catch part of the documentary when it aired on PBS, so I'm definitely looking forward to more at this event.

New Muslim Cool: Screening/Panel Discussion
Friday, February 5th, 4:00 pm- 7:00 pm, The King Juan Carlos Center Screening Room, 53 Washington Square South



New Muslim Cool follows the story of Hamza Perez, a Puerto-Rican American young Muslim hip-hop artist confronting the realities of the post-9/11 world. Followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker, Hamza Pérez, Zaheer Ali (Columbia U), and artist Popmaster Fabel. Moderated by Imam Khalid Latif (NYU Islamic Center). This event is sponsored by: Center for Media, Culture and History, Center for Religion and Media, The Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, The Center for Spiritual Life, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Kevorkian Center, NYU’s Islamic Center, Department of Social & Cultural Analysis/Program in Latino Studies.

Reggaeton's 'Hurban Renewal'

Here's yet another example of why I'm a fan of ethnomusicologist/blogger/DJ (plus my dear compi and co-editor) Wayne Marshall. Check his most recent blog post titled "Hurban Renewal" where he again focuses on reggaeton: it's qué fue, qué es and qué será.

El reggaetón ya está en la academia pero [...]

Me complazco en compartir un artículo reciente sobre nuestro libro Reggaeton. Lo escribió Eduardo Corrales para www.iblnews.com. Corrales es de los pocos periodistas que se ha tomado la molestia de leer el libro y escuchar mis planteamientos con detenimiento. ¡Gracias Eduardo!

Raquel Z. Rivera: El reggaetón ya está en la academia pero todavia demanda una mayor exploración
26/12/2009 - 17:42
EDUARDO CORRALES, IBLNEWS

Para leer el artículo completo, haga click aquí.