The track is the Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart’s longest-running number one.Īs American Studies scholar Petra Rivera-Rideau has argued, Bailando allowed Enrique Iglesias to reinvent himself as a hip Latin urban singer by relying on Afro-Latino cultural markers - in this case, reggaeton - while simultaneously embodying “Latino whiteness.” One of the most famous examples of this in Latin music is Enrique Iglesias’s collaboration with Cuban duo Gente de Zona and singer/producer Descemer Bueno in the 2014 remix of Bailando (Dancing). This so-called ”Despacito effect“ echoes broader patterns of appropriation and consumption of Caribbean music genres by Euro-American markets - and the resulting exclusion and marginalisation of their founding figures. Despite the original version’s enormous popularity, Bieber has often been credited with its mainstream success.

But as the global popularity of the music has risen, reggaeton has become increasingly “white-washed.”Īn obvious example of this was when Canadian artist Justin Bieber featured in a remix of Puerto Rican artists’ Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s reggaeton hit Despacito (Slowly) in 2017. In the 1990s in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, reggaeton became a vehicle for Black resistance against strict racial hierarchies, oppressive social structures and police brutality. Influenced by and built upon styles as diverse as dancehall, hip-hop, merengue, reggae and rap, reggaeton’s roots are in the African rhythms that were carried over during the colonisation of the Americas.

Reggaeton is an Afro-Caribbean music genre with a complex history of musical encounters between Panama, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and New York. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, there’s been a slew of popular songs by white and European Spanish artists that borrow heavily from a Latin and Caribbean music while erasing its black roots. But the recent comparison by academics of Rosalia’s rise to fame with the “evolution of reggaeton from its Afro-Caribbean roots to a genre with global cachet” speaks to the silencing of the music’s rich socio-cultural history. Rosalia rose to mainstream visibility in 2018 when her studio album El Mal Querer (The Bad Loving) landed in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

SPANISH singer Rosalia’s new album, Motomami, has received a lot of media attention for its melding of “every sound at her disposal.” Grounded in her flamenco background, the album sways from pop to jazz, is inflected with hip-hop and reggaeton beats and even features elements of bachata and salsa.

Bailando song salsa