Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico

by Petra R. Rivera-Rideau

Puerto Rico is often depicted as a "racial democracy" in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing Reggaetón , Petra R. Rivera-Rideau shows how reggaetón musicians critique racial democracy's privileging of whiteness and concealment of racism by expressing identities that center blackness and African diasporic belonging. Stars such as Tego Calderón criticize the Puerto Rican mainstream's tendency to praise black culture but neglecting and marginalizing the island's black population, while Ivy Queen, the genre's most visible woman, disrupts the associations between whiteness and respectability that support official discourses of racial democracy. From censorship campaigns on the island that sought to devalue reggaetón, to its subsequent mass marketing to U.S. Latino listeners, Rivera-Rideau traces reggaetón's origins and its transformation from the music of San Juan's slums into a global pop phenomenon. Reggaetón, she demonstrates, provides a language to speak about the black presence in Puerto Rico and a way to build links between the island and the African diaspora.

 

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 2015

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I love reggaeton, but it's not without its problematic gender/sexuality and cultural/racial aspects. This book satisfied the academic in me by analyzing the successes and limitations of reggaeton through the connection to Afro-Puerto Rican politics on the island and the intersection with African American issues in NYC. I now understand the artists themselves (particularly Tego Calderon and Ivy Queen) and the musical context better and can understand and deconstruct the musical history and still enjoy reggaeton.

[Mills College Library]

781.646 R6217 2015