More Than Just Party Music: New Book ‘Remixing Reggaetón’ Mines the Complicated Racial Politics of the Genre |
Remezcla
2015-10-21
Walter Thompson-Hernández
Los Angeles, California
For centuries, the complexities of racism in Latin America have been overshadowed by the false perception that high rates of racial mixture have created a racially democratic Latin American society. In her new book, Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, scholar Petra Rivera-Rideau challenges this idea through the prism of a genre of urban music that gained momentum in impoverished neighborhoods on the island and ultimately became a global pop phenomenon.Read the entire article here.
Positing that reggaetón challenges the racial democracy myth, Remixing Reggaetón focuses on leading Puerto Rican artists like Tego Calderon and Ivy Queen, who are shifting traditional views on gender, sexuality, and race through provocative, unapologetic performances. Using a historical and contemporary analysis, Rivera-Rideau situates the music against the backdrop of Puerto Rico’s legacy of anti-black racism, looking at how reggaetón both jump-starts the party and raises critical awareness.
We caught up with Rivera-Rideau to learn more about the motivations for her project, and how a sound popping off in the club is providing us with a language to talk about Afro-Latinidad…
Read the entire interview here.
Tags: music, Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, Petra Rivera-Rideau, Puerto Rico, reggaetón, Remezcla, Walter Thompson-Hernandez