VivirLatino

I’m not a huge fan of reggaeton. Alot of it sounds the same to me after awhile, alot of it is sexist and I am holding a grudge against the genre because local New York City radio station 105.9 FM , which occasionally played rock en espanish, became la Kalle, an all reggaeton format. Maybe I’m just getting old. I feel like I’m turning into my padres who would shake their heads back in the early days of hip hop and say, “y eso es musica??”

Pero I think that recent online campaigns that have been popping up on the web calling for a ban on reggaeton are taking it a little too far. It disturbs me that Latinos are passing judgment and making huge generalizations of what a reggaeton fan is like. Isn’t that what we call racism when gringos say such things about us? Just to counter with one example, did you know that there are gyms in the New York City area that are using reggaeton in their dance aerobics classes and that the gringas in the gym love moving to la Gasolina as much as the Latinas? Or how about the other day when I heard a group of preschoolers of mixed ethnicities singing reggaeton songs word for word. Are they all uneducated, vulgar, and without a future?

Every generation has its voice and often that voice is expressed through music. Just like hip hop was born from the lower classes of Latinos and African Americans as a way to tell their story from their point of view, reggaeton is serving the same purpose for Latino youth. Reggaeton is like Spanglish, blending histories, cultures and languages. It is something that to many Latinos feels uniquely their own. Maybe the genre could use cutting down talking about chicas with tremendo culo but like any cultural phenomenon, reggaeton is a reflection of the good, the bad and the ugly. Turning our back on a form of expression is tantamount to turning our backs on the youth that listen to it.