In the words of Daddy Yankee,
Reggaeton is street,
reggaeton is sex,
reggaeton is the struggle.
And reggaeton is everywhere.
Most of the names that are associated with reggaeton are male.
Think J. Balvin, Daddy Yankee, Gente de Zona, Zion y Lennox, Bad Bunny.
I think that women have been pretty underrepresented in reggaeton.
I think it's also important to understand that reggaeton does not operate in a vacuum.
But women – like Ivy Queen, Lisa M., Glory, DJ Bembona, DJ Riobamba, Tomasa del Real –
have been a part of the scene and are among those trying to change it, and its image.
And it's always been a boys’ club, and it still is. But I feel like, with that one woman that’s breaking through,
to pull in other women to be like, this could be – we can all be queens, we can all share that space.
Hey guys, it’s Sana, and this week we’re gonna talk a bit
about what it means to be a woman in the reggaeton scene and how that’s changing.
In a recent episode, we looked at the roots of reggaeton – talking to pioneers, scholars and innovators
about how one of the most popular music genres has evolved over the last 35 years.
Reggaeton went from being a musical expression from the caseríos of Puerto Rico,
with Jamaican and Panamanian roots, to now having its base rhythm, known as dembow,
being used in songs that have blown up on the charts.
But despite its success, reggaeton has a reputation for being really macho and hypersexualizing women.
Women are usually presented in music videos and on album covers as scantily clad models, often faceless.
When they’re singing, they’re usually voices in the background exclaiming sexualized phrases like “ay papi”
or offering sexualized hooks for the songs, like Glory in Don Omar’s classic hit “Dale Don Dale”:
There are a lot of songs and certainly a lot of videos, you know, portraying
women essentially as sex objects for the stars of the genre.
That’s music historian Wayne Marshall, and
he says that the hypersexualization of women isn’t just a problem in reggaeton.
Now, that's not terribly exceptional in the world of popular music. So without excusing it, I will just point out
that those same depictions can be found in rap videos and rock videos and salsa videos
and Latin pop videos and just, you know, you name it.
While Marshall’s right that the hypersexualization of women in reggaeton isn’t unique to the genre,
reggaeton has been targeted.
In the ’90s and early 2000s, the Puerto Rican government targeted reggaeton. And in 2002,
it led an anti-pornography campaign that focused largely on reggaeton music videos.
In addition to Puerto Rico being a pretty religious society, DJ Riobamba points out that it’s hard to ignore
the role that race and class have played in condemning reggaeton as obscene or pornographic music.
I think that racism gets coded as classism in Latin America and in Latin diaspora communities, and so
when I've heard reggaeton be stigmatized in the past, it’s like, oh no, that's like "hood music,"
or that’s like low class or whatever. And it's like, c’mon, like what are we really getting at here?
And the roots of reggaeton are in black communities.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems in reggaeton’s depictions of women,
as Petra Rideau-Rivera, who focuses on race and pop culture, points out.
I think, at the same time that some artists or some songs might be contesting racism,
they can also reproduce the objectification of women.
We have to acknowledge the kind of positive aspects of the music, the ways that it has provided a space
to talk about some forms of inequality, but also the ways that it has reproduced other forms of inequality.
But those depictions shouldn’t erase the role of women in reggaeton’s history and evolution.
Recently, now there's been a whole movement of feminine energy that's coming in, too.
And it's always been around, we've had people like beyond Ivy Queen that's been legends, that's been killing the game.
Take, for example, women like La Atrevida, Ivy Queen, Lisa M., Glory, Jenny La Sexy Voz.
La Atrevida was a Panamanian reggae-en-Español artist, known also as “Rude Girl,”
considered a pioneer for women in the sound that would later develop as reggaeton.
Both Glory and Jenny La Sexy Voz, while reggaeton artists in their own right,
provided the vocals for some of the most well-known reggaeton hooks.
Despite that, they both not only had a difficult time breaking into the mainstream,
but sometimes didn’t even get credit for their work.
Then there’s Lisa M., who has been referred to as “La Pionera,” or the Pioneer,
for her role in developing and raising the platform Latin rap.
She’s considered one of the first female Latin rappers.
Then there’s the only reggaeton artist to reach the success of her male counterparts,
in the early 2000s: Ivy Queen.
Ivy Queen joined Puerto Rican reggaeton collective the Noise in 1995
and quickly became a force to be reckoned with.
She went on to to have a successful solo career,
known for turning the machismo reggaeton was known for on its head.
She's a very talented artist who has had a very long career that has
spanned almost the entire history of reggaeton. And I think a lot of that has to do with her talent as a rapper
and her ability to continuously create this innovative musical style.
And in a May 2018 interview with Remezcla, Ivy Queen characterized her legacy as
“talking about empowerment” when reggaeton was talking about women and their butts.
And it was her 2003 hit “Quiero Bailar” that became an empowerment anthem for talking about sexual consent.
In fact, the entire basis of the song is about a guy expecting sex from a woman after a night of dancing
– and how that’s just not how it works, buddy.
That song would go on to become an integral part of the mainstreaming of reggaeton in the early 2000s.
But both DJ Riobama and DJ Bembona, who are New York-based Latinx DJs
and the first to play reggaeton in New York’s renowned Boiler Room club,
point out how traditionally only one woman’s been allowed a space in the mainstream reggaeton scene,
others just relegated to hooks.
Ivy Queen, right? Queen is singular. Because there was one woman who was allowed to have that place.
You know? Or like, there were the hooks on the tracks with like Glory or Jenny La Sexy Voz, where like you hear
a little snippet. But it was always like a really marginalized place.
But this is changing with more women coming into the reggaeton scene.
An example of a woman making waves recently – and controversially
– is Chilean neo-perreo artist Tomasa del Real.
Tomasa del Real is a tattoo-artist-turned-reggaeton-performer, known for her sexually graphic lyrics
And because of her centering of women’s sexuality in her music,
she’s been heralded as taking reggaeton into its next phase – one led by women.
The sexual nature of the music and like the way that women are talked about. Like, I play those tracks
because I'm going to stand in front of it and be like I'm not supposed to be here,
I'm not supposed to take up this space, but like I'm going to reclaim that space, in the club,
in a way that this was never intended to be.
While there’s still a lot of debate on exactly what sexual agency and empowerment looks like
in the reggaeton scene, Marshall points out that it’s important to treat the genre like any other genre.
Reggaeton deserves as much of a chance – and as much a sort of sense of scrutiny
and kind of getting a sense of what you like there and what you don't – as any.
So with reggaeton back in the mainstream, the genre is ripe for having its direction changed
– especially by women.