Reggaeton's success in the international music scene has incited heated debates about the genre's genealogy. The dominant framework for discussing reggaeton's origin often relies on and reifies nation-based claims to the genre, overlooking how reggaeton resists being fixed to any single locale. In this paper I discuss the emergence of the reggaeton subgenre bhangraton (a mix of bhangra pop and reggaeton) and point to some of the ways that it challenged nationalist claims to reggaeton. Reggaetonera and Hindi-vocalist Deevani, in particular, complicates claims about racial, ethnic, and sonic purity that circulate within reggaeton by highlighting how race, gender, and affinity are performed and felt and by calling attention to the genre's multiple circuits outside the nation.

This article deconstructs the wave of moral panic caused by reggaeton in Cuba to suggest that behind issues of “national” and “legitimate” culture lays a social but mainly political rejection to the marginal subject that this music brings to the fore. Reggaeton's embracing of money is a painful reminder to the authorities of the dreadful consequences of the dual economy and of the increasing gap between emergent values rooted in everyday life experience and socialist ideology. The text also discusses ethnographic work at performance venues that shows how this genre has been particularly successful in articulating not only the values and subjectivities of an underclass, but also the practices of symbolic distinction of more upward class sectors. In a different direction, the article exposes how reggaeton further participates in change, through discourses that voice the contradictory responses of male identity to the impact of sex tourism and the role of money in romantic relationships. Este artículo analiza la ola de pánico moral suscitada por el reggaeton hecho en Cuba y sugiere que tras discusiones sobre “cultura nacional” y “legitimidad” cultural se esconde el rechazo social y político al sujeto marginal que este género saca a la luz pública. La celebración del dinero en el reggaeton cubano es un amargo recordatorio para las autoridades de las terribles consecuencias de la economía de doble moneda y del creciente divorcio entre valores emergentes anclados en la vida cotidiana y la ideología socialista. El artículo expone cómo el reggaeton también participa de la interpretación del cambio social en Cuba, al proveer de discursos que permiten negociar los riesgos que el creciente rol del dinero en las relaciones de pareja y el turismo sexual suponen para la identidad masculina. También se discute en el texto trabajo etnográfico realizado durante varios conciertos de reggaeton y que indican que este género ha sido exitoso no solo en la articulación de valores y subjetividades ligadas a una underclass cubana, sino también como escenario de prácticas de distinción simbólica de sectores sociales más favorecidos. Keywords reggaeton, Cuban music, moral panic, underclass, symbolic distinction, hypersexuality, reggaetón, música cubana, pánico moral, clase baja, distinción simbólica, hipersexualidad

Using a mixed-methods approach, I aspire to trace the legitimation process of reggaeton. In this research, I examine market information regimes to understand the trajectory of reggaeton from 2005 to 2019. Billboard music charts, and press coverage suggest reggaeton did not follow an exponential upward trend. Data sources indicate high numbers between 2005 and 2008, before dropping, and remaining low until 2014. Following this descent, reggaeton’s presence in the USA mainstream music market has not stopped ascending until the end of 2019, indicating an unprecedentedly high level of legitimacy and popularity. In the qualitative analysis I investigate discourses of the reggaeton scene in relation to the Latin Grammy Awards. As suggested in the literature, reward systems are important indicators of legitimation. However, reggaeton has been nearly absent in the major categories of the Latin Grammys, since their inception in 2000. I examine the longstanding relationship between the Latin Academy and reggaeton, by focusing on the claims made by the reggaeton industry for the 20th Annual Latin Grammy Awards, on November 2019. Results suggest that 1) class-based discrimination is a main factor in the Latin Academy’s lack of recognition of reggaeton as an art form, 2) two levels of racism are at play in the social perception of reggaeton, namely within the Latinx community, and from the outside, 3) the reggaeton industry is challenging the relevance, influence and authority of the Latin Grammys, and questions are raised towards its structure and ability to vote.

From its origins in Jamaica, a small island in the Caribbean, reggae now commands a global presence. A substantial body of academic literature on the multilayered genre has been produced, with many scholars studying this phenomenon from a transcultural perspective, deploying a wide range of inter/disciplinary methodologies. This special issue of Interactions on ‘Reggae Studies in a global context’ documents the transformations of the music as it travels beyond the Caribbean to distant cultures and is reinvented through contact with other musical traditions. Itself a hybrid music, reggae privileges the transmutations that are engendered by cross-cultural interaction.

This article discusses various issues surrounding the presence of Jamaican popular music in Mexico and focuses on issues of great importance as the arrival, development, adoption and adaptation of these musical practices that arise in specific times or time periods; in different levels of locality that are related to each other, at the same time related to the global; and that they express themselves by reinterpreting these genres in their own ways. Each period has characteristics that distinguish it and at the same time coexist today in a same musical scene that involves several smaller scenes, as much regional as stylistic, in which continue to arise new expressions of reggae in Mexico.

Reggaeton can be seen as an example of postmodern, postcolonial musical expression in Latin America and the Hispanic community in the USA. This paper offers a critical analysis of Residente Calle Trece's song 'Pa'l Norte' (Off to the North), and its correspondent music video, in order to show how this identity and linguistic cohesion for the Latin American urban youth is achieved through a pastiche of linguistic choices, sound and visuals, as well as poetic and religious intertextual imagery to be unified only as it diverges from an uneasy tension with the American Other. The paper will focus in particular on the representation of migration and migrant workers, and particularly the song's equal treatment of legal and illegal Latin American migrants, as well as of tropes such as class, religion and gender as they relate to the often contentious inter-/cross-cultural communication between Latin America and the global North. The analysis will be realised through the compilation of a multimodal corpus examined through Transana 2.52 (WCER 2005-2012), and combining it with critical discourse analytical approaches, especially following Van Djik (2008), Fairclough (2003), Wodak (2004) and Baker (2006)."

That Caribbean music forms and their sonic influences are steeped in a vibrant culture of social awareness and ethereal consciousness is incontestable. Roots reggae’s protest appeal, rhythmic syncopations, and deeply religious impulses attest to a rich, aware and reactive tradition forged from post-slavery legacies to engage the rotary realities of mid–late 20th century West Indies. Contemporary Caribbean reggae follows in this tradition. With a very deep root in the religious beliefs of the people, Reggae music developed as the medium for the masses to cope with the social, economic and political realities of the day in Jamaica and many other Caribbean communities. Consequently, the Reggae music has proven to be relevant as long as there is suffering and injustices among the masses, this is not to say Reggae music does not reflect some other aspects of life. The emphasis in this paper is to trace the history and development of Reggae, especially its connection to the Rastafari life...

In my paper I will explore the reception of reggaeton and Caribbean music in Spain during the XXIst century. This reception has suffered a dramatic turn in the last decade. From its origins in the late nineties in Puerto Rico, reggaeton quickly expanded overseas and became widely popular on the peninsular context. Famous Puerto Ricans reggaeton stars as Daddy Yankee or Don Omar became familiar for the general audience and the rhythms of this particular genre of Caribbean music was incorporated into the Spanish sound. This integration of reggaeton into Spanish music became twofold, showing the conflictual relation that the contemporary Spanish national identity has regarding its history of colonization in America: while on the one side reggaeton seemed to appeal to the Hispanic or latino essence of the country making Spanish people embrace reggaeton as something owned and distinctive of Spain´s national character; reggaeton on the other side was considered to be as a degrading and cheap style of music related with low forms of culture due to its latino origins. This way, although reggaeton was the most common sound in most radios and night clubs during the decade of the 2000s, it was pretty uncommon to see a Spanish artist singing reggaeton or defining his music as close to reggaeton even if there was a clear influence. In the last years, however, the contradictive relation of Spanish culture with reggaeton has suffered a critical change thanks to the appearance of young Spanish artist who have considered a different approach in their relation with latino music. Young rappers as Ms Nina, Kaydy Cain or C. Tangana have openly defined their music as latina coining the term neoperreo, which alludes to a revival of old school reggaeton in the Spanish music. On my paper I will try to analyze the political aesthetics of these new artists in relation with the politics of identity in Spain. My analysis of this new musical phenomenon will show the appearance of a new identity between Spanish millennials which emerges in the context of the neoliberal crisis of the Spanish state and seeks to negotiate new ways of relating with Latinoamerica.