Each word has a long history, but it is rare that we know it: they are usually so old that no one really knows how they started. The few that escape that rule are called "neologisms": a new word, one that someone formed so recently that we could see, know. The word reggaeton, without going any further.
In these years most of the new words are of English origin. Reggaeton is, gringo with a Greek footprint. It was coined and cradled, they say, by a singer, Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez (a) Daddy Yankee —the nickname is a poem— and a "diyei" —another neologism—, Pedro Gerardo Torruelas (a) DJ Playero. They did, they say, just 30 years ago; it was in Puerto Rico, that's clear.
The cradle was very hybrid – almost Latin American, almost North American – and that music too: a mixture of Jamaican reggae with New York hip hop and those very sweaty stories and that ending in tone to say that it was a marathon, a long shot. Or, perhaps, to add a tone of Latin explosion: the thing is discussed. In any case, reggaeton began there, remained local for a few years, spread, sneaked into every corner. Reggaeton is the musical fashion that most lined the West in recent decades.
At first his lyrics told mostly of marginal lives. But more spread his dance: the perreo was an advance, humans doing animal things. Or things from people who don't want to be that which is supposedly implies. If the dances were always a more or less half-hearted representation of intercourse, here there was no distance, only clothes. In the perreo the dancers pampered a fornication without pampering or hugs, pure meeting of sexes. The perreo was an extreme honesty of the notion of dance—and some other notion.
In his image and likeness, his first videos sincere other desires of his executors: they insisted on showing golds, asses, cars, dollars, more golds, more asses, plastic tits, swimming pools in mansions, mansions, another wet ass. All the marks of success most like failures accumulated—and accumulate—in those journeys: the object women, the slimy objects, the shiny objects to make it clear that they are expensive, the idea that to succeed is to appropriate them and them. It was another strong sincerity: perhaps, after all, reggaeton had set out to show that sincerity is not necessarily good.
But that is almost incidental to its true role: to shape Latin American unity and find a place for us in the world. Reggaeton represents us: it is obvious that for many, now, we are that. Reggaeton connects with other ñamericanos clichés: rhythm, miscegenation, sweaty, hot, hot, slightly wild or, at least, wild. And it offers an advantage that many appreciate: being able to do some things they wanted — listen to bumbun music, rub their crotch between another leg — and attribute it to an alien culture, to exoticism. "We don't do that here, we only do it now because those people do it."
But what impresses me most is how reggaeton has managed to create the first truly common language, the authentic beginning of the famous Latin American unity. When I try to listen to the lyrics of certain reggaeton —and their trup of variants trap trip trep, undoubtedly trop—, I find it difficult to discover the nationality of the person who sings them. They all sound like a gangoso Caribbean leave that unites and confuses them, beyond national identities. It is an extraordinary advance: centuries looking for that unity and now it turns out that its clearest germ is that tropical accent joker that equals Argentines, Colombians, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Catalans and – there was more – the Puerto Rican daddies.
Thus, reggaeton follows its line: it shows that the famous union can be based on the worst. It's a hard line. Perhaps, after all, reggaeton is a sacrificial art, one that immolates itself to show us that certain things we wanted were not worth it. Slowly, of course, but even provoke your screams. Unless, as we suspect, we are trading a Ferrari for a twingo, a rolex for a casio. We just don't really know what the rolex, the ferrari, was. Neither the twingo, nor the casio, but our region could, somehow, sing that "a wolf like me is not for newbies". Or, if not, keep perreando – that the planets collide.
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