I HATE SALSA AND REGGAETON

you're actually a fucking moron right there.

p.s. MIA is still shit

Yeah, nobody else listens to this stuff. The main audience for reggaeton is clearly hipsters.

"Oh no the hipsters like this music I have to hate it now..."

stop laughing, it really is this serious.

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baile funk has its moments but is largely boring, i have yet to really hear a reggaeton song i think is interesting and baltimore club? come the fuck on. the simpsons theme over breaks?

these subgenres aren't bad because of their hipster taint (heh), but to deny that they are not currently of the young culture-devouring hipster is to either be willfully denying due to possible shame or just not paying attention.

which also doesn't mean that i think these subgenres are *solely* the domain of the hipster (echoing what oops said above) - so your credibility is safe, as far as i'm concerned. that's a joke, son.

hey - you like the stuff, great!
i don't see what the big deal is about.

but i love that i struck a nerve!

Is this an M.I.A. reference?

This thread has a lot of over-the-top responses.

In my BMW?

it's a predicament: i could care less what any of you think of me, i certainly don't need my taste justified, i've been lurking/posting here for yet if i actually deign to list what music i do like, i'll be accused of fishing for complements based on my taste. if i don't, then there'll be complaints as if my argument has no weight if it doesn't have some personal context. damned if i do...

you wanna know what kind of music i like, search my posts.

Of course, if you hate anything with a regular rhythm, no matter how multi-layered and spread out across various percussion voices, then there's no hope for you.

(JW, I know it doesn't sound like it, but I really just meant that to mean there is no hope for you getting into salsa or reggaeton, incidentally, rather than "no hope for you" in some total sense. I am being much too serious here, but that's what's most fun for me.)

i find it reasonably enjoyable in small doses. understanding jw's situation (living on a street with three latin music stores that blast the same few songs)

I'm honestly not sure what that means.

As for volume: I'm not pro-noise (in the non-genre sense of noise) at all, but I think that's a separate issue. At least there isn't as much bass in reggaeton as there is in hip-hop, so I don't get cars going buy vibrating my whole apartment building with reggaeton. But the noise issue is a different matter and I don't think people should be more considerate about that in general.

In my experience, Latin clubs aren't any louder than "dance music" clubs I've been to, and Latin bands (salsa/merengue, anyway) aren't any louder than rock or reggae bands I've seen live.

?

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Ah. Like the Rastafarians selling incense on the corner of 11th & Chestnut, here. (Not even playing the music that loud, but it always sounds widly distorted.)

R_S, what is it you don't like about Barrio Fino? I actually liked a good 85% of the songs. If that is a possible percentage on a 20-odd track CD. My reggaeton "experience" is limited but I'm learning. I luv the mix CDs I've purchased.

It's taken an unexpected turn for the sincere.

R_S, what is it you don't like about Barrio Fino?

I didn't expect to like it. I don't really like that much reggaeton to begin with. I like the new Vico C a lot better, for comparison, but then Vico C is more of an old Latin rap guy, I gather, and he seems to be interested in going for variety more than Daddy Yankee is at this point.

Everyone links to this when people ask them to justify listening to reggaeton!!!

it works for JA dancehall audiences!

anyway all music isn't made for the same purpose. you wouldn't play reggaeton at a funeral, duh.

anyway you may have noticed that reggaeton isn't a producer-led genre. unlike, say, rap, where people are at least as interested in hearing what just blaze or pharrell or timbaland are doing as they are what their favorite rappers are doing.

the vibe in reggaeton is built around the vocal performers, their various personaes and deliveries. the fact that your average reggaeton listener "gets" this and oops doesn't leads me to believe

1) oops has really poor listening skills / negative capability

2) oops finds listening to music excruciatingly tedious compared to dissing it on ILM.

yes, but rap doesn't have the "freedom and powerful connection" you get from reggaeton.

congrats on building an awesome circular argument, oops!

Obviously those who like reggaeton see positive things in it, and obviously rhythmic variation is not one of these things. All I'm saying is that it's important to me and I think any of the positives of reggaeton can be retained if the rhythm altered even a smidge.

1) reggaeton (like dancehall) is way way more streamlined than other musics (excruciatingly tedious drummer-led postrock, for example) as far as the beats go.

1a) this gives the vocal performers the freedom to go bonkers, while tying the music together enough to give it a powerful, linear flow for rocking the block party.

2) the reason all music doesn't do this is because all music isn't a block party. do you think rap is as good as rocking a block party as reggaeton? is that why reggaeton is more popular than rap in san diego on the rap radio stations right now? i think audiences prefer successful music to unsuccessful music.

exactly where did i make this argument??

all the positives of reggaeton could be retained if more than a single rhythm were used. there have been scores of other dance music genres that employed more than a single rhythm and many of them rocked blocks.

what truth? who/where are these hipsters listening to baile funk/reggaeton/b-more club? are we talking about hollertronix here or what? i mean, you can dislike the music all you want, fine by me. but i don't get how the jump is made to "emperor's new clothes."

South Bronx, late 70s to thread.

what a strange idea.

http://s38.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0EMDEKC9BAXXV1ZG8HMSGQDRTV

(I've posted this before.)

I don't have any real historical perspective on it, but I think reggaeton is actually in a very fluid state right now. I think the potential for commercial crossover (of various sorts--not necessarily even crossover to an English-speaking audience, but also crossover to different Latino demographics) is actually inspiring more experimentation, because the average pop listener doesn't want to hear a purist hardcore reggaeton sound. I think that could be a positive thing. For example, the fusion of reggaeton with bachata (itself pretty damn formulaic) has gotten fairly big, and I'm not sure that was there from the beginning of reggaeton. (Probably not since bachata itself didn't crossover big time into the general Latin music scene until the late 90s.)

Not sure if I agree with vahid re: not being producer oriented. What about Luny Tunes? But maybe he is an exception.

multi-x-post

So I understand your resistence.
Yet your objections are just as lazy I think. "its been done before, and better" - has it? This criticism just seems so removed from the fact that, you know, tons of people actually like this music and these genres are vital and that its not just about whether hipsters give a shit.

no, deej, they just haven't heard that south bronx 70s shit

Obviously those who like reggaeton see positive things in it, and obviously rhythmic variation is not one of these things. All I'm saying is that it's important to me and I think any of the positives of reggaeton can be retained if the rhythm altered even a smidge.

http://s56.yousendit.com/d.php?id=3FXOLI0J1FY802SFIZQ1KSYG4C

...just don't tell anyone you don't and, under no circumstances, explain why you don't.

But reggaeton has already been around long enough not to just be a fad, I think, though I'm not sure how the old numbers compare to where it is now. (It could be a fad for some of the crossover audience though.)

haha I used to listen to house ALL the time. but you know what? i got sick of the boom ch boom ch boom ch over and over and over. all along the, the stuff I liked most generally strayed from a strict four-to-the-floor beat.

after a few years on this board, i'm never surprised at the things people take offense to.

Disco was as much of a fad as any kind of music.

and i've never seen anything about r-ton as a socio-cultural thing that went further than "here is some culture and it dances to this, check it" anyway. it's always a bit ripe to complain that hollertronix are 'just' BEING DEEJAYS, wot a bunch of bastards

the interesting thing about r-ton (outside of the whole "i am dancing to any bit of reggaeton" situation) is probly that its relative remoteness might always demand some sort of crossbreeding to be popular and interesting (to 'us'?), a 4ever isolated core defined by its outsider tendrils more so than any other genre. so the whole orbit of hmm:

- 1 kogan/eddyish international idealistic freestyle-mash pop hit every year (probly by nina sky every year)

- the dj undercurrent of r-ton breaks 12s, rnb blends (dj kazzanova, co-stars), yellow av8s, 'reggaeton hits 14' compilations interpeting the r-ton bits it likes for urban clubs

- stuff like pharrell and j-lo doing a collabo with luny tunes (true)

- eventually a false critical continuum of "real" r-ton based solely on what tunes have the wibbliest mad noises (like saying ciara 'goodies' ws the best rnb tune of 04 etc) (nb if i had to post a top 10 right now it wd prob be one like this)

really i dont even know what i'm talking about anymore, but im sure as hell not reading this thread again for xps and no doubt massive holes in whatever i've said.

Vico C: Vamonos Po' Encima Feat D'Mingo & La Mala Rodriguez

I think there have been slightly more involved discussions than that about it on ILM.

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I wouldn't say it's THAT in your face in Philadelphia, but I do hear it pretty often. If I weren't already tuned into it though, I might not notice it coming out of passing cars.

In English:

"machete hey hey machete"

Translate again - Enter up to 150 words

ha ha, good thing you're not biased. That reads like "On the one hand I'm right but on the other hand you're wrong."

An awful lot of it is dark and broody and sounds like it's from the soundtrack of a grim movie about gang warfare or the like. Maybe that stays on the albums and doesn't get played so much in the clubs.

(To clarify: I have heard it in clubs at certain points, but I don't really know what reggaeton gets played in clubs now, since I go out for salsa; and reggaeton (in the mostly Latin context, here in this city, anyway) is mostly off on its own, or blended with merengue, bachata, and maybe Latin pop & house.)

don omar - entre tu y yo rmx
trivales - fiesta
daddy yankee / don omar - gata gangsteril
daddy yankee / divino - dimelo
g-unit - stunt 101 (dj mingo rmx)
notch - hay que bueno
k young / luna / co-stars - rain or shine
lito y polaco - si ella es brava
kamile - bando kurupto 2
guanabanas - bien bellaca
mario / pantera - let me love you (co-stars rmx)
wisin y yandel - dembow (mi vida)
ivy queen - papi te quiero rmx

This touches something for me: I often enjoy the pop end of a particular genre but with reggaeton that was particularly accentuated for me, N.O.R.E. or Ashanti crossover tunes seeming so much more idunno immediate than "proper" reggaeton (which I still liked but have to work with to get my head around to some extent) (BTW i'm speaking in past tense because I've since gotten much more used to reggaeton and the gap has narrowed somewhat)

What interested me was how on, say, that Ashanti bootleg, I didn't notice the repetitive staple rhythm as much as on other stuff... which leads me to suspect that it's not necessarily the rhythm per se that people find oppressive, but more the fact that, in the face of multiple levels of newness/unfamiliarity, the monotonousness of the rhythm is a step too far, leaves people almost nothing to latch onto in the first instance. Having a familiar Ashanti song, or even just familiar voices speaking in English (see "Oye Mi Canto") to work with made the experience much less tiring (on another level, both these tunes are I think exceedingly well produced).

I often think about a post Josh Kortbein wrote on his blog about how he couldn't remember the moment when he got used to house beat, but somehow it had quietly gone from seeming oppressive, rhythmically authoritarian, to seeming quite natural, almost inaudible in its familiarity (and this is only about a year or two after we'd had a bit of back-and-forth where he'd complained of exactly that) - in some senses the dance music fan doesn't actually hear the house beat at all, just what a particular track does with it - in the same way that when you're reading you don't necessarily stop and take notice of the fact that you're looking at the letters "a", "b", "c" etc., but you will notice if they're written in an interesting font.

I think this is true for reggaeton as well. Perhaps we can distinguish between two levels of frustration vis a vis the reggaeton beat:
a) the initial balking at its overall bracing quality (specifically its repetitiveness)
b) after this has been overcome, a residual desire for more interesting um fonting of the beat.

The hard part is often knowing which of these two types of frustration is speaking. It's easy to say "It's not that I don't get reggaeton, it's because I get it that it annoys/frustrates me." But I know from my own changing attitudes to lots of different styles of music that when I thought I was speaking from position (b) I was often in fact speaking from position (a), or a mixture of both - the two frustrations often interlock with one another and can be difficult to detangle.

Anyway, the point of all this is that its more of a dance sub-culture breakdown than a generational one. So far the more salsa-oriented nights don't appear to be drawing an older &/or less Latino crowd than they did previously. That could change, obviously. Meanwhile, I assume the nights dominated by reggaeton are mostly younger. I have never checked one out.

(all probly what u meant anyway in saying "exceedingly well produced")

(k young's 'rain or shine' does bear yr point out tho, dembow stiffness relaxed by youthful american rnb sweetness)

Well yeah it is what I meant but I hadn't actually worked out for myself that that was in fact what I meant...so thanx!!

Another way of putting what you've just pointed out is that most reggaeton is very ground-up structural, everything really complements (and effectively sounds like it's already implied by) the beat. On say the "Only You" remix I like the way the high'n'low synths almost feel out-of-time with the beat, or rather operating according to a different logic, so that there's a shadowy secondary groove at work - not just the repetitive beat but the ongoing loosening/tightening of the space between the beat and the arrangement.

Describing this sort of thing always makes me want to start using Marxist terminology - base/superstructure, totality, overdetermination...

i think reggeton has taken a lot of t[h]e younger market for salsa and merengue[.] merengue was HOT HOT with younger ppl here a few years ago, now not so much[.] i think a lot of it is that salsa has gotten stale and boring and reggaeton is fresh[.]
i wouldnt say its assimilation, as its happening within latin countries too[.]

-- Tim Finney (tfinne...), September 7th, 2005.

tim, i can see where you want to go here, and it doesn't make any sense. the base/superstructure thing (hardly a major part of marx) is more or less an invention of stalinist cultural theory. the concept 'base=rhythm/funktional', 'superstructure=other things' is wretched.

My experience with Baltimore radio has been that station(s)(2 or 1 over the years)) that normally play your standard top 10 rap and r'n'b songs were instead for a few late-night hour playing special mixes with 50s oldies as well as tv show themes and other stuff mixes over Baltimore club music. I haven't listened much lately, but it was once alot more than 'candy raver' stuff(whatever that is). When DJ Frankski, who is now in Atlanta, was on Baltimore radio years ago(shortly after he had left college radio) his late-night special mixes were imaginative.

Relax Enrique it was a joke!

they aren't played over the music, that is the music! or some of it anyway. i mean, they might have had a dj mixing stuff live in the studio, but there are plenty of baltimore club music SONGS that sample 50s oldies, t.v. shows, and lots of other stuff on record and cd.

P.S. Mamenme la poronga so hijos de la gran puta.

In English:
Mamenme poronga under children of great puta

DAMN YOU AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM!!!! YOU TOLD ME WE'D ERADICATE FOREIGN LANGUAGES BY 2006!!!!

did anyone ever follow up on this? i may not be artsy folks in nyc but that sounds like it could be interesting.

Hmm, I think we're done here.

I'm going to use this line in every argument I have from now on.

wow i love reggaeton man if u go to a club or a party it aint really poppin until they play some or the whole night reggaeton i mean if u r a latina like me cuz if u arent then i dnt blame u if u dnt like it,cuz i knoe white ppl cant really dance it,every club here in new york have 2 play reggaeton and the redio stations 2 so whoever dosent like it 2 bad cuz ur gonna have 2 hear it anyways :p oh and if u dnt knoe how 2 dance it dnt even try like ive seen some ppl do it cuz ull make an ass of urself jus find a seat and wait for some white music to be playd lol...1
― Latina