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..."

x-post:

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